Basements haunted meme

Sign up to get this weekly column as a newsletter. We're looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets. (CNN) Shortly after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison wrote in The New Yorker: "Unlike any nation in Europe, the United States holds whiteness as the unifying force. Here, for many people, the definition of 'Americanness' is color." Reflecting on efforts -- largely by White men -- to define themselves by sustaining that poisonous definition, Morrison argues that those "who are prepared to abandon their humanity out of fear of black men and women, suggest the true horror of lost status." In Morrison's formulation, fear-driven devotion to racial status is more powerful to many White Americans than even self-interest, shame or any belief in humanity. And it is this reality, that White Americans' anxieties in the face of a changing country have been and continue to be … [Read more...] about Opinion: What a Nobel laureate’s take on Donald Trump reveals about today