vivian shaw

Harry Reid’s Boo Boo

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democratic Senator from Nevada, publicly apologized yesterday for some groan-worthy comments about Obama that are set to be released on Monday in Game Change, a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 Presidential Election. Made back in 2008, Reid referred to the then presidential hopeful as “light-skinned” and “with no Negro dialect,” apparently complimenting these characteristics as helpful to Obama’s campaign. Republicans leaders such as Michael Steele (Chairman of the Republican National Committee) and Senator John Cornyn (Texas) didn’t wait for the weekend to be over to call for Reid’s resignation, accusing Democratic colleagues who arrived at the defensive of being hypocritical.

I don’t think Republicans are wrong that there’s hypocrisy at play here—while Obama himself would probably accept an apology from either side of the partisan divide, I doubt Rev. Al Sharpton would so quickly come to the defense of ANY conservative. My feelings on the question of Reid resigning, on the other hand, are a bit more ambiguous. Scandals like these toe the line between the private and public and it’s hard to gauge from the reportage if Reid’s backward language reflects a deeper, problematic view towards minorities that in turn affects his ability to serve all communities fairly.

What’s more troubling is that Reid is hardly alone in his lacking agility in talking about race, if not outright racism. One day before his apology, Congress finally decided to renege on its plan to add the term “Negro” to the 2010 Census, which had been underway until the blogosphere caught whiff and freaked out. I get that many Americans hate/resent political correctness, but there’s something quite wrong with elected policymakers “not knowing” to avoid racial terms that were deemed inappropriate and derogatory decades ago. In my opinion, what’s reflected here isn’t simply ignorance, but a certain level of apathy.

Update: Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times bends over backwards to defend Reid, in an argument that, in my personal opinion, makes very little sense.

Governor David Paterson (NY) walks the plank and calls Reid’s remarks “reprehensible,” though not bad enough to warrant a resignation.