Is racism dependent on who is speaking?
In case you haven’t heard about Sen. Harry Reid’s comments on Barack Obama, here’s a recap:
[Reid] told staff to brace for a tough weekend and instructed them to go into damage-control mode. He then hunkered down at his home in Searchlight, Nev., and began working the telephone, apologizing for saying Obama had a good chance to be the first black president because he was “light-skinned” and spoke with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
So is it racist? Well, I don’t think Reid is racist for saying that a light-skinned black would probably be more acceptable than a dark-skinned black. What gives a troubling insight into Reid is his terminology – exactly what is a “Negro dialect?”
The comparison, politically, is with Trent Lott:
Lott stumbled into trouble seven years ago when he declared at a tribute for former Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) that the nation would have been better off if Thurmond won the presidency as a segregationist candidate in 1948.Lott’s comments were little noticed at first but soon began to snowball into major scandal after civil rights leaders condemned the Republican leader. Wade Henderson, of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said Lott “betrayed his role as the majority leader.”
I think the attack on Lott was overblown because I don’t think he was endorsing segregationism. He was trying to compliment Strom Thurmond on being a staunch conservative. But his comment was stupid and ill-thought and he was hung out to dry.
Well, can we say the same thing about Reid? Is his comment about “no Negro dialect” just referring to something else? Hardly. To even contend such a thing would stretch credibility to the breaking point. He was complementing Obama on not sounding black. Which means that Reid believes he can tell if someone is black or not by the way they speak.
Cue the soundtrack on Oprah or Gwen Ifill. Review the OJ trial for Johnnie Cochran objecting to a LAPD officer saying a caller “sounded black.”
Yes, Harry Reid should step down. But he won’t. Because he’s a Democrat.
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