{"id":2022,"date":"2022-03-16T18:27:40","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T23:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/18.217.136.120\/?p=2022"},"modified":"2024-08-13T20:00:42","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T01:00:42","slug":"race-a-skin-color-isnt-a-culture-or-a-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/?p=2022","title":{"rendered":"Race: A Skin Color Isn&#8217;t a Culture or a Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.commonwealmagazine.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/article_full\/public\/sleeper%20crop.jpg?itok=ZcBnN38m\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Aspirations toward an American, civic-republican identity should not determined by race. (CNS photo\/Andrew Kelly, Reuters).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em><strong>(Note: This section&#8217;s introductory remarks, written in 2022, are much longer than the introductory remarks for of any other section on this website except for the one on News Media, the Chattering Classes, and a Phantom Public. A list of my major linked pieces on race follows this essay.)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cConstraining us to define our citizenship and even our personhood more and more by race and ethnicity in classrooms, workrooms, courtrooms, newsrooms, and boardrooms, today&#8217;s liberalism no longer curbs discrimination; it invites it. It does not expose racism; it recapitulates and, sometimes, reinvents it. Its tortured racial etiquette begets racial epithets, as surely as hypocrisy begets hostility. And it dishonors&#8217; liberals&#8217; own heroic past efforts to focus America&#8217;s race lens in the 1950s and &#8217;60s, when conservative pieties about color blindness concealed monstrous injustices.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8212; From the Introduction to<em>&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Liberal%20Racism.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Liberal Racism,<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;<\/em>1997<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Liberal Racism<\/em>&nbsp;is only partly an indictment of liberals. It\u2019s also a protest against making racial identity a central organizing principle of our public life. The new U.S. Census strongly&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/08\/12\/us\/politics\/census-demographic-shifts.html?action=click&amp;module=Top%20Stories&amp;pgtype=Homepage\" target=\"_blank\">suggests<\/a>&nbsp;that there\u2019s no longer a civic-cultural norm in \u201cwhiteness\u201d but also that no official racial color-coding can tell us who \u201cwe\u201d are. In 1920 the philosopher George Santayana noted that Americans \u201chave all been uprooted from their several soils and ancestries and plunged together into one vortex, whirling irresistible in a space otherwise quite empty. To be an American is of itself almost a moral condition, an education and a career.\u201d Precisely because the United States has become racially, ethnically, and religiously more complex than institutional color-coding can comprehend, we should be working overtime on narratives, principles, habits, and bonds that transcend racial groupism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> &#8212;From <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonwealmagazine.org\/scrapping-color-code\">&#8220;Scrapping the Color Code, <\/a><\/strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonwealmagazine.org\/scrapping-color-code\">Commonweal,<\/a> <\/em>October 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These observations, separated by 25 years, show that most of my views and arguments concerning racial identity politics haven\u2019t changed. Events since the mid-1990s haven\u2019t dissolved the post-racial, civic-republican convictions and hopes that I sketch here and in \u201cLooking for America\u201d and \u201cA Civic Republican Primer\u201d and &#8220;The Obama Chronicles&#8221;.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Almost every white American has had a \u201cfirst time\u201d encounter with blackness. I don\u2019t mean the very first time that every &#8220;white&#8221; interacted with someone whose physiognomy is \u201cblack\u201d or non-white. I mean the first time that a white American (or one who passes for white and self-identifies that way) experiences racial blackness as signifying a profoundly different historical, biographical, or cultural difference.&nbsp;In a white person\u2019s mind at such a moment, blackness may signify slavery and its repercussions that were \u201clathered into the foundations\u201d of the American republic, as Roger Wilkins has put it, and it may signify white oppression and a need to atone &#8212; or to double down or to flee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some societies treat race more fluidly and ecumenically than ours, because American national identity has long used race as a stand-in for other, deeper contradictions between our civic-republican, egalitarian principles and our actual practices. From the earliest English American settlements in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607, the gap between egalitarianism and domination has been driven by greed, power-lust, and herd-like huddling that have divided humans since even before what we now call \u201crace\u201d was a factor in their reckonings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Greed and power-lust were evident in the fabrication and worship of the Golden Calf at the very foot of Mt. Sinai. Ancient Greeks slaughtered and enslaved one another without reference to race as the visual, physiognomic signifier of hostile cultures that it has become in American life.