If the New York Times comment section is a microcosm of America, then the reasons why a preponderance of readers who’ve made these the top comments, so far, are racist in nature:

After reading an entire op-ed that goes through, in painstaking historical and logical detail, why one can’t simply choose to swap out who they were born as at birth, something that has never been debated as even possible, they… do!

In her recent op-ed proposing the capitalization of the word Black when it is used to refer to a person, Lori Tharps was met with the same kind of opposition, with commenters conjuring up all kinds of unrelated biological, anthropological, and grammatical distortions to negate her points and deny the simple courtesy of capitalizing a word when it is used as a proper noun.

Which leads me to think that, for at least half the readership that is engaged in the paper’s comment section, the knee-jerk instinct is to oppose a Black author for the sake of denying them legitimacy, even when that denial defies all logic or flies against their beliefs in every other situation. This isn’t just being contrarian, it’s racist.

Then, this gem arrived in my blog’s inbox:

I am told that person is really A. D. Powell who is known to troll blogs.

While this state of affairs makes me very sad, my determination to keep writing and fighting for change remains unchanged.