Who are you? You can’t be serious.

i shall treasure that always.

who WAS that Sapphire-vented Puffleg???

Double dare ya to google it & then click “Images”. Oh it be. It’s serious. And it’s cute. And it’s probably endangered.

Please please please vote for someone who cares about the environment.

may I refer you to #100, this thread?

it’s a bit long, but it might ease some of your concerns.

sincerely, A.

Yes. Well said.

Maybe we can all work together, in our separate corners of this country, and ease a few of those problems on a faster schedule, and maybe not.

We have to try. Just because it’s the right and just thing to do.

Thank you.

and RevBev said
“Can you add to your instruction something about acceptable language. Are you saying that the correct manner of conversation is without any “classification”? I am certainly open to a larger explanation beyond what is NOT acceptable.”

and paz3 said
“Surely you can see that there are differences of form among peoples from different regions that are far beyond just skin color. Don’t most all native people from the Indian sub-continent have straight hair? Don’t Australian aborigines have straight hair?”

I readily admit that there is no “correct” or even adequate replacement for the term “race,” if one is determined to refer to a collection of genetically heterogeneous people that have historically been categorized as some “race” or other, for all or part of the history of their relations with people of European descent. My point is that we should be aware that what we understand to be “racial” categorizations are nothing but the invention of racists, based as they are on, for the most part, an oversimplified category of skin color, such as “black” or “white,” neither of which refers to a group with uniform skin color. If, for example, we refer to “white” people as if it were a homogeneous group, we are manifesting an inherently racist view of the world’s incredibly genetically diverse people. If you want the “correct” word for “them,” try Homo sapiens, or people, or humans. And if you want to use superficial physical characteristics to specify about whom you’re talking, try eye color, or curliness of their hair, or whether or not they have distinct earlobes. Even the most well-meaning progressive will echo paz3’s comment that “Something like how the isolation of human tribes by geography allowed for the derivation of “white” people from our common dark-skinned ancestors in Africa, as the northern isolates (we’re talking 10s of thousands of years here) faded in color due to long dark, cloudy winters, and much colder temperatures.” However this always misses the point that there is no homogeneous portion of the human species with “white” skin–rather, whitish skin color is a continuous spectrum from the almost milky white of some people in the British Isles, through the less whitish people of western Europe, to the definitely un-whitish skin of the people who live in the Caucasus Mountains and who gave their name to the “white” “races.” To sum up, when you describe someone other than yourself as belonging to a particular “race,” you’re falling prey to the racist point of view that permeates your culture.
In spe.

To the extent that Obama can’t fix the unfixable, it will become because he is Black, not because the Republican/conservatives have screwed things up beyond all redemption.

Just wait. You will see.

And I’m still a White Texan who graduated from an all white segregated High School who is going to vote for Obama. He won’t win Texas, but he will have coattails that Hillary could never have had, and it a generation and a half, things are really going to start changing. The kids today are better than we ever were.

Oh, and there will also be a woman President within a generation because women’s advances have followed those of Blacks in America by about half a generation. There is a connection.

hope you & yours are doing well.

later…