Dear readers,
My name is Kmele Foster, and I’m thrilled to be Tangle’s incoming Editor-at-Large.
I joined Tangle for much the same reasons many of you became subscribers. I prize thoughtful, transparent, and reliably curious journalism that helps me reach my own conclusions. I’m not interested in reheated hot takes that flatter my biases, but I’m always eager to read the best arguments from across the political landscape — even the ones I’m inclined to disagree with — because that’s what being a well informed citizen demands. Tangle is obsessed with meeting exactly this need, and I’m eager to help advance the effort through my contributions to this newsletter, our weekly podcast, and beyond.
I’m grateful you're along for the ride, and I look forward to getting to know each other.
With that out of the way, I suppose a brief bio is in order: I’m a first generation American of Scots-Jamaican ancestry. At 16, I somehow convinced the most gorgeous girl in our high school to go out with me. We celebrated 20 years of marriage last Wednesday, and today we’ve got two incredible children, Lia (7) and Coen (3). I've spent most of my adult life helping to build companies in several very different industries, and about a decade ago, my eclectic entrepreneurial pursuits led me to the world of media commentary and journalism.
From my new perch here at Tangle, I’ll survey everything from economic and foreign policy, to science and tech news, media criticism writ large, civil liberties in particular, all things Cormac McCarthy, humanity’s search for meaning in the cosmos (yes, really — and you may enjoy this multipart documentary series on the topic that I hosted).
But if you’re already familiar with my work, or have been listening to The Sunday podcast, you may notice something conspicuously absent from that list.
I've developed a bit of a reputation for my often unconventional (if reliably well researched) commentary on race, identity, and politics. I’m even under contract to write a book on the topic for St. Martin’s Press. And while I was somewhat reluctant to tread this ground in my inaugural contribution to Tangle, with some encouragement from Isaac, I decided it was worth jumping in the deep end as we hit the fifth anniversary of a uniquely consequential moment in modern American life: the 2020 racial reckoning.
I’ve followed the evolution of racial justice activism since the emergence of Black Lives Matter in 2013, after the death of Trayvon Martin. I anchored live broadcasts during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown. But the extraordinary expansion of the movement in the summer of 2020 — what some described as the fastest-growing political movement in U.S. history — was unlike anything that preceded it.
In the midst of a global pandemic, American politics, media, and culture were swept up by a phenomenon whose legacy remains deeply misunderstood. Even after countless retrospectives, many of which were published in the past two months by the most prominent outlets in the country, we have yet to fully appreciate what the movement achieved. Most analyses focus on what didn’t materialize: sweeping legislative victories or lasting institutional reforms. Others point to the unintended consequences of overstating the dangers posed by policing.
But as the black squares took over Instagram, and scores of corporate equity pledges were published online, I began to suspect that the most enduring legacy of the movement was bound to be philosophical. In the end, it reshaped the way we talk to and about one another, the way we think about justice, and the way we encourage our children to see the world. A reckoning implies a confrontation with the truth. But this was something else — a kind of race monomania. Less a moment of moral clarity than a refurbishing of the essentialism that crudely obscures our collective similarities and exaggerates our differences.
Race became the quintessential lens for political and moral analysis — not just a feature of identity, but a framework for interpreting nearly everything.
“Hey Black Child.”
Almost two years after the pandemic drove us from Brooklyn, and just a month before the birth of our second child, my family relocated back to the East Coast from California. There are a thousand small things to manage during a cross-country move like that, but one particularly large thing emerged on a February morning when I was shuttling our five-year-old daughter to her first day at a new school.
On her best days, Lia is the most gregarious and talkative person in our household; that morning, she was all contemplation and single word replies. In a few minutes, she’d be dropped into an already formed Montessori class, just a week after saying emotional goodbyes to her former classmates and a teacher she absolutely adored. I did my best to try to keep her spirits up, but I was preoccupied with my own ruminations about Lia’s big day.
I hoped she’d make new friends right away. That she’d forge an instant connection with her new teacher. And that the Chernobyl-scale meltdown that would absolutely unfold on the threshold of her new classroom wouldn’t last more than ten or fifteen minutes. We were a bit of a mess. But as we drove into the parking garage and exited the car, the atmosphere felt noticeably lighter. The maelstrom of morning drop-offs had ended at least an hour earlier. Showing up just a little late was a good call. The elevator arrived almost immediately, and we stepped aboard, still holding one another’s hand.
The ride was quick, but just long enough to let a modicum of relief take hold. We stepped off the elevator and into the school’s reception area. Lia scanned the room and gave my hand a quick squeeze. Then something caught my eye. Near the entrance stood a credenza and bulletin board, covered with a haphazard assemblage of Black History Month materials — books on small plastic stands, postcards, and flyers. At the center, nearly the focal point of it all, was a half-letter-size, staple-bound children’s book with a glossy cover that barked its title in oversized block letters: HEY BLACK CHILD.
