Deceitful Affairs

A Reply to Nathan J. Robinson

It is for minds like Nathan J. Robinson’s that the phrase “a mile wide and an inch deep” was created.

Robinson, founder of Current Affairs, has written a breathtakingly dishonest review of my new book, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. His 4,700-word takedown accuses me of, among other things, “extremely dishonest” manipulation of historical evidence, “intellectual malpractice,” and putting forth a “simplistic, dishonest narrative.” 

In reality, his review is guilty of literally every sin it accuses me of. Having acquired a taste for public displays of hypocrisy, Robinson has apparently returned to the buffet line for a second helping. Indeed, I have never read someone so confidently accuse someone of sins that they proceed to commit mere sentences later.

Let’s examine his review claim by claim.

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Robinson begins his takedown by treating us to a 700-word extended metaphor about a hypothetical society in which there are two groups: the “A-Group” and the “B-Group”. If you’d like to waste some time, do read the whole thing.

For the rest, here’s the short version: the A-Group and the B-Group are exact stand-ins for whites and non-whites, and the saga they endure mirrors how whites and non-whites have interacted throughout American history. In other words, the A-Group oppresses the B-Group for a long time.

The only difference: what separates these two groups is not color, but some other trait. (Robinson proposes “birthdays," which is an odd choice given that, in his own metaphor, these are supposed to be hereditary groups, and birthdays are decidedly not heritable. A better writer might have chosen, say, hair color. But then, a better writer might have spared us the tedious extended metaphor in the first place.)    

Robinson continues: At some point, this system of oppression ends, but the effects linger. Some descendants of the B-Group develop “B-Group pride,” supporting policies that reverse-discriminate in their favor. But other members of the B-Group––people like me, presumably––seek to ditch these arbitrary categories altogether and just stop talking about the whole thing. 

At long last, Robinson arrives at the thunderous conclusion––which lands no differently than it would have without the metaphor:

And yet, it will still be the case that the children of the Bs are, on the whole, poorer than the children of the As. And something might strike us as a little strange when we notice the strong statistical correlation between being the child of a former B and being in jail or prison…[ellipsis in original] 

In other words, the purpose of this digression––the payoff which justified the whole journey––is the commonplace observation that race, though an arbitrary trait, is nevertheless correlated with all kinds of outcomes. How could it possibly be a coincidence, Robinson asks, that a group that was oppressed for centuries just so happens to be on the wrong end of so many disparities? 

This is among the most common arguments made about racial inequality. That’s why I address it in some detail in my book¹––arguments that Robinson addresses only in a passing sentence:

Hughes follows Thomas Sowell in appearing to rationalize a lot of disparities, saying that they may result from natural cultural differences or random factors rather than outright discrimination (they might, but the correlation between a centuries-long history of oppression and contemporary wealth disparities is hardly spurious or random).

My short reply is this: Surely, the history of oppression plays a role in the current state of black America. But if one looks at the whole landscape of interracial and intra-racial ethnic disparities (rather than the single data point of African-Americans), there is no way to make sense of the hypothesis that discrimination, past or present, is the main driver of modern-day disparities.

As Robinson didn’t spend much time (or effort) on this point, neither will I. A longer discussion can be found in my book.

Let’s move on to the core of Robinson’s critique.

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According to Robinson, I argue that we should stop talking about race. Full stop. Even more extreme, apparently I argue that talking about race makes you a racist. His objection to this pair of arguments is arguably his central critique of me––the thread that runs through his whole essay.

Twice, he quotes the following out-of-context sentence from my book: “Racial talk makes racist thought”²––once in the final sentence of his essay and once here: 

“Racial talk makes racist thought,” Hughes says. This makes about as much sense as saying that talking about class makes you a classist, talking about gender makes you a sexist, and talking about nations makes you a nationalist. 

Of course, I don’t believe that talking about race makes you a racist. That would be crazy. Robinson is practicing an egregious example of selective quotation.

