Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes all the way down to the soul.

I’d like to consider Aaryn a good friend. She’s at least a permanent tenant in my blogroll, which is something, right? Anyway, she’s a brave, beautiful woman who consistently and repeatedly exposes herself to scrotu scrutiny in her blog and in a column in a local paper. In response to her latest, she received some striking feedback, which she dutifully blogged, which, of course, brought more feedback. Here’s my take, as posted in her comments section:

This is fascinating to me. Your piece (excellent, as always), the racist email, and some of the comments here. I’m an Israeli-American Jew with left-leaning tendencies, with a professional background in advocacy for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I consider myself fairly sensitive to and cognizant of the ability of human beings on both sides of a divide (any divide – racial, cultural, social, religious, etc.) to dehumanize their counterparts. So seeing it happen in real life doesn’t surprise me; it only disappoints (I don’t know whether I’m more disappointed that people like that still exist, or that they have enough cognitive ability to share their opinions).

I’ll point out a couple of things: Aaryn, you are an amazing mom, and Ruby will grow up to be representative of a demographic that sees beyond color (doesn’t see color at all?) in family and public life.

Second, commenter Kathy said of the letter writer, She can’t even be human. Anyone else find this ironic in the context of a discussion of a racist who used similar language in her screed? I know well-meaning people sometimes say things without realizing the implication of their words, and an emotional situation like this one will exacerbate that, but it bears pointing out that we ALL need to be very careful about dehumanizing our opponents, no matter how abhorrent their views and positions.

Keep up the great work, Aaryn.