Negro, Please
Harry Reid: Give Me One Reason to Stay Here
I honestly don’t understand where the lines are in discussions of race in this country.
Before I get into the recent controversy surrounding Harry Reid’s comments re: Barack Obama’s candidacy, I have to check two things at the door.
1. My general views on race/racism, wherein I believe that things would honestly be best if no one ever mentioned race ever again. As I’ve said many times in many contexts, the terms we use to describe “race” are basically divided into a racist’s view of people, cutting them up into randomly sorted skin colors that have nothing to do with their personhood or even genetics or nationality. Not only do we need to discard our current racial categories, but the more we talk about race in general, the more we entrench racism as a practice, because awareness of race creates racism. Especially because race is an invented racist construct. I could go on, but I’m describing something I’m going to suspend for the purpose of this post.
2. My insane distaste for political apologies of all stripes, let alone the timing of this one in particular. The time for Reid to apologize for these comments was in 2008, when he made them, not in 2010, when a book exposing them is about to be published. Which just demonstrates that Reid does mean what he said and isn’t sorry, which is true of everything every politician has ever said and apologized for. But usually there’s a 48-hour gap that makes the apology look more feasible than, say, a 2-year gap.
Now then. We can begin.
First of all, does no one remember that the sitting Vice President, a man hand-picked by Obama himself, Joe Biden, made similar racially charged comments re: Obama during the early part of the campaign? Please recall. Sure, he didn’t drop the word “Negro,” but he sure implied the same things Reid was talking about in his comments.
Also, can we talk about the word “Negro” for a second? When did that become offensive? I certainly think we can all agree “Colored People” sounds more offensive, but that’s right there in the name of one of the most respected institutions in the country, the National Association for the Advancement of, uh, Colored People. Weird, huh? And don’t tell me this is like a more nefarious n-word, that people in the group allegedly described by it can use it but others can’t. For one thing, a lot of people in that group still find the n-word offensive from anyone. For another, “Negro” just means “Black” in some other languages. MLK used it in almost all his speeches. Doesn’t it seem weird that this has morphed into something that everyone’s calling a “racial slur”? How did this happen?
Wikipedia says this term became offensive in the 1960’s, but I guess someone forgot to tell MLK that (seriously, it’s all over the I Have a Dream Speech)… or the United Negro College Fund, another top-notch organization for civil rights. Oh, and the 2010 Census Bureau.
Wait, what? Read that last paragraph of the Wikipedia article’s top section again. The first census conducted under a African-American/Black President will include a term that everyone thinks of as offensive? Isn’t that… odd?
I mean, can you imagine an actual racial slur appearing on the Census as an option just because some people might identify with it? Is “fag” going to show up in the sexual orientation box because it’s all over YouTube comments? I mean, what?
So I have to question whether the term is really even that offensive. But it goes beyond the term, sure, Reid was saying some damning things about Obama’s skin tone and linguistics. Right? Wasn’t he?
Well… maybe. I mean, let’s compare it to something CNN said all campaign long, starting about March 2007. CNN continually peppered America with the following question: “Is America ready for a Black President?”
Isn’t that racist? Isn’t that way more racist than anything else we’ve discussed here so far? (Except maybe the n-word.) I mean, seriously. What does that even mean, if not racism atop racism? Why wouldn’t America be ready for a Black President (or any kind of race or gender of President)? Either the question implies voters are racist as all hell or the question itself is racist, implying there’s some good reason they wouldn’t be ready.
If the voters are racist, then Reid’s comment can be taken in the same light as the question CNN and other media outlets spent the whole campaign blithely asking. Will American voters overcome their racism? And he said that because Obama’s skin tone is lighter than other African-Americans/Blacks (I mean this is just observable fact, right? After all, he’s, uh, half-Caucasian/White, remember.) and he doesn’t speak Ebonics, that Americans are more likely to overcome their racism. Now should he have said “Ebonics” instead of “Negro dialect”? Sure. Did he probably say the latter because his intent was to be more delicate and he feared saying “Ebonics” would somehow be more offensive because it might seem parodic? I bet.
The real issue with all this gets back to my fundamental view on race, which I agreed to check at the door but can’t anymore. Obama is Multiracial. We probably all are. But by any rubric in a post-octoroon society, Obama is neither Black nor White. And yet everyone assumes he’s Black. Because he looks Black. Because that’s all race is about, someone’s most superficial gut-check appearance.
In which case, why does analyzing that appearance become any more racist than referencing that appearance in the first place? And if racism is about assuming people will do something because they look a certain way, why isn’t categorizing people and dividing them up based solely on physical appearance the exact same thing? Race is racism. Fundamentally.
Which is probably why it’s so hard to draw lines and distinctions around what phrases, speculations, or comments are racist and aren’t. Because, really, they all are. But as long as we’re going to have everyone asking questions like “Is America ready for a Black President?,” I don’t see why we can’t make other observations about our racist-ass American voting public.