Here is the paragraph that immediately follows the “Racial talk makes racist thought” quote in my book:

Let me make one thing clear: I’m strongly in favor of talking about real instances of racial discrimination and real systemic discrimination in institutions. To give one example, a sting operation with trained actors and secret cameras discovered that Long Island real estate agents discriminated against 19 percent of Asian prospective homeowners, 39 percent of Hispanics, and 49 percent of blacks. That’s worth talking about. But most mainstream racial talk doesn’t deal with actual racism. (bold mine)³

It’s hard to see how I could possibly have made it more clear that I’m in favor of talking about actual racism––and that the “racial talk” I am opposed to is, by default, something other than discussions of real racism.

Could an honest journalist read that passage and come to the conclusion that:

(1) I believe people should just stop talking about race, with no qualification, or…

(2) I believe talking about race makes you a racist?

I don’t think so.

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On to the next strawman: 

But while Hughes’s response to the impact of centuries of racism is legitimate, his distortions of the other point of view are not. Hughes accuses contemporary anti-racists of “race supremacy,” saying they agree with white supremacists that “some races are superior to others.” In fact, Kendi says precisely the opposite, writing that “whenever someone says there is something wrong with White people as a group, someone is articulating a racist idea.”

Nowhere in my book do I claim that Ibram X. Kendi endorses race supremacy. In fact, the section Robinson is quoting from––“Race Supremacy Returns”⁴––does not mention Kendi’s name even once (though I do give several examples of people who aren’t named Kendi promoting anti-white bigotry). 

In Robinson’s imagination, apparently a lively place, he’s informing me that Kendi rejects race supremacy––something I clearly must not know. 

He is about four years too late. Back in 2019, I wrote the following sentence in my review of Kendi’s book for City Journal: “Having matured out of his anti-white phase, Kendi takes a refreshingly strong stand against anti-white racism in the book,…” 

If I were writing as defensively as possible––in anticipation of a Robinsonian level of bad faith––I would have said that many neoracists endorse race supremacy instead of what I actually wrote––which was simply:  “They endorse a type of de facto race supremacy.” This, perhaps, would have closed the door to interpreting my statement as applying to every single person whom I elsewhere call a “neoracist”. 

But one either writes elegant prose with the proverbial smart-but-uninformed reader in mind, or one writes a mess of annoying caveats with one’s most uncharitable critic in mind. The majority of readers, I assume, will be happy that I did the former.

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“Intellectual malpractice,” what Robinson accuses me of, is a rather good term for what he does here:

Hughes is similarly manipulative in his discussion of Bayard Rustin. In a video for the New York Times, Hughes presents Rustin as being “opposed to affirmative action.” One need only open a copy of Rustin’s collected writings to find that, while he opposed a numerical racial quota system, he in fact wrote (on behalf of the A. Philip Randolph Institute) that “the affirmative action concept [is] a valid and essential contribution to an overall program designed to ameliorate the current effects of racial bias,” praising “special efforts to include those groups that had been previously excluded.” Rustin certainly had a strong critique of existing affirmative action programs, and argued strongly that the primary focus should be on creating an economy that guaranteed a decent standard of living for all. But it is unconscionable to leave out the nuance here, which is why leaders of the A. Philip Randolph Institute objected to a prior attempt to oversimplify Rustin’s views. They noted that Rustin chaired a program specifically designed to “rectify underrepresentation of blacks and other minority groups in the construction and building trades.” 

Robinson is wrong about this. And the hubris dripping off of a phrase like “One need only open a copy of…” is particularly ironic given that his knowledge of Bayard Rustin’s writings appears to be severely limited.

Rustin did not just oppose quotas. He also opposed (non-quota) preferential treatment in hiring and admissions––what we today call “affirmative action.” To understand this, we must first define terms.

“Affirmative action” has had at least four different definitions:

(1) Nondiscrimination: The original definition, articulated in executive orders by President Kennedy and President Johnson, was simply hiring “without regard to race”––i.e., color-blindness. 

(2) Outreach-plus-nondiscrimination: What historian of the policy Melvin Urofsky labels “soft affirmative action”: making extra efforts to reach minority candidates, followed by judging them purely on colorblind merit. Importantly, this is not what we mean by “affirmative action” today.

(3) Preferential treatment––i.e., taking race into account in the decision whether to hire or admit somebody without using quotas. This is what we mean today by “affirmative action”––see, for instance, the recent Supreme Court case. 

(4) Racial quotas, which have been banned for some time but were alive when Rustin was writing.

