Race
Annals of Education
The Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal Town
A post-pandemic fight about racism, the respectful treatment of trans kids, and the role of teachers’ unions has divided Amherst, Massachusetts.
The Political Scene Podcast
The Oscar Nominee Cord Jefferson on Why Race Is So “Fertile” for Comedy
“American Fiction,” nominated for five Academy Awards, satirizes the literary world, and upends Hollywood conventions about Blackness.
Cultural Comment
“May December” Probes the Dark Assumptions Behind a Tabloid Scandal
Todd Haynes’s new film on Netflix reveals how race and class shaped the real-world case that inspired it.
The Weekend Essay
A Mother’s Grief in New Haven
Laquvia Jones lost both of her sons to shootings. Now she wonders why a city with a deep sense of community—and one of the wealthiest universities in the world—can’t figure out how to address gun violence.
The Political Scene Podcast
Tim Scott, and the Republican Party’s Vexed Relationship with Race
Robert Samuels discusses his recent reporting on the South Carolina senator and Presidential candidate.
Our Columnists
Ibram X. Kendi’s Anti-Racism
The historian espoused grand ambitions to dismantle American racism, but the crisis at his research center suggests that he always had a more limited view of change.
Page-Turner
The Case That Being Poor and Black Is Bad for Your Health
The public-health professor Arline T. Geronimus has spent a forty-year career researching how inequality takes a “weathering” toll on the body.
Q. & A.
Larissa FastHorse Becomes the First Native American Woman to Bring a Show to Broadway
The playwright behind “The Thanksgiving Play” discusses her satire of theatre and U.S. history, the enduring prevalence of “redface” in casting, and how a background in ballet made her a better writer.
Daily Comment
Should Latinos Be Considered a Race?
A proposed change to the census faces opposition from Afro-Latino groups, and exposes conflicts among Latino communities.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
What if the Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action?
The conservative majority may strike down consideration of race in school admissions. What will that mean for colleges? Plus, how the culture wars came to the Catholic Church.
The New Yorker Interview
Danielle Deadwyler’s Gravity-Shifting Intensity
The multi-hyphenate discusses her role in “Till”; her approach to art; ego death; and the retrograde values of the Hollywood system.
Best Medicine
Amber Ruffin Doesn’t Have Time to Go Insane
The comedian and host of “The Amber Ruffin Show” (and author, writer for “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” “Drunk History” guest, and book writer for three musicals) discusses mining laughs from racism.
The Front Row
The Radical, Exuberant Transformation of “Random Acts of Flyness”
The second season of Terence Nance’s HBO series scrutinizes the nature of artistic collaboration while developing a visionary exploration of Black American life.
Cultural Comment
I Finally Watched “Seinfeld”
The show didn’t appeal to me when it first aired, mostly because I harbored a long-simmering antagonism toward mainstream America.
Persons of Interest
The Rock Goes Back to Black
“Black Adam” and the slippery identities of Dwayne Johnson.
The New Yorker Documentary
Hair, Trauma, and Healing in “The Ritual to Beauty”
For the women in Shenny De Los Angeles’s family, hair relaxers meant a mix of beauty and pain. Going natural was both a privilege and a liberation.
The New Yorker Interview
Lorraine O’Grady Has Always Been a Rebel
The eighty-eight-year-old artist and critic, whose profile has risen in the past decade, examines her role in the art world then and now.
Letter from Lusanga
Can an Artists’ Collective in Africa Repair a Colonial Legacy?
Its founders believe that they can use the tools of the Western art world to help heal the effects of more than a century of plunder.