Leave Senator Harry Reid Alone: His Comments WEREN'T Racist

The coverage of Sen. Harry Reid’s comments (from the book Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin) that then-candidate Barack Obama stood a good chance of being elected President because he is “light-skinned” and has “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one” is truly much ado about nothing - despite contrary viewpoint.

Fortunately, in a CNN interview, Dr. Boyce Watkins defends Sen. Reid and opines that he is NOT a racist. Unfortunately, he opines that his comments were. Similarly, in a Fox News interview, Rev. Al Sharpton offers that Sen. Reid’s statements pale in comparison to those of former Senator-turned-lobbyist Trent Lott, while contending that he was offended by Reid‘s words.

For those who don’t remember, in 2002, at a birthday party for noted segregationist/longtime Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, Lott said this:

“I want to say this about my state [Mississippi, which Lott represented]: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [in 1948, as a Dixiecrat], 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 all these years, either.”

(CNN.com 12/09/2002)

What did Trent mean by the “other problems”? Well, it might help to recall that, according to the same CNN article, Strom Thurmond - then a self-avowed segregationist - was quoted during his 1948 presidential campaign as saying that,

"All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."

And his Dixiecrat Party’s platform declared that,

"We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race."

Clearly, Lott’s praise of Thurmond - and obviously his Dixiecrat platform as a cure-all for “all these problems over the years” - are no comparison to Sen. Reid’s comments.

Answering The Call

President Obama has nothing to apologize for. He said the Cambridge Police Department officers ACTED stupid-LY in arresting Prof. Henry Gates! He didn't call THEM stupid. People need to differentiate between calling a person or persons "stupid" and declaring that they performed a "stupid act" -- that is, unless they are too STUPID to know the difference.
Having said that, Professor Gates' experience probably wasn't "racial profiling", though, and no lawsuit would probably allege that. Still -- as hinted to by Obama -- that a Black man would cry "racism" in this circumstance is understandable given our (and Latinos') experiences with police officers.
Is the fact that the Black cop (Sgt. Leon Lashley) stood up for the White cop (Sgt. James Crowley) in any way determinative? No. That just shows that the true problem is a “blue” one -- not black nor white. Lashley stated to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Crowley was within his rights to arrest Professor Gates. He added that -- because Gates was loud -- he would have arrested him, also. It didn’t matter to Lashley that Gates was on his porch -- “he was outside”, he said.

Controlling Israel

The recent arrest and detention of former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and 20 others aboard the “Spirit of Humanity” by the Israeli Navy raises serious concerns. It’s easy to dismiss this event as the result of the former lawmaker meddling where she doesn’t belong. And maybe I’m not so dismissive because I have long admired this woman for her championing the causes of the least of these -- something President Obama used to do when he was a community organizer. Of course, that was before his desire to help the least of these was replaced by his desire to just maintain power. But I guess power is intoxicating. Since I’ve never had it, I wouldn’t know.

Two points I would like to make here. The first is that the internment of Palestinians by Israeli terrorists is equally as cruel as the “Black Holocaust” of slavery and colonialization. And to ask these people to “denounce violence” as President Obama suggests is tantamount to asking Nat Turner, et al not to participate in insurrections but to instead wait until Massa’s conscience weighed on him. One should be able to understand the urgency of removing a foot from one’s neck. Breathing is fundamental!

IS AMERICAN JUSTICE TRULY BLIND?

Troy Anthony Davis, convicted in 1991 for the fatal shooting of a Savannah, Georgia police officer is still embroiled in what has become a 19 year odyssey to save his life. Seven of the nine witnesses against him have recanted their stories -- many alleging police coercion. Yet he has twice come within hours of a scheduled execution - the first time within 24 hours of death and the second time within two. As per eyewitness testimony, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. offered the following on courant.com in his article today entitled, “Grief, Rage Pave Path to Deadly Injustice”:

   Last year, Brandon Garrett, a professor of law at the University of Virginia studied 200 cases in which people were freed from prison after DNA evidence proved them innocent. He found that erroneous eyewitness identifications were the leading cause of wrongful convictions, occurring in 79 percent of the cases he studied.

