Greenwald aspires to sagacity and pretends he has the moral and intellectual standing to critique an Instawriter.

Ha ha ha ha ha...that's funny..hmmm... Yawn.

He linked to another one, and the post you're writing about wasn't even written by the guy who wrote the post he did link to. It's a group blog. What you're doing is roughly analogous to bashing someone because he linked to a Paul Krugman op-ed on nytimes.com, because, on the same site (nytimes.com), there's a Bill Kristol op-ed that you don't like.

As a Black man whenever I get the courage I read Black American History afterwards I am also so angry or exhausted I simply fall asleep when I wake up of course nothing has changed externally but I still must wake up..

Yes. Sometimes I teach a class with a colleague on Native American history and thought. In a good part of it we simply expose students to a straightforward account of the history based on eyewitness accounts. After class it is often like we are all, students and teachers, shell-shocked. I always feel this urge to run out to the flag pole and pull down the flag and put it back up to fly upside down. And scream and scream.

It's not isolated. Most black people I know don't see anything that wrong with Wright's comments, and polls show that over 40% of blacks believe that the government gave us AIDS.

And a sizable number of Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was involved somehow with the 9/11 attacks. Does this automatically make the 2003 invasion of Iraq justified?

Ultimately, people are going to believe the strangest things even in the face of evidence to the contrary. This doesn't automatically mean everyone who belongs to that particular ethnic group holds those same beliefs or arranges their lives around them. Certainly my wife, who's black, doesn't accept Wright's odd statements as the gospel truth.

Put another way, if Obama is indeed irredeemably soiled by Rev. Wright, is not McCain similarly unworthy of office due to his association with Hagee?

It does seem that our experiences have been different, which is why generalizations are so often inaccurate. My experience has been limited to one elementary school, one junior high, and one high school in my family's district, and two schools in two neighboring districts where I have taught. So I will freely acknowledge that my opinions can be based on nothing more. And, of course, your experience is limited, as well.

It is possible that Arizona's "right-to-work" status and the plethora of charter schools here have raised the bar in general for public school teaching when compared to other states. (This is not a popular hypothesis to bring up among my colleagues, as I have found, but I do wonder about it.) Competition and job uncertainty are not pleasant to deal with, and I believe salaries are lower here than in some states, but very likely the children have benefited.

You say, "Sorry you think you are doing a good job." I will assume that your second "you" is plural and refers to teachers in general rather than me specifically. I know that I do a very good job, but will avoid generalizing to others.

I am indeed sorry that your experiences with public school have been so negative. Perhaps your experiences have been more typical than mine. I hope not.

I want to second the comments of several who have spoken on the topic of personal connections or empathy. As Cindy Ross pointed out, a good outcome of school integration, at least in some locations, is that the youngest generation has a chance to be truly colorblind. Identifying the multicultural members of the classroom as classmates first is the way to accept each as an individual. I think susan sunflower was saying much the same thing when she said that familiarity is the way to defeat racism and to overcome the fear of "the other".

jumwerth also points out the importance of empathy and notes the social pressures against empathy where "it becomes difficult to walk a mile in another person's shoes when everything in our culture is encouraging you to think of yourself as an isolated individual".

Finally, KBRtrucker relates the blatantly racist "tribalism" that is present in US facilities in Iraq.

I've never been to Iraq, but I worked alongside an Iraqi national from 1987 to 1993. Because of this personal connection, I could not cheer the widespread killing of the Iraqi troops that was being cheered daily on US television during the first war in Iraq. Instead, I saw a familiar face on each of those deaths and wondered why more effort didn't go into a different approach to settling the issues that lead to that war.

Maybe I'm being a little too optimistic, but it is my sincere wish that a number of people, especially through the "More Perfect Union" speech, but at least through the ubiquitous presence of Obama in the media today, will develop empathy with Obama. To the extent that Obama can be seen as a person running for president first, and as a man with many cultures in his background, maybe, just maybe, a more widepsread repudiation of comments like those from InstaPuke will be forthcoming. At least a guy can hope...

As a postscript, I think some of the bounce-back by Hillary, at least in New Hampshire, could be said to be due to empathy for the attacks on her (only making all the sadder any participation by her camp in the attacks on Obama).

You posted the content of the blog post that you felt was "ugly."

I'm curious to know what, precisely, you felt was wrong with that post.

No, this is not about what I believe or don't believe; I want to hear what you feel is offensive about what he said. Specifically. Not sneering, not "I don't believe you're asking," not "How stupid can you be," not "Surely you don't believe that..." I want to hear your analysis of what, exactly, is offensive about that post. To YOU.

I'll bet you can't do it.