&nbsp;The more that our republic has prided itself on vindicating universal ideals against ethno-racialist myths of sacred blood and land, the more the republic&#8217;s failures have driven some Americans to seek succor and self-justification in separate racial and tribal camps and religious communions that excuse or even sanctify our race-based failings instead of challenging them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such excuses sidle up seductively into a person\u2019s self-understanding. If a larger civic culture is becoming thinner and colder, alternative ethno-racial bastions will seem thicker and warmer&#8211;but also less \u201cAmerican,&#8221;, as Santayana\u2019s comment, quoted above, suggests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My own first encounter with blackness and these bittersweet truths came in 1976, when I was a graduate student with a side job teaching mostly white, working-class veterans at a junior college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.&nbsp;One evening I brought my class to hear James Baldwin speak at Harvard.&nbsp;Try to imagine the painful intersections of class, race, and culture in my students minds as they say in that hall with hundreds of Harvard undergraduates, many of them black. Or read my description of that moment  in<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>this<strong>&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Above%20the%20Battle,%20Harvard%20Crimson%201976.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Harvard Crimson<\/em>&nbsp;account.<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong>A year after writing it, I carried some of its lessons about the co-dependency of social-class and racial differences&#8211; into my decade-long immersion in black inner-city Brooklyn. Or maybe that first encounter <em>carried me,<\/em> a young, New England civic-republican moralist, into a New York approximation of George Orwell&#8217;s experiences \u201cDown and Out in Paris and London.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I lost and found myself in black, Hispanic, and white-ethnic neighborhood life, politics and journalism. Many of my earlier intimations of racial identity and difference dropped away as I lived along and across race lines that I\u2019ve sketched and assessed in my signature essay\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Orwell's%20Orthodoxies,%20and%20Ours,%20(book%20chapter%202004).pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Orwell&#8217;s Smelly Little Orthodoxies and Ours&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>and in\u00a0<strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/The%20Closest%20of%20Strangers.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Closest of Strangers<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, (Read <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidgarrow.com\/File\/DJG%201990%20SleeperWaPoBWReview.pdf\">David Garrow&#8217;s <em>Washington Post <\/em>review of the book<\/a><\/strong>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>___________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of my left-leaning presumptions about the centrality of race in America have outlived those years in Brooklyn and in citywide journalism., but older civic-republican inclinations have survived more strongly: I&#8217;ve learned &#8212; and, in some pieces here, I argue &#8212; that only a civic culture that\u2019s thick enough to live in on race-transcendent terms can carry Americans past our dangerous tendency to make race a key arbiter of civic dignity and national destiny. Too many Americans retreat into illusions about racial identity whenever our civic-republican venture seems hopelessly rootless and draining.&nbsp;Blacks&#8217; constant, maddeningly intimate exposure to civic promises that are cruelly broken has made some of them the American creed&#8217;s most eloquent champions, others its most nihilist assailants: That struggle to belong fully to the American republic is the most powerful epic of unrequited love in the history of the world. When it has been loving, it has driven much of our music and the civic culture&#8217;s richest appeals. In 2008, Barack Obama expressed them brilliantly in the civic republican equivalent of a religious revival rally.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But because that struggle has been unrequited for so long, those whom it has embittered often choose hurting over hoping, deepening the racialist coordinates within which they\u2019ve had to orient themselves to survive. In consequence, whites have often expected blacks to come to the public arena bringing just rip-offs and rebellions more often that the searing moral uplift of a King or an Obama. Yet to watch more and more blacks running municipalities, military machines, and multinational corporations is to watch the demons of blackness withdraw along with the angels. For whites, it will be to surrender white contempt along with doting condescension.