Old white racists

It came out this week that before the 2008 election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D,-Nev., praised then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. as electable in part because of his “light-skinned” appearance and speaking patterns “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

And I have to admit, in a way, I’m surprised at the shock at this statement.
Clearly his statement was wrong and offensive. But Reid is a 71-year-old white male. He grew up in a world in which the only black people on TV were maids and servants, and the word “Negro” was a more respectable treatment for black Americans. That certainly doesn’t justify what he said, but it also shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that an old white man is afraid a black politician will start speaking Jive or Ebonics while engaged in policy-making.

During Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation process, I’m sure some were probably thinking: “If Justice Alito says something to anger her, I just know she’s gonna go off on him in that Spanish jibberish.” It’s the same misunderstanding many had when Obama mentioned brushing the dirt off his shoulder.

There’s the reason why the jokes about Will Smith being “the black guy everyone at work can agree on,” and Wayne Brady “making Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X” work. Some white people are still terrified of Chuck D-type black people. When it came out during the election that Barack Obama wrote about his struggles with growing up as a mixed child in 1960s America, people freaked out, worried that somehow he was plotting against “white” America.

That’s why it doesn’t surprise me when Democratic senators make comments such as the one Harry Reid made. There’s still the idea among many that somehow the only way to get elected in this country is to play to the 1950s image of a white picket fence in the hula-hoop suburbs.

But considering our current president is named Barack Hussein Obama and not Palin, maybe people will realize that you can quote Jay-Z and still be able to hold elected office.

Reid’s comment does highlight one amazing facet of our political culture, though. The GOP, even being the party of Strom Thurmond, Rush Limbaugh, Trent Lott and George Allen, still attempted to use Reid’s quote as political leverage to remove him from power.

I could write an entire article dedicated to the blatantly off-color racist, bigoted or sexist comments of right-wing politicians and commentators over the last five years alone, but that would be a political cheap shot. The election of President Obama shows we’re now a post-racial society.

That means no longer using the offensive language and stereotypes of the past, but looking to each other as equal human beings, not as separate races. And I know the GOP is dedicated to that. Honest Injun.


E-mail: mrstraw@indiana.edu