Betty Baye: Push Past Reid; It's [GOP Chairman Michael] Steele Who Merits Scrutiny.
Push past Reid; it's Steele who merits scrutiny
By Betty Baye
Unfortunately, some of the more thoughtful commentaries about Republicans' call for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resign — for saying privately that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's light skin and non-“Negro dialect” enhanced his chances of being elected — came a tad late.
They appeared only after Michael Steele and other Republicans had an entire weekend to perpetrate, virtually unchallenged by most in the supposedly liberal media, the fiction that Reid's comments were no different than former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott saying publicly that the country would be better off if an old segregationist, the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, had been elected president.
I don't know what's in Harry Reid's heart when it comes to black people. What I do know is that Reid was one of candidate Obama's earliest big-name Democratic supporters, and that Reid has possibly put at risk his own re-election by carrying the President's agenda in Congress so effectively that leaders of the Party of No want him out of office in the worst way.
Reid's remark ended up in a hot new political book. And the other day on “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg said that though America's first black president may be light-skinned to some, most black Americans don't see him that way. (FYI, white America: When you hear black people referencing someone as light-skinned, they're more inclined to be talking about persons with the complexions of radio personality Tom Joyner, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, the singer Beyoncé or someone local such as former state Sen. Georgia Powers.) I also don't know what Harry Reid considers a “Negro dialect,” but I do know that, unless you plan to go into rap music, slang talk isn't likely to advance your career aspirations.
Even so, though inartful, Reid's comments seemed to me less intended as an insult to Barack Obama than a fair assessment that color still does matter in America. Case in point is Tiger Woods. He spent a lifetime trying to distance himself from his black side. He even invented his own racial classification, and so long as Woods played well and toed the line, everybody, even black folks, left him free to enjoy a supposedly post-racial lifestyle.
But once news came that Woods was a womanizer, who'd often stepped out on his blond wife with other white women, he was reinvented into just a hypersexual black man. Vanity Fair's editors perpetrated the new image of Woods by digging into its vault and coming up with pre-scandal photos shot by the legendary Annie Leibovitz. It was no accident that they chose for the February 2010 cover a shot of a nearly naked Woods, wearing a black skull cap, sort of scowling and looking very much like a convict pumping iron in the yard.
Woods' skin may not have been darkened for the cover, but he looked suspiciously blacker than usual.
But back to Reid: What he said simply does not reach the level of suggesting that he's a Klansman who, therefore, should resign from the Senate, but that's what Steele and company were screaming for all weekend. Sadly, though Steele is ideally positioned as a GOP leader to lead intelligent discussions of race, he lacks the temperament and the icy discipline of President Obama, who has not been faultless, but has more often than not sought to use his new bully pulpit to enlighten people on matters of race and class.
Steele, on the other hand, squanders teachable moments. For example, while at a Republican gathering where he was asked to discuss his ideas for diversifying the GOP, someone hollered out to Steele, “I'll bring the collard greens,” and he replied, “I've got the fried chicken and potato salad.”
More recently, Steele appeared on the TV network that has elevated political race-baiting to a fine art. He was making the case that the Republican Party is fine as is, and then he added, “Honest Injun on that.”
When a white commentator pointed out to Steele that calling Native Americans “Injuns” is akin to calling a black person the “N-word,” Steele said, “Well, if it is (offensive), I apologize for it,” and then proceeded to thump Reid for using the term “Negro.” “The Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own. But if it comes from anyone else, it's racism.”
No, it's not racism, it's ignorance, and Michael Steele is old enough, and presumably black enough, to know better and to do better on behalf of his political party — one that has very few “Negroes” of whatever hue or other people of color.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
By Betty Baye
Unfortunately, some of the more thoughtful commentaries about Republicans' call for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resign — for saying privately that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's light skin and non-“Negro dialect” enhanced his chances of being elected — came a tad late.
They appeared only after Michael Steele and other Republicans had an entire weekend to perpetrate, virtually unchallenged by most in the supposedly liberal media, the fiction that Reid's comments were no different than former Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott saying publicly that the country would be better off if an old segregationist, the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, had been elected president.
I don't know what's in Harry Reid's heart when it comes to black people. What I do know is that Reid was one of candidate Obama's earliest big-name Democratic supporters, and that Reid has possibly put at risk his own re-election by carrying the President's agenda in Congress so effectively that leaders of the Party of No want him out of office in the worst way.
Reid's remark ended up in a hot new political book. And the other day on “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg said that though America's first black president may be light-skinned to some, most black Americans don't see him that way. (FYI, white America: When you hear black people referencing someone as light-skinned, they're more inclined to be talking about persons with the complexions of radio personality Tom Joyner, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, the singer Beyoncé or someone local such as former state Sen. Georgia Powers.) I also don't know what Harry Reid considers a “Negro dialect,” but I do know that, unless you plan to go into rap music, slang talk isn't likely to advance your career aspirations.
Even so, though inartful, Reid's comments seemed to me less intended as an insult to Barack Obama than a fair assessment that color still does matter in America. Case in point is Tiger Woods. He spent a lifetime trying to distance himself from his black side. He even invented his own racial classification, and so long as Woods played well and toed the line, everybody, even black folks, left him free to enjoy a supposedly post-racial lifestyle.
But once news came that Woods was a womanizer, who'd often stepped out on his blond wife with other white women, he was reinvented into just a hypersexual black man. Vanity Fair's editors perpetrated the new image of Woods by digging into its vault and coming up with pre-scandal photos shot by the legendary Annie Leibovitz. It was no accident that they chose for the February 2010 cover a shot of a nearly naked Woods, wearing a black skull cap, sort of scowling and looking very much like a convict pumping iron in the yard.
Woods' skin may not have been darkened for the cover, but he looked suspiciously blacker than usual.
But back to Reid: What he said simply does not reach the level of suggesting that he's a Klansman who, therefore, should resign from the Senate, but that's what Steele and company were screaming for all weekend. Sadly, though Steele is ideally positioned as a GOP leader to lead intelligent discussions of race, he lacks the temperament and the icy discipline of President Obama, who has not been faultless, but has more often than not sought to use his new bully pulpit to enlighten people on matters of race and class.
Steele, on the other hand, squanders teachable moments. For example, while at a Republican gathering where he was asked to discuss his ideas for diversifying the GOP, someone hollered out to Steele, “I'll bring the collard greens,” and he replied, “I've got the fried chicken and potato salad.”
More recently, Steele appeared on the TV network that has elevated political race-baiting to a fine art. He was making the case that the Republican Party is fine as is, and then he added, “Honest Injun on that.”
When a white commentator pointed out to Steele that calling Native Americans “Injuns” is akin to calling a black person the “N-word,” Steele said, “Well, if it is (offensive), I apologize for it,” and then proceeded to thump Reid for using the term “Negro.” “The Democrats feel that they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own. But if it comes from anyone else, it's racism.”
No, it's not racism, it's ignorance, and Michael Steele is old enough, and presumably black enough, to know better and to do better on behalf of his political party — one that has very few “Negroes” of whatever hue or other people of color.
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
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