In mid-May of this year, former New York Times columnist and public intellectual Charles Blow declared on one of his social media accounts that those attributing President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection primarily to former President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline are obscuring “the racist, misogynist, nativist, risk-it-all, devil-may-care doom lust among the year’s electorate.” Blow went on to say that “rather than accept Harris, America chose the flame.” Within the liberal pundit class, the tendency to attribute Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss principally to racism or misogynoir (hatred of black women) runs deep.

In a postelection interview on MSNBC, Princeton University distinguished professor of African American studies Eddie Glaude asserted of Trump’s reelection: “We chose a felon because we didn’t want to elect a black woman,” which means “we would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened.” If I had a dollar for every time I happened upon a meme or social media post or found myself in conversation with friends or colleagues that echoed Blow’s and Glaude’s sentiments, I might be able to retire by the end of the year.

I confess, I’ve never been thrilled by Blow’s racial moralizing. The fundamental problem with a moralistic discourse on race and inequality is that neither righteousness nor righteous outrage permit explication of context. Harris’s not terribly surprising loss was owed to many factors, not just the electorate’s racism or sexism. And Blow — who has written some very thoughtful columns on the issues informing support for Trump among Hispanics as well as black male discomfort with Harris-Walz — knows this, even if he’s not always comfortable with where context takes us.