No doubt the display was conceived with the best of intentions. An effort to be inclusive. But I stopped imagining Lia greeting me at the end of the day with a wide smile, and started wondering what assumptions her new teachers might already be holding the moment they meet her. Would they see her as we do at home — a singular, curious and deeply imaginative child, becoming more herself every day? Or would they see a systemically disadvantaged minority, seared by struggle, in need of special handling and extra care?
At five years old, Lia loved stargazing, had a budding interest in photography and physics (“Daddy, is infinity invisible?”), and her musical interests included Donny Hathaway, Michael Jackson, James Taylor, and Lana Del Rey. She had — and still has — a rich inner world and an appetite for not-quite-age-appropriate narrative fiction (which I’ve always been happy to indulge). But Lia had no conception of herself as a member of a racial group, or as a black person in particular. And why should she?
I was still wrestling with these thoughts when we found our way to Lia’s classroom, and we were still holding hands when Lia’s new teacher came out into the hall to greet us. This woman was a stranger to us and not at all like Lia’s former teacher. She was a noticeably younger woman with a quieter demeanor. But as she bent to meet Lia at eye level, greeting her by name and just opening her mouth to say more, Lia slipped her hand out of mine and threw her arms around her new teacher in a desperate hug. I can’t recall if Lia looked back as they entered the classroom together, but the teacher shot me another confident grin.
I was relieved to see Lia make an immediate connection with her new teacher. In the moment, I might have been contemplating a recent headline in The New York Times professing the importance of children having teachers who share their race. While that segregationist prescription would apparently satisfy the concerns of both Jim Crow-era bigots and modern racial-justice activists, the lack of any obvious ethnic or phenotypical similarities didn’t turn out to be an obstacle for Lia that morning.
Months before Lia was born, I interviewed historian Henry Louis Gates via Skype. He was short on time and our exchange was brief, but over the course of that call we discussed James Baldwin (whom we both adore) and the subjective and artistic dimensions of ‘doing history.’ Toward the end of our conversation, Dr. Gates offered an observation I’d heard paraphrased numerous times before: “There are 42 million African Americans; that means there are 42 million ways to be black.” It’s an adage he imparts to students in his Harvard classroom at the end of each semester, and the idea resonated deeply with me. So deeply that upon first encountering it, I was immediately inspired to ask a related question.
“If there are as many ways to be black as there are black people, what exactly is blackness? And why should I bother with it at all?”
Toward the end of our conversation, I shared what may be my most controversial, and for others, my most confounding and unconventional belief: I don’t self-identify as black. And I can’t imagine any valid reason to do so. Gates’s response was polite, brief, and frankly perplexing.
“Though you might see yourself as [simply] a human being, when you walk in a room, very few Americans see you that way first… and that means that you inherit, whether you want to or not, all these stereotypes and connotations that are just part and parcel of being a black male — and you have to know that. And if you have a child, your child has to know that, too. It’s a form of self protection… Sooner or later, you’re going to encounter ‘antiblack’ racism, and woe to the person who doesn’t know that history.”
It remains frustrating to me that, even when talking to another person who acknowledges the crude, nuance-flattening qualities of race, I still encounter resistance when insisting on full autonomy for myself. That I would have to make the same request on behalf of my daughter heightens the register of that frustration substantially. I’ve tracked the strange winds, both cultural and political, that helped bring us to the point where such requests feel obligatory. I’ve spent a lifetime advocating for my own autonomy, but having to request amnesty for my daughter from having a racial identity imposed on her was a potent reminder of the odd — and still somewhat newly ascended — philosophy of racial equity.
A James Baldwin quote comes to mind: “For the sake of one’s children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion — and the value placed on the color of the skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion.”
A moment that promised clarity but delivered confusion.
In June of 2020, scores of Americans bucked pandemic restrictions to join mass demonstrations and demand racial justice under the banner of Black Lives Matter. National media coverage was saturated with stories about systemic racism, primers on antiracism, and demands for racial equity. Public discourse was overtaken by a sense of moral urgency that seemed to leave little room for nuance. While most demonstrations were peaceful, significant violence and property destruction, resulting in record-breaking losses for property owners and insurance providers, left lasting societal scars. Five years later, the legacy of that moment remains complicated, contentious, and deeply disappointing.
