Black, White and Waste of Time

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is under fire for comments revealed in a newly released book “Game Change”. Back in 2008, Reid was quoted as saying candidate Barack Obama in 2008 ‘could benefit from being light-skinned and not having a Negro dialect unless he wants one’.

Assemble the firing squad! Everyone grab a torch and head for the streets! Really? What is it in that sentence that makes one a racist; the word ‘Negro’? Be serious. Look, I’m no fan of Harry Reid, especially after he bribed Ben Nelson of Nebraska to secure his vote on the health care bill, but we average Americans are tired of this feigned outrage every time someone screams racism.

Shelby Steele, one of the most articulate writers of our time, made a provocative observation in the Wall Street Journal in July 2009. Steele, a black man, recalled a day as a boy in a barber shop in the South. A picture was being passed around of a young black man who had been beaten to death by an angry mob who believed him guilty of raping a white girl. There was no trial, no due process, no witnesses or public defenders. All that was needed back then was for a white girl to point at a black male and say “Rape!” and the verdict was in. Steele goes on to draw a parallel using the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police last July to show that in the 21st century, any minority can simply point at a white person and say “Racism!” and they are presumed guilty.

Racism is treated with even more disdain than child molestation or mass murders. Nothing else gives people license to vent all the pent up rage and frustration they accumulate by holding in their prejudices. No poisonous vitriol is too harsh, no punishment too great, and no response too disproportionate for the evil wretch branded a racist. If you doubt this, think for a minute of the most forbidden word in the English language. It’s not the F-bomb, or cursing, or any George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on Television. It’s the “N-word”. We can’t even say it when we are talking about how the “N-word” has been used in history or how it appears in dialog today. It’s always just the “N-word”. In the OJ trial, Detective Furman was demonized and discredited by F. Lee Bailey because, at some point in his life, in some unknown context, he dared to utter the “N-Word”. If you say it once, you are a racist for life and can never be redeemed. Racial activists have the right- no the obligation, to hate, disregard, spit on, and ridicule you forever. You should not be allowed to hold a job nor ever appear in public again. We even let murders out on parole occasionally, but not “N-word” violators. They are the worst form of human scum we can imagine. Unless, of course, you are black an then you can use it as a term of endearment, a reference to friends, family, or pretty much any way you wish with impunity.

So, it’s obvious why Harry Reid’s critics are trying so hard to get the racism label to stick to him. It worked against former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. He mentioned in a 2002 farewell address to Senator Strom Thurmond that the country would have been better off if they had elected Thurmond president back in 1948. Well, any thinking person knows that he could only be talking about the pro-segregation position that was one of dozens of planks on Thurmond’s platform 50+ years earlier. Lott was clearly a racist bastard, and the democrats demanded that he surrender his position as Majority Leader. It worked. Never mind that 9 term Democratic Senator Robert Byrd was the hood-wearing Exalted Cyclops of the Klu-Klux-Klan in his 20s. Somehow he has been granted amnesty by the same lynch mob who demanded Trent Lott’s ouster.

And this is the heart of the matter. Republicans want to point out the double standard that is being applied depending on which side of the aisle you’re on. But this is a silly way to do it. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and no good purpose is served by demanding Senator Reid resign in the name of racial harmony. Republicans need to take the high road on this one and point out that although Reid’s remarks could be misapplied by those trying to exacerbate race relations in the US; a more mature society won’t play this ‘gotcha’ game. Congress needs to be occupied with much more serious issues.