In the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and seeing FBI wanted posters featuring the occasional nonwhite rioter, I wrote an op-ed-length essay on multiracial whiteness, an idea I've been mulling over for some time, and sent it to the Washington Post, which not only accepted it but ran it in print, on the front page of the Sunday opinion section! (Here's a link to the article; click on the picture below to read just the text as published.) A week later, Lulu Garcia-Navarro reached out to do a quick interview on the subject, and that aired shortly afterward—my first NPR appearance. (Here's a link to the audio.)
In between the two, I was reminded of what happens when one talks in the public sphere about the concept of "whiteness" (which is NOT the same as white people, BTW) or tries to discuss how the legacy of white supremacy has distorted our collective understanding of democracy: A bunch of right-wing pundits and their followers freak out! First, they post a bunch of outraged tweets. Then they write faux-news articles about the outraged tweets they've just written. It's a big dumb circle of silly, but it was far more negative attention than I've ever gotten from an MSNBC appearance—even the one time when Bill O'Reilly put a clip of me on his Fox News show. Fortunately, the insults and ugliness quickly peter out as the online mob moves on to a new outrage. The good news: A whole lot of people read real newspapers like the Washington Post. And that strikes me as a very good sign!