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Every society has a murderous hierarchy: someone’s always knocking at the basement door, trying to get free. But life is prismatic—it’s possible to be Black and degraded in America while also profiting from wanton extraction of resources overseas, oppressing millions of non-Black others, and living...

If our nation had done nothing more in its whole history than to create just two documents, its contribution to civilization would be imperishable. The first of these documents is the Declaration of Independence and the other is that which we are here to honor tonight, the Emancipation Proclamation...

Afro-pessimism and its treatment of withdrawal as transcendence is no less pleasing to white supremacy than Booker T. Washington’s strategic retreat into self-help. Afro-pessimism threatens no one, and white audiences confuse having been chastised with learning. Unfortunately, black people who...

It’s a perennial question: Can you really tell? The great black jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge once made a wager with the critic Leonard Feather that he could distinguish white musicians from black ones — blindfolded. Mr. Feather duly dropped the needle onto a variety of record albums whose titles and...

The most shocking aspect of Mr. Coates’s wording...is the extent to which it mirrors ideas of race — specifically the specialness of whiteness — that white supremacist thinkers cherish

I didn’t feel good. It felt as if I were trying to gain pity. I knew what I went through was tough and to overcome those challenges was remarkable, but was that all I had to offer?

I don’t capitalize “black” or “white” in my writing because it promotes essentialism while minimizing individuality. I understand the thoughts and sentiments behind capitalizing Black; to many, it reflects dignity and empowerment. But its constitutive nature may reinforce an illusion. This...

Black people certainly don’t all ‘feel’ or ‘experience’ the same things. Nor do they all ‘experience’ the same event in an identical way. Finally, even when their experiences are similar, they don’t all think about or interpret their experiences in the same way.

[Nikole Hannah-Jones] wanted me to verify some statements for the project. At one point, she sent me this assertion: “One critical reason that the colonists declared their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery in the colonies, which had produced...

The goodwill and naivety of many is being exploited to push a toxic agenda. An agenda that, if taken to its logical conclusion, would produce a new form of racial prejudice. As we’ve seen, groups of white people at protests are kneeling, apologizing and begging for forgiveness for actions they did...

Far from challenging the establishment, wokeness has become a means through which the establishment reinvents itself. Corporations and public figures can gain woke points by engaging in superficial gestures which win social validation and accumulate capital, while real social issues remain unsolved...

What we need are not singular, racial narratives about how to live our lives; rather, we need multiple narratives, which are only possible when persons of different cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds converse with one another in neutral, multicultural, educational environments. A segregated...

I make a case for Black freedom of thought—an unconditional stance no matter if the next idea challenges mine.