TIME
Read More
The New York Times
June 24, 2017
Read More
New York Times
FEBRUARY 22, 2017
Many Americans might not know the more polemical side of race writing in our history. The canon of African-American literature is well established. Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin are familiar figures. Far less so is Samuel Morton (champion of the obsolete theory of polygenesis) or Thomas Dixon (author of novels romanticizing Klan violence). It is tempting to think that the influence of those dusty polemics ebbed as the dust accumulated. But their legacy persists, freshly shaping much of our racial discourse.
Read More
Newsweek
FEBRUARY 11, 2017
Contrary to popular conceptions, ignorant and hateful people have not been behind the production and reproduction of racist ideas in America. Instead, racist ideas have usually been produced by some of the most brilliant and cunning minds of each era.
Read More
Public Books
JANUARY 23, 2017
I think I first read All About Love sometime in 2010. I had just earned my doctorate and was stepping into my career as a professor. At 28 years old, I was also stepping into a conscious understanding of who I was: I was consciously trying to understand who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to be. Every draft of myself contained the chapter of love.
Read More
New York Times
JANUARY 21, 2017
Barack Obama said in his final news conference that he planned to use his time off from politics “to do some writing.” I am hoping in his post-presidency, he begins to write a different racial history from the one he proclaimed from his presidential pulpit.
Read More
Academe
NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2016
Barack Obama’s presidency will forever be connected to postracial ideology. The postracial idea that racism has been marginalized or eradicated came of age during the early years of his tenure in office. It was mortally wounded during the final years of his presidency by a rash of police shootings and Black Lives Matter protests.
Read More
Black Perspectives
OCTOBER 20, 2016
This year marks the 100-year anniversary of the academic achievement gap–built and continuously renovated by the 100-year-old standardized testing movement. It is a centennial that hardly anyone knows about.
Black Perspectives
AUGUST 22, 2016
Dear Brother Nate: I write to you as my brother because I cannot think of anything else to call you but my brother. When I learned about how you and your friend were tried for raping an intoxicated fellow student at Pennsylvania State University in 1999, the anger, embarrassment, and shame I felt were feelings I would feel for a family member.
Read More