Mr. Asim,

About twenty-five years ago, when I first heard "gangsta rap," I understood that it was hateful trash. Nothing has changed. It is still a third rate art form preaching a view of dark-skinned people which is identical to Ku Klux Klan propaganda at its most vile. Both the Klan and rap/hip-hop say that blacks are violent, rapacious, thieving creeps. Both the Klan and rap/hip-hop say that black men would rather kill than reason, and black women are brainless holes.

The Klan calls black people niggers. The rap/hip-hop industry calls black people niggers.

I have always been disgusted by the patronizing excuses made by pseudo-intellectuals like yourself, Mr. Asim. By insisting that nigger means something different out of the mouth of a black person you are insisting on an intellectual Apartheid. Two different modes of thinking for two different "races." Two dictionaries. Two moralities.

These pathetic rationalizations of black racism guarantee that ghetto America will continue to be black. Those places in America where people call themselves nigger will continue to have the highest murder rates in the civilized world.

Nothing will change until everyone realizes that race is a myth. The contemporary theorists of race, such as yourself, are simply old-fashioned racists with darker skin.

Mr. Manjoo,

I am seriously annoyed by the bland lightheartedness of your reporting on Tasering by University cops. This isn't a joke. The assault on Andrew Meyer was a grotesque violation of civil rights. It's enough to make Thomas Jefferson puke.

Nowhere in your article did I see the words "brutality," "First Amendment violation," or "thug." Do you believe that you are being "neutral" or "journalistically responsible" by failing to use words which describe a police crime accurately?

The whole point of your text seems to be a warning to the thug cops: "You're stupid if you allow yourself to be photographed committing a crime against an unarmed person, so you had better make sure no cameras are around." This is the kind of advice that cynical criminals give to other criminals.

I expect more from Salon.

Ms. Clark-Flory,

Your equivocation over the role of religion in the murder of Aqsa Parvez is bizarre and disgraceful. If a Christian Police force stormed into your office and demanded that you cover your head and shoulders with a scarf I doubt that you would remain a “shades-of-grey girl.” I’m fairly certain that you would become a “get-your-fucking-religion-off-my-body girl.” I doubt that you would be soothed by anyone’s autistic discussion of “potential versus actual oppression.”

How stupefyingly arrogant of you to suggest that the women of Islam are somehow different from yourself, that their language of freedom is so many degrees of eloquence and ferocity beneath your own. Freedom is not a shade of grey. You either have it or you don’t. Do you really believe that the women of Islamic theocracies are incapable of considering the concept of freedom? Are they incapable of seeing the connection between compulsory clothing, compulsory thought control, and compulsory inferiority? Are they stupid?

The hijab and burqa are not “symbols” of some abstraction that us free Westerners have yet to recognize. They are nothing less than the final insult in a complex, totalitarian theology which relegates women to the status of cattle. Because these ridiculous items are compulsory, any discussion of “empowering vs. oppressive” is meaningless. By what perverse logic can a compulsory, dehumanizing ritual be discussed in terms of choice?

It is especially galling to hear one more lame “who am I to judge” comment. I have never understood the remarkable magic of the word “religion” in its ability to camouflage any and every form of stupidity under the sun. It is the ultimate euphemism. If free people cannot cut through the crap and point a finger at fascism when it is right under our noses, then today’s victims of fascism are truly hopeless.

I wonder how Aqsa Parvez’s friends will react when they read your warning that it would be rash to “proscribe anything with the possibility of being oppressive.” I believe they would say, “The possibility is over, you fool. She’s dead.”