Ta-Nehisi Coates gets a guest post in the New York Times, and uses the X-Men First Class movie as the starting point for a conversation on race.

And here's a follow-up on his own blog. Spoilers, i guess, but i haven't seen the movie yet and they didn't bother me.

Update:
Aaand let's just put it all in this post (even though it was really supposed to be about "Hey cool, Coates is being published in the Times, good for him!"). In the second link above, Coates links to Susana Polo's post that addresses both race and gender angles. And here's a response to that from Matthew Yglesias, who basically cautions that we shouldn't look at Magneto as a pure bad guy.

Update II: More from Yglesias.

Update III: And here's Ezra Klein.