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this here actually touches on something interesting, but in a lazy way. 
after @byjoelanderson worked on a piece on white supremacists, he did a thread #onhere that touched on how...unremarkable they could be.
how he'd hear those white supremacists and realize just how mainstream their views were. they weren't nearly as fringe as advertised.
so let's move to this quote from the times about coates, spencer and what they may have in common. 
say what you want about spencer, but he's bright. and, like it or not, he gets a *lot* about race in america and the role of whiteness.
difference between coates and spencer is coates sees the danger of white supremacy and what it's wrought and spencer can't see the problem.
but the mistake, as usual, is the assumption that white supremacists -- used in the individual, pejorative sense -- are crazy dummies.
some of them can see everything coates sees about race. they just wanna keep it that way. and, with your silent complicity, will do so.
what the writer calls coates buying into the "specialness" of whiteness is like saying i buy into it because i use #gtbw.
nothing inherently special about whiteness. but it's the most special thing going in america, and you're a fool if you deny that.
which is to say, @bariweiss, send that dude to debate coates and you'd be responsible for what happened. you'd have to call his mom after.
