I’m posting this essay, which I wrote right after the 2016 election results, because I’ve begun to speak more openly about how constrained I was in covering racial resentment and white nationalism during my time at FiveThirtyEight. On October 2, 2015, I wrote a very factual and, in my mind, innocuous story about how Jeb Bush’s rhetoric about blacks and “free stuff” was a racial dog whistle. Nate Silver, the founder and editorial director, then called me into the office on my day off, and told me that at FiveThirtyEight they didn’t go cherry-picking the facts to fit their thesis. The entire conversation was essentially a hostile interrogation of my journalistic skills and values when I had far more political reporting experience than he did.
America Already Tried Anti DEI, and The Result Was Cruel Racial Exclusion
When someone says they’re anti-DEI, not enough pressure is put on them to explain what the alternative looks like to express their vision for…