Thank you for making a point about the biological themes in Butler's work! I have long been a fan of her writing since I first read "Parable of the Sower" years ago (while in Africa on a working trip). I have devoured whatever of her books I could get my hands on since. I happen to be a professor of evolutionary biology, and had the good fortune to meet Ms. Butler in 2003 at the "New Frontier" conference at Howard University. We talked about evolution and biological symbiosis, and she talked glowingly about her favorite biologist, Dr. Lynn Margulis of UMass Amherst. Dr. Margulis developed the "serial endosymbiotic theory" of the origin of complex multicellular organisms, which states that more complex forms arose via a close symbiotic association between simpler forms such as bacteria. Symbiotic lifeforms are a common theme in Butler's writing - "Bloodchild" definitely exemplifies this.

I feel a profound connection with many of her characters (even though I am male), because even beyond gender, she has consistently been able to capture the basic essence of humanity... Losing her so soon has left us with one less glimmer of hope for this world - I will miss her deeply, but I will treasure what she has left us.

quoting:

"OK, let me get this straight. 90~95% of black people can vote for Obama and it's not racist. Yet you feel a need to travel all over the U.S. to find whites who might be turned off by his color...after he won in lilly-white Iowa, and is garnering respectable white numbers even in polls now?

How about traveling some heavily black places and doing a report on blacks who won't vote for McCain just because he's white. I have a pretty strong hunch you're going to find there are now a lot more blacks acting as racists toward whites, than there are whites acting as racists toward blacks.

Of course, that wouldn't be PC to do such a study, now would it?"

You obviously have not considered the fact that in all preceding presidential elections in which African-Americans have been allowed to FREELY vote as full citizens (e.g. since the Voting Rights Act of 1965), and have cast a vote in a presidential election for either a Democratic or Republican nominee have ONLY EVER cast that vote for a white nominee. Why would you think that we would disregard our own best interests simply because the nominee was white? The fact is that most blacks will not vote for McCain because he does not represent our interests, and this would be no different if it were Alan Keyes or Condoleeza Rice running for president. On the other hand, the evidence that poor and working class whites would vote for a McCain, who would certainly work against their best interests, solely on the basis of race, is a sad commentary indeed. This "black racism" trope smacks of what one might call "projection," and also shows how little some folks in the majority have bothered to understand about black people in this country.