In the World

Twice as good and half as black

The must-read article of the last week or so is without question Ta-Nehisi Coates's essay on race, racism and Obama's presidency. Along with being a magnificent writer, Coates is a sharp observer of the cultural and political ramifications of America's original sin. A couple highlights: 

Obama’s racial strategy has been, if anything, the opposite of radical: he declines to use his bully pulpit to address racism, using it instead to engage in the time-honored tradition of black self-hectoring, railing against the perceived failings of black culture.

His approach is not new. . . . [and] the strategy can work. . . . And yet what are we to make of an integration premised, first, on the entire black community’s emulating the Huxt­ables? An equality that requires blacks to be twice as good is not equality—it’s a double standard. That double standard haunts and constrains the Obama presidency, warning him away from candor about America’s sordid birthmark.