Slips of the Lips

Often what we say and the words we use reveal a lot about who we are as people. We are a language oriented species. We have a strong desire to communicate. So what was Harry Reid trying to communicate when made his statements about Barak Obama?

Reid was outed recently in the news media by the release of the political trails gossip manifesto, Game Change, written by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. He used what some would consider inflammatory language, or rather an inflammatory word. He used the word “Negro”. This, coupled with the phrase, “light skinned”, definitely opened the doors for some criticism.

The problem with the news media is that statements made are often divorced of their context. Reid, in his own twisted way, was actually trying to pay Barak Obama a compliment. This is the quote from the book:

"He (Reid) was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama - a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he later put it privately,"

The GOP and their Right Wing Army of Justice have been calling for Reid’s head. In their view he made a racist statement, yet they have failed to identify what part of the statement they consider racist, or how the whole statement in itself is racist. Everybody knows they don’t give a damn about racism. They saw an opening to bring down someone on the opposing side and went for the jugular.

Somehow for them it is all about Trent Lott. Like I said they could care less about racism or if black people were offended. They and the news media never came to talk to any of us or asked how we felt about it. It just political gamesmanship. Every story I have read about the GOP’s viewpoint always mentions Lott. They are making the most noise and their issue is not if Barak Obama or black people were offended, their issue is their perception of a double standard. Their mindset is, if our guy can’t get away with it, neither can theirs. The “it” being a racist statement. They aren’t concerned with the racist statement, they are concerned with the fact that they can’t get away with making racist statements. Lott didn’t step down because his party was ashamed and embarrassed by what he said, he stepped down because he made his party look bad due to the public reaction.

Well, what did Lott say?

"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,"

Lott said this in December 2002, on Capitol Hill, during a celebration for Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday. It was in reference to Thurmond’s failed 1948 presidential bid, running on a pro segregation platform. What was Lott implying by his statement? Was he trying to pay someone a compliment? Doesn’t seem like it. It seems to me he was saying he was a supporter, and still is a supporter, of legal segregation. It is a statement that is going to get a lot of people fired up. It brings up images of school kids being escorted to school by National Guardsmen. It brings up images of Leave it to Beaver Families holding up signs with some very ugly and hateful language, containing words way worse than “Negro”. It is a period of American history that Americans of today look back with shame and embarrassment, except for people like Trent Lott, who seem to be bitter because of that era’s passing.

When you get down to the bones, who wants to go back to how things were back then? Or maybe more precise, who is willing to publicly admit it? It’s the kind of thing people only say when they are angry and lose the ability to censor themselves, like Michael Richards when he lost it during his live comedy show. Americans have a lot of racial baggage. It is unfortunate because we live in a country with people of many different ethnic backgrounds who have to live together, but some don’t want to live together, some want to be separate. “White flight” replaced segregation when it was legally ended and still continues today. There are a lot of “white flight” people out there, silently supporting people like Trent Lott.

Harry Reid could be one of those people. Barak Obama and the Democrats are giving him a pass, but he doesn’t deserve it. He is not getting a pass from me. What he said does deserve some scrutiny. What he said gives insight to a broad issue that is not discussed very often, something that is overlooked in favor of bellicose reactionary behavior and finger pointing. Anger does not always have to be the reaction to racism, real or perceived. Incidents like this are the perfect opportunity to bring out of the shadows and into the light, something that really shapes people’s racial views, and that is myopia and tunnel vision.

Myopia is something that affects all groups of people in how they see other groups of people and individuals, different from themselves. It is the fallacy of solely focusing on any set of undesirable characteristics that are exhibited by a group or individual and completely ignoring all the rest, even going as far to paint all individuals associated with the group or individual with the undesirable traits. It is one thing to be indoctrinated into a way of thinking about certain groups of people as a child, where for the most part one is just parroting what they experience. At some point as the individual approaches adulthood and claims responsibility of their behavior and thought processes, they can choose to change as they accumulate life experience and learn and adopt progressive philosophies that deal with human thought and behavior.

Most people who do not change, it is because they have given themselves over to the authority of their peer group. It is the peer group that defines and sets the boundaries of thought. Peer groups are the oldest dictators and purveyors of propaganda on the planet. It is the empire and domain of hypocrites. It is not surprising in a world where people of independent thought are often chastised, ostracized, and belittled, while adherence and blind following to the peer group is often rewarded. How often has this been the case in school or in the workplace?

There are two things to look at in Reid’s statement. First is his need to inject “light skinned” into the conversation. For black people this opens up an can of worms that goes back all the way to slavery. Light skinned slaves were often “house negroes” because they were closer to the standard of white, able to live in the house with the Master and serve him directly, literally, making his beds, serving his food, rearing his children, and attending to the Master’s families intimate needs, including sexual duties for the Master himself. The House Negro was treated much better than regular slaves and often identified with the Master, seeing themselves as a part of the family. They might even be taught how to read and write. The dark skinned negro, or the “field negro” was the regular slave who labored hard in the fields and mostly dealt with the Master’s foremans who’s tools of control were the gun, the whip, the branding iron, shackles, and hound dogs. The Field Negro was considered an animal, like a cow or a pig, to be treated and bought and sold as such. Obviously there was friction and animosity between the House Negro and the Field Negro because of the difference of how each were treated. In post slavery, segregated America, light skinned blacks attempted to “pass” themselves off as white to get better jobs and living conditions and to be free of the harsh treatment that was the everyday life for people who obviously identified as black.

W.E.B Dubois and Marcus Garvey were enemies, and much of that was rooted in the fact that Dubois was fair skinned and Garvey was as black as coal. Jesse Jackson didn’t call Barak Obama a House Negro, but saying he wanted “cut his nuts off” arose from that bitter soil. It may be something we do not want to talk about but it is something we all know about, even Al Qaeda second in command Ayman al Zawahiri, who called Obama a House Negro when he won the election. Michelle Obama has had to endure many crude comments about her looks and personality because she is not light skinned. If she looked more like Halle Barry, Thandie Newton, or Zoe Saldana, she would have all of America eating out her hands and she would be the most adored woman on the planet. Many of the first successful African Americans were light skinned because they were more acceptable to the white standard. This is directly what Reid was referencing when he chose to focus on skin color in his assessment of Barak Obama, positive or not.

The second thing to look at in Reid’s statement is “negro dialect”. WTF is a negro dialect? Can somebody please tell me because I’ve been black my whole life and I do not know what a negro dialect is. I am aware that black people from New Orleans speak differently than black people from New York, who speak differently from black people in Chicago, who speak differently from black people in Los Angeles, but none of those ways of speaking is a negro dialect. Those are regional differences, just as it is with when comparing the speech of a white person from West Virginia to a white person from Massachusetts. So what the heck is Reid talking about? Ebonics? I think the man is suffering from a myopic view of black people. Can someone please tell Harry Reid that is is 2010 and he needs to get an update. If he is still using the word “negro”, it indicates his views about black people may be stuck in the past. He may not be as far from Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond as many people are trying to portray him.

So continues the saga of President Barak Obama, the first black man to hold the top office in the allegedly most powerful, and perhaps racially sensitive country in the world. We have made much progress in our views on race, but I think much of is more like the child who cleans up their room by throwing all the dirty stuff in the closet. Every so often something causes that door to open, even slightly, and the crap just spills out on to the floor in a heaping mess.