The MacArthur Foundation gives $625,000 "genius grants" to leaders in the fields of art, history, electronics, chemistry, biology, physics, and fomenting hatred for other racial groups.  This year Ta-Nehisi Coates won the prize for the lattermost category. Coates's father was a devoted Black Panther who was a firm believer in free love and felt that monogamy is too limiting.  He instilled in young Coates a firm pride in all things black and a resentment of all things white.  Coates studied journalism at Howard University for five years but could not gather enough credits to graduate. Despite his lack of a college diploma, a wide variety of journalistic jobs were open to Coates, including a writing job at The Atlantic, and he started to write books and articles about race, notably "The Case for Reparations." Why this qualifies him to be a MacArthur "genius" I am not sure, since he is certainly not the first to call for...(Read Full Post)