Another Perspective
Reid Isn't Racist
Which isn't to say the effect of Democrat policies isn't.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's comments about Barack Obama being "light-skinned" and speaking with no "Negro dialect" offer Republicans a real opportunity -- but not the one they seem to think. Other than the entertainment value of watching Democratic senators and Al Sharpton briefly scurry around, like ants after the top of their anthill is disturbed, there is little or nothing to be gained by wondering aloud whether Harry Reid is a racist, by calling for him to step down as leader, or by accusing the Democrats of hypocrisy.
Harry Reid is many things, from union puppet to war defeatist to lame duck, but he's almost certainly not a racist. Accusing him of being one makes Republicans look petty.
Because Reid has, albeit to the nation's great detriment, maneuvered an all-but-dead health care "reform" bill through the Senate and due to his upcoming reelection bid, it is inconceivable that he will step down as Majority Leader. Pushing him to do so -- a push sure to end in failure -- makes Republicans look weak, like a spoiled child pounding his hands on his mother's leg when he doesn't get his way.
And accusing Democrats of hypocrisy -- even if true, which is a hard case to make in this situation -- is the single least effective charge against liberals. Liberals are not about principles, they are about outcomes. Their actions are not premised on a foundation of certain actions being inherently right or wrong nor are they weighed against campaign promises of a certain standard of behavior; rather they are utilitarian, believing that almost any actions are acceptable if they take one step further down the road toward their goal of government control over…everything.
Democratic promises of transparency lead to closed-door deals. Promises of fiscal discipline lead to record-shattering deficits. But Democrats don't care, and won't care; each broken promise was in the service of their desired outcome. Liberals will never be moved by charges of hypocrisy. In their minds, there is no such thing -- except for Republicans. Sure, some independent voters might be swayed by the accusation, but just as many will find it an unnecessary distraction and blame Republicans for taking their eye off the ball.
The responses of many Republican and conservative leaders to Harry Reid's somewhat bizarre remarks are indeed like stirring the sand at the top of the anthill: a little furious action visible at the top, but below the surface, the colony keeps on trudging through its daily routine barely aware of any disturbance.
Instead of the unproductive direct attack on Harry Reid, Republicans should instead use the opening to bring up to black Americans the fundamental and perpetual question: Why do you continue to support a political party whose actions have done more harm to the black community than any policy since Jim Crow?
The literal poster child for anti-black Democratic policies is any student from the D.C. school voucher program, canceled with Barack Obama's acquiescence by Senate Democrats to appease the National Education Association, one of the biggest contributors to Democrats' campaign coffers. Multiple surveys show that a majority of blacks favor vouchers to help get kids out of failing schools. And why wouldn't they, with studies showing that black students in voucher programs score substantially higher on national math and reading tests than black students stuck in the public school system?
There is nothing as insidious, as likely to keep a poor person poor, as a bad education. Yet, it is Republicans who argue for school choice even though "the party of rich white people" has little to gain from the policy and poor blacks have everything to gain.
Republicans should also point to Social Security personal accounts. The payroll tax to fund Social Security is generally the largest tax paid by low-income workers, many of whom are black. Sadly, blacks, especially males, have a shorter life expectancy than whites, making the current system effectively a transfer of wealth from young black men to old white women.
Social Security is not inheritable whereas personal accounts would be, potentially representing in the aggregate an enormous source of wealth for the black community. But Democrats fight bitterly against personal accounts because they would reduce the power of government and politicians. They would reduce the money flowing through government and cause lower-income Americans to suddenly recognize themselves as part of the investor class with a real stake in wise economic policy decisions.
There are other issues as well: Blacks are religious and socially conservative. And the Democratic Party's utter devotion to abortion on demand serves the wishes of Planned Parenthood, the organization founded by Margaret Sanger whose primary motivation was a racist eugenic drive to discourage and prevent blacks from having children.
It's true that the GOP has enormous hurdles to cross in order to get even a respectable minority of the black vote. But with elections decided as closely as they have been in recent years, peeling off just a single digit percentage of black voters for Republicans could make a very big difference in the makeup of governments across America.
Rather than flailing about calling Harry Reid a racist, Republicans and conservatives should take a smarter tack: Remind black voters at every turn that Reid's statements didn't reflect racism, but that the policies which he supports are as virulently racist in effect as anything one can find in modern America.
About the Author
Ross Kaminsky is a self-employed trader and investor and is a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute. He blogs at Rossputin.com and is the host of The Ross Kaminsky Show on Denver's NewsRadio 850 KOA on Sundays from 11 AM to 2 PM.
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drudge ette obama| 1.19.10 @ 6:15AM
Harry Reid is a clumsy politician who spills out his true thoughts on occasion, such as he did with the light-skinned, nonNegro dialect remark. Despite the change in the mainstream Mormon religion that blacks aren't decendants from the devil - Reid is too old, despite Botox, to have completely eradicated the old Mormon views from his mind thought. And he will do almost anything to divorcec himself from that longtime traditional belief. Race focused politics know this, hence the advantage taken recently by black politicians who most assuredly received som good old fashioned quid pro quo for standing by this powdery buffoon named Reid.
Ned| 1.19.10 @ 7:00AM
It's called the bigotry of lowered expectations. That about covers any plan the Democrats have to solve, in their minds, a race inequality.
But none of that really matters now concerning Harry. It was found yesterday, when the “dinghy one” was going through his old Mormon genealogy files that he, himself, is indeed black.
