If you’re like me, you probably just spent a weird stretch of January staring at your television, vainly trying to figure out what our national leaders could be talking about this time. Political gibberish is nothing new, but lately the nonsense has reached new heights.
Here’s what I got: It had something to do with Harry Reid, the charisma-challenged Senate Democratic leader, and something offensive he said about black people, and now somebody on television wants him to resign. After that my brain froze.
Happily, things started coming into focus after a nice nap. What we have here, I figured out, is a fairly ordinary case of gotcha politics: Somebody speaks overly frankly at an unguarded moment; somebody else twists it around and whips up a scandal; accusations of hypocrisy get hurled in every direction, and everyone ends up wounded or soiled. So far, not terribly edifying.
What’s instructive is how this case turns clichés on their heads and recasts the traditional plot line. It’s standard practice for minorities to defend themselves from prejudice by watching for bigoted code words and then shaming the speaker. Bad speech precedes bad behavior, we assume; ergo, stop the speech, prevent the behavior. This time, though, the speaker happens to be a leading defender of the minority he’s supposedly slurring, and right now he’s in the fight of his life. So his supposed victims rally around him.
Conversely, conservatives have long complained that restricting biased speech — that is, political correctness — is used as a ploy by liberals and minorities to gain advantage by using victimhood as a weapon. This time, though, conservatives have caught a liberal in flagrante incorrecto, and they’re flogging it to the hilt.
Maybe it’s just me, but when everybody is rushing to abandon their positions on hate speech the moment they’re inconvenient, I suspect that nobody meant what they said in the first place.
To review: Reid is under fire for a comment made two years ago that just came out and sounds bigoted. During the 2008 presidential campaign, according to a new book, Reid had explained why he thought Barack Obama could win. Reid believed, the authors wrote, “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 said privately.”
Well, you know what happened next. Reid reaped the whirlwind. Critics accused him of racial insensitivity for using the word “Negro,” supposedly a slur, and of seeking to divide Americans by skin color. Some leading Republicans are demanding he resign.
Curiously, the complainants were largely white. Most black opinion-makers agreed that while Reid’s words were inept, he was correct on the substance — that America has overcome much racism but not all, and that darker skin and so-called Black English still carry a stigma. Obama himself said Reid “used some inartful language in trying to praise me.”
The strongest critics, in fact, were Republicans complaining of a double standard. Back in 2002, they recalled, Senate GOP leader Trent Lott was forced to resign after inartfully saying, at a 100th birthday party for South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, that America would have been better off if Thurmond had won the presidency when he ran in 1948 on a segregationist third-party ticket. If Lott had to resign in 2002 for racially insensitive remarks, some top Republicans argued, Reid should have to do the same in 2010.
The Reid-Lott comparison is ludicrous, but quite revealing. Lott wasn’t pilloried for clumsy language, but for explicitly endorsing Jim Crow — and not for the first time. Assuming Reid’s current critics mean the comparison seriously and aren’t just taking potshots, hardly a safe assumption, it means they’re unable — or unwilling — to see the difference between observing the decline of racial segregation and lamenting its decline.
Is there a lesson in all this? Here’s an important one: Be wary of using biased speech and code words to measure racism. It’s a very inaccurate tool. Back in 1992, the Anti-Defamation League surveyed American opinion to measure levels antisemitic prejudice. The ADL had been measuring antisemitism since the 1960s. Its survey offered 11 true-or-false stereotypes about Jews, including that Jews “always want to be at the head” and “only care about their own.” Five or more “true” answers constituted antisemitism. More than one-third of black respondents recorded five or more. In focus groups, however, many blacks saw some of the stereotypes — ambitious, caring for their own — as positive. Some openly wished the black community could learn from the Jews.
The mistake happens over and over. In 1996, Marlon Brando told Larry King that “Hollywood is run by Jews,” and was pilloried for it. It sounded like conspiracy-mongering. In fact, Brando, a lifelong, passionate Zionist, was talking about stereotyping of blacks in movies. Jews “should have a greater sensitivity” to human suffering, he told King, because of their history and their values.
As it happened, Universal Pictures was in the midst of a succession battle at the time. At its height, The New York Times ran a box showing the chairman and president of Hollywood’s top 10 studios. Of the 20 studio heads, one was gentile.
Back to Reid: His argument in 2008 was, in effect, that Americans had made some progress against racism — but only some — in the 45 years since Martin Luther King Jr. voiced his dream of freedom. King dreamed in 1963 of a nation where his own children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We’re not there yet, Reid was saying. We value character over color, but we still favor selected tints.
King went on to say in his speech that 100 years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, “the Negro still is not free.” What would King say if he came back today? For starters, he’d probably have to apologize for his inartful phrasing.
Contact J.J. Goldberg at goldberg@forward.com and follow his blog at blogs.forward.com/jj-goldberg
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That last line comparing Harry Reid to Dr. King is *insane.* For one thing, Dr. King was using the parlance of his time. For another, Harry Reid was not being inartful, but was at best completely racially tone deaf and at worst is revealing ignorant and racist tendencies. As member of the Democratic party and a firm supporter of Barrack Obama, I am offended and appalled. Dr. King was a visionary and a man of peace and tolerance. Reid is a disgrace, an embarrassment to the party and should resign.
