The Call-to-Whiteness

<p>I&rsquo;m posting this essay, which I wrote right after the 2016 election results, because I&rsquo;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,&nbsp;<a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-americans-get-free-stuff-from-the-government/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">innocuous story</a>&nbsp;about how Jeb Bush&rsquo;s rhetoric about blacks and &ldquo;free stuff&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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.</p> <p><a href="https://faraic.medium.com/the-call-to-whiteness-9a27b5a0b347"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>