Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2010

Telling the truth is a very bad thing for a politician to do. It could
set a dangerous precedent.

If, as seems likely from his words, Harry Reid was implying that a
candidate of Obama's ability and background but with dark skin and a
negro dialect would have appealed to fewer voters, then I as an outsider
would accept that as a reasonable statement.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Would you wonder what is wrong if he said "Joe Lieberman is a viable
candidate because doesn't have a big Jewish-looking nose or speak with
that borscht belt comedian accent."?

Or "The RNC's clothing budget for Sara Palin was justified to counter
the droop and spread that starts with over-40 women."?

The truth may be a defense against libel, but it's not a defense of
public utterances by politicians.

I pretty much agree with you, maybe entirely.

I thought so when I first heard it on the news.

If Reid had been saying he himself preferred that Obama was
light-skinned**, that would have been racist.  But he wasn't saying
that at all.

Instead, his remark was insulting to white people, because he clearly
implied that if Obama were more dark skinned, more (white) people
wouldn't vote for him.  Of course that's true, but it's still
insulting to white people.

Reid can't use this as a defense now, becuase it will just dig him in
deeper.  It won't satisfy most of those who are complaining now,
certainly not the Republicans, and will antagonize new people.  All
his other defenses suffer from the same defect.

**[rather, imo.  There are a lot of people in the black community who
are a lot lghter]

The use of "Negro" dialect, instead of black or some synonym, I'm
guessing was a historical reference to the time when Negro was the
common polite word and a higher percentage of Blacks spoke with that
accent.  

Although maybe he didn't think it all through, but it reminds me of
those who use "gender"(for other than grammar) instead of "sex",
becuase they feel that sex has a sexual connnotation. "Black" and
Afro-American have modern connotations, which don't correspond with
black accents. I'm sure Reid sees loads of black people in Washington
with no accent at all, and even moreso in Nevada.  If you watch Blacks
from California interviewed on the news, or on Jay Leno's on the
street interviews, *none* of them have accents, and it's been this way
for 10 or 20 years.

The one thing that could have been insulting to Obama was "unless he
wanted to have one".  I didn't hear enough or pay enough attention to
his speeches to know if or how much he spoke with a black dialect, but
if actually had done so during an entire speech before a Black
audience, everyone would have noticed and called him on it.  Even
Blacks wouldn't have liked that.  

I belive what Obama did, that Reid had in mind, was occasionally, once
or twice in a speech use a 5 or 8 word phrase in Black dialect.   He's
by far not alone in doing something like that.  There are lots of
educated speakers including those who have never used dialect in their
lives as children, especially politicians, who will occasionally
insert, "Ain't no way" you'll see me do this or that.  There are
several other folksy but ungrammatical phrases that that speakers will
use before various audiences, by no means all of them black.   This is
even a bigger change than including a Black accent, which is a lot
like but I think not identical to a Southern white accent. It may be
identical to a poor Southern white accent.

Among the callers to C-span this mornign was a black woman who
insisted Reid was telling the truth, and that if Obama had been much
darker, he would have lost, and I'm sure she agreed with what all you
said Gary.   And a white guy who insisted that race and even darkness
hasn't mattered for 20 years.  The guy is deluding himself.

The comparison with Newt Gingrich's, no not him, someone else with a
weird name, his praise for Strom Thurmond, and wistfully thinking what
it would have been like if he had been elected president (back when he
was running as unreconstructed segregationsist), the comparison is
stupid.

Thurmond was a racist, (yet with a daughter with a black mother)
running on the Dixiecrat party, and yet it did not occur to whomever
to shut up and give the kind of generic praise that is acceptable to
the general public when applied to a racist or almost anyone one
doesn't like.

Reid's situation is by any thinking-standard different. He's accused
of being racist to the very person he was in the middle of praising,
and whom he went on to endorse and campaign for.

I think no one understands this better than Obama, and he probably
wanted to say, There is nothing to apologize for, but he too is stuck.
He doesn't want to get in the middle of a fight, so he just accepted
the apology.

It is insulting to suggest that just because someone is black they must speak
ghetto English.  It is also insulting to suggest that a light-skinned black
person is somehow superior to a dark-skinned person.  Frankly, I'm surprised
that anyone would not know why these ideas are considered insulting.

On Sun, 10 Jan 2010 12:17:41 -0500, "Gary Eickmeier"
<geickmei@tampabay.rr.com> wrote Re Question for the Politically
Correct:

He told the truth.

Where did he go wrong? Where do I start...

Mistake number one: "Light-skinned" is an irrelevance.

It's not like anyone's going to look at Obama and say "Seriously? He's
black? Wow!"

I've mingled with blacks, sometimes being the only white face that
dined amongst them, laughed with them, work along side them and know
myself  to have been enriched by their company. I've also had the less
fortunate experiences.
With that experience, though was not extensive, I know what Black
means; I can see it in ways beyond the simply visual, I can hear it
beyond the basic sounds and Obama is Black.
He's not all that "light-skinned" and his other facial racial features
say "Black". But a youngish black.
He's may be articulate, and intelligent sounding but that is not a
specific white trait. We need look no further than Mr Reids remarks
for confirmation .

2nd mistake centres around the light-skinned" remark. Seeing as it's
basically false , we can deduce that it's a reference to aesthetics.
He might be saying dark-skinned blacks are uglier. It would have been
the same had he said that Obama would win because he has relatively
symmetrical features; because his eyebrows aren't too bushy, or meet
up with each other.... or whatever passes for unattractiveness. But
no, he focused on colour and  that might be read as  saying something
about Mr Reid.

3rd error referring to "negro dialect"; and " unless he wanted to have
one"

Taking the latter point first; As a politician, Mr Reid will know the
value of speaking to people in their own "language" and will probably
have adjusted his own speeches to incorporate local sayings and
expressions which intone certain meaning enabling greater
communication with his audience. say  To say "unless he wanted to have
one" is not only crass, but underlines at best, sour-grapes and at
worst; hypocrisy.

And as for "negro-dialect"; seeing as many a white moth can be heard
producing such sounds,  was that a reference to class? If not, it
displays an insularism and betrays  a lack of experience of the real
world out there. Neither view does him any favours.

So, in short, where he went wrong was in not only being so
pathetically petty, but stupid enough to tell the whole world what an
eejet he is.