the always-surprising journalist, author and blogger, ta-nehisi coates. i'm maria hinojosa. this is one on one. ta-nehisi coates, you're one of the senior editors for the atlantic monthly, you're a blogger, you live on twitter, you wrote this wonderful memoir called the beautiful struggle, about your relationship with your dad. it's great to have you on one on one. >> thank you. i'm honored to be here. >> hinojosa: so, put those two things together. i mean, did you say, "i'm going to be a writer," and then all of a sudden you realized that your life was on the internet or...? >> no, i wrote off-line, in print, for about 12 years almost exclusively, and it's so funny. colson whitehead has this recent piece about writers who complain that twitter and blogging is going to destroy their writing. and it's actually a split that i never really understood much. i love print, and i like blogging and i like tweeting. you know, i like a lot of things. and so it never really struck me as being in contrast or even being a problem or, you know, it being two different worlds or anything li

. >> ta-nehisi coates book. you guys are essentially dealing with the white supremacy in 2016. so my question is as appointed short story writer is, that while i agree, my thesis was on james baldwin and he'sba talking about love as a humanistic approach, my question is, in 2016 these problems still exist. is there ever a time when black folk have to come if weo are not going to reevaluate black nationalism as the answer, self-determined. because what's interesting isth that 80% of black people that ie are employed by white employers, only 20% of people are employed by african-american employees which means we can't feed ourselves because we can apply yourself. so would not an answer to white supremacy be at some point a reconsideration of what came out of the black lives movement is self determinism on how black people take control of their own institution. >> wow. that was deep brother. wow. why is it always me that has to make somebody mad in them room. that was a brilliant question. i do think there are several vectors to what you have said. i do think economic self-determi

i mean a big one for me was when i got the ta nehisi coates blurb. i had no idea that he even had the book. he turned to me and said you're about to lose your mind. because coates was tweeting about the book. >> seth: oh wow. >> that's how i found out that he had it. so that was a huge moment. >> seth: that's really great. also it's -- you know, and it is sort of social media at its best when you find out because literally someone's not just telling you they like the book, they're telling everyone. and you happen to be one of the people that hear it. >> exactly. it was beautiful. >> seth: now have you always known that you wanted to be a writer? was this something that you set out for at a young age? >> yeah. my secret ambition was to be a pop star. s that's totally fine. >> but other than that i kind of knew from a very young age that i wanted to be a writer. >> seth: yeah, cause pop star, you know, ultimately if you spend seven years trying to be a pop star and it doesn't work out, it is far more depressing. >> exactly. yeah. [ laughter ] yeah, very