Fair warning, readers: I am about to rant. If you prefer your blog posts dainty and unoffensive to everyone, including cats and dogs, you should probably click off now.
Two years ago, Senator Harry Reid was trying to explain to someone why he thought Barack Obama had a chance to be elected POTUS in racially divided America. He was not stating his personal point of view about African Americans. Actually, he was stating the opinion of millions of non-African Americans, albeit in a circuitous fashion, who either openly or secretly judge black people by criteria that include skin color and speech patterns. There are those in the USA who prefer their black people with lighter skin, because they find the rich darkness of the ebony color frightening. There are those in the USA who prefer that their black people speak without saying "axe" when they mean "ask," and who use the possessive case properly; e.g. not "I was at my Mama house," but "I was at my Mama's house." And Mr. Reid seems to be in on the poorly kept secret that many-- maybe most-- African Americans have the ability to lapse into the urban vernacular at will. I dare anyone to argue with the truth of these statements.
Mr. Reid was an idiot for one thing: why in the world would he invoke the term "Negro" in the 21st century? I know it has been confusing for people that the preferred term for Americans of African ancestry has changed over the decades. First we preferred "colored" over "nigra" or "nigger." Later we thought Negro was better than colored -- at least it had a capital letter in the front! In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Afro-American was considered the best moniker, and eventually we settled on African American or Black/black. It is kind of hard to forgive Harry Reid for not keeping up with the rules, confusing as they probably are to most non-African Americans. So, yeah, he blundered big-time; off with his head!
People, we need to cut the crap and start talking about these things without fear of losing our jobs, our families or our lives, for heaven's sake. Rather than calling for Reid's resignation, we should be trying to figure out a) what caused him to choose to say Negro; b) why the truth of what he said is so threatening to both sides of the issue, that we would prefer to waste time arguing about whether he is a racist rather than discuss the points he made; c) why the President of the United States has to spend time defending his friend who had a lapse in verbal judgment instead of tending to the less sexy issues of war, terrorism, joblessness, poorly-functioning federal departments and people who simply want to annihilate us; and d) why CNN last night chose to replace Larry King with Soledad O'Brien and assemble a panel of three African American women , one young, black male journalist, and one token white male, James Carville, to have a discussion about Harry Reid's "transgressions."
What were the suits at CNN thinking????????? Did they think Larry King couldn't handle the topic? Couldn't they find any white women brave enough to join the discussion? Can only black people and people who worked for the honorary "first Black President" (Bill Clinton) have anything valid to say about this topic? I would bet that not one viewer learned anything at all from the panel discussion, with the possible exception that yes, there is such a thing as a conservative Republican who is a black woman!
Shame on CNN!
A good rant. The only thing missing is my point of view. He was saying those physical and verbal qualities were the only way White America would vote for our current president. Certainly not true about all of White America.
ReplyDeleteHarry showed himself to be another Pol (to use a Chicago term) out of touch with mainstream America.
On the contrary, tbish1. He was talking about the portion of White America who would consider color as one of their criteria, and that certainly does not include ALL white Americans. But it does include enough of them to make the difference in the outcome of the election.
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