Taking Yes for an Answer

It is beneath the dignity of decent and intelligent men and women to struggle over the superstitions of Louis Farrakhan, except that the struggle is really over the definition of dignity. Farrakhan represents the view that hatred is an element of dignity, that a proper respect for oneself and one's own is well expressed by a proper disrespect for others. In this view, he is not alone; as a society we have gone from a hatred of hatred to a fascination with it.

Or, to put it differently: the persistence of racism in America notwithstanding, the age of American racism has...

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