Harry Reid was quoted in a political book as saying privately that the US would be “ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama – a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’ ”
I listened to talk radio intellects Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin duly hammer Reid and Democrats in general for the double standard they openly displayed in dismissing the quote to try to quickly get past the embarrassment.
Rush played endless clips of Democrats being racially insensitive, and pointed out that the comment shows that Reid thought that the country would not support a very black man with a negro dialect.
Levin attacked the quote as well, and showed how Obama, the President of the NAACP and Al Sharpton chose to deal with the quote. Obama called the quote “unfortunate.” The NAACP President said the quote was “not offensive,” just “awkward.” Sharpton said he was offended, but attacked Senator Trent Lott for a quote given 8 years ago.
They all focused on the word ‘negro.’
At the heart of all the back-tracking, strange equivalence, and mental gymnastics surrounding the quote however, is a more serious matter.
The quality of each human life and its individuality.
Harry Reid looked at a man and thought he was a more worthy individual than another based on the tone of his skin and his ability to fake a speech pattern. It shows his point of view as bigoted.
It is the trademark of the Democrat Party in fact, to gather people into groups in order to figure out how to promise them something they will find appealing and then purchase their vote. In Reid’s mind, Obama seemed to check all the correct boxes of Democrat voters.
A caller to Levin’s radio show, an individual named Jewel from Chantilly, VA, said that as an African-American, he thought the comment showed Reid to resemble slave owners of the past who allowed only the light-skinned blacks to serve at the house, and kept the dark-skinned blacks in the field.
Jewel’s comment struck me as the explicit truth.
Reid’s shallow apology, that he could have used different words, rings quite hollow. Why bother? My guess is that we would still have understood any other words he chose to use, and he would still be proved a bigot.
