During the campaign season of 2008, Harry Reid referred to then-candidate Obama as a man being “light-skinned” and having “no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.” In essence, Reid, using a term to describe black people from a segregationist south, asserted that Obama was a black man of convenience and could turn on and off his blackness at his leisure.
How tasty, right?
As could be expected, since this wasn’t a right winger that said it, we’re being told again and again that we had to take it context. After all, when you’re a left-winger, like Reid, and you make a racist remark or use a racially derogatory term, the context must be discerned and true intent must be deciphered. Context in other cases, of course, is irrelevant, because if you’re a right-winger or a non-approved white person, you’re a racist; context-be-damned.
To be clear, there has been nearly no universal outrage at Harry Reid’s remarks, and he hasn’t distanced himself from them. In fact, he not only admits having made them, but he has apologized to President Obama who called for Trent Lott and Don Imus’ heads on a platter after Lott made a remark that could only be interpreted as racist (it wasn’t outwardly racist no matter how tortured your look at it is) and Don Imus’ “Nappy Headed Ho” remark. Needless to say, Obama immediately accepted the apology because, as stated earlier, Reid is an approved white person. Apparently, in context, with the benefit of being Black Approvedtm, you can call the president a Negro of Convenience without fear of repercussion.
I find it funny that this is all going on amidst another controversy in the use of the word Negro.
A fiery blast from the past is conjuring controversy in the new millennium. The word “negro” is now featured on an official U.S. document and now many are questioning if the Census Bureau is being insensitive.
It’s a word that many African Americans associate with segregation, so imagine how shocked many were to see it on the 2010 U.S. census form.
“The fact that it’s 2010 and they’re still putting ‘negro,’ I am a little offended,” said Secaucus resident Dawud Ingram.
Question #9 on the this year’s census asks about your race. One of the boxes you can choose is “black,” “African American,” or “negro,” all placed next to the same box. Ingram said it’s not a word he uses to identify neither himself nor anybody else.
“African Americans haven’t been going by the term ‘negro’ for decades now. It’s really confusing,” he said.
But census officials disagree, saying they found some older African Americans identify themselves that way and they’re trying to be inclusive. In a statement, they said: “Results from the census in 2000 showed that a number of respondents provided a write-in response of ‘negro’ when answering the question on race.”
In fact, Congress approved the form more than a year ago. Newark resident Jabbar Ali can’t believe it.
“I thought it was something we left behind a long time ago – the word ‘negro,’” said Ali.
Chanou Wilshire said the census form doesn’t give her an option since it’s got “African American,” “black,” and “negro” next to the same box.
“It’s highly offensive,” she told CBS 2.
The mere mention of the word is “highly offensive.” In fact, this story has been playing out quite a bit in the local New York media to the point that it’s near inescapable. Every two-bit hack local news reporter is cramming a mic into the face of the first black person they can get to to get their reaction to the word Negro being on the census form. The universal reaction, of course, is outrage, and the outrage is that the word is dated, and hails from the darkest times of Antebellum America.
The word being on the census form is offensive to the point of mobilizing outrage.
A Senator using it to discuss a black man running for President? Not so offensive.
I’ve heard a lot of talk about double standards between right and left and the use of racially inappropriate terms, but this isn’t even a left-right issue. This is a curious issue of manufactured outrage versus subdued reactions or a lack of reaction at all.
Incidentally, I don’t think the term Negro on a census form indicates racist intentions. I also don’t think that Harry Reid was being racist just in his use of the word Negro, but that’s because I’m smart enough to see that using a word one time doesn’t necessarily equate to racism / hatred. I’m not part of the offenderati culture, and I refuse to be, but it’s hard to reconcile offense at a word with no target against lack of offense at use of that same word when aimed at a specific target, to whom it would likely apply. If context is indeed important, than shouldn’t using the word as a derogatory term carry more weight than using it on a form for voluntary classification purposes?
Unless, of course, we’re just talking purely about using the word as a club of convenience with which we can beat our political opponents over the head, in which case we’re doing just fine.