Logic and the Riddle of Divergent Reactions
Sometimes one has the impression that a large part of US media is devoted to soap opera — celebrity sightings and tabloid gossip — as if to distract ordinary readers from important issues with serious political, social, economic, and even environmental implications.
This last week, the soap opera was Rachel Dolezal, who has become infamous as the former head of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Dolezal rose to prominence in the world of black activism as a spokesman of her race, until the embarrassing discovery by investigative journalists that she was not a black woman at all…