kelefa sanneh

  • Complicating The New Jim Crow

    At the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh discusses a new provocative book about current racial tensions in the US. The book, Black Silent Majority by Michael Javen Fortner, aims to complicate the idea that black people are disproportionately affected by police violence and…

  • Half a Century Later

    Down at the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh asks where the black critics are (and whether we ever had any to begin with, and how the field is irrelevant until they come back): Sociologists who study black America have a name for…

  • Standing Ovation

    Over at the New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh gives Chris Rock the profile treatment. Sanneh touches on the business of comedy, dueling aesthetics, and the trouble with staying relevant in an age of irrelevance: On set, whenever someone complimented Rock’s performance…