When I was a younger man — shortly after the cooling of the Earth — I worked in and managed political campaigns. In addition to Ohio Gov. John Gilligan and Boston Mayor Kevin H. White, I worked on the presidential campaigns of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, ...

“I didn’t know.” Those were the first words my friend, a white guy named Dave, spoke to me the day after the first episode of “Roots,” which depicted the capture and enslavement of an African boy named Kunta Kinte. This was 43 years ago. So you can perhaps imagine my frustration ...

“Are you not entertained?” — Maximus, in “Gladiator” It helps if you think of it as a show. Certainly, that’s the way the man in the middle of it does. So just consider last weekend the latest bizarre episode in Season Four of the Donald Trump presidency. Call it “The One ...

“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” — Galatians 6:7 I received the news that Donald Trump and his wife had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in a text from a family member. It came with 31 laughing emojis, the kind with tears squeezing out of both eyes. “It is what it ...

Seated at the breakfast table, scanning The New York Times story on Trump’s taxes, I said to my husband, “We have a greater net worth than Donald Trump.” He knitted his brow. I was thinking of a story that Ivanka Trump shared a while back: “I remember once my father and I were ...

Just last week, the headlines were inescapable. They stemmed from a story in The Atlantic detailing what amounts to the Republican Party plotting a coup. Which is to say, cooking up Electoral College schemes designed to keep Donald Trump in office even if voters turn him out. Even worse, ...

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal.’” — Martin Luther King In other words, what is legal is not necessarily what is right. With that in mind, I find myself struggling to imagine what justice for Breonna Taylor would have looked like. ...

“Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others.” — Groucho Marx Sen. Mitch McConnell, seeking a new fig leaf to disguise the spectacle of hypocrisy that Republicans are presenting regarding the “advice and consent” clause, is sputtering that there really is ...

Ultimately, it comes down to a set of rules. Meaning norms, practices, guidelines — some written as law, some just respected as customs — to which we all adhere, even when that gives advantage to those with whom we disagree. It’s a covenant pluralistic self-government demands. And ...

This is for the people who keep asking me about Chicago. Other cities too, sometimes, but it is mostly the City of the Big Shoulders, with its spiraling murder rate, that sends many of you rushing to your keyboards. Why are black people so exercised about police killings of unarmed African ...

Los Angeles — We gave a damn too late. Sometimes, I think that will be the legacy of this generation. Or maybe I’m just tired of seeing people walking around without masks as if a pandemic had not taken almost 200,000 American lives. Then again, it could just be the smoke. On a normal ...

We weren’t going to normalize this. Remember that? Remember the way many of us solemnly vowed we would always maintain the ability to be outraged, hold on to our capacity for shock? Well, after almost four years that have passed like geologic time, that declaration feels like an artifact ...

According to John Bolton, when Xi Jinping told Donald Trump that he was putting Uighurs in camps, Trump said he was doing “exactly the right thing.” Of course, Xi’s depiction was pure agitprop. China is not targeting Uighurs who have shown terrorist tendencies; it is crushing an entire ...

The American Cemetery at Normandy sits on a bluff overlooking the beach where, on June 6, 1944, American soldiers waded ashore to begin the invasion of France. The old battlefield is marked with shell craters and gun pits offering mute testimony to the fury of that day. In the cemetery itself ...

Kyle Rittenhouse is not a hero. Granted, many on the right are working overtime to paint him as such. “He’s a good kid,” his attorney, John Pierce, told Fox “News” last week. “He’s a patriot,” a man who declined to give his name told Politico. “He’s a hero,” a man named ...

This is almost four months early. Ordinarily, Christmas trees are looking peaked, and George Bailey has long since realized that he had a wonderful life when pundits begin to summarize the year and assign it a theme. But given the eight long months of 2020 we’ve already endured, not to ...

Glenn “Doc” Rivers is reportedly paid $10 million a year to coach The L.A. Clippers. It is not enough. That’s not a statement of his market value, but an answer to those who think he had no business saying what he said last week. Rivers, who is African American, gave an impassioned ...

Since I announced publicly that I will be voting for Joe Biden in November, I’ve received a few communications from puzzled readers. “How can you, a supposedly pro-life woman, support someone who believes in killing babies?” I will try to respond for the sake of those who, like me, find ...

It comes early in an African American life. Before “Pomp and Circumstance” is played. Before the corsage and the limousine ride. Before final exam, favorite teacher and science project. Before first kiss. Before any of that, someone has appraised you — millions of someones who ...

The “post-game” analyses of the 2020 Democratic National Convention have gone on for longer than the convention itself. Critics continue to weigh in on whether Barack Obama or Michelle Obama was the more effective speaker and whether Joe Biden, in his 24-minute acceptance speech (remarkably ...