Another educated opinion.

Professor Eugene Volokh, himself an immigrant, doesn't understand the fuss over Harry Reid's comments either:

The complaints about Sen. Reid’s quote (“He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was 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,’ as he later put it privately”) strike me as much ado about relatively little.

First, the substance. As I understand it, Sen. Reid was simply about what he saw as political reality: that a majority of voters would be ready to accept a lighter-skinned black man who spoke mainstream English, but that only a minority voters (sic) would be ready to accept someone who was darker-skinned or who generally spoke non-mainstream English. This is a report of what Sen. Reid perceives as racism against dark-skinned blacks; it is certainly not itself racism against blacks.
...
Finally, I’ve seen some people suggest that if a Republican had made this statement, he would have been faulted by the media in a way that Reid has not been. That may be so, though it’s hard to tell for certain.

Which comes first? The racist assumptions, or the well-meaning acknowledgement of it that artificially holds someone back because of their ethnicity -- evidenced by their physical looks?

Coming from the Chicago area myself, where you get all shades of black people, I can't imagine vocalizing that you think most Americans would choose their president not only because of his skin color, but more importantly, his skin tone.

So had he been a bit darker -- with a big honking Harold Washington nose, perhaps inherited from two ethnically black parents, say direct descendants of the talented tenth unconcerned with intermarraige for the sole purpose about lightening the stock -- all bets on Senator Obama's advancement within the Democratic party would be off?

And the liberals and intellectual professors are o.k. admitting that aloud? I wonder if Reid would have passed on a results-oriented, more qualified, "blacker" black man, or if he would have seen that candidacy as doomed, not worth supporting until someone with a more passable skin tone was put up...

What exactly are you telling American children with that kind of color analysis? Specifically darker black American children? That no matter how good you are -- based on the content of your character, the quality of your ideas and promised proposals -- keep waiting until we educated white folk are more comfortable with your external appearances?

And if you buy this tripe, is it any wonder Sammy Sosa was going for the skin bleaching, when he had the money to improve himself, to be more acceptable to Harry Reid's measured majority that both Klein and Volokh seem to believe exists? I think they both underestimate America, and how most mature people choose candidates.

I guess it's good at least that these types are revealing their true colors, what standards they use to evaluate career credibility, which definitely helps explain why the country is faltering under the type of intellectual leadership that substitutes rigorous evaluation of policy proposals with a superficial analysis that cuts only skin deep.

ADDED:
A wise comment here.

Scott M said...
He may not be racist, technically. What I believe his sin here to be paternalism. This is the "next big thing" in race politics. I say this because not only are the pundits on both side mentioning it more, the rank and file people I deal with, of all stripes, have had it with this so-called soft-racism or the racism of lowered expectations.

If you believe innately that an entire group of people produce exceptional examples that cut against the norm (dark skin, "negro" dialect) then regardless of whether you dislike that group as a whole, you're judging them by a different standard.

1/11/10 11:29 AM

It's sad when the professors, even the in the softer more PC California public schools, fall for that type of evaluation. Especially when they can't see how they are artificially distinguishing between peoples.
vbspurs said...

Scott M wrote:
He may not be racist, technically. What I believe his sin here to be paternalism.

The deep irony here, regarding the UK versus the USA in race relations, is that we are said to have gone from paternalistic (White Man's Burden) to racist.

In America, you are going from racist to paternalistic.

1/11/10 11:44 AM