Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

Ta-Nehisi Coates has emerged as one of the leading minds when it comes to the topic of race matters in America, and the author has touched upon those themes in his best-selling book, Between the World and Me. Appearing on MSNBC Monday (Sept. 21) night from Paris, Coates had some choice words for conservatives and GOP candidates drumming up an anti-Black Lives Matter sentiment.

Coates was a guest of MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes show as he was promoting the release of his book in the French city. At root was Coates’ latest piece for The Atlantic, of which he serves as its National Correspondent.

In the article, “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Coates examined the current criminal justice system and the 50 years since late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family” report which Coates states helped create the current climate.

Towards the end of Coates’ time on-air with Hayes, the writer pointed clear words to GOP presidential hopefuls and others for the current fear-mongering rhetoric that is attempting to paint Black Lives Matter as an anti-police movement.

More from MSNBC:

HAYES: You know, when you and I have had conversations about this piece, particularly, and the issue more broadly, I think we have slightly  different perspectives on how much political progress we`re going to make towards bringing the era of mass incarceration to a close. What`s your sense as you watch the politics of this play out of what hope there is? People talk about the bipartisan movement for criminal justice reform and conservative think tanks talking about it. Where do you  think this is going?

COATES: It`s interesting. I`ll just lay this out for the viewer.  Chris, you and I had a conversation and I believe it was about a month or so ago, and you were saying it would not surprise you, and you can correct me if I have this wrong, but within the next 20 or 30 years if we somehow got our incarceration rate down to about [400] per 100,000. Right now we`re at 700 per 100,000. There`s no country in the world with reliable  numbers that`s even compatible with us.

At 400 per 100,000 we would be somewhere in the vicinity of Russia. We  still would be a major outlier and still an embarrassment to democracy and the world, but that would be some sort of progress. I just don`t know. I hope you`re right. I hope you`re more than right, in fact. But when you see the reaction to what folks are calling theFerguson Effect which is really just a juking of the numbers, a total mathematical innumeracy. When you see that, when you see people like Ted Cruz, when you see Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina, running a campaign against Black Lives Matter, when you see Donald Trump, you see people standing up, talking about a war on cops, anybody who thinks progress in the era of prison reform is a done deal really should be humbled by that.

If only — God forbid crime actually rise for real. I mean, forget Ferguson Effect. God forbid it actually happened. I don`t know, I think it`s highly dependent on the weather. If it rains tomorrow, we`ll get prison reform — I mean we won`t get prison reform. If it`s sunny, we will.

Watch Ta-Nehisi Coates’ MSNBC interview below.

Photo: MSNBC