When your boy gets nominated for an "Image Award." Man listen: The kid boasts the sort of resume that sends respectable blacks into anaphylactic shock. Let's do a run down here:
--Born out wedlock. Check!
--Has brothers and sisters by different mothers. Check!
--Was kicked out of high school. Check!
--Dropped out of college. Check!
--Bad grammar. Check!
--Happily continued the cycle of having children out of wedlock, Check!!
--Lives in sin. CheckCheck!!!
--Has not been to church--in, well, almost ever. Check!
--Uses the word nigger. CheckityCheckCheck!!
--Uses the word conversate, then attempts to legitimize it. Check!
If only I'd done a bid, the cipher would be complete. But I'm from Baltimore. I think that counts.
There's a part of me that wants to say to the NAACP--Do I look like a role model? But it's a really, really, really small part. The truth of the matter is that I'm highly amused. But the deeper truth is that I'm honored. All I ever wanted to do, was represent for my folk. Now get out here, before I start losing my edge. Someone send me a Bobby Rush clip. Fast.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
All kidding aside, congratulations.
Congratulations TNC! Not to get all serious but but but...If the "image" part of the struggle is for blacks to see themselves and be seen in all their complete, complex, and various personhood, you definitely desesrve the award.
Plus, D&D-heads have waited far too long for their NAACP props. That underrepresentation was a crime just screaming out for some Blago-style intervention.
TNC, you are true to yourself. That's a message that everyone can take to heart.
Congratulations! And while this is fairly amusing, you're right to be honored. If you'd gotten a Source Award nom, I'd be concerned--that joint is always the height of nignorance.
From the official release:
Congratulations! To be perfectly honest, it doesn't change the way I see you one bit. But it does make me feel like there might be some life left in the NAACP after all..
Mazel tov!!!
Does this mean that you may be in the running to be the future Official Voice of Black America?
Oh, my God. BabylonSista, I realize that it is a term that I will never be able to use without expecting (and deserving) a serious ass-kicking, but I sit in awe of the word "nignorance."
Congrats Coates!
Somewhere out there, Fred's head is exploding.
How u managed NOT to become a famous rapper is beyond me...i mean, puffy dropped out of howard to...i thought he was the voice of urban black america?? Or was that Stanley Crouch??
All jokes aside..congratulations are in order, i haven't had the pleasure to actually read the book...but NAACP must carry some weight!
I'm still laughing. It's the "CheckityCheckCheck."
Despite your listed "flaws," excellence will always be recognized. I don't know about anyone else, but on many occasion at work, I've been staring at my screen reading something you've written, like "American Girl," with my fingers to my lips and tears rolling down my cheeks.
At my sister's Kwanzaa ceremony, my niece, a poet and writer, said something to the effect of "I want to make sure that I have an affect on the world, not just to those close to me like family and friends, but that how I live my life and what I do mean something to people who don't know me."
Congratulations.
-TNC
Congrats! Like you, it's amusing, but damned near everything the NAACP does is amusing to me. However, I know it means a lot to you so sincere congratulations. Keep up the good work.
TNC,
Gratsoo to you. I'll have to check the book out from my local library. (Support your local libraries folks!!)
Let me add a box to the list...
Failed miserably by every standard measure of success and made it to the heights anyway. MegaCheck!
Now, as my best friend used to say to me before I went onstage back in the day: Don't fuck this up.
Good on you, mate.
P.S. You're going to get me fired for malingering and weeping while doing it. There's affect for ya.
It came down to you or R Kelly. Probably not so hard a choice. Congratulations.
Congrats Coates
Do you have your acceptance speech/shout outs ready for pookie and nem?
Tom C and SGWhite, you are both wrong as hell for those comments. I almost choked on my coffee.
Good for the NAACP!
You get better by the day -- "American Girl" is written in a voice that is equally & authentically Black & American & Human, without compromise or loss.
Congrats!
Conversate just came up, though--I'm sure if they'd known you were going to do such a thing it would have knocked you out of contention. (I still don't quite get that--I share in the agonic writhing initiated by "black people are biologically programmed to speak with a certain grammar and word choice" or "and we should teach the correct usage of that in schools" that is how I first encountered ebonics, but this usage doesn't seem any different from my kid using "sick" for everything he likes about yesterday's snow. Or my making up "agonic" up there.)
You can be a role model for my kids; it's not like they can ask me anything about video games. And your grammar is fine.
Sg,
There will be shout-outs to my mens and them.
TNC, Congrats to you. Don't know why you think you wouldn't even be in the running, much less receiving the Image award. Not to kiss your a$$ but, I read an article you wrote in Essence several years ago (think it was the first) about you and your partner and your decisions about having your beloved child and not wanting to get married. I was totally taken with it and your way of expressing yourself in words. It stuck with me, often wondered what had become of you. Glad to see you are getting some props, even if it is the NAACP image award- maybe I'll update my membership.
Congrats! I'm sure the other nominees are worthy, but you can leave the trash talking to us so you can keep your nose clean. :)
Got the book as an Xmas present--looking forward to reading it.
Congratulations! Good for the NAACP too.
Congrats, and it is very well deserved. Funny thing is than when the Academy Awards are announced, I will have seen none of the Best Picture nominees, but I can say I read the book that was a finalist for a Image Award for the NAACP.
LMAO. You *really* got the respectable negroes in a tizzy this week.
Congrats... but you realize you can't accept the award without first thanking the "big man up there," while pounding your chest and then pointing upward.
Mr. Coates,
You'll be the HNIT any day now.
Congrats!
Congratulations, Ta-Nehisi! Good work is its own reward, but it's also rewarding to be recognized for it.
Congrats, TNC!!!
Is the book in paperback yet? If so, I'm headed to Barnes & Noble today. (Sorry, man....no room on my shelves for all those hardbacks.)
Congrats!
Oh and I put part of your defense of "conversate" in my facebook status last night. Never received so many nasty messages in one day... it seems the black college crowd still ain't havin it.
Irregardless of all the checks, congratulations.
What block in B'more did you grow up on?
Congratulations! For what it's worth the NAACP does try to recognize excellence amongst the peoples (except R Kelly) and your words are excellent!!
Total congratulations. I haven't gotten the book yet, because I keep forgetting to add it to orders, but it's going in the queue for the next time around.
Does anyone remember the Boondocks episode (Season 1) when R. Kelly's lawyer mentions the NAACP Image award? You should bring this up in your acceptance speech!
Congrats on the nod!
Congratulations on a well-deserved honor. Maybe you got there because of some of those things you checked!
Congratulations, Coates.
You crack me up with your checklist.
Very much deserved!!!
Any chance I can get you to get a beef going ala Snoop at The Source Awards.
Maybe get you to say something like, "What, ya'll aint got no love for the Atlantic, ya'll ain't got no love for T-Dog???"
...as you snarl at John McWhorter
bid = jail time?
Tsk, all that and you still never carved a backwards B in Pittsburgh.
The book is available in paperback, at least online. I just ordered it today, along with the Eyal Press book.
Tioga Parkway. Right across the street from Mondawmin.
Congrats! and I hope you don't think less of me but I got the Kindle edition... I'm tired of moving boxes of books :)
Gratz, TNC. From one gamer to another.
Congratulations, yo!!
(That last part is a result of me catching up on The Wire. I never watched while it was airing. Right now I'm on season 1, episode 8. The drug dealing brothas sho like ending every utterance with that 2 letter word. And I find it pretty cool. LOL!)
Most heartfelt congrats to one of the messengers. More, more, more!