Senator Reid

After watching all of the Republican Ruckus about Senator Reid, at the end of the day it was just another example of the standard attack mode of the RNC.  I find the attempt at equating Senator Reid's comments with those made by Senator Trent Lott a few years ago to be very offensive and illogical.  Lott praised a man known for his segregationist views and made the wish that he had become a president of the US.  Did Lott state that he wanted Jim Crow laws back and not just in the south?  It sure sounded like that to me.

I am not sure what I would call what came out of the other side of the political spectrum. If Senator Reid had been making those comments as part of a speech of his political and social views, then he did pick his words with little wisdom or tact. However, as I understand the comments as reported in the book, Game Change by John Heileman and Mark Halperin, Reid was making a political analysis of the US electorate and how that portion of the electorate would react to a black presidential candidate with then Senator Obama's oratorical skills and personal image.  I translated Reid's remarks to the following:  he, rightly, opined that a significantly component of the electorate would react badly to a very "black" black politician running for national office and that Obama's lighter skin color would negate or at least reduce that reaction.  

Watching an interview covering this topic on CNN, I was told that many of the darker skinned blacks find this situation intolerable, as raw discrimination.  This is new to me and very unsettling to me to be told by two members of the Black community that this splitting of hairs exists.

As politicians, Senator Reid and I cannot be blinded by fantasy or political correctness. This type of blindness would and has lead to political disasters like the special Senate seat election in Massachusetts. We have to deal with reality and if possible the truth. Telling the truth, when that truth is unpleasant to hear, is often greeted with rejection.  But it is, unfortunately, the truth.  And if this attitude about reality, truth, and discrimination is ever to go away, the truth, the fact that it is there now, must be faced before it can be worked out of our national culture.