There is no objective "world around us." There are only attempts to represent that world, whose attributes and flaws vary. I am a writer. I believe in being "on the ground." I believe in "seeing things." But part of "seeing things" is that if you actually are seeing as much as possible, you understand the limitations of your eyes.
Given that Coates is complaining about a pundit who disdains polls in favor of personal impressions (or worse, secondhand accounts thereof), it seems like a better conclusion would be "there is an objective world; and your feelings about how the world is, are not the world itself; you actually have to go and measure in a systematic fashion if you want to know what the world is like". I'm not sure why he concludes that the objective world is not real. Besides, if there's no objective world, then the notion of some attempts to represent that world being more or less flawed, seems incoherent...
P.S. You've got the hyphen in Coates' name placed wrong; it should be "Ta-Nehisi Coates".
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