So for the last week or so the big stupid political hubbub of the week has been the fact that in a private conversation two years ago Harry Reid said that white people don’t generally want to vote for black people, and that lighter-skinned black people generally do better electorally with whites than dark-skinned people, and also that Barack Obama can speak both in White Person and Black Person. All of this is of course unquestionably true (there have been studies conducted to demonstrate the first two issues, and anybody who’s seen Obama in both modes knows that the last is accurate), but Reid also called Obama a “Negro” and that’s kind of weird so everybody had at it.
And the really fun thing is that right-wingers are going on TV to complain about Reid getting a double standard because when Trent Lott said things would be better if Strom “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches” Thurmond had been elected President, people got all offended. And they don’t understand why all those liberals got pissed about Trent Lott and don’t care about Harry Reid, so they’ve jumped to their stock accusation of hypocrisy.
Here’s the thing. Nobody really gets upset when somebody just says something stupid. We might make fun of them, and I’m sure Reid can take some mockery, but what it boils down to is that Reid said something entirely true with clumsy archaic phrasing that might be construed as offensive while in a private conversation. When the sentence was made public, he immediately apologized. For people who might be offended, that’s generally good enough, because Reid’s got a good record on civil rights (as the Congressional Black Caucus made quite clear this weekend when they gave him their full support). If somebody who by dint of his actions has made it clear he supports your causes says something stupid or offensive then apologizes, there’s no real reason to hang him out to dry.
Of course, the right seems determined to claim that forgiving Reid when other, right-wing pols who have made racist statements is hypocritical, and the reason they do that is because they quite simply don’t understand why the left gets offended by one and not the other. To them, this is about the statement. The actual sentence. They think that’s the reason people get upset: the words in question. (This is also the reason why the right wing thinks making fun of “political correctness” is hilarious. Most of them genuinely don’t know that the term originated on the left-hand side to specifically describe people who talked the talk about inclusivity but didn’t walk the walk, and only later became a catchphrase for the silly “non-offensive” phrasing the term was originally intended to criticize.)
But here’s the thing. You know that old Avenue Q song, “Everybody’s a Little Bit Racist”? It’s true – everybody is, and most people get that. Nobody’s perfect. We can forgive people’s slip-ups, when they’re slip-ups. But when a Trent Lott or a George Allen or a Rush Limbaugh says something racist, it’s not about this one occasion of them saying something offensive; it’s about the fact that these foul fucking bigots, who by their personal histories of action have made it clear that they’re perfectly willing to judge people on the basis of skin colour – these assholes have achieved public prominence without having been made to feel shame, or at least having been publicly shamed for their loathsome beliefs. They deserve that shame, and they don’t get it, and then they have the temerity to make clear how little they think of the public at large by cheerfully saying how great it would be if Strom Thurmond had been elected our first official segregationist president, or calling a black guy at a rally a racial slur, or suggesting that a great black quarterback is only esteemed because he’s black.
That’s why Lott was offensive and Reid wasn’t: deeds, not words. Maybe one day the right will get that. But I’m not holding my breath, because really, all they’re interested in on this issue is juvenilia and playing gotcha, because that’s all they think it is. They don’t get it, and that’s just sad.
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Reid is an old man who used a term that was common when he was a young man.
And I never thought I’d say this, but I miss by-comparison-sane conservatives of the Reagan era.
I feel for Reid, but mostly because the man had to apologize for something that really wasn’t worth apologizing for. In a private conversation, he didn’t choose his words carefully as he might have in a public one. He didn’t say anything that was actually offensive, just pointed out observations he saw and believed to be true. And used the word “Negro”… But he didn’t, from all accounts, use the word in a hateful way.
My heart always goes out to the good people who get caught in these situations. We all say things behind closed doors in ways that we wouldn’t say them in public.
I agree completely with everything said here. I bet we hear more “Dr. King was a Republican and Democrats filibustered the civil rights amendment” bullshit this weekend. (forgetting to mention that King supported JFK, Strom and Jessie lived out their political careers as Republicans and LBJ actually signed the legislation).
The whole Reid incident has been weird. The comment, with it’s clumsy 70-yeah-old man language, the book, which burned the source, George Will (!) defending the statement against Liz Chaney (!) on national television.
But the whole incident seems to have saved Michael Steel’s job, which is the best outcome the Democrats could have hoped for.
I completely agree with you. The people criticizing Reid are only doing so simply because they need to criticize. They think all they need is another political scalp. That to ‘win’ the political debate is to shame and embarrass and humiliate their opponent rather than on actual merit. That you’re right: what counts are deeds, not words.
I’ll agree that everyone’s racial. Not everyone is racist.
Negro is kind of a gray area in terms of racism. The United Negro College Fund uses the name to this day and as such it seems a little out of place to characterize Reid as a blatant racist or as much of one as the droolers who burn crosses and such. Regardless, it can still be perceived as a hateful word that reduces the black people to the color of their skin.
I think we should erase race.
