Most newspapers have style manuals. I prefer the rule that says Black people have black skin. That makes the term "Black and brown people" nonsensical.

In these days of Trump, fascist analogies fill the 'Net, but now I think we need to consider Stalinst tropes. What does this article say about White and Black that was not said, mutatis mutandis, about capital and labor? What argument is made about Sen. Cotton's Op-ed that could not be said about Nazis marching in Skokie? Like Marx, BLM is absolutely right about what's wrong. But then what?

There's a whiff of totalitarian "truthism" in the air — the notion that only what the zealots (and then, inevitably, the apparatchiks) deem true need be said or heard. Quite the opposite is the case. We need to know what Tom Cotton thinks, because we need to vote on whether people like him represent us. The First Amendment is only mechanically about your right to speak; constitutionally, it is about my right to know what you want to say. That's why patriots will defend to their deaths your right to say it.

Yes, the exercise of free speech puts lives in danger. But if there was ever an argument that proves too much, that one is it. There is a line between advocacy and incitement, but it is not a bright one, and the possible result of speech cannot be the test, because too much is merely "possible." Only intent can be censored, and even then, we must be careful not to infer specific intent from our distaste for the message in chief.

Sen. Cotton was wrong. He is wrong on lots of things. He's a Trumpist, so he's automatically a fool or a coward or a turd or some combination thereof. Makes no difference. He's a US Senator, and we need to know what he has to say. How else would we know how awful he is?