Kevin Alexander Gray

I met Kevin Alexander Gray the only way I could have: through his writing. It was 2008. It was election year, the U.S. presidential race was in full swing, and Barack Obama was all the rage. On June 15th, soon after the first-term Illinois Senator had just secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic Party nomination to run for president, Obama delivered his infamous “Father’s Day Speech.” In this speech, as the New York Times put it, Obama “Sharply Assail[ed] Absent Black Fathers.” He did more than that: Obama conjured up some of the most invidious, insidious, and racist stereotypes about Black people in the U.S.