Two Nights, Two Very Different Ways of Talking About Race

In the past three weeks, Donald Trump has alleged that Al Sharpton “hates Whites & Cops.” He’s called Baltimore, a majority-black city, a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and he’s attacked one of the city’s congressmen, Elijah Cummings. He’s sent racist tweets telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to the countries they came from. But for much of the first night of the Democratic debates this week, the president’s most recent stoking of the racial divide barely seemed to register.

The glaring lack of racial diversity onstage Tuesday was a product of chance: The current field is the most diverse in history, and each candidate of color in the race was randomly chosen to appear the next evening. That may be one reason for the dearth of discussion about Trump’s recent comments, even though it was the