In an IDEAS essay for TIME Magazine, Tayari Jones discusses America’s current political moment, and the dangerous obsession behind a moral middle. On finding common ground in the wake of school shootings, family separation, and more, Tayari writes, “The middle is a point equidistant from two poles. That’s it. There is nothing inherently virtuous about being neither here nor there. Buried in this is a false equivalency of ideas, what you might call the ‘good people on both sides’ phenomenon. When we revisit our shameful past, ask yourself, Where was the middle?”

“There’s Nothing Virtuous About Finding Common Ground” appears in the November 5, 2018 print edition of TIME Magazine. To read the essay in its entirety online, click here.