When we talk about “affirmative action” today, we’re talking about #3. And Rustin opposed #3.

Now let’s look at the record, which Robinson either obscures or is unfamiliar with.

Robinson cites two pieces of evidence to back up the claim that I’ve misrepresented Rustin’s views. The first is a quote pulled from Rustin’s 1974 essay, “Affirmative Action in An Economy of Scarcity”: 

“The A. Philip Randolph Institute believes the affirmative action concept to be a valid and essential contribution to an overall program designed to ameliorate the current effects of racial bias, and, ultimately, to achieve the long-sought goal of racial equality”. 

The crucial question––not even asked by Robinson, much less answered––is which definition of “affirmative action” Rustin was supporting here. In the context of the rest of the essay, it appears he was referring to #2, not #3.

We can infer this because Rustin ends the very same essay with a 4-point plan––curiously omitted by Robinson––for how “affirmative action” should be implemented. In that plan, he literally suggests that hiring procedures should in some cases be left to race-blind lotteries. Point 1 of Rustin’s plan, in its entirety, is: 

"Affirmative action efforts should be largely directed to instances of racial discrimination. In place of ratio or quota formulas, those institutions that have been found guilty of practicing discrimination should be given stiff fines; in other instances of recalcitrance, such as have been exhibited by Southern police departments, government should consider asking the courts to institute racially blind lotteries to determine hiring procedures”. (bold mine)

The only other piece of “evidence” Robinson cites is a letter written by Norman Lynch of the A. Philip Randolph Institute…after Bayard Rustin died. Lynch’s letter does not specify which definition of “affirmative action” he has in mind: Preferential treatment, quotas, outreach, non-discrimination? We are left to guess.

More importantly, why cite material not written by Rustin when Rustin left so much writing behind? Is Robinson unaware of Rustin’s other writings on the topic? Or did he intentionally omit them?  

Here are two other pieces of evidence––undiscussed by Robinson––supporting the claim that Rustin opposed both quotas (#4) and preferential treatment (#3).

• In 1974, Rustin wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, correcting a false assertion that "quotas and preferential treatment" were the brainchildren of the Civil Rights movement (of which Rustin was a lead architect). Instead, Rustin writes that they were the unfortunate consequence of the Nixon administration. 

  The controversy over quotas and preferential treatment did not originate in the agenda of the civil rights movement, except insofar as that movement provided the impetus for all subsequent efforts to enhance the status of minorities. The leaders of the civil rights movement—King, Randolph, Wilkins, and others—were explicit in opposing reverse discrimination. They were opposed on philosophical grounds, but were also motivated by pragmatic political considerations…Which brings us to a basic point, albeit one which is often overlooked or dismissed as of secondary importance. And that is that quotas are the progeny, not of the program of the civil rights movement, but rather of the economic policies of the Nixon administration and of the shortcomings of the administration’s bureaucracy. (bold mine)⁵

  The penultimate sentence of the same letter is: "Weakening the merit principle and legitimate standards does no benefit to society, least of all to minorities." 

• In his 1970 essay, “The Failure of Black Separatism,” Rustin celebrated a poll result which reported that blacks overwhelmingly rejected “preferential treatment in hiring or college admission.”

  It is insulting to Negroes to offer them reparations for past generations of suffering, as if the balance of an irreparable past could be set straight with a handout. In a recent poll, Newsweek reported that “today’s proud Negroes, by an overwhelming 84 to 10 percent, reject the idea of preferential treatment in hiring or college admissions in reparation for past injustices.” There are few controversial issues that can call forth a greater uniformity of opinion than this in the Negro community.⁶

In sum, what we today call “affirmative action”––non-quota preferential treatment in hiring or admissions––is a policy that Rustin opposed. What he did support was an older definition of “affirmative action”––outreach-plus-nondiscrimination––that is no longer in use today. It is only through selective and out-of-context quotation (precisely what he accuses me of) that Robinson is able to argue the opposite. 

