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Harry Reid and the
Demagogues
By Jean Damu
America needs to get a grip. The idiotic
controversy that is the focus of the nation’s media and
which claims Nevada Senator Harry Reid
uttered racist
comments is mind boggling in its obtuseness. It’s clear
he is being pilloried for making comments inherently not
racist merely as an attempt to sidetrack the healthcare
reform debate.
Reid was quoted by
authors John Heilmann and Mark Halperin as saying in
2008 he told Barack Obama he should run for president
because he is “light skinned” and “has no Negro dialect
unless he wanted to have one.”
The only thing more
mind boggling and more obtuse about this non-issue is
that the Republicans, who lit the match to ignite the
controversy and continue to pour gasoline are getting
away with it. Democrats and honest Republicans, white
and black, cannot seem to gather the moral energy and
mental clarity to call the Republicans who are promoting
this issue by their true name—demagogues.
Giving Republicans
any credibility on issues of defending blacks against
racism is ludicrous. For 40 years the Republican Party
utilized the so-called “southern strategy” to create a
divide between white and black voters in widely
successful attempts to create fear on the part of whites
in regards to civil rights legislation and to drive
white voters into the Republican Party.
California Senator
Dianne Feinstein is typical of the muddled thinkers. In
her appearance on Face the Nation she did not seem to
understand the issue. Equating Reid’s comments with
the Jesse Jackson "hymietown" comments of the late
1980s, Feinstein lamely said, "First of all, all of us
are imperfect." She conceded the issue to the
Republicans but went on to say because Reid had
apologized, so therefore the matter was closed.
Apologized for
what?
Without defending
Reid on other issues of racism of which he is certainly
guilty, on this issue he was merely speaking a truth
that virtually every black person in the US, including
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele,
the Republican Party’s walking and talking lawn jockey,
knows to be true.
Admittedly there
are things black folks can say (but shouldn’t) that
white folks can’t. Think the N-word here. But Reid’s
controversial comments weren’t among them.
Every African
American has heard the maxim, “If you’re white, you’re
all right. If you’re yellow, you’re mellow. If you’re
brown, stick around-but if you’re black, get back.”
Though not as true today as it was in the 1950s, it’s
still true enough.
For instance, do
people really think someone with Flava Fav’s complexion
could be elected president? Or someone who talks like
Snoop Dogg. No. Harry Reid was right.
Furthermore, every
African American also knows that every black person
raised and nurtured in the black communities and
churches and who has been successful and gainfully
employed in the US business and political communities
speaks virtually two different languages; the language
of home and the language of the work place.
This has been
written about extensively.
It is widely
acknowledged that linguistic opposition, the dislike
whites have for the way many African Americans talk, is
one reason many blacks have getting jobs in the service
section of the economy; jobs that would require blacks
to come in contact with non-black customers.
Also the issue was
the focus of the 1996 Ebonics debate that saw the
Oakland School Board adopt, then rescind (under massive
public pressure and ridicule) a program to use Ebonics
as a tool to teach Standard English. Ironically the
proposal was inaccurately written, offering evidence of
the need for such a program, and the entire discussion
went sideways because the true intent of the proposal
was never made clear until the issue Ebonics as a
recognized language was dead and buried.
The other element
of idiocy in this issue, and here is where the true
nature of Republican demagoguery is encountered, is the
attempt to equate what Harry Reid said to what
Mississippi’s Trent Lott said.
In 2002 at a 100th
birthday celebration for South Carolina Senator Strom
Thurmond, Lott said,
“I want to say this
about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president
(1948), we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the
rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t
have had all these problems over all these years,
either.”
This is to say if
Strom Thurmond had won the 1948 presidential election
there wouldn’t have been a civil rights movement and
most blacks, rather than the approximate 30 percent
today, would still be relegated to an underclass status.
For these
sentiments Lott was forced to resign his leadership
position in the Senate and Steele and other Republicans
want Reid to pay the same price, a move that would
clearly sidetrack the healthcare reform debate.
The only difference
of course is that comparing what Reid said to what Lott
said is like comparing a Grimm Bros. fairly tale to
Hitler’s Mein Kampf: the degree of difference between
the Reid and Lott statements is immeasurable. Reid’s
statement offended almost no one—Lott’s statement
offended nearly every black person and many others in
the US.
But the Republican
demagogues are going to milk this issue for all it’s
worth and then some.
The only question
is will someone with a clear sense of the racial issues
confronting the US stand up and call out the demagogues?
Jean Damu is a former
member of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters, taught Black Studies at the University of New
Mexico, has traveled and written extensively in Cuba and
Africa and currently serves as a member of the Steering
Committee of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
jdamu2@yahoo.com
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The Shadows of Youth
The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation
By Andrew B. Lewis
With deep admiration and rigorous scholarship, historian Lewis (Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table) revisits the ragtag band of young men and women who formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Impatient with what they considered the overly cautious and accommodating pace of the NAACP and Martin Luther King Jr., the black college students and their white allies, inspired by Gandhi's principles of nonviolence and moral integrity, risked their lives to challenge a deeply entrenched system. Fanning out over the Jim Crow South, SNCC organized sit-ins, voter registration drives, Freedom Schools and protest marches. Despite early successes, the movement disintegrated in the late 1960s, succeeded by the militant Black Power movement. The highly readable history follows the later careers of the principal leaders. Some, like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown, became bitter and disillusioned. Others, including Marion Barry, Julian Bond and John Lewis, tempered their idealism and moved from protest to politics, assuming positions of leadership within the very institutions they had challenged. According to the author, No organization contributed more to the civil rights movement than SNCC, and with his eloquent book, he offers a deserved tribute.— Publishers Weekly |
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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posted 12 January
2010
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