This Incredible Editorial: Race in America.

At the start of 2009, we joined the rest of the country in guarded optimism about America's racial progress. This has been our issue since the late nineteen-fifties, when we were the first national publication to describe Sidney Poiter as "handsome." We were also the first to print James Baldwin's recollections of growing up black and gay, though we made a small editorial goof in asking him to recast several characters as precocious talking pigs. Still, no one can deny this is a cause close to our hearts.

Which is why were so saddened by what happened last night.



What does it say when a prominent African-American attempts to speak truth to power and is literally jeered offstage by an angry mob? What does it say when his proximity to a Southern belle who could have escaped intact from the pages of Margaret Mitchell is enough to have him physically evicted from American TV?

It says that we have not come as far as we would like.

We must admit that Kanye West has not been on our radar until now. From the evidence we've (briefly) reviewed, he seems a courageous young man who has managed a successful recording career despite the disability of having to sing through a mechanical larynx. We've also found very few photos of Mr. West in which he is not wearing dark glasses - indicating he is perhaps a sightless man who may have been unaware he was on-camera, or even on-stage, when he voiced his protest.

No matter; these are just excuses for an act that ultimately needs none. Mr. West did what courageous members of his race have done since Rosa Parks - stand up and be counted. He "saw" - if he can indeed see - an injustice, and he acted to right it. Boy, did he. We owe him great thanks for the national conversation that his lonely heroism will no doubt spark.

In the coming days, we hope that Barack Obama - a president whose election we helped bring about - will join with These Incredible Times in speaking up on West's behalf. If not ... well, I think we have a pretty good idea of whose name we'll be writing in come 2012.

The Editor(s)