“A quarantine facial-hair experiment led me to a deep consideration of my Blackness.”

Anytime the racial temperature goes up and hell pays a visit to earth, the disappointment takes a holiday. And you fight. You fight because you’re tired. Yet you’re tired because you’ve been fighting. For so long. In waves, in loops, in vacuums, in vain.

A circle of young black playwrights is doing some of the most vital work in American theater. And Perry is at its center.

From Driving Miss Daisy to Green Book.

Not knowing what these movies were “about” didn’t mean it wasn’t clear what they were about. They symbolize a style of American storytelling in which the wheels of interracial friendship are greased by employment, in which prolonged exposure to the black half of the duo enhances the humanity of his white, frequently racist counterpart. All the optimism of racial progress — from desegregation to integration to equality to something like true companionship — is stipulated by terms of service.

Should art be a battleground for social justice?

Life after Get Out.

On America’s deep and persistent fear of the black penis.

Who we think we are in 2015.

The politics and rhetoric of Trevor Noah’s appointment as the new host of the Daily Show.

On Cops, cop movies and Ferguson.

An essay on television and race.