A friend of mine recently asked me if I thought everything was systemic. I said I think that’s sort of right. Take systemic racism. I tend to think that while systemic racism exists, “progress” on questions of race is no less systemic. This is not how we like to talk about things in the United States. We imagine entrenched injustice that is righted... See more

But the answer “black” immediately carries a heavy load, and a number of potentially violent actions—that would have been unlikely otherwise—suddenly become psychologically possible. You don’t just lecture or book this type of body or take it down to the station. It would have no respect for you if you did that—after all, it is more than used to

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In a manner reminiscent of the televised coverage of civil rights demonstrations, which forced some white northerners to witness the brutality experienced by black southerners demanding basic rights, the viral videos of police killings created a similar dissonance between the much-vaunted progress symbolized in the election of Barack Obama and the

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