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What you could say the 1619 Project is doing at its best is to talk about the African American contribution to making America live up to its ideals. That’s actually a very traditional point of view within the African American community — that it’s our struggle that transformed America and makes it...

We must wonder...how confidently university leaders will be able to resist the demands that would destroy the very functioning of their institutions. But awkward and painful as it may be, they must. They must resist destructive demands, even by self-proclaimed representatives of people of color,...

So will Trumpism force the head of American literature out of its cocoon of sand? I doubt it. And it’s because there is a new liberal political orthodoxy that I believe will stifle art, particularly literature, in America. Will Trumpism be the subject of literature? I’m sure it will be. But will it...

The call to “listen to the most affected” or “centre the most marginalized” is ubiquitous in many academic and activist circles. But it’s never sat well with me. In my experience, when people say they need to “listen to the most affected”, it isn’t because they intend to set up Skype calls to...

Last year I was on a podcast in which the presenter asked me to name something about myself that no one could find about me online. I said that during the first lockdown I enjoyed watching an old ITV programme called Rosemary & Thyme. It is a crime drama about two middle-aged women who act as...

I benefited greatly from affirmative action. I very much hope my children will not — because the current system contains significant weaknesses. The fate of the American Dream depends on reforming it to make it work.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in an affirmative...

American voters are hungry for common sense and purpose. Republicans and Democrats are giving them strife and division instead.

Who are we without the malice of racism? Can we be black without being victims? The great diminishment (not eradication) of racism since the ’60s means that our victim-focused identity has become an anachronism. Well suited for the past, it strains for relevance in the present. Thus, for many...

I didn’t know about the 1619 Project until it came out, and frankly when I learned about it my reaction was a big sigh. But again, the relation to history has passed to the appropriation of the past in support of what whatever kind of ‘just-so’ stories about the present are desired. This approach...

The essay from which the 1619 Project derives (without attribution) its negative assessment of Abraham Lincoln. On this assessment of Lincoln, see Mitgang, Herbert. (Feb. 11, 1968). “Was Lincoln Just a Honkie?” New York Times.