Bouie has written extensively on racial politics including the Ferguson unrest, Charleston church shooting, and Black Lives Matter movement. Shortly after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, he wrote an article for "Slate" arguing that there was "no such thing as a good Trump voter." Several days earlier, he compared Trump voters to the "angry, recalcitrant whites" who resisted the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. He has criticized the media for an unwillingness to label racism as "racist" (opting instead for terms such as "racial" and "racially charged"). He also criticized the media for its "horse-race" coverage of the 2016 election. His writing on racial and national politics subjects is often quoted by other journalists.