“This Is How We Lost to the White Man”
E508348
“This Is How We Lost to the White Man” is an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates that examines Bill Cosby’s respectability politics and the broader history of Black leadership, responsibility, and racial inequality in America.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T5281937 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” Context triple: [We Were Eight Years in Power, hasPart, “This Is How We Lost to the White Man”]
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A.
This Is a Black Man’s Country
"This Is a Black Man’s Country" is an early reggae track by Jamaican singer Horace Andy that helped launch his recording career.
-
B.
Custer Died for Your Sins
"Custer Died for Your Sins" is a groundbreaking 1969 book by Vine Deloria Jr. that sharply critiques U.S. policies toward Native Americans and helped catalyze the Native American civil rights movement and literary renaissance.
-
C.
The War You Don't See
The War You Don't See is a documentary film by journalist John Pilger that critically examines how the media shapes public perception of war and conflict.
-
D.
A Place Among the Nations
A Place Among the Nations is a political and historical book by Benjamin Netanyahu that presents a defense of Zionism and the Jewish people's claim to the land of Israel.
-
E.
Trail of Broken Treaties
The Trail of Broken Treaties was a 1972 cross-country protest caravan and occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., organized by Native American activists to demand recognition of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” Target entity description: “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” is an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates that examines Bill Cosby’s respectability politics and the broader history of Black leadership, responsibility, and racial inequality in America.
-
A.
This Is a Black Man’s Country
"This Is a Black Man’s Country" is an early reggae track by Jamaican singer Horace Andy that helped launch his recording career.
-
B.
Custer Died for Your Sins
"Custer Died for Your Sins" is a groundbreaking 1969 book by Vine Deloria Jr. that sharply critiques U.S. policies toward Native Americans and helped catalyze the Native American civil rights movement and literary renaissance.
-
C.
The War You Don't See
The War You Don't See is a documentary film by journalist John Pilger that critically examines how the media shapes public perception of war and conflict.
-
D.
A Place Among the Nations
A Place Among the Nations is a political and historical book by Benjamin Netanyahu that presents a defense of Zionism and the Jewish people's claim to the land of Israel.
-
E.
Trail of Broken Treaties
The Trail of Broken Treaties was a 1972 cross-country protest caravan and occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., organized by Native American activists to demand recognition of treaty rights and tribal sovereignty.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (46)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf | essay ⓘ |
| about |
Bill Cosby’s public speeches on Black responsibility
ⓘ
the history of Black elite leadership ⓘ the legacy of earlier Black leaders ⓘ the limits of respectability politics ⓘ the relationship between culture and policy in racial inequality ⓘ the tension between individual responsibility and structural barriers ⓘ |
| addresses |
how Black leaders have negotiated white supremacy
ⓘ
how narratives of cultural deficiency obscure structural racism ⓘ the politics of respectability in the 20th and 21st centuries ⓘ the role of celebrity figures in Black politics ⓘ |
| author | Ta-Nehisi Coates NERFINISHED ⓘ |
| authorEthnicity | African American ⓘ |
| authorGender | male ⓘ |
| authorOccupation |
essayist
ⓘ
journalist ⓘ public intellectual ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| focusesOn |
Black family discourse
ⓘ
continuities between past and present Black leaders ⓘ political uses of personal responsibility rhetoric ⓘ public moralizing about poor Black communities ⓘ the gap between Black middle-class and poor communities ⓘ |
| genre |
cultural criticism
ⓘ
literary journalism ⓘ political essay ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainSubject |
African American history
NERFINISHED
ⓘ
Bill Cosby NERFINISHED ⓘ Black conservatism ⓘ Black leadership in the United States ⓘ Black nationalism ⓘ Black respectability ⓘ Black self-help tradition ⓘ civil rights movement ⓘ class and race in America ⓘ generational divides in Black politics ⓘ moral uplift ideology ⓘ personal responsibility discourse ⓘ racial inequality in the United States ⓘ respectability politics ⓘ structural racism ⓘ |
| perspective |
critical of respectability politics
ⓘ
focus on structural causes of inequality ⓘ historical analysis of Black leadership ⓘ |
| publicationContext | American magazine press ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” Description of subject: “This Is How We Lost to the White Man” is an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates that examines Bill Cosby’s respectability politics and the broader history of Black leadership, responsibility, and racial inequality in America.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.