#173: The Best Articles of the Year 🏆

Brian Broome rides the 79 Bus every night after work back to his home in the East Hills neighborhood of Pittsburgh. East Hills is a low-income area, and though Mr. Broome is Black and poor, too, he looks down on his neighbors, calling them pathetic and lazy. He’s not like them, he says. Mr. Broome’s writing is raw and tough to read. Right when you’re ready to give up — angry at Mr. Broome, or angry at yourself for being angry — this article takes a big turn, and Mr. Broome’s judgment transforms into epiphany. Once he realizes that “the white people are coming,” and that gentrification has been the plan all along, everything changes. (32 min) (Issue #143)

Jerry and Marge Selbee are delightful retirees from down-home Michigan who have worked hard every day their whole lives to put their six kids through college. Now they’re ready to game the lottery and win millions of dollars. If you’ve ever dreamed up money-making schemes, or if you like mathematical thrillers pitting grandparents against MIT students, this one’s for you. This is a big-hearted, delightful article about some smart, wily elders. Thank you to loyal subscriber Jessica for recommending it. (47 min) (Issue #133)

After Dylann Roof killed 12 Black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015, members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church forgave him. President Obama sang “Amazing Grace.” The media marveled at the victims’ families’ acts of absolution, and white America sighed with relief. For Hafizah Geter, this sequence of events was an act of theater. Ever since slavery, when white people commit violence against Black people, there is a compulsion, rooted in Christianity, for Black people to forgive. The only other option, Ms. Geter argues, is rage, which white society does not tolerate — unless, of course, that rage turns inward, destroying the Black family, the Black body. (37 min) (Issue #168)