Issac Bailey, a 2014 Nieman Fellow, is a journalist, race relations seminar creator and facilitator, and the author of “Why Didn’t We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland” (Other Press, October 2020). He is also the author of “My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South” (Other Press, 2018). He has contributed to Politico, CNN.com, Time, and The Washington Post. He is a former columnist and senior writer for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and he was a 2011 recipient of a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for stories about a child protection case. The state subsequently revamped the way it handles such cases.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my career in journalism began in St. Stephen, South Carolina when I was a 9-year-old boy—the year my hero big brother murdered a man and briefly faced the death … Read more
The story isn’t whether MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid was homophobic a decade ago, supports the LBGTQ community now and should be commended for that growth. She should. It’s not about whether she’s a likable person who provides a strong, necessary … Read more
We are in a time of hyper-propaganda, and not just from Russia, through social media that has reached, if not influenced, tens of millions of Americans. The president of the United States repeatedly lies and pushes conspiracy. The … Read more
An associate of Erica Garner created a firestorm by doing something editors and producers do every day: use race to help decide who gets to tell an important story. It’s just that the Garner request was blunt while race and … Read more
Two things keep happening and probably will continue in 2018: News outlets will continue producing in-depth Trumpland stories; critics will keep slamming them for it. Some of that criticism is warranted, given that the media have decided that a small … Read more
A much-discussed Nazi-next-door piece in The New York Times went wrong for one reason: It treated the reporter’s discovery of the normalcy of white supremacy as news. There is nothing new nor abnormal about white supremacy, just … Read more
When Cam Newton, one of the biggest names in the NFL, said, “It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes; like, it’s funny” while responding to a question from Carolina Panthers beat reporter Jourdan Rodrigue of … Read more
I had increasingly intense visions of harming my wife. That’s not quite right. I had been having off-and-on images of violent events for years—seeing myself raped in prison or impaled during car crashes—and they finally became visions of hurting my … Read more
An “AP Explains” piece illustrates just how difficult it is to get racial nuance right in the Trump era, even when journalists set out to bring much needed context to maybe the most vexing issue we face. The first clue … Read more
CNN has the right to change its mind. It can reasonably believe it is unnecessary—right now—to name a man at the center of a controversy sparked by President Donald Trump’s tweeting of … Read more