Debates over policy wins and losses often distract from the deeper philosophical error at the heart of the reckoning: the assumption that race is a meaningful and explanatory feature of human identity. This assumption didn’t just shape individual programs or campaigns — it reshaped our moral compass. It encouraged us to treat racial categories as real, causal forces rather than as social fictions. In doing so, it deepened divisions, warped our understanding of justice, and provoked a growing ideological backlash.
One of the clearest signs of this shift is the movement away from equality toward equity. For generations, equality meant treating individuals fairly, without regard to race. Equity, by contrast, makes race central — its goal is not equal treatment but equal outcomes between racial groups. Though often presented as a more sophisticated or compassionate approach, equity-thinking replaces individual dignity with demographic accounting. It treats statistical disparities as proof of injustice, regardless of context or cause. In doing so, it reduces people to representatives of their group and reframes justice as the balancing of categories rather than the honoring of persons. This change may have been well-intentioned, but its long-term effect is to reify race and subordinate the individual.
A conversation centered on racial equity isn’t just centered on equity — it is also, definitionally, centered on race. In forcing the concept of racial equity, the movement required all participants to commit to race as an essential characteristic of all individuals. The commitment to this race essentialism has been bipartisan. On the left, equity-driven thinking created a fixation on racial outcomes. Despite good intentions, policies inspired by this thinking often reinforced racial essentialism, fostering division, resentment, and polarization.
Reflecting again on Lia’s first day, I'm reminded how subtly these ideological presumptions creep into so much of our everyday experience and interactions. How many well intended efforts at instilling racial pride or awareness inadvertently reinforce the divisions they’re ostensibly seeking to bridge? When we prioritize symbolic racial representation over genuine individual particularity, what lessons are we teaching our children? Are we genuinely preparing them for a complex, diverse world, or merely reinforcing inherited divisions?
Let me offer an anecdote: My skin has a particular melanin content that you might be tempted to regard as “black.” Imagine for a moment that I walk into a jewelry store and find myself being followed by a salesperson as I peruse the aisles. The racial reckoning taught me — or tried to teach me — to recognize this “microaggression” as a person making the assumption that I look like the kind of person who might try to steal a piece of fine jewelry.
Now imagine I come into the same jewelry store and the same sales person looks up, sees me, and then ignores me. The philosophy of the racial reckoning all but insists I recognize this “microaggression” as a person making the assumption that I look like the kind of person who can’t afford any of the fine jewelry in the store.
The trap is set. There’s no escaping. And there’s no way I want either of my children to live in that paradigm.
Toward an authentic racial reckoning.
The outpouring of race-focused discourse that took place in 2020 faltered not because it was overly ambitious, but because it rested on the misguided assumption that race itself is fundamentally meaningful and explanatory. Its failure obscured true justice, deepened social divisions, and intensified polarization.
We deserve an authentic racial reckoning. It must prioritize individual dignity, human equality, and the moral seriousness we rightly demand when genuine justice is at stake. This reckoning requires honestly confronting the philosophical incoherence of race and explicitly acknowledging the harms our modern obsession with race continues to inflict on individuals and communities.
There is nothing essential — biological, cultural, experiential, or moral — that all members of any so-called racial group share. No trait, no belief, no history, no fate. A category that can’t tell us what is included or excluded is not merely imprecise, it’s incoherent. Race pretends to name something concrete, but it’s an imagined substance, persistently elusive. It seems to offer only shifting generalizations that collapse under scrutiny.
What happens when you elevate an incoherent conceptual placeholder, like race, into a defining feature of personhood, policy, or moral life?
In the first case, you settle for confusion instead of clarity. In the second, you prioritize group avatars over actual persons. And finally, you create systems, institutions, and moral frameworks that orbit a divisive fiction, but behave as if the abstraction were an inviolable fact. You get policy and activism rooted in hysteria and myth.
For example, in the fall of 2020, the American Medical Association (AMA) followed the lead of many other organizations and formally declared racism “a public health emergency,” but they also went further. In the same press release, the AMA rightly rejected the use of biological race essentialism in a medical context, warning that it undermines individualized patient care. Paradoxically, however, the AMA simultaneously adopted equity-driven policies that were explicitly grounded in racial categorization.
Logically, racial medical risks imply either:
Biological reality: risk is tied to essential racial traits (immutable and biological),
(or)
Social reality: shared social conditions produce consistent outcomes, effectively essentialized in practice.
The AMA explicitly rejects biological essentialism yet embraces social essentialism. This replicates precisely the problem they sought to avoid: subordinating individual care to general categories associated with race. If my personal medical history and lifestyle do not indicate elevated risk, why presume otherwise based on racial category?
Progressives are not reinforcing racial essentialism alone. Conservative critics, though rightly skeptical of equity frameworks, also reinforce racial essentialism, albeit differently. While most conservative critics do not explicitly engage in race realism, its troubling resurgence in some conservative circles merits concern.
