Yesterday morning, I sat down with John McWhorter for our bi-weekly conversation. Immediately afterward, as is now becoming my routine, I recorded a post-show mini-episode with Mark Sussman and Nikita Petrov, my editor and creative director, respectively. Many of you have been anticipating (or dreading) this talk with John, because we’re continuing our discussion of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Message. We talked about it two weeks ago, but John hadn’t read yet it. Now that he has, we have a full-on debate about it. You’ll get to see that tomorrow.
Some of my friends and colleagues are disturbed by my admiration for The Message, my revulsion at the death and destruction in Gaza, and my criticisms of Israel and the US’s conduct. Some of you, my valued Substack subscribers, are disturbed as well. As Mark points out, there are any number of things I could be doing instead of throwing myself into this debate. So why do I keep talking about it?
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