“Negro” isn’t so much a slur as it is a really, really antiquated term that makes you sound backwards.
I mean, I’m sure some people get offended by it and that’s as good a reason as any not to use it, but it doesn’t have the inherent hatefulness of an outright slur.
Chris, you might be interested in this analysis of the Reid situation:
http://living.jdewperry.com/2010/01/harry-reid-and-light-skinned-negroes/
I’ve been so torn with all the “Should Harry Resign” polls popping up on news websties. I think he should resign because he’s an ineffective majority leader who couldn’t guide the senate out of a paper bag, and because he’s too timid to call the Republicans on their nonsense, not because he’s an anachronism.
Re: the point about PC, THANK YOU.
The funny thing is Obama’s prepared and entirely generic statement summed up my feelings perfectly…the economy is on the verge of shambling, we are fighting two wars in hostile countries that are unlikely to be won, and health care reform threatens to divide this country further into red states and blue states. Let’s focus on something worthwhile people.
One of the smartest things I’ve read all week.
MGK, not to pick nits, ’cause I totally agree with everything you wrote, but Reid did not in fact call the President a negro. He used the term in reference to the dialect that Obama specifically didn’t use.
It’s like Chappelle said (pretty sure it was him, and not Chris Rock): black people are bi-lingual, able to speak both “street” and “job interview”. Add in to this that nebulous quality in someone’s voice that says “black”, and you’ve got, to use blunt language, situations where someone can “talk white” but still “sound black”, which is exactly what Reid noted was missing from Obamas oratory.
Again, great piece, I agree 100%, but remain doubtful that any of this will calm the hysteria over on the right about all this.
Again, great piece, I agree 100%, but remain doubtful that any of this will calm the hysteria over on the right about all this.
Nothing will calm the hysteria from the right, because the hysterics are the entire point. It’s just a convenient excuse to be assholes, and they’re not about to let the fact that they don’t actually have any excuse stop them from being assholes.
Oh, believe me Dan, I know. It’s just that I sometimes forget exactly who we’re dealing with, and ease back on the cynicism throttle, and allow myself to think that logic will be able penetrate their collective helmet.
Then it all comes back to me, and my little fantasy world of logic and reason comes crashing down about me.
Oh well.
I know it’s not fair to blame Obama for being high yellow, but I really wanted to vote for a darker president. Does that make me racist, that my president isn’t black ENOUGH for me?
I agree with all your general points, but you’re wrong when you said Thurmond would’ve been ‘our first official segregationist president’. Woodrow Wilson was a staunch segregationist who expelled the last remaining Black civil servants from the Federal Government, and wanted to keep Black Americans out of the armed forces entirely (although the manpower shortage during the war forced him to back down from that position).
Warren Harding joined the Klan with an induction ceremony at the White House, though as far as I’m aware it didn’t influence his policies significantly.
Question: he said this two years ago-why is it only now being used against him?
Weirdly enough, “Negro” is how African-Americans are listed in the 2010 U.S. Census…so is the word really as archaic and supposedly offensive as some are claiming it to be?
And man, I just love watching right wing white guys lecturing black people on how to be black.
But the Republicans are no doubt furious at Haiti, what with the earthquake burying Reidgate in the back pages now.
Yeah, I’m 38 years younger and I know that “negro” is not something you want to go around saying. Still…
For a long time, up until several years ago, I thought that “Negro” was to black people what “Caucasian” was to white people. I wasn’t going around using the word even back when I thought it wasn’t offensive, though; I’d say “black” or “African-American”, but that had more to do with the fact that I never heard anybody else use “Negro” in regular conversation and I heard them use one of the two other terms instead. So Reid may have been under the same impression I was about the word not being bad, and since he undoubtedly heard it used years ago in a non-hateful way–as in “the patient is a 34-year-old Negro male exhibiting signs of blah blah blah” or whatever–he’s probably used it more.
Anyway, the people making a big deal about this now seem to forget that before that election there was serious doubt as to whether the U.S. would elect a black president, just because of the fact that there were a lot of stupid voters or ignorant voters or hate-filled voters or a combination of the three. Those people wouldn’t vote for him because he was black, and Harry Reid appears to have been saying “Well, he doesn’t seem really black, so we probably can get a lot more of those idiots who care about skin color to vote for him than, say, Carol Moseley Braun.”
This.
[…] 13th – What we have here is a failure to comprehend -Trent Lott vs. Harry […]
…and because he’s too timid to call the Republicans on their nonsense…
And this is why I want more Democrats like Howard Dean in office. Every time Dean howls, another conservative soils himself.
Ugh. This morning someone linked me to your “what if Bertie were Batman” post, and I loved it and thought, “Why on earth did I stop subscribing to this blog?”
And now you go and remind me.
You probably really believe the incredible bullshit you’re shoveling here, but just in case there is a tiny crack in your skull through which an occasional fact or logic can get through, two words: Robert Byrd.
The man who got a 100% approval from the NAACP some 60 years after he was a member of the Klan?