Ta-Nehisi Coates says that the Roland Burris saga is like a “Greek Tragedy.” I think that’s mistaken. Burris’ journey more resembles a Shakespearean tragedy along the lines of King Lear, where the main character has made an initial foolish decision that dooms them from the beginning of the play. Oedipus could have just let Laius go first for pete’s sake, and Jason could have changed his mind about marrying Glauce and simply run off with Medea before she decided to kill their children. By engaging in Blago‘s pay to pay scheme, like Lear splitting his kingdom between his two ungrateful daughters, Burris sealed his fate from minute one.
That said, the protagonists in tragedies are usually representative of a particular class, group, or idea. If we interpret the Burris saga in this manner, we’re witnessing the end of a particular kind of black politics, the idea that the advancement of any black individual, no matter how corrupt or incompetent, is a kind of progress, and that opposition to such an ascension is somehow an attack on community as a whole.
— A. Serwer