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According to Robinson, I deliberately mislead my readers about Thurgood Marshall’s views:

Hughes also cites Thurgood Marshall’s belief in a color-blind Constitution, but doesn’t tell his readers about how Marshall acted after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. The issue of affirmative action came before the court in the famous case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which considered whether racial preferences in state school admissions policies were constitutional. Marshall gave a strong, unequivocal defense of the use of preferences to make up for past discrimination. Let’s see what he had to say:

Then we get a long block quote from the late 70s in which Thurgood Marshall defends race-based Affirmative Action. And Robinson continues:

Now, let’s remember that when Hughes brings up Marshall (pp. 51-53), what he tells us is that Marshall agreed with Justice Harlan that “our constitution is color-blind.” Hughes uses this as part of his evidence that the “neoracists” of today (those who believe in race-conscious remedies) are betraying the spirit of the civil rights movement, which believed in color-blindness. But Hughes deliberately misleads his readers. When Harlan mentioned that the “constitution is color-blind” in his dissent to Plessy, which established “separate but equal,” Harlan was arguing that this color-blindness conferred to all people equal protection under the law. But Marshall’s actual belief was that because the Constitution’s color-blindness, in the vein of Harlan, had been ignored for so long, it was necessary to “give consideration to race” in order to fix the resulting injustice.

Robinson, here, is ignoring a simple fact: Thurgood Marshall appears to have changed his mind. When he was a participant in the civil rights movement in the 1950s, he believed in the “colorblind constitution”––so much so that in difficult moments he treated Justice Harlan’s Plessy dissent as his “bible”.⁷ What’s more, he argued in his Brown vs. Board appellate brief that the constitution does not allow states to make racial distinctions of any kind.

By the late 70s, when the Civil Rights movement had been over for some time, his beliefs had changed. He went from arguing that the state can make no racial distinctions at all to reportedly saying things like: “You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it is our turn.” That is a rather stark change of opinion. Both his belief in colorblindness (during the civil rights movement) and his later turn against it (after the civil rights movement) were his “actual beliefs”––so far as I know. His beliefs just seem to have changed.

In writing a chapter about the philosophy of the civil rights movement, I naturally focused on what its participants believed and fought for during the civil rights movement. In that context, it is not an “omission”––in anything other than the trivial sense of the word––to exclude contrary opinions developed after the civil rights movement was over. Had Thurgood Marshall become a full-blown Nazi later in life, I would have “omitted” that too.

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You’d think the intellectual dishonesty couldn’t get any worse. But it does.

Robinson falsely asserts that Dr. King’s view was “similar” to Marshall’s view––implying that Dr. King supported race-based affirmative action. He then provides a Dr. King quote that appears to support him:

Similarly, Hughes doesn’t mention that King’s view was similar [to Marshall’s], and that while he aspired to a color-blind society, he thought that in the world we actually live in, “a society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro.”

This sentence is taken from page 95 (in my version) of Dr. King’s final book, Where Do We Go From Here? At the end of that sentence Dr. King includes a footnote, directing readers to his previous book for specifics: “For an elaboration of this theory, see Why We Can’t Wait, Harper, 1964, pp. 146-153”.

When we go toWhy We Can’t Wait, Dr. King has a very similar quote:

It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on a just and equal basis?⁸

The promised elaboration comes four pages later, when he specifies exactly what he means by “something special for the Negro”––namely, a class-based anti-poverty program that would benefit the black and white poor alike. He called it the “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged”:

I am proposing, therefore, that, just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial…While Negroes form the vast majority of America’s disadvantaged, there are millions of white poor who would also benefit from such a bill. The moral justification for special measures for Negroes is rooted in the robberies inherent in the institution of slavery. Many poor whites, however, were the derivative victims of slavery…It is a simple matter of justice that America, in dealing creatively with the task of raising the Negro from backwardness, should also be rescuing a large stratum of the forgotten white poor. A Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged could mark the rise of a new era, in which the full resources of the society would be used to attack the tenacious poverty which so paradoxically exists in the midst of plenty.⁹

Thus, Dr. King’s proposal for “something special for the Negro” was in fact a class-based anti-poverty program, not as Robinson suggests, a race-based program at odds with colorblindness.

Moreover, just before the above passage, Dr. King mentions being aware of an affirmative action program in India where untouchables received preferential admission to colleges. He could have easily added, “And we should do what India is doing.” But instead, he came up with a distinct and specific recommendation for an anti-poverty program targeted at the black and white poor. So-called journalists like Robinson, either through ignorance or dishonesty, tend to omit this tiny detail.

