Brent Staples

New York

Editorial Writer at The New York Times

Delta husband. Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Award.

Articles

Opinion | ‘There’s a Big Market for Fighters Now’: Four Opinion Writers on the Democratic Party and Andrew Cuomo

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | Mara Gay |Brent Staples |Nicole Gelinas |Andrew Kirtzman

Gelinas: “Corporeal vacancy” is such a great term!Staples: Nicole, thanks for the shout-out to my 12th-grade English teacher, Ms. Riley. Kirtzman: To Brent’s point, polls have found vast numbers of New Yorkers feel the city is going in the wrong direction. And fear of crime is, arguably, the No. 1 driver of that. I was on a stalled subway train recently, trapped in a tunnel for five to 10 minutes as a large, deranged man screamed at us.
The Cipher at the Center of a Brilliant Spy Series

Oct 10, 2024 | nytimes.com | Brent Staples

Gary Oldman has found the role of a lifetime in Jackson Lamb, the hard-drinking, hygiene-challenged spy who commands a band of MI5 misfits in the Apple TV+ series "Slow Horses," which presented the finale of its fourth season on Wednesday.
Opinion | The Cipher at the Center of a Brilliant Spy Series

Oct 10, 2024 | flipboard.com | Brent Staples

1 day agoThe Scottish actor at the center of the darkly comic spy series talks little moments, big chase scenes and the benefits of honing his craft under the radar. The following article contains spoilers for Season 4 of “Slow Horses.” When Jack Lowden read the script for the current season of “Slow Horses,” …
The Point: Conversations and insights about the moment.

Sep 25, 2024 | nytimes.com | Brent Staples

The New York Police Department has shown repeatedly over decades that it cannot be trusted to do its work in a constitutional manner. The Federal District Court in Manhattan underscored this problem most emphatically when it ruled in 2013 that city officials had willfully ignored "overwhelming proof" that the department's stop-and-frisk program was violating the Fourth Amendment and discriminating against minority citizens.
The Black identity in Kamala Harris’ Jamaican roots

Aug 28, 2024 | mercurynews.com | Brent Staples

Millions of Black Americans are descended from slaveholders who fathered children with women they owned. White ancestry is especially common among those of us whose families were enslaved in Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia, where the planter class was notorious for its mixed-race children. My white great-great-grandfather, who managed the estate where my great-great-grandmother was held captive, was probably unknown even a county away.
A Brooklyn School District Finds a Path Toward Integration

Jun 25, 2024 | nytimes.com | Brent Staples

Elected officials who prefer not to discuss the fact that New York City has one of the most segregated school systems in the United States could soon have no choice. A state appellate court has said that an anti-discrimination lawsuit can move forward.
The federal marijuana ban is rooted in myth and xenophobia

Jan 21, 2024 | myheraldreview.com | Brent Staples

The federal law that makes possession of marijuana a crime has its origins in legislation that was passed in an atmosphere of hysteria during the 1930s and that was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans, who were associated with marijuana use at the time. This racially freighted history lives on in current federal policy, which is so driven by myth and propaganda that is it almost impervious to reason.
Brent Staples: Confederate tributes are losing their patron saint

May 2, 2023 | twincities.com | Brent Staples
Opinion: Confederate-named bases losing their patron saints

Apr 28, 2023 | timesfreepress.com | Brent Staples
Opinion | Exorcising the Ghost of Robert E. Lee

Apr 26, 2023 | nytimes.com | Brent Staples