‘A Dream Deferred’ Revisited Shelby Steele’s masterful second book invites black America to reject redemptive liberalism and the helplessness it demands for a humanistic politics of advancement. Samuel Kronen 22 Aug 2023 · 17 min read
Fate, Faith, and Suffering Coping is not enough. We must strive to live. Samuel Kronen 5 Sep 2022 · 27 min read
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Meaning of Human Suffering Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. Samuel Kronen 28 Oct 2021 · 27 min read
Historical Racism Is Not the Singular Cause of Racial Disparity The popular vision of race in America seems to be incapable of breaking the gridlock that places the fate of black Americans in the hands of white society and then condemns that society to the wasteland of history. Samuel Kronen 17 Jul 2021 · 26 min read
Black Lives Matter and the Psychology of Progressive Fatalism There is nothing wrong with elevating anti-racism in one’s own life. But there is something wrong with imposing one’s moral reality upon total strangers. Samuel Kronen 28 May 2021 · 18 min read
James Baldwin and the Trouble with Protest Literature “The hardest thing in the world to do,” wrote Ernest Hemingway in a 1934 article for Esquire, “is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn and anybody is Samuel Kronen 2 May 2021 · 24 min read
Thomas Sowell: Tragic Optimist In his 2000 memoir A Personal Odyssey, Sowell recounts a parable that was read to him as a young boy and which he never forgot. Samuel Kronen 27 Mar 2021 · 29 min read
The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Conor McGregor MMA represents a meeting of cultures and individuals that transcend identity, class, and geography while integrating art and philosophy with sport—a healthy pressure valve in the modern world. Samuel Kronen 25 Feb 2021 · 17 min read
The Tragic Vision: Making the Best of Things The denial of tragedy inevitably results in the denial of what makes us human, snipping the invisible thread that connects us to the lives of other people and draining the individual of moral gravity. Samuel Kronen 31 Jan 2021 · 13 min read
"I Was Never More Hated Than When I Tried to Be Honest" Allergic to narrow-mindedness, poor taste, and moral arrogance, Ellison detested any kind of racial essentialism, separatism, and determinism. Samuel Kronen 28 Dec 2020 · 26 min read
Reinventing Racism—A Review Beyond dismantling the ideas in White Fragility, Church leverages his background in economics to forward a more comprehensive framework around privilege. Samuel Kronen 30 Nov 2020 · 7 min read
The Prescience of Shelby Steele A great writer shows us how to think rather than telling us what to think. Samuel Kronen 8 Oct 2020 · 18 min read
On Race and Inequality—A Reply to Nathan J. Robinson The reality is that virtually no two ethnic groups in history have ever achieved equal outcomes on all measures, anywhere, ever. Samuel Kronen 27 Jun 2020 · 10 min read
'Systemic Racism'—An Unhelpful Concept Is racism an individual or systemic problem? Traditionally, racism was broadly recognized as an interpersonal phenomenon: reflexive antipathy towards an identifiable “other,” supported by the negative cultural tropes and stereotypes used to inflame resentment and justify discrimination. This was the definition used by history’s most prominent anti-racist figures, from Samuel Kronen 11 Mar 2020 · 8 min read
Cosmic Justice and the Expectation Gap The issues of our time demand a more serious approach. Samuel Kronen 14 Feb 2020 · 7 min read
