It keeps getting bigger. One might have expected last month’s protest by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, his refusal to stand for the national anthem, to have blown over by now. Instead, it has caught fire. Sunday, members of the Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs all staged protests of their […]

“Why haven’t you reported that Colin Kaepernick’s actions are due to his radical Muslim beliefs? Why are you covering this up?” So reads an email sitting in my inbox. Not shockingly, Snopes, the fact-checking website, has rated the claim it makes as false. Kaepernick, an NFL quarterback, did not mention religion in explaining why he […]

Today’s column is presented as a public service. It is for serious politicians both Democratic and Republican — and also for Donald Trump. The urgent need for this service has been painfully obvious for many years and never more so than today. So, let’s get right to it. This is: How to Talk to Black […]

I had decided not to see Nate Parker’s new movie. This was a tough choice. I had been looking forward with great eagerness to the October release of “Birth of a Nation,” Parker’s acclaimed account of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave uprising. But this was before I heard about the rape. Meaning the 1999 rape that […]

His name doesn’t even appear in the book. But make no mistake. “Hillbilly Elegy,” the new best-seller by J.D. Vance, is, in a very real sense, about Donald Trump. More to the point, it’s about the people who have made his unlikely run for the presidency possible. It is also, not coincidentally, a book about […]

Ordinarily, I might gloat. Last week, a prominent conservative pundit conceded a point yours truly and countless others have been making for a long time. Namely, that in their constant assaults on mainstream news media, conservatives have wrecked the very idea of objective, knowable fact. In effect, they broke reality. And Donald Trump came oozing […]

We will get to Baltimore in a moment. First, let’s talk about innocence. That’s the unlikely ideal two great polemicists, writing over half a century apart, both invoked to describe America’s racial dynamic. It’s a coincidence that feels significant and not particularly coincidental. In 1963’s “The Fire Next Time,” James Baldwin writes, “… and this […]

“Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” — John 8:32 Or maybe not. Far be it from me to correct Jesus, but to survey the modern political landscape is to see precious little evidence of the truth setting anyone free. Indeed, it is to become convinced that a great […]

Dear Republican Party: Congratulations. By now, one thing is beyond dispute: You have produced a candidate for the ages. This column is only 600 words or so, which gives me not nearly enough space to do justice to the many ways Donald Trump has proven himself unfit to be president. He is an overgrown frat […]