IS SENATOR REID A RACIST?  OF COURSE NOT! 

          I truly feel sorry for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.  He suddenly found himself in trouble for simply being a gentleman…for being candid, insightful and truthful in a private conversation.  The only thing he did wrong (but, it was “wrong” only in the context of unprincipled, savage Republican partisan politics!), was to utter a wonderful, promising assessment of America’s Caucasian-American people demonstrating that at long last they, as a Group, had crossed over a major psychological hurdle.  

          In a private conversation about the 2008 Presidential contest with two writers, perhaps “scalawags” is  a better term, i.e., Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, authors of the newest political tome, Game Changer, Senator Reid noted to the two writers that he felt that,  

“…the Country is ready to embrace a Black Presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama–a light-skinned African-American with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one…” (emphasis added);

while it was actually Halperin and Heilemann who added the supposedly offending language reading,

“…there is no way to read that other than Reid recognizing that there is prejudice in America against darker-skinned African-Americans and those who speak in Black American dialect…(emphasis added.)

          The dramatic, even immense irony here is in that: a.) Reid offered nothing more than a hopeful, positive assessment of a change in mind-set of much of the American people over his lifetime (and mine) which makes it possible for a person who is clearly of partial African-American descent to become our President; and b.) it was the authors, and other scalawags such as Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and all of the Fox News “big money establishment” that were saying that these lines, recognizing a truth about some Caucasian-Americans, proved that Reid is a racist!!!  This suggests that all of these named persons other than Reid are either: a.) very young with no sense or understanding of this Nation’s history since the settlement of Jamestown in 1604 and the subsequent introduction of institution of slavery by Great Britain, France, The Netherlands, and Spain which stained, and strained, the psyche of Caucasian-Americans for over three hundred years, or b.) they are all opportunistic liars operating only as obstructive partisans seeking what is good for themselves with no sense of right and wrong.

          Anyone still living in America today who lived as a child or teenager from the late 1930’s through the 1960’s, if they be honest, has to remember that there was during those times a simple basic truth, a shameful fact, about the relationship between African-Americans and a large percentage of Caucasian-Americans.  From the ignominious past of slavery and its demanded, institutionalized servility (and the occasional frightful resistance to it), there developed within a large group of Caucasian-Americans an intangible, sometimes even vaporous concern, not often rising to the level of fear, about “those most unlike us.”  Even if one has totally overcome the feeling in his or her conscious mind, this unease, nonetheless, lies hidden there in the generational memory of this very large group of persons. 

          It is really this simple.  The word “Racist” describes a person or group of persons who foster hatred and intolerance of people of other races out of fear or ideological belief of superiority of themselves over the other.   Sometimes racism even exists because some have fear of another group, sometimes of the vaporous kind noted above.  But the key is that over time and as African-Americans have assimilated more and more into the totality of society and have shown there is no difference in inherent intellectual potential, the unease, concern or fear has by degrees diminished–and, hopefully, within the lifetime of my children it will be absolutely eradicated and no one will be concerned whatsoever about the color of one’s skin or his or her manner of speaking if he or she be a person of courage, intellect and honesty.  

          With this proper understanding of racism and its fitful expunction from our society, any honest person has to recognize that nothing Senator Reid has done marks him as a racist.  He simply stated an absolute, unquestioned sociological and psychological truth in an honest, candid and caring manner. 

          I am so proud that we as a society have come so far since I was a youth in the 1950’s when many Caucasian-Americans often referred to a person who had the skin color and even the intellectual ability of President Barak Obama as a “High Yeller.”  In the year 2010, thankfully for all of us, most of us have progressed to the point that we can gladly address him as “Mr. President.”  That was Senator Reid’s meaning.  

Don Switzer

Rogers, Arkansas

(c) January 15, 2010

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