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Telling these truths as I lived them in Brooklyn became my burden in&nbsp;<em>The Closest of Strangers.&nbsp;<\/em>Some liberals and leftists resented my charge that they were misappropriating the moral cachet of \u201ccivil rights\u201d to camouflage their compromises with &#8220;the system&#8221; or to justify their rage at it.&nbsp;Conservatives, eager to score points against leftists and liberals, hypocritically touted my civic-republican warnings against racial identity politics. I&#8217;ve kept the faith of my experiences and reckonings in Brooklyn.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Black leaders and writers who shared civic-republican aspirations and insights like mine had trouble expressing them very strongly in public. Brave black truth-tellers in daily journalism in the mid-1990s such as N. Don Wycliff and Clarence Page at the&nbsp;<em>Chicago Tribune<\/em>&nbsp;and William Raspberry at the&nbsp;<em>Washington Post,<\/em>&nbsp;were eclipsed by hipper, angrier columnists and by retaliatory black conservatives who were being subsidized, in effect, to put down the hip poseurs and their liberal backers. Yet Wycliff, Page, Raspberry, and a few others held to the best of a civic-republican black tradition of struggle.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Writers like those I&#8217;ve just named, of whatever color, have been ahead of their time, not behind it, because they&#8217;ve understood something that champions of &#8220;identity politics&#8221; seldom acknowledge: As Santayana anticipated, we\u2019re all lurching into the uncharted waters of a&nbsp;<em>Post-ethnic America<\/em>., as the historian David Hollinger calls it in his book by that name.&nbsp;Whether by historical accident or an irrepressible logic in its founders\u2019 intent, America\u2019s destiny is to diminish the power of racial differences as determinants of human worth and belonging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That doesn&#8217;t mean that black communities of memory and endurance should disappear, but I do envision an American identity beyond blackness or whiteness. I envisioned it in<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/HarpersTowands%20an%20End%20of%20Blackness.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">&nbsp;<strong><em>Harper\u2019s<\/em>&nbsp;in 1996,<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/a>and in<strong>&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Liberal%20Racism.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Liberal Racism<\/em>,<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;published a year later, and, most recently, <strong>in&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonwealmagazine.org\/scrapping-color-code\"><strong><em>Commonweal<\/em>&nbsp;in 2021<\/strong>.<\/a>&nbsp;Along the way, these arguments have drawn some respectful critical attention, as in&nbsp;<strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/scoops&amp;revelations\/NPR,%20Liberal%20Racism%20Interview.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">this interview with Robert Siegel&nbsp;for National Public Radio\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered;\u201d<\/a><\/strong> in my own commentaries on that NPR program; and in<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/past\/docs\/unbound\/bookauth\/sleepint.htm\" target=\"_blank\">&nbsp;<strong>this interview with&nbsp;<em>The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/a>&nbsp;I debated my analysis with Al Sharpton on the Charlie Rose Show, with Derrick Bell on the PBS News Hour, and in&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/scoops&amp;revelations\/Barnes%20&amp;%20Noble.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>an online reading with questions and answers&nbsp;<\/strong>at <strong>Barnes &amp; Noble<\/strong><\/a>&nbsp;and in appearances on The Charlie Rose Show.&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/?p=3508\">I clashed with the Black linguist John McWhorter 20 years ago<\/a><\/strong> by arguing that he misrepresented his own perfectly valid objections to obsessive liberal color-coding of civic life by lending too much credence to hypocritical conservative professions of color-blindness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Americans should be able to grow up in or to join distinctive ethno-racial communities that tap wellsprings of tradition and enrich their aspirations. Masters at summoning such literary and political expression within and across race lines, such as the black writers Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, A. Philip Randolph, Toni Morrison, and many more, have shown how people can be culturally distinctive yet outward facing &#8212; &#8220;rooted cosmopolitans,&#8221; as Anthony Appiah has called them. So did the young Barack Obama when he decided to join an African-American community of memory and endurance that hadn&#8217;t really been his own.