Funnily enough, Robinson’s attack on my character applies nicely to himself: “And how can one trust anything said by a writer willing to exclude evidence that undercuts or complicates his thesis?”

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Another charge related to my coverage of Dr. King:

In fact, throughout the book, Hughes presents various thinkers selectively in a way that crosses into intellectual malpractice. For instance, to support his narrative that the “civil rights movement” favored color-blindness, while “neoracists” favor discrimination against white people, he cites Martin Luther King Jr. over and over, presenting a small heap of King quotes in which King says things like “black supremacy is as dangerous as white supremacy.” First, Ibram X. Kendi wouldn’t argue differently, having written himself that “Anti-White racism is indeed the hate that hate produced, [and is] attractive to the victims of White racism.” But secondly, Hughes selects only those quotes from King that are convenient to his narrative, excluding others like “White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism,” in which King did precisely what Hughes says he didn’t do, and made collective judgments about the members of one race… 

In writing a chapter about the core philosophy of the civil rights movement––not judging people by the color of their skin, a colorblind regime of public policy, common humanity, broad-based anti-poverty programs, etc.––I included lots of representative quotes from many people, including MLK. I excluded rare, one-off exceptions.

In general, Martin Luther King Jr. was against making invidious generalizations about whole races of people. And the exceptions prove the rule. By my lights, it is a legitimate editorial decision, when writing a chapter about a phenomenon, to include quotes that capture its core essence and exclude those that do not.

Robinson is free to disagree. But if he seriously believes that I had an obligation to include the rare times in which MLK “made collective judgements about the members of one race” (to use Robinson’s exact words), then he should apply that principle evenly.

For instance, he would have to argue that I should have included this MLK quote as well:

Yet Negroes must be honest enough to admit that our standards do often fall short…Our crime rate is far too high. Our level of cleanliness is frequently far too low. Too often those of us who are in the middle class live above our means, spend money on nonessentials and frivolities, and fail to give to serious causes, organizations, and educational institutions that so desperately need funds. We are too often loud and boisterous, and spend far too much on drink. Even the most poverty-stricken among us can purchase a ten-cent bar of soap; even the most uneducated among us can have high morals.¹⁰

Something tells me that Robinson would be fine excluding this MLK quote from a summary of the civil rights movement. But how is it different? It, too, is a rare exception to MLK’s general habit of not make negative collective judgements about races of people.

The fact that excluding a rare “anti-white” MLK quote brings out the pitchforks, but excluding a rare “anti-black” MLK quote elicits a yawn exposes the underlying double-standard here. It is not about my alleged misrepresentation of Dr. King. It’s about the fact that critics of colorblindness like Robinson desperately wish that Dr. King had agreed with them vis-a-vis the acceptability of anti-white rhetoric and policies. So they are willing to bend the historical record, quote him out of context, and make mountains out of molehills.

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That just about covers the most serious charges made against me.

But there are two relatively minor asides in his piece––both strawmen of my actual positions––that I would not want to give the impression of conceding to.

Hughes goes after some points made by contemporary anti-racist activists that are indeed absurd, such as the idea that punctuality is “white.” But he does the same thing that John McWhorter does in Woke Racism, which is to pick the most ludicrous, easily shot-down examples, when it’s not clear how representative they are (e.g., an online controversy in the YA fiction world over a writer’s supposed downplaying of racial oppression). He leaves out context that might give his readers a more sympathetic view of those he’s criticizing. (For instance, he goes after activists for criticizing racial disparities in traffic camera tickets in Chicago, saying that traffic cameras save lives. But a crucial argument, undiscussed by Hughes, was that differences in road design across Black and white neighborhoods, and not just differences in driving behavior, are a major source of the disparity.)

What Robinson portrays here as a dishonest omission on my part––––pages 37-38 in my book––was in fact an innocent omission irrelevant to my point. 

My point was this: everyone in Chicago seemed to agree that red-light and traffic cameras saved a ton of lives. (It is worth noting that traffic fatalities were particularly high among black citizens, so in a sense black citizens benefitted the most from these cameras). And everyone seemed to agree that the cameras had been placed equally in black, Hispanic, and white neighborhoods––as per the ProPublica article that both I and Robinson cited. 

