I would say my racial education was built on unintentional oversimplifications. I grew up in a safe, middle-class area and pretty much never witnessed outright racism. I might have been sheltered, so I never thought to question my beliefs.

I just did a quick skim of Wikipedia and found that the sickle cell anemia trait is tied to prevalence of malaria, which is indirectly tied to geography. It just so happens that mostly black and/or darker skinned people live in malaria-stricken parts of the world. I knew that other races got anemia, too. But I guess I…

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect socioeconomics is a big factor. I run marathons, which of course are famously dominated by Kenyans. A big factor in that is that in Kenya, running is one of the few ways for a lot of poor young men to do well socially and financially, so a lot more of them try it, they train…

You don't want to be black. You want to check 'black' on a form when and only when it would be convenient for you.

Did you know that Whites still get a majority of the scholarships? Also people can qualify for scholars solely on major, gender, religion, first-generation etc. Also their are scholarships for white ethnicities (ex. Irish). Also what "free college education" do you speak of for being Black? I never heard of that.

Ha! Barkeepers Friend is what I use on the outside of my pots for that....stuff. I don't know what it is, but that takes it off.

Surya Bonaly was who I watched as a little girl that made me want to skate. Dominique Dawes was who I looked at when I wanted to do gymnastics. While my sister and I didn't do gymnastics, we did skate and going to lessons every week and being the only black children was hard. While the children might not have been so…

Braids have always been an acceptable casual/workout style for white women. My pet theory is that the popularity of Game of Thrones is helping to bring back braids as acceptable for a fashionable/professional setting.

Attention commenters: this piece is not about white women stealing braids from black women because black women had them first. It's about the NYT writer being an idiot and subbing "white women" in for "all women." You are still allowed to braid your hair.

Know what I love? I love how douchebags have been talking like this every day for hundreds of years with no fear of any repercussions and still claim they're "breaking taboos."

I want so badly to listen to a band called Rock Hard Vagina.

"No, no, you don't understand, it was a joke!" If people aren't going to learn how to not be assholes can they at least take classes to learn how to be funny? Even if it's a joke: your joke failed, it was not funny and no one could tell it was a "joke." You are terrible at both civility and humor.

I'm assuming it was Zeus.

Dr. Wade: You blatantly misrepresent Helliwell's account (which has its own known flaws), and then use that misrepresentation to craft a grotesque leap in logic that bears relevance to the reality of sexual violence only in your own imagination. And to do so you had to reach back to an article published in 2000, so…

I'm sorry that that happened to you, but I have a problem your assertion that "the real permanent damage is culturally-induced" that may be true for you, but for a friend that was raped the permanent damage did not come in the form of cultural attitudes towards what had happened to her but from the fact that she had…

While regularjane may not have been as polite as you would like, you didn't answer the question. And it seems to me that the question needs an answer. Which do you think would be worse for you personally: being beaten up or raped?

Did you really have to ask, "Oh, is rape really worse than being beaten?" Was the answer not quite obvious? It's called empathy. Imagine you are a woman. Imagine that a man forcibly inserts his penis into your vagina. And then proceeds to have intercourse with you, against your will (perhaps having beaten you into…

Ok so would you prefer to be beaten up, or for your attackers to shove their penises up your asshole? Why? Why is the thrusting of the penis into your asshole so much worse than any other form of physical violence?

I never went through the ew-cooties-boys-are-gross phase. I just skipped from infancy immediately to the tortured, he-must-be-mine-or-I-shall-die phase, largely because of my first grade crush. Well okay, he wasn't just my crush. I shared my obsession with my best friend, but it was so young and innocent that it was…

Ugh, me too. I'm trying to think of a clever way to describe the life-altering crush I had on every boy I ever met from ages 9 - 13. And I was a total dork, too, so my love was always completely unrequited/ruined by complete social awkwardness.