It's amazing how similar middle-class and well-positioned African Americans are to white elites in their perspectives on US politics. They continue to play in the sandbox of respectability politics and civility, as if only since the election of Donald Trump as president has racial and socioeconomic progress been in jeopardy. Take Washington Post columnist Colbert I King's reaction to US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement last month. The "honor - or from, my point of view, blame" for strengthening the right-wing hold on the Supreme Court