About Harry Reid and racism
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this one, because I’m very tired of the petty stupidity and transparent partisanship involved. The word “racist” has almost no meaning today, except as a weapon to throw at opponents. It’s a fluid shape-shifter that means whatever a political group wants it to mean on any particular occasion.
One trend I have noticed, however, is the general truth of the following:
When Lott made a nostalgic remark about the segregationist Dixiecrat presidential run of Strom Thurmond, his Republican allies quickly abandoned him. Democrats are sticking by Reid so far.
That’s correct in general, whether the charge be racism, sexual acting out, or other types of corruption. As a general rule, Republicans tend to throw the offender out, while Democrats spin themselves into rhetorical tops in order to defend their own.
Reid’s comment reflected not racism but a cynical elitist contempt for the motivations of the American voter.
I wish the Republicans would let go of this. I agree with Neo’s disgust at the uses to which the accusation of racism has been put. And even if the idea is that turnabout is fair play, it’s unfortunately the case that what Lott said was a lot more open to the charge of racism than what Reid said.
Reid’s comment is awfully close to Biden’s “clean and articulate” remark. Both were fairly accurate observations with no malice.
Very astute observation about conservatives wanting to purge themselves of the offender and the offense, while liberals want to spin and rationalize it into something edible.
Mr. Frank: but noticing such things—as well as using the un-PC term “Negro”—is now considered racist, if it’s your opponent doing the noticing. Personally, I think the term “racism” ought to be reserved for comments that actually express negative judgments based solely on a person’s race.
Hey, but that’s just me—and I’m an evil neocon.
I’m with Mr. Frank 100%. We need to dial back the sensitivity setting of the innuendo meter.
Hell, I can even imagine giving Trent Lott a skip. Although one had to have been there, I suspect Lott’s remarks were not intended as a policy prescription but rather a simple show of kindness and respect to a colleague at the end of his life.
If so, it was probably said more in the spirit of addressing a wife’s question of whether a given dress makes her look fat, i.e., not something to be chiseled into stone for the ages.
Reid, not a racist? Rubbish. He is among numerous closet racists within the Democratic Party whose own words betray them. Barbara Boxer, being another. These are people for whom African-Americans serve as a prop to demonstrate how high-minded and upright they really are, because they look out for minorities or the great unwashed that they can SMELL on a hot summer day on Capitol Hill. Harry insists it was a poor choice of words and indeed it was. He made the mistake in an unguarded moment of speaking from the heart.
Personally, I don’t see any problem with the word Negro. It’s all in the context. The word Negro didn’t damn Harry. His sentiment and context did. What could Harry possibly mean by his statement about a “light-skinned” black man “with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one,” other than Obama’s okay because he’s a black man that doesn’t look TOO black or sound TOO black. To say it was a mistatement is as insulting as the statement itself. I mistate something if I say three when I meant four. If I say three and mean three, it’s not a misstatement simply because three proves offensive.
Adrian: What Reid could have meant is that the electorate would perceive Obama that way, as opposed to a candidate who spouted Ebonics and looked like a guy from the ‘hood. And that this fact made Obama more electable. It’s more or less what Biden also observed.
If that’s what Reid meant, is it racist to notice such a thing? Note, also, that I have no idea whether Reid is actually a closet racist or not. He certainly could be, but I don’t think this rises to a level that proves it. I can’t stand the man for a host of reasons, however.
This idiocy ain’t a Republican fight. We ought to stay the heck out. Let the PC-Thought Police of Leftyland hand Feckless Harry some pain. NOT us. He’s a sewer dwelling lout. Let the scumbag stay right where he is..Hurting Dems and pi**ing off more Nevada voters for November. Bu-Byeeee, Harry !
Neo:
Perhaps. I will conceed that it is not enough rope to hang the guy. Unfortunately many people are only able to recognize racism in its ugliest forms (i.e. blind hatred over differences like skin color). In fact, though it is just as racist to vote for a man because he is black as it is NOT to vote for him for the same reason. A positive predjudice is still a prejudice and impairs judgement. Patting one’s self on the back because you voted for a black man is the flip side of the same ignorance and I think this kind of racism is rampant among liberals.
