Both of those things made TNC a "safe messenger" for the very hard truths he continued to tell, which for all the regrettable but familiar reasons continues to be a requirement for telling those truths as a Black public intellectual in the U.S. without being relegated to the margins. 4/

In other words, if TNC was able to tell those hard truths so that they were not only heard but also had a huge cultural and political impact, it was because in addition to him being a generational talent as both a thinker and writer, White America knew him and trusted him. 5/