This column by Leonard Pitts (that's Pitts in the photo at left) appeared in the Miami Herald on Monday. Thank you, Dr. Murphy, for forwarding the link."Reid right about skin color, dialect"
"Somebody please tell Harry Reid there are no Negroes in America. There haven't been since the late 1960s, which is when black people arrived and drove that term out of favor. The person who uses it without irony, as Reid did, paints himself as a geezer out of touch with the past 40 years, the kind of person who still calls rock music a fad.
"That said, there is little else to complain about in the quote from the Senate majority leader that has had political types hyperventilating. Said quote is from "Game Change," the new book on the 2008 presidential campaign. It has Reid, a supporter of then-candidate Barack Obama, privately suggesting the country was finally ready to elect a black man, especially one who, like Obama, is "light-skinned" and has "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."
"A firestorm quickly raged, with Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele likening Reid's remarks to the gaffe that got Sen. Trent Lott in trouble eight years ago. In his online column, Journal-isms, Richard Prince wrote that panelists on the talk shows "were shocked, shocked that there is 'colorism' in America and a perceived 'Negro dialect.'... Coincidentally, there were no journalists of color in any of the discussions."
"Too bad. They might have helped frame the one question that went conspicuously unaddressed in the loud debate over what Reid said:
"Was he right?"
To find out Pitts' answer to this question, click here.
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