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Re: Saletan has a case
by bmooremsu

Face your own reality. Clearly you have not experienced the unbridled joy of being black in America. We regularly have to defend our competence, decorum, and intelligence against false presuppositions. Now we have to defend our genetic parity as well! When will the parade of indignities end in this country. We were kidnapped, enslaved, raped in front of our children, had our families sold to the highest bidder like cattle, and even after the civil war treated like lepers and second-class citizens until the 60s. Now this?! The final indignity. It has been less than 50 years since black people received equal protection under the law and were expected to perform on par with folks who've had centuries worth of a head-start. Don't you think people who've experienced trauma on that scale would have lingering psychological issues that remained unresolved without some sort of counseling. Maybe some of those issues were passed to their children.

While I am generally in favor of free and rigorous discourse in the marketplace of ideas, I would submit to you that this debate is tasteless and completely inappropriate for public discourse. Either we as a society are going to treat people equally or we aren't, period.

Do you have any black friends or colleagues? How do you think they would feel as you debate whether they and their families are genetically inferior? These are living, breathing people with the same emotions as you. Not all arguments benefit from objectivity. The further you explore this internecine, dehumanizing debate without regard for the individuals you may adversely impact, the more humanity you lose.

Consider if you were an impressionable black child of 13 or 14 and happened upon this debate. Do you have any idea of the impact this discussion would have on a child's nascent self-image? Now ask yourself, is this debate honestly worth having in the public square?

Face your own reality, then embrace your humanity.


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