Last week, Ta-Nehisi Coates published his latest essay, “The First White President.” As with all Coates’ work, this latest essay combines a historical perspective with merciless insight and powerful prose, illuminating in his characteristically soul-crushing manner the immensity of American racial injustice. According to some, Coates is so skilled at pressing the full weight of this legacy – what Coates calls the “bloody heirloom” – down upon his readers that by the time he’s done, he has sniffed out any glimmer of hope for a politics dedicated to battling back against what he fairly calls the nation’s “original sin.” In Read more