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Americans must be free to leave such affinity groups without censure or stereotyping. Over time, too, disparate communal wellsprings commingle, and some disappear. When New York\u2019s first African American mayor, David Dinkins, called the city a \u201cgorgeous mosaic\u201d of racial and other groups, I respected the sentiment but demurred at the metaphor: A mosaic\u2019s tiles remain fixed in color and place, but human communities and individuals change places and even colors amid cultural interaction and interracial marriage. If everyone were a mosaic&#8217;s tile, who would be its glue?&nbsp;Each of us is the glue whenever we act as citizens, as voters or as jurors do when they assess evidence by trans-racial standards (See<a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Jury's%20Out,%20Dissent,%202008.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong> \u201cDaily Life and the Jury System,\u201d<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/a><em>Dissent,<\/em>&nbsp;Winter, 2008.)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s one thing to make such arguments abstractly. It\u2019s something else to have made them in decades of \u201cadvocacy journalism\u201d as a neighborhood newspaper editor and publisher, a muckraker for&nbsp;<em>The Village Voice,<\/em>&nbsp;a&nbsp;<em>New York Daily News<\/em>&nbsp;columnist, and a contributor to political magazines. What follows is a sample of my grounded reckonings with race in these and other venues. Contact&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"mailto:jimsleeper@aol.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">jimsleeper@aol.com<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong>for more.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>RACIAL IDENTITY AND AMERICAN CIVIC CULTURE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commonwealmagazine.org\/scrapping-color-code\">&#8220;Scrapping the Color Code,&#8221; <em>Commonweal <\/em>magazine, 2021.<\/a><\/strong> <strong>This essay offers the most recent summary of my views about racial identity in America. It has videos and interviews with me on the PBS News Hour, at <em>The Atlantic,<\/em> at Brown University, and at other venues. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zxuZcvv3CQ0\">Video of Jim Sleeper and Lani Guinier<\/a> in conversation at Brown University in 2009 about race and political representation<\/strong>. <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/01\/07\/us\/politics\/lani-guinier-dead.html\">Guinier, who died early in 2022, <\/a><\/strong>was a brave, distinguished, and controversial fighter for racial justice. Although I disagreed with her in some ways, as this video shows, I respected her greatly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Identity%20Politics,%20an%20early%20warning,%20Tikkun,%201991.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">The Perils of Identity Politics: A Warning to the Left,<\/a><\/strong><em> Tikkun,<\/em>&nbsp;1991<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2016\/11\/23\/is-criticism-of-identity-politics-racist-or-long-overdue\/political-correctness-reflects-crises-more-than-it-causes-them\"><strong>Political Correctness Reflects Crises More Than It Causes Them &#8211; NYTimes.com<\/strong><\/a>, Nov. 12 2016<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Civic%20liberals%20and%20race,%20Boston%20Globe,%201992.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Civic liberals and race, <\/a><\/strong><em>Boston Globe<\/em>, 1992. Written just after John Kerry had ignited a controversy by questioning some aspects of affirmative action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/culture\/limits-indignation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cThe Limits of Indignation,\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The American Prospect,<\/em>&nbsp;1998. My review of books by Alex Kotlowitz, Nicholas Lemann, and Thomas and Mary Edsall.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Skip%20Gates,%20Cornel%20West,%20C.%20Eric%20Lincoln%201996.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cThe Content of \u2018Black\u2019 Character,\u201d<\/a><\/strong><em> The Washington Post<\/em>, 1996. Review of books by Henry Louis Gates &amp; Cornel West, by Benjamin DeMott, and by C. Eric Lincoln<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Racial%20atonement%20(Shipler,%20Patterson,%20New%20Leader,%201998).pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;<strong>\u201cRacial Atonement,\u201d<\/strong><\/a><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The New Leader,<\/em>&nbsp;1997. Review of books by David Shipler and Orlando Patterson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/HarpersTowands%20an%20End%20of%20Blackness.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cToward an End of Blackness,\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>Harper\u2019s,<\/em>&nbsp;1996. An evocation of America\u2019s racial destiny after controversy about Alex Haley\u2019s Roots.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/a%20messy%20review%20of%20jesse%201996.