Harry Reid and Trent Lott: Not Seeing the Difference is Part of the Problem

Today Senator John McCain joined the Republican chorus, led by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, decrying the Democratic Party’s double standard on “racially insensitive remarks,” which has led them to stand behind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid instead of calling for his ouster as they did in 2002 when then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott made remarks that the Republicans view as equivalent. While the Republican outrage is intended to show their racial sensitivity, their apparent inability to see the difference between the remarks reveals these Republican Senators to, at best, be cynical partisan opportunists attempting to exploit this country’s racial issues for partisan gain.

The nature and impact of the remarks made by Harry Reid and Trent Lott are as different as using the words niggard (essentially a synonym for miser with no etymological relation to the other word) and the racial slur that starts with “N.”

Reid, in a private conversation assessing then candidate Obama’s chances of being elected, correctly observed that Obama’s chances were improved by his being  a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.' The “light-skinned” part of the remark, while a regrettable truth, is according to sociological data, true nonetheless. The same holds true for the content of Reid’s comment on Obama’s speaking ability. That leaves Reid’s use of the word “Negro” to shock and horrify us.

Reid I suspect is somewhat older than I am, and while I was growing up, “negro” was the politically correct way of describing a black or African American, and it is still current. For example, this year’s census includes the word “negro” along with “black” and “African American” as one class of racial description because a certain percentage of Americans still use the term to self-identify their race. It is also found in titles such as the “United Negro College Fund.” Does this wholly excuse Reid’s use of the term? Perhaps not, but the term is at worst distasteful, but there is no slur in it.

Compare Reid’s indelicate, but accurate, remarks in praise of Candidate Obama with Trent Lott’s ceremonial acclamation of Senator Strom Thurmond. In 2002, at a ceremony celebrating Strom Thurmond’s 100^th birthday, Lott declared “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either." The problem is, Lott ran as a segregationist, for the Dixiecrat Party, with a platform that said in part, “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race.” Lott had just said he was proud of his state voting for a segregationist and that the US would have had less problems had segregation continued!

To compare a Reid’s mildly graceless statement of support to Lott’s pride in his states history of supporting segregation and his continued belief that segregation should still be practiced is nothing short of inane. And if John McCain and the others who have called for Harry Reid’s resignation truly cannot tell the difference, then their true commitment to civil rights has to be questions. They should either resign or be turned out of office.

Democrats, liberals, progressives and independents who value civil rights and the progress America has made towards equality for all must come out and vote in 2010 or the fired-up conservative base will elect more politicians whose the commitment to civil rights is not felt but merely a public pose.