Ta-Nehisi Coates

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, Harry Belafonte, entertainer and potentate of the old black left, criticized Colin Powell for his role in the Bush administration war effort. Belafonte implied that Powell was a house slave, President Bush the master, and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the big house. “In the days of slavery, there […]

J. C. Watt’s Memoir, What Color is a Conservative? should be a primary text for Republicans dumbfounded by black America’s loyalty to the Democratic Party . Perhaps more than any other book in recent memory, Color effectively demonstrates why African Americans recoil in horror when “Republican” is preceded by the adjective “black .” By no […]

The signs are everywhere. In the 2000 election, you received a measly 8 percent of the black vote—a dubious distinction only surpassed in 1964 by the hated Barry Goldwater, who, of course, lost the election. A poll taken shortly after the election noted that some 8 out of 10 African Americans believed that you were […]

Jones’ fear of police didn’t match his profile. He was a Howard University student, a father, and a man of faith who never hesitated to dispense a religious aphorism to friends. He was also a fitness freak and personal trainer at Bally’s Total Fitness. After leaving Howard, Jones became engaged to the mother of his […]

Bill Clinton’s scandals were supposed to end on Jan. 20. But days after leaving office, he was taking hits for his late-night pardon of financier fugitive Marc Rich, and absconding with White House furniture. Congress was threatening to pull the plug on his plans for a pricey New York office suite, and Wall Street firms […]

By Rock’s definition, I know exactly where I belong among African Americans today. For I am sure that even for this meager deed of fatherhood I am performing, I deserve a lot more than credit. My mission sounds simple enough: carting my young son through West Manhattan to visit another friend, working in Chelsea. I […]

On Monday, October 16, several hundred thousand people heeded the call of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and assembled in the shadow of the Washington Monument to celebrate the Million Family March. The march was a sequel to Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March, which had ranked as the largest civil-rights march on the nation’s […]

Those parallels, and the feeling of dread, and their lingering influence on black Americans’ attitudes towards police and other authorities, are dramatically evoked in a new book by Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown. The book is a thorough history of mob violence directed against African-Americans over nearly a century after the end […]