Ta-Nehisi Coates says he’ll likely vote for Kamala Harris

Bestselling author Ta-Nehisi Coates says he will likely vote for Vice President Kamala Harris even though she and former President Donald Trump both present a “moral and ethical conundrum” over their support for Israel.
In a packed auditorium Monday night in Des Moines, Iowa, Coates shared his views on the coming election while recounting details of his trip to West Bank now folded in his latest book “The Message.”
The National Book Award recipient has received significant media backlash for the book, which in part illustrates the “segregation” he witnessed in the occupied West Bank between Palestinians and Israeli settlers. He explained to the crowd his reluctant decision to support Harris.
“What you’re basically saying is to preserve the rights of all of you in this room, all of us in this room … I will vote for somebody, I will support somebody who continues to allow bombs to be dropped on hospitals in defense of apartheid,” Coates said. “… Sometimes, the choices are bad, man.”
In his book, Coates also writes of his first trip to Africa, particularly in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and to Columbia, South Carolina, where one of his books was challenged at a local school board meeting.
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A recent “CBS Mornings” interview showed co-anchor Tony Dokoupil pressing Coates about that section of the book on Palestine, stating that without the acclaimed author’s name or Penguin Random House as a backer, his depictions of the country “would not be out of place in a backpack of an extremist.”
Dokoupil, who is Jewish and whose former wife and two children live in Israel, also criticized Coates for not addressing the countries “that want to eliminate” Israel and at one point asked: “Is it because you just don’t believe that Israel in any condition has a right to exist?”
Coates rebutted: “There is no shortage of that perspective in American media,” before telling Dokoupil he is “most concerned with those that don’t have a voice, with those that don’t have the ability to talk.”
Coates’ Des Moines appearance at the Franklin Center for a sold-out event with Beaverdale Books drew criticism from the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines. Jarad Bernstein, the chapter’s executive director, called out the independent bookstore for featuring an author who “holds extremist views about both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Jewish people.”
“The narrative that Ta-Nehisi Coates outlines comparing Israel and Jim Crow laws is dangerous, outrageous and falsely compares very difficult subject matters,” Bernstein said in an emailed statement. “Coates’ attempt to fit the long and deeply complicated history of the Mideast into the entirely different framework of America’s racial history only reinforces the false binaries of the conflict.
“While we recognize Mr. Coates’ important contribution in combating anti-Black racism over the last number of years, it is also true he holds extremist views about both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Jewish people.”
On Monday, at the Franklin Center, Coates mentioned the heated exchange with Dokoupil, adding there is no shortage of “arguments or justifications for Israeli government occupation.” Coates, borrowing a line from civil rights leader and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, said he chose to tell the story about “the slave,” not the “story of the master,” and the moral implications intricately woven into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I would not be doing you a service if I lied about what I saw there,” Coates told event moderator Rekha Basu, a former Des Moines Register columnist, and more than 500 people who filled the center on the city’s northwest side.
“I have a responsibility to people and that responsibility comes from the stories I told, but it also comes from me as an American because everything I saw was made possible by my tax dollars,” he continued.
During the hourlong conversation, Coates spoke more in-depth about visiting the West Bank’s Area C, the only administrative area under Israel’s full authority and which largely covers the occupied territory.
Area C is where Palestinians and Israeli settlers live, with many Palestinian communities in parts of the region devoted to military training, according to Anera, one of the oldest and largest U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) providing humanitarian aid in the Middle East. Palestinian authorities and police oversee Area A, while Palestinian and Israeli authorities share control in Area B.
These communities also lack a primary school and regular water access, and it is difficult for Palestinian residents to obtain land permits for housing and farming, the nonprofit said.
Coates said the permit process is not an “equal” one, comparing it to America’s history of redlining, an illegal practice that barred Black Americans from homeownership.
“Think of what we would say, for instance, if right now, (Russian President) Vladimir Putin started having settlements in Ukraine. We would be very upset about that,” Coates said while asking what or who exactly is Israel defending?
“What I saw was, again, you are defending a system in which one group of people enjoys total citizenship and where another group doesn’t,” he said. “You are defending an occupation wherein one group of people has access to one kind of legal system and the other people have another access to a different kind of legal system. You are defending literal housing segregation. This is apartheid.”
USA TODAY contributed to this report.
F. Amanda Tugade covers social justice issues for the Des Moines Register. Email her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter@writefelissa.