Alienated …

… Coates contra mundum by Anthony Daniels - The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

There is a kind of moral blackmail at work here: to mention the rather obvious fact that young black men in the ghetto are now much more likely to be killed or otherwise seriously victimized by their peers than by the police, however reprehensibly the latter may sometimes behave, is ipso facto to yell, in other words be irrational in a particular and politically offensive way. According to Coates in another passage, even to speak of violence done to blacks by other blacks is to do “violence to language.” Rather than yell, then, it is best to keep quiet on the subject, to pass over it in silence or, better still, fail even to notice it. And this, be it remembered, is a recommendation to his son.

Coates fails to notice that his blanket exoneration of the perpetrators actually dehumanizes them. On his view, when the young perpetrators pull the trigger or thrust the knife in they are only vectors of forces, not agents with purposes, desires, plans, or motives. Therefore they are not really men at all, so that, ironically enough, they become for him Invisible Man writ large.