Last week a long lost friend emailed me after coming across several of my internet columns. He said, “It sounds like you’ve become a Republican” and then nothing else. It took me a while to realize that he meant it as an insult because, in many parts of the country, the word “Republican” is a pejorative by itself. I told him that not just I, but he, and every white person in the country should join the Grand Old Party, or, at the very least, resign their Democratic Party membership as soon as they can. I often overlook the fact...