race

Bad News—A Review
A review of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Encounter, 312 pages. (October 2021) In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek (where, full disclosure, she has published two of my essays), argues that elite left-wing

George Floyd and the Rise of the Rival Constitution
On May 25th, 2020, a Minneapolis police officer subdued a suspected forger by placing his knee on the suspect’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. The encounter was filmed and wildly disseminated. The suspect died as a result of several factors, including the officer’s use of excessive

Why Culture Matters for Racial Disparities
In the 1980s, the National Basketball Association (NBA) experienced a revival in fan interest sparked by a hyped team rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, and by the personal rivalry between their two respective superstars, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Bird is white, Johnson is black,

Say It Ain’t So, Doc: How Should Martin Luther King Scholars Deal With the Rape Story?
These are difficult days for students of Martin Luther King, Jr. The man many of us have dedicated long months and years to researching, often out of a profound sense of respect, is facing an allegation of laughing and even offering advice while a fellow Baptist minister raped a woman

Superior: The Return of Race Science—A Review
A review of Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini, Beacon Press, 256 pages (May, 2019) The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct… ~Charles Darwin, 1871, The Descent of Man Angela Saini’s new

Anxiety About Immigration is a Global Issue
Much has been written about anti-immigrant sentiments in the West in recent years. Brexit, Trump’s election, and the moderate success of political movements hostile to immigration in countries like Italy, Germany and Sweden have provoked much admonishment of Western societies by various intellectuals and commentators, usually of leftist leanings.