Thomas Sowell used to talk about the damage affirmative action in college admissions did to black achievement. His argument was fairly simple. Putting unqualified blacks into elite colleges like Stanford may make white liberals feel good, but it just resulted in more blacks flunking out of college. The black students that should be in Fresno State, for example, were getting placed in UCLA. The blacks that should be at UCLA were getting bumped up to Berkley. Affirmative action created a cascading effect that damaged all blacks entering college.

Whether or not you agree with Sowell, putting people into a position for which they are unqualified is a terrible idea, regardless of the justification. It is one of the many ways the Left dehumanizes black people. Affirmative action in college admissions has nothing to do with helping black people. It is all about making the white people feel noble. They get to retire to their all-white neighborhoods to boast about how they are making the world a better place.

I’ve written here about the corrosive effect of racial solidarity amongst blacks. When Charles Barkley said pretty much the same thing I’ve been saying, I thought good things about Mr. Barkley. How could I not? He was less elegant, but more to the point. Blacks are the people hold black people back in America.

“We as black people are never going to be successful, not because of you white people, but because of other black people. When you are black, you have to deal with so much crap in your life from other black people,” Barkley said.

Barkley, a native of Leeds, said African Americans are too concerned with street cred than true success and that’s holding the community back.

“For some reason we are brainwashed to think, if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don’t break the law, you’re not a good black person. It’s a dirty, dark secret in the black community.

“There are a lot of black people who are unintelligent, who don’t have success. It’s best to knock a successful black person down because they’re intelligent, they speak well, they do well in school, and they’re successful. It’s just typical BS that goes on when you’re black, man.”

For some reason, I decided to check in on the Atlantic’s house, er, black guy to see if he had picked up on it. Sure enough, he had a post up. Coates is a nice fusion of what Sowell and Barkely are saying. The Atlantic is decorating its site with Coates. They don’t really care what he has to say, how could they? His arguments are juvenile and incoherent. I thought after his embarrassing long essay on reparations that got so much attention, he would have been ushered off and replaced. His sudden “sabbatical” looked like a polite way of brooming the guy, but here he is.

Now, it very well may be that he is simply too dumb to realize he is an ornament. He’s certainly too dumb to know he is who Barkley had in mind when he talked about stupid blacks trying to tear down successful blacks. Of course, this could not happen if the white people running the Atlantic viewed blacks as something other than wrapping paper. Coates may be a nice guy, but he should be covering high school sports for a town paper, not writing essays for a major opinion journal. He is in way over his head, but it is not his fault. The fault lies with the white’s who hired him. The casacading effect of such decisions is their fault as well.