What did Reid say thatoutraged these racially sensitive Republicans? In a background interview, themajority leader suggested that electing Obama as the nation's firstAfrican-American president was likelier because he is "light-skinned"and speaks with no "Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one."
However ineptlyexpressed, those observations about the president's racial identityand the waythat white voters perceive himare truisms that have been widely discussed bothwithin and outside the black community. Although "Negro" is nowconsidered archaic, Reid's use of that term implied no hostility to blackAmericans and no nostalgia for the racist past.
So after hearing the Nevada senator apologizefor his choice of words, which sounded especially inappropriate coming from anolder white man, the nation's black leaders have publicly forgiven him,explaining that his career record on civil rights and racial tolerance isunblemished from their point of view.
He "has been astalwart champion of voting rights, civil rights," the president noted ina CNN interview. "This is a good man who has always been on the right sideof history. For him to have used some inartful language in trying to praise meand for people to try and make hay out of that makes absolutely no sense."
Lott'sPraise for Thurmond's Racist Past
Case closed, as far asObama and the leadership of the civil rights community are concerned. Yet thatverdict has not discouraged the Republicans, whose insistence on comparing Reidto Lott only reflects poorly on them. The Republicans complain about a"double standard" that permits Reid to survive politically while Lottwas forced to walk the plank. But the circumstances aren't alike or evensimilar. The easiest way to understand the difference is to recall the Lottutterance preciselyand to place it within its real context.
The occasion was abirthday party for Strom Thurmond, the centenarian senator from South Carolina who hassince passed to his reward. Lott took the microphone to make a fewcongratulatory remarks, recalling Thurmond's third-party presidential campaignin 1948 (whose slogan was "Segregation Forever!"), which led to hisdeparture from the Democratic Party. "When (Thurmond) ran for president,we voted for him," said Lott, then the Senate majority leader. "We'reproud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn'thave had all these problems over all these years, either."
That vile statementechoed similar public comments that Lott had made more than two decades earlierat a Reagan presidential rallyand highlighted the Mississippi senator's longand intimate relationship with racist and ultra-right organizations such as theCouncil of Conservative Citizens.
When videotape of theLott speech first aired, several prominent conservatives leapt to his defense.They soon retreated as revulsion spread within their own ranks. NeitherDemocrats nor the "liberal media" could have ousted Lott had The Wall Street Journal's editorialpage, The Washington Times andfinally President Bush not abandoned him. While protesting that Lott should nothave to be sacrificed to "political correctness," they simply couldnot afford to keep him. He had to go because he represented a strain ofprejudice that has infected his party for decades, despite the best efforts ofdecent Republicans to extirpate it.
Today, the RepublicanNational Committee (RNC) has a black chairman, but even he still plays gameswith race. Listening to phony expressions of outrage over the word "Negro"by the Republicans, including RNC chair Michael Steele, is an insult to everyAmerican's intelligence. Do they think everyone has forgotten how Rush Limbaughrepeatedly mocked President Obama on radio as "the magic Negro"? Thatdidn't disturb any of the politicians and pundits who now angrily demand thehead of Harry Reid. Their nasty hypocrisy is far more shameful than his clumsysincerity.
© 2009 Creators.com.
