Editorial Director
New York, NY
Kai Wright is editorial director of Colorlines.com and a reporting fellow of the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. His investigative reporting and news analysis appears regularly in The Nation, The Root and The American Prospect, among other publications, and he is a regular commentator on National Public Radio and in other broadcast media. His work explores the politics of sex, race and health. He has closely covered the foreclosure crisis and the ensuing economic collapse.
Kai is author, most recently, of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York. He is also the author of two books of African-American history: The African American Experience: Black History and Culture Through Speeches, Letters, Editorials, Poems, Songs, and Stories, and Soldiers of Freedom: An Illustrated History of African Americans in the Armed Forces, which explores America's struggle with race as it has been dramatized by the need to staff a viable military.
You can follow Kai on Twitter at @kai_wright, or look for him in his Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn neighborhood. Check out Kai's media appearances here. For more information, check out KaiWright.com.
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VideoThe Morning Browse: Green Jobs Build Communities, WashPost Wilding Out and Wealth Gaps
by Kai Wright on March 24 2010, 9:52AM
ColorLinesTV profiles three green jobs projects that show how we can end the jobless recovery while tackling long-standing challenges in communities of color. NYT profiles the big idea that health insurance reform is part of President Obama’s effort to…
Topics: Economy, Environment, Media, Race and Recession
Obama’s Health Care Lesson: Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way
by Kai Wright on March 23 2010, 1:17PM
As President Obama wound into his health care victory speech this morning, an urgent cry rang up from the East Room crowd: “The bill! Sign the bill!” Everybody laughed, but it was the most real moment of the ebullient signing…
The Morning Browse: Noose Faxes, GOP’s Immigration Rhetoric, and More
by Kai Wright on March 23 2010, 9:37AM
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy The Tea Party onslaught continued yesterday as Rep. James Clyburn told Keith Olbermann about noose faxes to his office - “This stuff is not all that isolated.” GOP…
Topics: Economy, Environment, Health, Immigration, Politics
South Carolina’s AIDS Crisis Shows Health System’s Worn Patches
by Kai Wright on March 18 2010, 3:45PM
South Carolina is once again making really bad news on HIV/AIDS: People living with HIV are rallying against a budget plan that will end funding for a program that helps low-income people living with HIV/AIDS buy meds. More than 2,000…
Topics: Health
The Morning Browse: Big Stuff in Today’s News
by Kai Wright on March 16 2010, 6:25AM
The evil ad wizards who brought us Willie Horton are tying Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid to Dubai “slave labor,” which they in turn equate with union labor in Nevada. MoJo’s Stephanie Mencimer reports. The FCC’s releasing it’s National…
Topics: Criminal Justice, Economy, Health, Politics, Race and Recession
Parsing the Details of Dodd’s Not-Independent Consumer Watchdog
by Kai Wright on March 15 2010, 2:23PM
Sen. Chris Dodd came out swinging today to defend his revamped proposal for fixing the financial regulatory system, and he’s won cautious support from some key reformers. Bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren, who has been the most vocal Beltway advocate of…
Topics: Economy, Race and Recession
Senate Financial Reform Bill Leaves Communities at Lenders’ Mercy
by Kai Wright on March 15 2010, 8:52AM
Retiring Sen. Chris Dodd is rolling out his revised bill for reforming financial regulations today and the general consensus is… it’s a bust. Dodd broke off negotiations with Republicans on the Banking Committee last week, raising hopes that he’d craft…
Topics: Economy, Race and Recession
The Morning Browse: Big Stuff in Today’s News
by Kai Wright on March 15 2010, 6:00AM
President Obama discusses his blueprint for an updated Elementary and Secondary Education Act to overhaul No Child Left Behind. Clarence Thomas’ wife is holding her own Tea Party. The LA Times profiles an effort she launched in January to…
Topics: Economy, Media, Race and Recession, Schools & Youth
Introductions: The New Guy at Racewire
by Kai Wright on March 14 2010, 9:49PM
Hello Racewire fam! So I’m the new guy. Well, sort of. I’ve been contributing to ColorLines for years and, like you, loving the Applied Research Center’s work in creating a meaningful frame for dealing with race and justice in America….
Topics:
by Kai Wright on March 2 2009, 12:00PM
Why racial justice matters in the fight for gay marriage.
Topics: Gender & Sexuality, Prop 8
by Kai Wright on May 1 2008, 12:00PM
Black and brown queer youth are desperately seeking space to love—and be loved. They’ll do whatever is necessary to find it.
Topics: Gender & Sexuality
by Kai Wright on May 1 2008, 12:00PM
One teenager talks about getting it on, turning it off and charting her own course through a sexual coming-of-age.
Topics: Gender & Sexuality, Schools & Youth
by Kai Wright on May 1 2008, 12:00PM
The federal judge who dropped the hammer on Lewis “Scooter” Libby explains his crusade against crack sentencing laws.
Topics: Criminal Justice
Black People Being “Killed By the Cops”
by Kai Wright on April 29 2008, 9:18AM
Originally published on theroot.com. If They Are So Scared, How Come We’re The Dead Ones? By Kai Wright The cops in the Sean Bell case walked because the judge said it was reasonable for them to be scared of…
Topics:
Electioneering Race and Identity Politics
by Kai Wright on January 16 2008, 12:51PM
by Kai Wright Teams Clinton and Obama agreed this week to move on from their racially loaded fight over the comparative historical import of Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson. But the dustup will hardly be the last in…
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by Kai Wright on January 7 2008, 12:00PM
A collection of stories breaks new ground, but still falls short.
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Twenty Years Later: James Baldwin’s America Hasn’t Changed
by Kai Wright on December 6 2007, 8:50AM
by Kai Wright Author and essayist James Baldwin died 20 years ago on Dec. 1. Baldwin’s biographer and close friend, David Leeming, called his essays “prophetic,” as they articulated an eerily clear-eyed view of America’s peril at the hands of…
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SCHIP Politics Punish Children of Color
by Kai Wright on October 23 2007, 9:29AM
by Kai Wright When President Bush vetoed the bipartisan children’s health bill last week, the administration said he aimed to put “poor children first.” But what the White House has actually done is once again put an ideological agenda ahead…
Topics: Health
Thousands Like “Jena Six” Seen As Superpredators
by Kai Wright on September 26 2007, 10:41AM
by Kai Wright Reed Walters, LaSalle Parish district attorney that is trying the ‘Jena Six’, says in the NYT today:I am bound to enforce the laws of Louisiana as they exist today, not as they might in someone’s vision of…
Topics: Criminal Justice
The “Colorblind” Attack on Your Health
by Kai Wright on March 1 2007, 12:00PM
For three decades, conservative thinkers have worked mightily to discredit race-based considerations in public policy and cement the belief that America today is, as it should be, a colorblind society.
Topics: Gender & Sexuality, Health, Schools & Youth
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