For our part, The Times has not reprinted these insensitive images, even as a means of shedding light on the controversy in Europe. But it is not necessary to agree with these cartoons to defend another's right to publish them.

I don't support conservatism in its current iteration, and I support black conservatives even less...

Here is a man who, like most black conservatives, has had to do an awful lot of personal and political rationalizing to pay dues...

That has unfortunately, but not always unfairly, invited comparisons to slave times, when the most loyal blacks were those who worked in closest proximity to their white masters — house Negroes, as they were derisively known...

...that might have been reasonable if they were eventually granted the same status as the whites they so assiduously served. They weren't, of course; race has always mattered. And it matters now, though the dynamic is more subtle and devious...

It's hard to imagine that such compromises and cognitive dissonance don't exact a psychological toll at some point, and Allen's alleged dabbling in crime might have been that point for him.