Similarly, conservatives and liberals fixation on racial disparities in crime and incarceration suffers from conceptual confusion. Empirical evidence demonstrates these disparities are complex and exaggerated when interpreted solely through racial lenses. Far more predictive factors — such as family structure, community stability, and socioeconomic conditions — better explain complex social outcomes. Our cultural obsession with racial explanations obscures clearer understandings of reality.
More distant history offers rich examples as well: Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, colonial Latin America categorized individuals into racial hierarchies — the casta system — defined by fractional ancestries. These categories included “Mulatto” (one European parent, one African parent), “Morisco” (one European parent, one Mulatto parent), “Quadroon” (one-quarter African ancestry), and “Octoroon” (one-eighth African ancestry).
Today, we recognize these classifications as absurd. Yet contemporary racial categories like “Black,” “White,” and “Asian” are as unsophisticated and commit precisely the same conceptual error, imposing arbitrary distinctions onto the fluid and overlapping spectrum of human biodiversity.
When race is your moral compass, you're bound to lose your way. And when race (or gender, or sexuality, or even religion) is proffered as an identity, are we not trading the soul for a silhouette?
Building beyond “The Dream”
Much of what I’ve outlined here is at sharp odds with newly fashionable ideas that rose to prominence in conjunction with the mislabeled “racial reckoning,” which has ironically led many people to unwittingly embrace beliefs and political prescriptions that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those of 1960s segregationists. That’s a jarring assertion to make, but it’s not an overwrought characterization, and I don't intend it as a smear.
Relatedly, when many critics on the right have responded to these misguided racial proclivities on the left (and when they aren’t openly reactionary), they often serve up their own disappointing appeals to authority. They defer to black conservatives or evoke familiar quotations of historical figures like MLK. The first move only imitates the error of their political rivals, attributing authority to individuals not on the basis of merit but on the basis of their identity. The second often requires regrettable oversimplifications of the views of historical figures, but it also betrays a failure of imagination. The answers to our current problems don’t lie in the past. We don’t only need a restatement of old ideals. King’s Dream was wonderful for its time, but must it be the height of our moral ambition?
“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists… little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.”
King’s potent sentiment still speaks to us, but I can imagine something much better than black and white children playing together. I aspire to a world where no one would dare risk overlooking the dignity of any individual child by indulging in casual racial generalizations.
In America, the enduring achievement of racism as an ideology has little to do with vulgar assertions about any group’s biological inferiority or supremacy. Its most frustrating and consequential legacy is having seduced most of the world into simultaneously rejecting the notion of biological racial inferiority while uncritically accepting the taxonomy of human races as valid. And not only accepting it, but inculcating it into nearly every area of our lives.
If you’ve ever completed a form that inquired about your race, and you proceeded to voluntarily identify as a white, black, Asian, or Latino — rather than writing in the word “human” — then you’ve fallen under this spell, too. And whether you’re committed to the cause of racial justice and antiracism, or segregation and white supremacy or even color blindness, I’d argue that you’ve casually endorsed the same retrograde presumptions about the corporality of race and the nature of human difference.
Race is America’s most pervasive and consequential conspiracy theory. And as a country, we’ve very nearly sanctified the concept while systematically ignoring the philosophical compromises and intellectual inconsistencies it demands.
We need to deliberately define the world we want to live in. To set aspirations that build on the profound achievements that preceded them. And once we’ve done that, we’ll be better positioned to draw inspiration from the past and face our most urgent political and civilizational challenges. Today’s Black Lives Matter activists ought to consult the example of Memphis sanitation workers, who in 1968 didn’t obscure their demands for dignity by making appeals on behalf of a race; they rested their claims on the incontrovertible fact of their shared humanity.
The difference in moral posture isn’t trivial. The Memphis sanitation workers held signs that read “I AM A MAN,” a declaration of individuals grounded in their coequal humanity. That claim is personal, universally applicable, and morally unassailable. By contrast, Black Lives Matter couches its appeal in the language of race solidarity; its moral force is mediated through group identity rather than individual personhood. That shift — from asserting “I am” to insisting “we matter” — marks a philosophical retreat, a retrogression in support of a taxonomical scheme suitable only for the dustbin.
This is the unfinished work of the racial reckoning — not better management of racial categories or symbolic gestures of inclusion, but the principled dismantling of racial ideology itself. Only then can we create a society where justice is measured by tangible improvements in individual lives rather than abstract demographic categories. Lia, along with every child, deserves to grow up in a world that sees them fully, explicitly as themselves — not as avatars of particular racial groups, but as individuals whose dignity and worth are unquestioned and inviolable.
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