Reid was offering a sincere and honest opinion of Obama's superficial features and voter attractiveness, which provide an opening to his deeper concerns and values, necessary to win the presidential electon.It was an opinion - not an expression of any racism on his part.Failure to understand this frank comment merely reinforces the hypocritical "gotcha politics" of those who revel in its use.Furthermore, opining that Reid should resign because of his judgement in this matter, cripples a major player who is managing the progress of critically important legislation to the American people.
Moshe, assuming you're correct than why is it when a Republican or Conservative like Rush Limbaugh offers up a similarly 'sincere and honest opinion' on race the Liberal-Left media, which is most of network and print media, erupts in howls of outrage and calls for that person's head? Don't bother to reply, it's a rhetorical question...we all know the answer.
While I dislike Rush most of the time,he does come up with some interesting ideas.Because he spouts quite frequently so much nonsense,the so-called liberal-left media,as you call them, whacks him at every turn.I've stopped listening to him some years ago.On the other hand, the extreme left frequently is just as bad,if not worse than the extreme right wing.My views are based on the issues of the moment.
The appeal of Limbaugh to myself and millions of others is precisely because of the lack of nonsense in his content. He is wonderfully Politically Incorrect which has undoubtedly gained him the hate from the Liberal-Left. Of course Reid's comments are also Politically Incorrect. But, as a leading Democratic political figure, he gets a pass from his constituency, namely the Liberal-Left media and the majority of the black political and civil rights establishment.
Harry Reid is not a racist, he is a fool, put up front in the Senate to deflect the darts and arrows from the real power brokers, Schumer, Dodd, Durbin and Kerry. He is no "major player", he is a distraction from the real problem. A health care bill that cannot stand the light of day, crafted in the backrooms of congress by a corrupt party that could only sell it to its own members by offering bribes. How any Jewish man or woman can support this bill is beyond me. Maybe, we should be looking at the left-wing extremists that pretend to be Jews? It reminds me of the old Communist axiom "The end justifies the means" My Democratic Conressman told me that all bills are a results of compromise and negotiation. What he did not tell me is that they compromise their integrity and negotiate away their morals and ethics. REPLACE THEM ALL!!!!
Charlie, maybe you'd better explain more about those "left wing extremists who pretend to be Jews." I'll make it easy for you: Just one name. Then the explanation about the person's pretending to be a Jew.
I'd always heard the canard that it was the Jesuits that taught "The end justifies the means." With you it's the old Communist axiom? Shades of red-baiting 1950s style.
Harry offers us the quintessential entertainment bordering upon what admixture supplies us our daily bread and butter. What finer yeah yeah yeah's can he bid upon our composed and delicate mannerisms, what better can he do but negrify the composition? Bring it on Harry! Go Zion.
In a different scenario: "He isn't a dirty Jew and doesn't talk like a Jew"
People are dying in Haiti and this is the nonsense we worry about. Who cares?
Moshe, you say "It was an opinion - not an expression of any racism on his part" which would be true if not for his use of archaic and offensive terminology which I refuse to repeat. The word may have been acceptable in the time of Dr. King, but it is not now, that is the very essence of the problem.
This is not about the frankness of Reid's assessment but his choice of phraseology, and the only ones playing the game of hypocritical "gotcha politics" are those in the Democratic party who are not willing to stand on principle, and would rather see Reid keep his seat to hold our cherish supermajority. But principles are still important, and if you don't want to be a hypocrite, if you don't want to just make politics a game, you must hold people accountable. "The ends justify the means" is a very apt characterization for the sort of argument you and Mr. Goldberg are making.
Also, Dr. Rosenberg, I appreciate your sentiment, particularly on a day like today when we should be honoring the memory of Dr. King and what he stood for. But ideas are important too. This is not an either/or decision. We can be practical and compassionate to those suffering in the "real world" but we cannot l expected a return to principles in politics, something that was sorely lacking in the Bush administration. But what has happened to those principles when a Democratic leader gets a pass on racist behavior like this?
...We can be practical and compassionate to those suffering in the "real world" but we cannot ignore blatant hypocrisy such as this. When I voted for President Obama, l expected a return to principles in politics...
Just a quick fix there. Also one more point, if we're going to play games of realpolitik like Mr. Goldberg and Moshe seem to suggest, then why waste precious political capital --that could be spent on so many other important things-- to defend Reid anyway? He'll be gone in a year anyway, at least if he resigns we can put up a decent Democrat who isn't completely inept to compete for the seat. Why doesn't he resign, despite being disgraced and nothing but baggage to the party? Because Reid is looking out for Reid, not the people. This is a cynical manipulation of the system by shameless partisans any way you look at it.
Rabbi Doctor -- it's just possible that the darkness of the skin of most Haitians is part of the reason they have been treated as they have in the past and even now: considering the impact of "colorism" http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/opinion/19vedantam.html?scp=4&sq=color&st=cse might be very appropriate now, along with efforts to aid.