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cHe Is Somebody,\u201d<\/a><\/strong> <em>The Washington Post,<\/em>&nbsp;1992. Review of Marshall Frady\u2019s biography of Jesse Jackson Frady&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>RACIAL PROTEST THEATRICS AND DEMAGOGUES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-srv\/style\/longterm\/books\/reviews\/comingracewar.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&#8220;Nightmares of Rage and Destruction,&#8221; <\/a><\/strong><em>The Washington Post,<\/em> 1996. (Review of books about race war by Carl T. Rowan and Richard Delgado)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Sharpton%20on%20Bklyn%20Bridge,%20Daily%20News,%201994.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rudy Giuliani vs. Al Sharpton<\/a>,&nbsp;<\/strong><em>Daily News,&nbsp;<\/em>1994<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Sharpton%20profile%20TNR.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Al Sharpton tries to pick up the pieces,<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The New Republic,<\/em>&nbsp;1996&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Race%20and%20Misogyny,%20TNR.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Black Activism and Misogyny<em>,<\/em><\/a><em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/strong><em>The New Republic,<\/em>&nbsp;1990<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Sharpton%20and%20Moynihan,%20New%20Republic,%201994.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Al Sharpton tries to replace Daniel Patrick Moynihan<\/strong> <\/a>as U.S. Senator from New York.&nbsp;<em>The New Republic,<\/em>&nbsp;1994&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Race%20doctors,%20Leonard%20Jeffries,%20Daily%20News%201993.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Quack Race Doctors (Prof. Leonard Jeffries)<\/a><\/strong><em> Daily News<\/em>, 1993<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/scoops&amp;revelations\/OJ,%20TNR.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The OJ Simpson Verdict,<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The New Republic,<\/em>&nbsp;1995&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/scoops&amp;revelations\/LIRR,%20Hebron.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Massacres on Long Island and in Israel expose similar evils;<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;two&nbsp;<em>Daily News<\/em>&nbsp;columns, 1994 and 1995&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/scoops&amp;revelations\/Vender%20Beatty.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">A pivotal contest to succeed Shirley Chisholm&nbsp;<\/a><\/strong>in Congress pits an idealist against an opportunist. The idealist won.&nbsp;<em>The Village Voice,<\/em>&nbsp;1982&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Blacks%20and%20Jews%20(Leonard%20Jeffries,%20LIRR%20massacre,%20Israel%20Massacre,%20early%201990s.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Blacks, Jews, and Good Faith Gone Wrong,<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The Nation,<\/em>&nbsp;1991&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"block-acaad7b4-471c-4fcc-9a3b-6ddeeda46e92\"><strong>The case of the Central Park jogger, 1989, and beyond.<\/strong> \u201cThis was our first encounter with alternative sets of facts. Different sides had different facts, and they were not going to budge,\u201d I told Mike Kelly, author of the gripping, relentlessly honest <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/lifestyle\/1995\/09\/14\/witness-to-a-nightmarish-divide\/f8fe805e-f880-4c70-8ffd-e9f06c6a6daa\/\">Color Lines: The Troubled Dreams of Racial Harmony in an American Town <\/a><\/strong><\/em>(about tensions in Teaneck, NJ) and a columnist at&nbsp;<em>NorthJersey.com<\/em>. &nbsp;<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/northjersey.com\/story\/news\/columnists\/mike-kelly\/2019\/06\/05\/when-they-see-us-central-park-5-case-still-matters\/1356744001\/\">Kelly and I sense that we haven&#8217;t learned the <em>whole<\/em> truth <\/a><\/strong>of what happened that night in Central Park and, subsequently, in the criminal justice system, even though it&#8217;s probably true that the five men convicted and later exonerated in the case didn&#8217;t bludgeon and rape the jogger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\" id=\"block-c91aaf7c-0bd9-4763-a436-3ef5d96fa017\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/image-2.jpeg\" alt=\"This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-2.jpeg\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>Mike Kelly, an indomitable truth-teller<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/lifestyle\/1995\/09\/14\/witness-to-a-nightmarish-divide\/f8fe805e-f880-4c70-8ffd-e9f06c6a6daa\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Witness to a Nightmarish Divide, <\/strong> <\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/lifestyle\/1995\/09\/14\/witness-to-a-nightmarish-divide\/f8fe805e-f880-4c70-8ffd-e9f06c6a6daa\/\">The Washington Post<\/a> <\/em>September 14, 1995. My review of Mike Kelly&#8217;s <em>Color Lines: The Troubled Dreams of Racial Harmony in an American Town<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2015\/11\/25\/we_the_people_remain_filled_with_rage_a_nation_spinning_apart_on_thanksgiving\/\"><strong>**Race, Campus Protests, Helicopter Pundits, and What Black Students Really Experience at Yale,<\/strong><\/a> <em>Salon,<\/em> Nov. 25, 2015.