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[sebastian_dangerfield]

Oh, it was? What was the irony there?

The suggestion they bury the hatchet was ironic. Clearly this is never going to happen.

That wasn't quite the point. It was the juxtaposition of how Sullivan and Coates each saw their relationship. Sullivan was deluding himself in thinking it was great.

And Coates taking himself as serious as cancer, as usual, and offering a bitter take on it. Sullivan may have been a bit deluded, but Coates was, as always sour and dour. In a moment where he could have made fun of Sullivan quite effectively, he's again flatfooted, ever earnest.

Whether or not you think Sullivan is racist, and whether or not you think that Coates is a good writer, you have to be struck that Sullivan bragged about the great intellectual relationship he shared with Coates, but Coates had a very different view.

Sullivan was clearly deluded.

Several years ago, Coates read a history of the Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood and blogged about it, for example in this post and this one. When I think about his stuff, that's the stuff that stands out to me. I read Wedgwood's book on his recommendation, and it was great. I defy you to read those posts and tell me that Coates has a hammer-and-nail view of the world. Now, maybe you've read his books (I haven't) and can tell me he's changed. But more likely, I think Coates often writes about race, and that's not a subject you're interested in, so you have dismissed him. Your caricature of him and his work is ignorant, but that's your problem, not mine.

An examination of his works, which can be aggregated on The Atlantic website, shows a roughly 80% focus on matters of race. The very article you cite shows him shoehorning his own quest to understand racism into a review of another person's book. If not for his his giving the author a lengthy quote in the middle of the piece, one could and should flag him for making a book a review into a self-examination.

Yes, that was a pretty big dust-up. If you are interested only in West because you found someone dumping on Coates, you will not care to read this piece about their back-and-forth or Coates saying he doesn't understand what West is on about.

In one of those pieces, Coates admits he cannot hold forth on economics or foreign policy. Well, if one desires to make strident policy prescriptions, one should address that ignorance. Because if you don't understand economics, which West very much does, you don't understand one of the largest forces causing systemic racism and classism. I find it utterly astounding for a person who makes a case for reparations to admit he doesn't consider himself qualified to speak on economics.

What, Mr. Coates, is reparations if not an economic program?

This preciousness in which he asserts he can offer policy prescriptions in a vacuum and needn't engage the economic arguments offered by West and Sanders is why his stuff fails to satisfy. Agree with him or not, West Gets It. He connects the economics and the property rights-obsessed legal system to racism and classism. He explains how our hierarchies are designed to deliver for certain people while excluding others. His is a more expansive and satisfying view that sees racism in context rather than as a stand alone item.

Coates would do well to learn economics, and perhaps math more generally (no one can argue for reparations and claim to grasp math).* He may find a lot of his Marvel royalties fail to materialize if he does not learn the numbers, and how to spot an agent's syphoning of them.
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*ETA: I believe West makes the case to highlight how much has been robbed from generations of African Americans, not out of a sincere belief the money could ever be paid.