In the meantime, famed author and attorney Vincent Bugliosi is calling for the prosecution of President George W. Bush for murder to very little media fanfare. He correctly asserts in an excerpt from his New York Times bestseller, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder”, that if President Bush lied to get our country to invade Iraq (as most Americans believe), he should be tried for the murder of our soldiers. Bugliosi also highlights Bush’s own attitude as Texas governor that mass murderers deserve the death penalty versus life imprisonment. All of this begs the questions: Why is Troy Anthony Davis still fighting for his life while George W. Bush hasn’t even been indicted? Is American justice truly blind?

BLACK YOUTH REVOLUTION

WARNING! EXPLICIT CONTENT!

The race-deprecation and misogyny saturating the hip-hop lyrics that American distributors unfortunately deem to make hip-hop most profitable, is obviously disturbing to most of us -- as recent outcries would attest. But calling for hip-hop artists to be fired will not work. Their music is considered to be protected artistic expression. Some of us may not like it, but neither the artists nor their distributors are likely to incur Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fines. They make “clean” versions available for radio and, although there are some videos that skirt the line of decency, they are still probably within the realm of FCC regulations. Thus, rather than dwelling on unfruitful strategies for purging hip-hop music, we need to concentrate on strategies that are likely to work.

The most effective stratagem for the eradication of race-deprecation and misogyny in hip-hop is education. The first concession we must make is that the expressions emanating from hip-hop -- just like country and western, rock and roll, comedy, and cinema -- are reflections of the society we live in. Granted, they don’t reflect the entire picture of society, but no artistic endeavor strives to or is capable of doing that.

Knowing why American society in general and black society in particular exhibits such race-deprecation and misogyny allows us to attack these ills within the black community and, residually, within the reflections of our community -- in music, comedy, and cinema. Thus, black folks in general -- and hip-hop artists, comedians, and the performing arts industry in particular -- must be educated on the underpinnings that drive this phenomenon. First I will address race-deprecation and then misogyny in the black community. In both instances I will -- as Isaiah Washington’s character in the movie “Love Jones” intimated -- “break it down so that it will forever be broke[n] down”.

BEING FAIR

When Tim Russert passed earlier this year, many of his colleagues characterized him as a journalist who was tough, but fair. I have never have I had a problem being tough, but journalistic fairness is still a work in progress for me. On the other hand, I’m more of an activist than journalist. My writings are more about persuading than reporting -- more about calls to action than mere dissemination of information. But for now, I’ll try this “fairness thing”.

The titles of my blog and internet radio program -- A More Perfect Union --reflect the goal of America, not its reality. From time to time, I have reminded “my fellow Americans” that the “original intent” of our Founding Fathers’ call for “a more perfect union” was the promotion of the American Dream for white male landowners only. I have reminded them that there was no intent to include white male non-landowners, white women, blacks and other ethnic groups, laborers, gays and trans-gendered, unions, nor poor people of any ethnicity. Thus, throughout the history of this great nation all other demographic groups outside of the preferred group -- white male landowners -- have had to protest and struggle for inclusion, mostly by regurgitating the eloquent words of our Founding Fathers. Usually, this has been done with full knowledge of their original intent -- our exclusion. Thus, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. challenged America to “live out the full meaning of its creed. That we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. And more than three centuries later, his daughter -- Rev. Bernice King -- admonished in her trial sermon that American politicians “say what [they] mean and mean what [they] say”.

While switching from C-Span’s full coverage of the Democratic National Convention to CNN’s and MSNBC’s selective coverage, initially I was inwardly tough on the latter two. How dare these political pundits on CNN and MSNBC decide whose speech was and whose wasn’t important enough for the American people to hear, I thought. On C-Span I heard numerous everyday citizens -- as well as lesser known politicians -- speak of the difficulty of survival in today’s economy and the need for a new governmental focus that includes all Americans, and not the mere upper echelon. One could feel the ambiance in the convention hall. Delegates and others danced and swayed to an eclectic array of music, clearly exhibiting the convention theme of that “common thread” uniting Americans -- belief in the possibility of the American Dream. Michelle Obama poignantly addressed that common thread and all those before and after her echoed the same.