I find it interesting that Reid’s Morman faith has not come up. Had it been Romney’s quote, he would have been pilloried for his racist religion.
I don’t think this particular remark was anything other than political calculation, expressed in terms regarded as racist. I suspect that Reid has a good deal of the condescending sort of racism in him, but this episode provides only a smidgen of evidence for it.
For those able to hear, it has been pointed out that Trent Lott’s comment was in about the same territory. No sense going further with it.
My question is: when did so-called “Reverend” Al Sharpton develop into such a respected figure that even Fox asks him on as a commentator?
Has he ever apologized for helping to perpetrate one of the biggest hoaxes of the last century ?
Has he ever apologized for viciously slandering an innocent public official ?
Has he ever made up for his own history of race baiting ?
How did this animal manage to get such respectability?
I’m in the camp that sees it as cynicism and not racism.
I suspect the man is a racist but this isn’t what proves it.
I am elderly, maybe more so than Mr. Reid, and I was taught the proper, respectful word was Negro. I think that is why he used it. Of course, I know now what the PC word of the moment is and he should, too.
I agree with George Will’s comment on the Stephanopolus (sp?) program, that what Reid said was a clear description of fact; his fellow panelists quickly changed the subject, ignored Will, and slid into High School type debate about what “racism” is, or isn’t, which is what I see above.
The problem isn’t racism, rather the dishonesty, indeed, evil of Affirmative Action and all of that Identity politics stuff.
When Republicans, Conservatives, and neoconservatives finally get some balls and support really courageous, patriotic people such as Ward Connerly they will show some understanding of “racism,” and the courage to stand for the old American solution of giving credit or blame to individuals. Individuals, and individual behavior, accomplishment.
Trent Lott wasn’t waxing nostalgic for segregationism, but it sure sounded like he was. Sadly, like accidentally running a red light, for Lott’s political career his gaff was fatal.
I don’t like that, but I think I understand it.
Sen. Reid’s situation is different. Unlike Lott he wasn’t “caught up in the moment”. Nope, Harry simply claimed he “could have used a better choice of words”. Unlike Sen. Lott he doesn’t regret the sentiment. He doesn’t deny the construct. He just wishes he had said it differently.
If there is indeed a “better choice of words” would someone please ask Senator Reid to kindly rephrase his belief that it’s a good thing that candidate Obama wasn’t too dark and didn’t talk like he came from the hood.
Negative judgments about persons based solely on a person’s race are plainly stupid: every geneticist will tell you that for different populations of the same species individual differences are order of magnitude higher than differences between groups averages, even if latter exist. And more advanced in human genetics will tell you that genetic diversity of black people is at least five time higher than that of Caucasians, so every generalisation about “blacks” usually is false almost by definition, since this is not a natural group. We can with better success muse about Italo-Scandinavians or Mongolo-Spaniards. Such “types” simply do not exist.
I can understand what people mean a century ago when they think about races: they believed that races were species. Nobody believes this anymore, so what “racism'” means now is hard to understand. May be, just stupidity?
Give Harry a break, he’s a former prize fighter who took too many whacks to the head.
I don’t know if Reid’s comment indicates racism or not. I don’t really care. The only way to stop dems from crying racist everytime a republican disagrees with their agenda is to start throwing the accusation back and twice as hard. Politics nowadays is a blood sport and we need to draw blood.
Incidentally, one of the reasons Lott had no republican support was because he was an old lady-he didn’t fight the dems at all. The feeling on our side of the aisle was pretty much “Good riddance”.
The more I’ve kicked this around and considered the laughable pathetic defenders of Harry, both Black and White, I’m holding to the assertion that Harry Reid IS a racist with an important distinction.
He’s not merely a racist; he’s what Grocho Marx would designate as “the crummy moronic kind”. That is to say he’s too stupid to even realise he’s a racist or how degrading this viewpoint is. The fact that the words came out of his mouth demonstrates this. He didn’t mis-speak, to invoke the euphemism that liberals love to fall back on when betrayed by the mouth almighty. He said what he meant and he meant what he said, until it became widely known that he said it. Racism is often attributed to ignorance. With regard to that attribute, Harry Reid is over-qualified.