from the Washington POST:
Harry Reid’s ill-advised, accurate, analysis
BY RUTH MARCUS
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acted like an idiot.
Also, he was right.
It’s a measure of the suffocating culture of political correctness that it feels risky to say that. It’s a measure of the insulting how-dumb-do-they-think-we-are culture of incessant partisanship that Republicans leapt on Reid’s remarks as racist.
Reid, assessing Obama’s chances in 2008, cited the fact that the candidate was a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Those ill-advised comments, to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann for their new book, “Game Change,” have produced an apology by Reid to the president. That was followed immediately by presidential forgiveness: “As far as I am concerned, the book is closed.”
Not quite.
For a politician, especially a white politician, to comment on another politician’s race is treacherous. Remember Joe Biden’s “articulate and bright and clean” description of Obama in 2007?
For anyone in public life to use the word “Negro” in 2008 is beyond stupid. What was once polite has become demeaning. (Although, interestingly enough, the U.S. Census chose to retain the word on the 2010 census form because so many respondents wrote it in 10 years ago.)
The lame explanation offered by an aide — that the remarks were not intended for use in the book — is about as convincing as Jesse Jackson’s assertion that he did not consider his “Hymietown” comments to the Washington Post’s Milton Coleman on the record. (“Let’s talk black talk,” Jackson had said to Coleman.)
But there’s a big difference between Reid 2008 and Jackson 1984 — or, more to the point, Lott 2002. When the then-soon-to-be-former Majority Leader Trent Lott said that the United States could have avoided “all these problems” if Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist campaign for president had succeeded, there was an unmistakable — if unintended — whiff of racism. As much as Republican critics would like to use the incident for partisan purposes, Reid’s blundering comments were made in the context of supporting an African American candidate, not praising a segregationist one.
Not that critics were stopped by this distinction. “These are fairly racist comments,” declared Liz Cheney on ABC’s “This Week.” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who ought to have some charity toward those who say dumb things, called on Reid to step down as majority leader.
So much for the idiotic part. But, to a degree, Reid’s assessment of the salience of Obama’s skin tone was relevant. Not only do we not live in a colorblind society, we live in an exquisitely color-sensitive one. A 2007 study that used magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain reactions to photos of light- and dark-skinned subjects found more activity within the amygdala, which reflects arousal to perceived threats, when dark-skinned faces were shown. “Disconcertingly, to the extent that Afrocentric features increase the likelihood of making stereotypic inferences, this may result in severe consequences for those possessing high levels of Afrocentric features,” the authors wrote.
As for “Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” well, do we all have to pretend we don’t know what Reid is talking about? There is a distinctly recognizable African American voice and some African Americans dial it up or down depending on the setting. It was striking during the campaign how Hawaii-born, Indonesia-raised, Chicago-living Obama sounded so strikingly southern when he was campaigning in southern states. That “blaccent” was useful to Obama in some venues. But I have little doubt that it would have been held against him by some white voters, perhaps subconsciously, if it were his regular voice.
Reid’s analysis was correct. Even if it was, as he said in a masterpiece of understatement, “a poor choice of words.”
By Ruth Marcus | January 10, 2010

If there is only one race, the human race, scientifically referred to as “homo sapiens”, why then, is a person considered “biracial” or “multi-racial”. Come let us reason together….perhaps the word “racist” as the scientists
below have advised, should be abandoned. It creates division.
Scientists are now agreeing that, biologically, there is only one “race” of humans.
For example, a scientist at an Advancement of Science Convention in Atlanta declared:
“Race is a social construct derived mainly from perceptions conditioned by events of recorded history, and it has no basic biological reality.”
The word “race,” therefore, should be abandoned—it is meaningless.”
Blessings of all that aspire to inspire the oneness of the human race, Zarayah Israel

I think when the founding fathers wrote the standards by which a man could be president they weren’t thinking of race, they were thinking of the good of the nation. That is no longer the case in America. Men think of the presidency as a job or a place to get their political agenda heard. In my honest opinion, and the facts that I was taught in military school, the government of America was just supposed to be enforced to protect its citizens against foreign invaders. The states were supposed to govern themselves according to their own standards and ways of living. How and when did it become so backwards that the government is more important than the people being governed?

Excellent blog by Rabbi Brad and other comments.
What I came away with here is that scapegoating is an American pastime. America , in addition to becoming a fast-food nation craves looking through peep-holes to see all emotional and spiritual pornography of it’s idols and icons. One merely has to check out the sales of Enquirer and Globe type magazines or check the number of ‘hits’ on web sites detailing all the current foibles, sins and misadventures of our elite to see the trend.
One of the most efficient vehicles for labeling sins against the people has been and now is political correctness. Political correctness threatens to drive the ‘truth’ underground and censor what should be open discussion and debate. The climate today isn’t unlike children who decide to gain parental approval by pointing out a sibling’s fault or disobedience to the point that every move by the sibling is deemed ‘punishable’ so the one sibling is always shouting, ‘MOM !DAD! ‘B’ is doing this and B is doing that, and B said this , and B is making faces at me AND AND AND!!
Some of the worst offenders are those counted among the ranks of our partisan politicians. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like this ‘MOM DAD LOOK” has really escalated since the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. Since then each side almost immediately finds an action or issue in a rep from the ‘other side’ and starts screaming..”look! look! step down ! racist !”
I agree with Starla Lloyd, political office , especially the Presidency is far afield from serving the people. Rather, it is a prize to won like an Academy Award or a Grammy and that just can’t be good for America’s future.

The important part too me is that he recognized that Obama had “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to”. The “wanted to” is the key for me. I noticed during the campaign that he spoke one way speaking to one group and another way speaking to another group.