Much Ado About Nothing

So Harry Reid made some comments about whether Obama could win election based on his speech and skin color. Big deal! He was absolutely right, for one thing, and wasn't saying anything everyone else wasn't already saying or thinking at the time.

Obama, if successful, would be the first President with any known African ancestry. Considering this country's history with slavery, this was more than a pretty big deal, it would be monumental. It had been tried before and those other potential presidents failed. What the white voters needed was some reassurance that this person wasn't some scary guy from the hood, so the more he resembled them, the better. Reid just said it out loud. And we are forgetting the context.

If Reid said it, so did all the political pundits at the time, as well as the common folk who call in to talk radio shows. I listened to that stuff constantly, from MPR to liberal political talk station shows. Even the African American callers were speculating as to whether Obama was black enough or too black to win the highest office in the land. Very little conversation at first was about his being president of the Harvard Law Review or a community organizer or a non-philanderer with a lovely family, or liberal enough or too liberal on whatever issue under discussion. It was all, "He's black. Can he win? How black is he?"

All those in an uproar today seem to forget that there was another parallel discussion going on in this country at the same time. Hillary Clinton if successful would be our first woman President. Was she feminine/masculine enough? Or too much? After all, we were at war, and a significant segment of our population didn't believe a woman could lead a war. She needed to out-macho the good-ol'-boys, and when she looked like she was going to be successful at that, suddenly she was being called a lesbian!

Our country badly needed to grow up, but that process involved months of discussing racial issues and hinting at racial issues and tiptoeing around racial issues. Ditto for gender issues, though without so much tiptoeing.

So what if Harry used the word "negro"? Yes, it's badly outdated, but for his generation it was the legal usage and term of respect. Much worse were common. OK, Reid's a dinosaur. Big deal, move on. Remember Senator Stevens talking about the internet as a series of tubes? Dinosaurs abound in the political arena. They also abound in our communities and families, if we are lucky. Of course he could do well for himself in updating his PC language, but what he said was nothing more or less than the truth, making the political calculation that the whole country was making at the time. This particular black man, with his particular traits, might be able to win the highest office in the land!

A final word here, not about Obama or Reid, but going back to the late 60's and some of the best, most biting satire at the time. The Chad Mitchell Trio did a short skit that I still love, that points out an earlier struggle by a politician trying to be PC. You heard two voices, one coaching the other until the pronunciation gradually changed from "nigra" in a very southern (Texas) accent, to "neee-grow". Once successful, the coaching voice called out, "OK, Dr. King, the President will see you now." It seems Lyndon Johnson had his own learning curve.