Donald Trump wants to be the high priest of the flag totem religion. A master of symbol manipulation, he is apparently doing whatever he can to take attention away from his linkage to Russian mobsters, oligarchs, and and other tyrants.

I hope that Mueller hurries up and squeezes the orange Julius out of the white house before the end of September. October would be okay September would be better.

http://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pePD6K21A3?play=true

Yup. That post is dripping in racism the way the hotcake special at a cheap diner drips in syrup.

You can almost imagine the response to your comment beginning “I’m not a racist, but…”

As a writing teacher, I want to introduce students to Darwinian concepts–homology, phylogeny, etc.–because it’s important to take a stand in these so-called culture wars.

My justification for doing so in an English class is this: We are never going to get anywhere on the issue of race in this country until we incorporate the fact of evolution into our collective view.

The moral/religious arguments against racism are tired and have never impressed me because racists just appeal to “their” version of religion or “their” morality.

The bottom line is that racist views represent the persistence of the Great Chain of Being (the Ladder of Life) that comes down through Christianity and goes all the way back to Aristotle. This is the view that there is a hierarchy in nature, that things are “created” for reasons, that there is a place for every thing, and everything is in its place–including whites at the top of the list and non-whites down below.

Darwin’s idea kicks this view right over on its ass and says we’re all family. Ranking by race–like ranking by “superior” species–is a myth.

Agree?

Please, either try to write with simpler grammar for those of us who are ESL, or stop digging. I am not sure I’m parsing the meaning of #9 correctly. Or I’m afraid I did it correctly.

I got bad vibes from your “ones who are clean and articulate”. I guess you mean Black people who happen to be educated and well-groomed also make great speakers when accusing Republicans of being racists.
Well, yes. Same for everybody. Why is it an issue here?

I cannot parse #9 any other way than “Coates is a Black dude being taken seriously and fronted by liberals only because he is clean and articulate”.
IOW, an illiterate Black bum with crooked teeth speaks in Carribean patois about the hardships in his life, he can be ignored; replace him with a snappily dressed Black lawyer who graduated from Harvard, he can be ignored as well.

tl;dr: If you can not see the racist subtext – and the circular reasoning – in your “clean and articulate”, I cannot help you.