I Guess Harry Reid Would Accept Me
This is going to be short and sweet. It’s a little rambling, but I’m on my lunch hour and have just a few moments to pull this together.
Harry indicated that that candidate Obama would have a good shot at becoming the first black president because he’s “light-skinned” and doesn’t speak with a ”Negro dialect.”
The uproar over this has been enormous and mostly misguided.
Yes, Harry apologized to the President and to the black members of Congress. Many others, including Dems and black “leaders” such as Al Sharpton, have circled the wagons and sung praises that despite this faux pas, Harry is great.
Most of these nitwits completely missed the point. It’s not about Obama. It never was about Obama. It was about every other black person in the US, and the implied small-mindedness of the typical white American voter.
I am a light-skinned black woman who speaks with no “Negro dialect” unless I want to. One of my close friends is a dark-skinned black woman who speaks with no “Negro dialect” unless she wants to. I guess someone could infer that I would be more “acceptable” because of skin color alone, aside from the fact that she’s a doctoral candidate and staggeringly brilliant. It’s all about what the racist white majority would find palatable, I guess.
I feel insulted because according to Harry, as a black person I could get anywhere on my skin color because I’m light enough. According to Harry, white people would like me more. According to Harry, the way I speak would make me more acceptable as well. According to Harry, a dark skinned black candidate would, apparently, trigger something negative in the ignorant white populace that would cause them to vote blindly against such a person. While there are pockets where that is undeniably true, I give the American people far more credit than that.
This is what it comes down to. In my opinion, Harry needs to apologize to every black person in America, because by his comment, he implied that most would be unacceptable to the electorate. He needs to apologize to the electorate because he assumed that they would find a darker skinned person unpalatable. In a nutshell, Harry made inappropriate conclusions about the American people. So far from insulting Obama, he insulted all of us.
This has been compared to what Trent Lott said at Thurmond’s 100th birthday. What Trent said was infinitely worse, and he needed to leave. Trent apologized and then resigned. Harry only apologized because he got caught.
Does he need to step down? Absolutely not. In the scheme of things, it’s not that big of a deal.
Besides, he needs to be in office for the November election. I’d like nothing better than to support whoever is running against him and lay on some serious electoral whup-ass.
