The second season of Huang’s World, chef Eddie Huang’s punchy man-on-the-street food and travel show that airs on Viceland, returned in late June. Its first episode, though, carried a heavier load than usual: wading through America’s troubled waters. In a segment following an Inauguration Day visit to Washington, D.C.’s oldest black-owned restaurant, Huang meets with Jared Taylor, founder of the “white advocacy” nonprofit American Renaissance, to discuss the ominous political climate over plates of, as Huang phrases it, “some fire peking duck skins.” Taylor, who considers himself an acolyte of “race realism,” is strong-armed in his frame of mind: in one exchange, he spews a theory about how there is a higher racial probability that you will become a criminal depending on the color of your skin. “The likelihood to commit crime has a clear genetic component to it,” he says venomously. Huang’s face goes blank; watching him, I felt the same mix of irritation and…