You see, Harry is the lightest of the light skinned Negroes, so he has a pass to say anything he wants to about race and can not be a racist.
Senator Reid said that he had forgotten about this long ago, but due to the present circumstances his mind was jogged into recalling this little known fact. "My wife used to wonder why at night while I was talking in my sleep, my dialect would return to its negro roots. Once I fell asleep in the Senate Chamber and when I woke up several of the Senators and a few of the colored page boys were giving me some really strange looks. I feared what had happened, so I told everyone I was having a nightmare about how rough it was for Negroes to survive in old days. My empathy was so strong I dreamed I was colored and suffered their same plight."
Harry says “My very, very, light skin keeps folks from knowing I am colored. That is how I got elected to Senator. Being a Mormon made it hard enough, but to leap that hurdle all I had to do was order a cup of regular coffee with my meals and keep my temple garments covered up, and the Nevada folks would think I was a Jack-Mormon and therefore electable.”
Later in the day, Harry sensing he was in clear water with the press also stated that he was lucky he didn’t inherit big lips and a large squashed out nose, not to mention the frizzy hair. He said “If that had still been in my genes I would never have won public office and would be lucky to be on the end of some kind of affirmative action benefit, or some other program us Democrats have gave the Negro race.”
drudge ette obama| 1.19.10 @ 7:11AM
Dear god, Ned. Go get a glass of orange juice and sit in the corner.
Ned| 1.19.10 @ 11:42PM
Can I come out of the corner, please.
drudge ette obama| 1.20.10 @ 6:07AM
Ned, today you can eat dessert all day if you want!
qwilly| 1.19.10 @ 7:22AM
No truer words have ever been written.
Appleby| 1.19.10 @ 7:24AM
Yelling YOUARACIST! has long ago lost any force and effect it might have had, except with the class of people who are in fact bigots, not racists, and try to cover it up by pretending they are the ardent fans and champions of those they personally look down upon. When I was working for the Education Board in a Southern city years ago, the supervisor was one of these types. After I left that job for a law firm, I got a Black friend who was too good to waste his life in the government a job in that firm too. He reported that the aforesaid supervisor told him that a person of his race would never be allowed to succeed in a firm run by wealthy White men. Naturally she turned out to be wrong. My friend was not shocked by her attitude, but I was. I am not shocked anymore.
madhaxus| 1.19.10 @ 7:31AM
Reid's gaffe was his way of making the case for an Obama candidacy to a group he assumed were, at a minimum, suspicious of supporting an African American for president: he's light skinned (black, but not enough to scare anybody) and no negro dialect (sounds intelligent, not another ryhmin' Jesse Jackson type) unless he wants to have a dialect (speaking to other blacks in the party base). Remarkable that the Left has been able to successfully spin this as "racial but not racist."
Alan Brooks| 1.19.10 @ 10:38AM
Reid isn't racist-- he is senile.
Derek Leaberry| 1.19.10 @ 12:45PM
Reid isn't a racist and blacks are not socially conservative. People with a 70% + illegitimacy rate, a high crime rate, a relatively high abortion rate and a high promiscuity rate are not conservative but libertine.
Ned| 1.19.10 @ 1:17PM
I think individually black folks are no different than any other group of people. The problem is leadership, and the only leadership the media recognizes is that which plays the victim card. I do, however, have faith this will change over time. Not the media, but more and more leaders who are tired of sucking hind tit will emerge and lead them out of Democrat encouraged servitude.
Alan Brooks| 1.19.10 @ 5:16PM
"I do, however, have faith this will change over time."
A very long time-- only Marxists think otherwise.
MAJ Mike| 1.19.10 @ 1:50PM
Reid isn't necessarily a racist, but he is certainly an elitist (recall his comment about the odor of tourists, “My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it’s true.”). It's hard to make a case that he is more contemptuous of African-Americans than he is of any other group of taxpayers, but it is very easy to make the case that the Democratic Party hosts the only sitting senator who was a KKK member, Robert Byrd of West Virginia. In addition to his having been a "Kleagle" with a long record of racist commentary, Byrd, when presented with the opportunity to play a small role in the movie Gods and Generals, chose to play a Confederate general, despite the fact that West Virginia, his home state, was founded because it refused to secede with the rest of Virginia. Any racial incidents involving any member of the senate should immediately trigger a reminder of Byrd's history.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 1.20.10 @ 5:18AM
I see the media is doing what the media does well. The comment by Harry Reid wasn't so much directed at Obama as it was towards white America and it wasn't true. At the very least it portrays an individual steeped in true ignorance and elitism. Taken as a belief of Harry Reid, it is more indicative of the Democratic Party long term policy towards blacks. Give them free cheese and condemn them to live in ghettos. There they have no chance of a real life and the few who escape are looked at and further defined with terms like clean and articulate vis a vis Joe Biden, another Democratic moron.
Margie| 1.20.10 @ 2:03PM
You are correct. Harry Reid's pronouncement of racism upon Americans reflects the man's own character. Try as they may Liberals can't erase the truth.
Leftist race mongers just can't believe that all people just don't believe the way that they do.
ehliyet| 1.23.10 @ 4:07PM
Reid's gaffe was his way of making the case for an Obama candidacy to a group he assumed were, at a minimum, suspicious of supporting an African American for president: he's light skinned (black, but not enough to scare anybody) and no negro dialect (sounds intelligent, not another ryhmin' Jesse Jackson type) unless he wants to have a dialect (speaking to other blacks in the party base). Remarkable that the Left has been able to successfully spin this as "racial but not racist."
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