&nbsp; Travel warning: This piece reports things I haven&#8217;t seen elsewhere, but it&#8217;s many layered as well as long. (I didn&#8217;t write the awful headline or choose the photo.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>RACE AND ELECTORAL POLITICS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com\/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjUci1pATcv4CXFKsk_IRWxbDcPeF_ngn1Kg&amp;usqp=CAU\" alt=\"Untitled\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Liberal-Racism-Liberals-Wrong-America\/dp\/0140263780\" target=\"_blank\">Liberal Racism: How Liberals Got Race &#8230;amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2021\/01\/23\/trumpism-isnt-history-but-our-neglect-of-history-invites-its-return\/\">Trumpism isn&#8217;t &#8220;history&#8221;: But our blindness to history could lead to its comeback<\/a> |<\/strong> <em>Salon<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/End%20of%20the%20Rainbow,%20New%20Republic,%201993.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cThe End of the Rainbow?\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The New Republic,<\/em>&nbsp;1993&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/NY%20Mayoral%20Election,%20Giuliani,%20Dinkins,%201993.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">New York City\u2019s Fateful Mayoral Election of 1993, Giuliani v. Dinkins;&nbsp;<\/a><\/strong>three&nbsp;<em>Daily News&nbsp;<\/em>columns.&nbsp;See especially the second column, &#8220;A &#8216;Race Man&#8217; Views the Mayoral Contest,&#8221; about the Rev. William Jones:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/image-3.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"211\" height=\"239\" src=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/image-3.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3243\"\/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><strong>The Rev William Augustus Jones (1934-2006)<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Harold%20Washington,%20Rivlin%20review,%20Washington%20Post.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chicago\u2019s Larger-than-Life Mayor Harold Washington,<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The Washington Post,<\/em>&nbsp;1992&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/rainbow%20coalition.pdf%20%28jimsleeper.com%29\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Some ironic consequences of racial districting,<\/a><\/strong><em> The New Republic<\/em>, 1996<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>THE \u2018DIVERSITY\u2019 DODGE IN EDUCATION AND SOCIAL POLICY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/Diversity Police at colleges, Washington Post 1991.pdf (jimsleeper.com)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Federal \u2018diversity\u2019 police on campus<\/a>,<\/strong><em>&nbsp;The Washington Post,<\/em>&nbsp;1991&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Diversity%20in%20Brooklyn%20(Daily%20News,%201995).pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Diversity as it should be in public schools,<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>Daily News,<\/em>&nbsp;1995&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Race%20on%20campus,%20New%20Republic,1991.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Diversity as it should be in colleges,<\/a><\/strong><em> The New Republic,<\/em>&nbsp;1991<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Ward%20Connerly%20Gets%20Pinched.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cWard Connerly Gets Pinched,\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>The Weekly Standard,<\/em>&nbsp;1997. <em>(Was I angered by what the New York Times had done here, or what?)&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Mickey%20Kaus%20on%20inequality,%20Newsday,%20'92.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Failure of \u201cMoney Liberalism\u201f<\/a><\/strong>,&nbsp;<em>Newsday,<\/em>&nbsp;1992; a review of Mickey Kaus\u2019&nbsp;<em>The End of Equality.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Journalistic%20Color%20Coding%20(McGowan%20review),%202002.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Journalistic Color Coding,&nbsp;<\/a><\/strong>a review of William McGowan\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Coloring the News&nbsp;<\/em>for&nbsp;<em>The Los Angeles Times,<\/em>&nbsp;2002&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Commentary%20symposium,%20affirm.%20action,%201998.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cIs Affirmative Action Doomed? Should It Be?\u201d<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong>A symposium in&nbsp;<em>Commentary<\/em>&nbsp;magazine, 1998&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/www.nytimes.com\/books\/97\/04\/27\/reviews\/970427.27sleepet.html\">Review of Nathan Glazer&#8217;s <em>We Are All Multiculturalists Now<\/em> and Martin Marty&#8217;s <em>The One and the Many:<\/em> <em>America&#8217;s Struggle for the Common Good.