Should Harry Reid step down?
Words that matter
Remember when Washington rancor used to be directed at the vicissitudes of health care reform? Ah, those were the days. Now it’s back to politics as usual. You know what that means–attacking inappropriate conduct. A few months ago it was Joe Wilson speaking lies to power. Last week it was Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Already caught in what pundits regard as a tough reelection battle at home, Reid landed himself in trouble when it emerged that a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign quoted Reid as suggesting that then-candidate Obama could be the first black president due to his fairer complexion (“light-skinned”) and because he had “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Unfortunately for Reid, the word “Negro” was left behind as politically incorrect several decades ago, as did most of the appropriate contexts for the way Reid referenced President Obama’s skin color.
Reid has already issued a public apology, and has called the President to apologize directly (which Obama has publicly accepted). Should he also step down?
Pointing to the 2002 resignation of then-Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (from his leadership post), some say there’s not only a precedent for abandoning his position, but that to keep it would imply a double-standard for Democrats and Republicans when it comes to inappropriate comments about race (as Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has plainly alleged).
By comparison, Trent Lott made what are arguably less appropriate comments. In 2002, at Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday, he said that “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 the years, either.” Thurmond’s states’ rights presidential campaign had been explicitly segregationist and Lott’s remarks were therefore perceived as, if not pro-segregation, certainly not critical of it, either. Two weeks later, he left his position as Majority Leader, but remained in the Senate until 2007 when he became a lobbyist.
Reid’s remarks are certainly worthy of disapproval by contemporary standards. He used a racial term that the consensus view regards as derogatory. In addition, the idea that a leading white politician would (a) characterize a manner of speaking as more authentically black and (b) suggest that the absence of this would improve a politician’s chances for election seems outside the bounds of comfortable public discussion.
Yet an ethical evaluation of Reid’s remarks is hardly straightforward. Obama’s candidacy and now presidency have raised some serious questions among both black and white people about the strength and role of racial perceptions in America. Many have reasonably asked whether Obama has had an unusual appeal with white voters who have traditionally spurned black candidates. There have been real debates about Obama’s racial authenticity and identity, debates that have been fueled as much by his statements and associations as by his relative lack of explicit reference to his race.
Words about race matter in America because race matters in America, whether we like it or not. Like many of us, Reid did not quite find the right words to describe his sense that Obama’s comportment struck many as less “black.” This is a disturbing thought. But it is perhaps more disturbing that Reid’s sentiments — however inappropriately phrased — may contain some kernel of truth, that Obama’s broad public support may actually have been heightened by a way of speaking or skin color that many white voters found less “black,” however profound their own misconceptions about “blackness.”
There’s no question that Reid spoke in an inappropriate way about subjects that are publicly taboo. But an honest ethical evaluation will be inevitably precluded in a racially dishonest environment.
Reid should be ashamed and criticized for using the word “Negro” in 2008. How should he feel about the rest of what he said? It’s hard to know.
-Sam
Related posts:
- What’s best or what’s possible?
- No country for identity politics
- What’s wrong with racial profiling?
- Our fearless leader
- The politics of identity
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