1. Sen. Harry Reid’s statement — a nearly two-year-old statement, remember — that two reasons Obama would be very electable were that the candidate was “light-skinned” and didn’t use “Negro dialect” is an embarrassment for Democrats, but shouldn’t be more than that.
2. For RNC Chair Michael Steele and other Republicans to claim any similarity between Reid’s statement and the 2002 resignation of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is ridiculous. Lott resigned under pressure after he said that America would have been better off if it had elected super-segregationist Strom Thurmond president in 1948, when the S.C. politician ran on the Dixiecrat ticket. As Salon’s Joan Walsh points out, one guy is speaking, albeit in a backward fashion, about how he strongly supports the country’s first black president, while the other is wishing the country had elected a racist demagogue as president. Sorry, but that’s not even close to being the same thing, or even similar.
3. Bad news for Republicans: Your campaign against Reid is so transparently political — Reid is in a tight re-election race this year — it begs the question of how a major party could become so cynical, silly and self-oblivious at the same time.
4. Bad news for progressives: Reid’s statement hardly makes him a racist. What Reid said doesn’t fit into our mindset about racial progress and relations, but, frankly, that’s how old white liberal politicians often speak; and, considering how cloistered their powerful positions keep them from changing mores and language, it’s not even a big surprise. Reid’s no racist, he’s just a classic, out of touch D.C. dweeb. Yes, it’s disheartening, but it’s politics, people, not a purity contest (leave that to the right wing): The guy who’s basically on your side on many issues doesn’t have to be your ideological and linguistic twin.
5. Michael Steele’s statement that there isn’t any kind of black dialect borders on insanity. America is absolutely riddled with ethnic and area-specific dialects — in fact, this country is a recognized treasure trove for sociolinguists.
6. Don’t we have enough really serious problems to figure out without wasting time on this kind of triviality? Why does the press jump on this kind of imbecilic story? For a good look at how the U.S. press’ idea of political reporting has gone down the crapper and turned into “royal court gossip,” read this piece by Glenn Greenwald, also from Salon.
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2010.
Sorry, I’m not buying it. I’m a registered Independent who voted for Obama and the Dems in 2008 and would do it again in a heartbeat, if for no other reason than to punish the party of Cheney for eight years of lies, incompetence and unaccountability.
But Harry Reid should not be let of the hook here. I don’t care how what he says compares to what others say. If the Dems are reduced to comparing themselves to Michael Steele or Trent Lott, then God help us all. Shouldn’t we all aspire to more than that?
Harry Reid is a goofball and always has been. He shouldn’t be in charge of his household, let alone the U.S. Senate. And his remarks about Obama’s “light skin” and lack of a “negro dialect” are more than an embarrassment. They underscore a deep-seated inabilty of older pols to grasp this country’s rapidly changing demographics. Democrat or Republican, whoever would say something like that is obviously too old and clueless to be given a position of authority.
I don’t care about the racial nature of Reid’s comments. Sticks and stones, etc. etc.
It’s his absolute ignorance of the 21st Century that pisses me off. Skin tone is becoming increasingly irrelevant — we live in a country of 10,000 different colors. Within the black community alone you have 1,000 different dialects. A black guy growing up in Seattle is going to sound a lot different than one growing up in Mobile. It’s not a racial dialect; it’s a regional and cultural dialect. It would be like me saying all Southerners have hillbilly drawls. They don’t.
Can you imagine anyone under the age of 40 saying something as stupid as Reid said? Unless they were stupid themselves?
Harry Reid is stupid, period. He should not be Senate majority leader. And I hope he get beat in November.
And liberals, including Grooms (and myself), should not go out of our way to explain away his stupidity.
I am black and do not think Reid’s statement was racist. He was stating a fact. A lighter skinned black man who did not speak with “negro” aka hood dialect went over much better with the majority white electorate. Lighter has always been considered more attractive, right or wrong it is reality.
Contrasting to Lott’s statements:
Lott was a hypocrite trying to appeal to the states’ rights past of then-Democrat Thurmond. Lott did not believe in limited federal power yet always tried to play to that base, as do much of the GOP today. Lott was correct in stating that we likely would not have the problems we have today had we stuck to a states’ rights philopshy as Thurmond did at that time. We have 2 major wars, burgeoning police state and an unsustainable empire funded by an out-of-control federal leviathan. The federal gov’t is too big. Thurmond’s reasons for supporting states’ rights Thurmond also rightly opposed the civil rights legislation as a Democrat. Further, fellow Republican Bill Frist wanted to knock off Lott so he didnt care what reason it was. Thats why so many in the GOP called for Lott’s resignation.
So, if anything Reid should resign for his repeated failure to uphold his oath to the constitution. So should 99% of the Congress and President Obama.