<\/em> <\/a><\/strong><em>The New York Times<\/em>, April 27, 1997. (<a href=\"http:\/\/Glazer and Sleeper grapple with issues of race, culture - Yale Daily News\"><strong>Years later, I hosted Glazer in a discussion of race at Yale.<\/strong><\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/articles\/signature-pieces\/Whites%20and%20Affirm.%20Act..pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cNot All White Men Are Racists,\u201d<\/a><\/strong><em> Chicago Tribune,<\/em>&nbsp;1995<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/bookforum.com\/inprint\/021_04\/13929\"><strong>In Living Color:<\/strong><\/a><strong> <em>Bookforum<\/em>,<\/strong> Dec.\/Jan. 2015. A review of the historian Jason Sokol&#8217;s <em>All Eyes Are Upon Us<\/em>, his perceptive analysis of how whites are two-faced about race and how both faces &#8212; the idealistic and the racist, in the same community and even the same person&nbsp;&#8212; can be utterly sincere. Also posted by <a href=\"http:\/\/historynewsnetwork.org\/article\/157745\">History News Network.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/washingtonmonthly.com\/2014\/06\/01\/race-reparations-and-the-need-for-a-universal-culture\/\">What I&#8217;ve learned from 25 years in America&#8217;s &#8220;race&#8221; debates.<\/a> <\/strong><em>The Washington Monthly<\/em>, June 1, 2014. A short&nbsp;post prompted by, but not joining, the debate between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jonathan Chait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>WASHINGTON POST <\/em>COLUMNS (NOT BOOK REVIEWS) ON RACE by JIM SLEEPER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"> <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/09\/17\/AR2009091703598.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/09\/17\/AR2009091703598.html?hpid=opinionsbox1\">This Anger Isn&#8217;t Just Black and White,<\/a><\/strong> <em>Washington Post,<\/em> &#8220;Outlook&#8221; section cover piece, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009. This column, prompted by a white police officer&#8217;s arresting Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates as he tried to enter his own home, proved so controversial that the <em>Post<\/em> hosted a <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/discussion\/2009\/09\/18\/DI2009091802873.html\">live, online discussion with Jim Sleeper and <em>Washington Post<\/em> readers<\/a><\/strong> on September 21, 2009. This is a transcript of the discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Earlier <em>Washington Post<\/em> columns on race by Jim Sleeper:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"%0b1991:%20MOVING%20BEYOND%20RACE%20TO%20A%20COMMON%20AGENDA%20%0dhttps:\/www.washingtonpost.com&nbsp;\u203a%20archive%20\u203a%201991\/03\/19%0d\"><br><\/a><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com&nbsp;\u203a archive \u203a 1991\/03\/19\">MOVING BEYOND RACE TO A COMMON AGENDA<\/a><\/strong> March 19, 1991<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/opinions\/1986\/08\/24\/the-caribbean-black-challenge\/aed8e306-0cd6-421a-b7cc-43192aebe238\/\">The Caribbean Black Challenge &#8211; The Washington Post<\/a> August 24, 1986<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com&nbsp;\u203a archive \u203a 1996\/01\/21\">From the Ashes of a Harlem Tragedy<\/a><\/strong> January 21, 1996<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/Diversity Police at colleges, Washington Post 1991.pdf (jimsleeper.com)\" target=\"_blank\">Federal \u2018diversity\u2019 police on campus<\/a>,<\/strong><em>&nbsp;The Washington Post,<\/em>&nbsp;1991<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/archive\/entertainment\/books\/2002\/02\/03\/the-reds-and-the-blacks\/65eb6245-c4de-4f1a-8701-d43b5277cb7f\/\">The Cold War and the Color Line,&nbsp;<em>Washington Post<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, Feb 3, 2002. A (skeptical) assessment of Thomas Borstelmann\u2019s argument that the American civil rights movement gained a lot of its ground when U.S. foreign-policymakers wanted to enhance American standing with new, post-colonial nations and the Soviets who were pandering to them with anti-racist propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>___________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/?p=546\" target=\"_blank\">JIM SLEEPER&#8217;S OBAMA CHRONICLES, 2008 and 2011<\/a>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>___________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jimsleeper.com\/?p=3479\">Jim Sleeper&#8217;s <em>Washington Post<\/em> reviews of books on race<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aspirations toward an American, civic-republican identity should not determined by race. (CNS photo\/Andrew Kelly, Reuters). (Note: This section&#8217;s introductory remarks, written in 2022, are much longer than the introductory remarks for of any other section on this website except for the one on News Media, the Chattering Classes, and a Phantom Public. A list of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":50,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4529,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions\/4529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimsleeper.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}