I was born and raised in Lima, Ohio. And in many ways, I’ve never left. Home weighs heavily on us all. Our early experiences deeply influence the way we see and understand the world around us. I had a charmed upbringing– safe, comfortable, and loved. My parents encouraged me in everything I did. They bought […]

Read more "Why I Can Never Go Home Again"

The bloated, self-referential, corporate orgasm that is the Super Bowl has come and gone again. It brought with it all the usual nonsense– contrived “storylines” like the exuberant, emotional, athletic stylings of Cam Newton vs. the stoic, studied, precision of Peyton Manning (a narrative that didn’t even bother hiding its naked, insipid racism– wonderfully mocked by […]

Read more "Legitimacy in Policing"

Parul Sehgal, senior editor of the New York Times Book Review, wrote a wonderful piece on erasure in American culture yesterday. Sehgal makes a compelling case that we lack the capacity for imagining more than a single narrative (primarily that of the straight, white, Christian male), which is made evident across our artistic spectrum– from media coverage of crime to […]

Read more "Erasure and Black History Month"

Yesterday, conservative theologian R. R. Reno wrote an editorial for the New York Times entitled “How Both Parties Lost the White Middle Class.” For Reno, the populism of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is the result of a broken covenant between the two parties and the white majority. The fear and anxiety of the white middle class, who […]

Read more "Losing the White Middle Class"

Reality TV star Phil Robertson stumped for Ted Cruz today in Iowa. While working the Cruz crowd into a lather, Robertson launched into the now familiar conservative evangelical Christian refrain that America is plagued by ‘evil gays’ and that our salvation can only be found through a return to the original intent of the Constitution and our Biblical traditions. […]

Read more "God, James Madison, and the Constitution walk into a bar…"

I’ve been busy traveling for work, so this is not as prompt as I would like, but I would like to continue the conversation about liberalism and white supremacy that we started last week. The controversy over Bernie Sanders remarks regarding reparations and the half-hearted way that liberals address issues of race seemed to confuse […]

Read more "Divisive Rhetoric and the Mythology of the Dunning School"

Killer Mike rose to the defense of Bernie Sanders with a series of tweets in response to Ta-Nehisi Coates piece “Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?” The exchange between Killer Mike and TNC is great– this is what political disagreements are supposed to look like. I wrote a little about liberals fundamental problem with […]

Read more "Liberal America’s Ignorance of White Supremacy (redux)"

Anyone who has been a part of my life in the last five years knows that I think Ta-Nehisi Coates is the best writer in America. His technical skill, his biting wit, and his towering intellect are a credit to his profession. His notoriety, at least among educated Americans, is proof that quality discourse and […]

Read more "How Liberals Fundamentally Don’t Get White Supremacy"

Students in schools across the nation will pay homage to Martin Luther King Jr. this week. His likeness will appear in your Google search bar. Tribute will be paid, in the form of feel good highlights of “our” successes in overcoming racism and sadness from the tragedy of his assassination. Most will hear a piece […]

Read more "MLK and the Problem with Calls for “Law and Order”"

Last night’s GOP debate was an ugly affair. There was the customary anti-Obama nonsense: like Chris Christie threatening to kick the President’s butt out of the White House next year (ignoring the fact that he is Constitutionally bound to leave office anyway), Ted Cruz and Christie calling Obama a petulant child, and Marco Rubio’s fantastical claim that […]

Read more "Nativism’s Long, Ugly History in American Politics"