Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the new book “Between the World and Me,” reminds us that the term “post-racial” is a farce:

As many of our sharper activists and writers have pointed out, America’s struggle is to become not post-racial, but post-racist. Put differently, we should seek not a world where the black race and the white race live in harmony, but a world in which the terms black and white have no real political meaning.

The Charleston, SC, murders have sparked a renewed discussion of Confederate flags and other racist symbols. Coates suggests that “the meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.”

University of Texas at Austin officials should pay attention; once again, UT is considering the message sent by statues of Confederate “heroes” on campus. For a review, check out Mac McCann’s story in the Austin Chronicle last month, “Written in Stone: History of racism lives on in UT monuments.”

For a review of how the mainstream media covered the murders, Ben Norton analyzes the reporting on the Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting website in “Charleston Massacre Media Coverage: Recognizing the Crime, Downplaying the Causes.”