One thing I concluded about Ta Ne-Haisi Coates as I looked over my notes from We Were Eight Years in Power was that he did not have much patience for comparisons. Longtime readers will understand why this is a notable observation given my own distaste for comparisons because I feel they often act as a substitute for deep and rigorous critical thinking.
The note that made me first consider this was Coates’s comment about ratios. He notes that the problem with a ratio is how although it requires understanding two components, they are commonly manipulated to state truisms about just one component. He cites a 2012 study from the Manhattan Group to make this point – in this study, the group suggested that segregation had declined since the 1960s. Great, Coates comments, but comparing two eras fails to account for why African-Americans still remain the most segregated group in the country and does nothing to determine what must be done to remedy the ongoing injustice.
I view Coates’s thought as an example of a larger problem with comparisons. If we become too accustomed to using comparisons against the past as a marker for progress, we risk complacency before all of our work is completed. Instead, we should understand what the ideal is that we are working toward and resolve not to finish working until the ideal has been reached.
