It's not Harry Reid who should be apologizing [View All]

[liberal N proud]

His remarks about Obama, however indelicate, carried an unfortunate truth. The real scandal is comparing him to Trent Lott, as Republican Michael Steele did.

Harry Reid doesn't owe me an apology.

Sure, it was a little odd to see the term "Negro" used outside of a history class or documentary. Sounds like Reid is stuck in the last century.

But the Senate majority leader didn't say anything many Americans -- especially us Negroes -- don't already know.

If you're black, it is easier in this country to be light-skinned.

That's borne out not just by anecdote and experience, but by research documenting favorable treatment for fair-skinned blacks in criminal cases, employment prospects, even social and romantic liaisons.

<snip>

I think the next apology ought to come from Michael Steele -- the light-skinned, dialectically flexible African American head of the Republican National Committee.

Steele has called for Reid to step down as majority leader, likening him to Trent Lott, the former Mississippi senator rebuked in 2002 for saying he was "proud" that his state had supported a segregationist candidate in the 1948 presidential election.

That candidate was Strom Thurmond, who famously declared during his White House campaign: "All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."

Either Steele is playing politics with a combustible case, or he thinks Americans are so incapable of thinking intelligently about race that we can't tell the difference between Lott and Reid.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/newsletter/la-na-reid-banks11-2010jan11,0,3725336.column