Politics
-
No, Patton Oswalt, America Is Not More Sexist Than It Is Racist
On Tuesday night, as the world watched in shock and horror with the realization that Donald Trump had, in fact, won the presidency, it didn’t take long for a new narrative to take hold. A tweet by Patton Oswalt, in which he stated that the election results affirmed that America is far more sexist than it is racist,…
-
RIP, Obamacare, We Hardly Knew Ye
Obamacare has officially moved into hospice. I think the best thing we can all do now is try to make President Barack Obama’s life work, and arguably the most controversial and effective piece of legislation during his two-term presidency, as comfortable as possible, because the end is near. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,…
-
Black Women Were the Only Ones Who Tried to Save the World Tuesday Night
With dust settling on the biggest political upset in U.S. history, the hazy day after is an atom-bomb-drop mess of circular firing squads, blame games and armchair-quarterbacking analysis of what just happened. And while the top-line analysis pretty much points to white America’s collective anti-black streak as the primary culprit, we are now getting a…
-
#WeOutOrNah? The Internal Conflict of a Conscious Black Person Postelection
“Ohio. North Carolina. Florida. My God. This is really happening.” As last night’s results rolled in, I was hunkered down in a war room with colleagues. Together we watched our greatest fear, and that of millions of others around the country, be actualized in real time. My body stiffened as state by state, vote by…
-
What a Trump Presidency Means to Civil Rights
Last night, America’s “silent majority” defied political scientists, expert pollsters and what many would regard as common decency in electing Donald Trump president. When faced with a choice between arguably the most qualified presidential candidate we’ve seen in the modern era of electoral politics and … well, a bigot, America felt safer with the latter.…
-
Whiteness in America Is a Virus Whose Sole Purpose Is Preserving Itself
The only photograph I have with James Alan McPherson is from the beginning of the Obama era; it turned out to be far more symbolic than I could have imagined. In the picture, Jim’s students flank him, a fairly mixed group of mostly smiling faces: three white women, two black men, a black woman, a…
-
So, Um … Will Black People Pull Out Their Old 'Black America' IDs Again?
When I was certain that Hillary Clinton was going to win, I was going to write about how black America now has its own version of red states vs. blue states. My idea was that Michelle and Barack Obama were going to become—really, are—new heroes in black America, forever creating a new divide: black America’s…
-
Welcome to the New Nadir
The impossible happened. Against all odds, against all prognostications, America elected a racist, xenophobic and misogynist man in Donald Trump as president of the United States. It’s not as if America hasn’t done this before, of course; we’ve elected plenty of racist, xenophobic and misogynistic white men. But this hurt more because we were all…
-
Donald Trump Is Our Next President, Thanks to White Voters
The human embodiment of white privilege is the next president of the United States. Just after 2:40 a.m. Wednesday, news reports rang out that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had conceded the election to Donald J. Trump as several states remained too close to call but were unlikely to turn in her favor. Now…
-
I Don’t Understand Richmond, Va., Mayoral Candidate and Alleged Pervert Joe Morrissey
I don’t understand how Joe Morrissey is still here. I don’t understand how, in 2013, a then-56-year-old Morrissey was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates when he hired a 17-year-old black girl to work in his law office. The old white man raped the teen and then lied about the nature of their…