Yet people still wanted to get rid of these cameras simply because they yielded disparate ticketing rates. That is insane.

I said nothing at all about the reason that such disparities remained––other than the fact that officer discrimination, by definition, could not be one of them. Nowhere did I mention “driving behavior” as the cause for the disparity, as Robinson dishonestly implies. Nor did I mention his favored theory that road structure––i.e., wider roads in black neighborhoods––was to blame.

If I had wanted to digress into a conversation about the causes of the disparity, then I would have had an obligation to consider both of those potential causes (and any others). But that wasn’t my purpose in bringing up the traffic cameras.

For the sake of argument, I could fully accept that road structure was 100% to blame for the disparity––or, alternatively that it was 100% caused by driving behavior. Neither scenario would change my conclusion. Which is to say: it would still be nonsensical to get rid of the cameras simply because they yielded a disparity in ticketing. To see this as a dishonest omission––rather than a normal and justified omission––is a failure of reading comprehension. 

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And finally:

N. Hughes also interprets facts to make today’s “anti-racists” look as ludicrous as possible. For instance, he says that the film Hidden Figures exaggerated the amount of racism experienced by one of the women whose lives it was based on. From this, he concludes that because “according to the strange dictates of neoracism, whiteness is inherently evil and blackness is inherently good,” the filmmakers had to show the character “experienc[ing] more segregation than she actually did.” But I’m sorry, that just doesn’t follow. I think you’ll find that most Hollywood films based on real-life stories play up the adversity the character experienced. The film Sully, for instance, created drama by portraying the NTSB as much more skeptical of Sully Sullenberger than they actually were. I certainly don’t take this as a sign that there’s an inherent Hollywood ideology that the NTSB is evil, rather that the screenwriter was struggling to create 90. 

No doubt, I agree that it doesn’t follow from the mere fact of exaggerated racism in the movie Hidden Figures that the filmmakers exaggerated because of ideological commitments––or for any other specific reason. However, I did not argue that it “follows” from the fact of the exaggeration itself. 

Neither I nor Robinson knows (for certain) the motivations behind decisions made by screenwriters and directors. But some theories explain the evidence better than others. 

I argue that in Hollywood, there is a bias towards neoracism and wokeness––i.e., a bias towards portraying whites as eternal oppressors and blacks as morally superior victims etc. Movies like Hidden Figures and The Woman King––which both distort history in ways that are friendly to wokeness––are examples of this trend, not proofs of the trend.

There is an easy way to test my explanation of motives (“Hollywood has a wokeness bias”) against the innocent explanation (“screenwriters just like to exaggerate adversity”). (Of course, in the case of Hidden Figures, both motives could coincide).

If I’m right, then there should be many recent (say, past decade) examples of movies that distort history in the direction of neoracist ideology––exaggerating the evils of white people and downplaying the sins of people of color––and few, if any, examples of historical distortions that run in the opposite direction.

But if Robinson’s explanation is right, then you’d expect there to be many of examples of recent Hollywood movies distorting history in both directions––i.e., with the grain of neoracist ideas and against the grain of neoracist ideas. In other words, you’d expect Hollywood to be an “equal-opportunity” exaggerator with respect to wokeness. I wish Robinson the best of luck finding a bunch of recent Hollywood movies that distort history by downplaying the historical sins of white people and playing up the sins of people of color!¹¹ To find data consistent with that hypothesis, you’d probably have to take a time machine back to the 1930s.

1. Hughes, The End of Race Politics, pgs. 108-119

2. Ibid. pg. 101

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid., pg. 32-35

5. Rustin, “I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters,” pg. 395

6. Rustin, “Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin,” pg. 231

7. Hughes, The End of Race Politics, pg. 51

8. King, Why We Can’t Wait, pg. 159

9. Ibid., pgs. 163-165

10. King, “Stride Toward Freedom”, in Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King. Jr., pg. 489. (HarperOne: 1986)

11. American Fiction, which I highly recommend, is a welcome exception to the rule. Indeed, it is a commentary on the very observation I’m making.