Saturday, January 9, 2010

"Light Skinned" with "No Negro Dialect"

It's often interesting to hear about how these powerful white people speak of black people behind closed doors.

A new book on the 2008 Presidential Campaign reveals that Senator Harry Reid said that he "believed the country would support a black presidential candidate, particularly Mr. Obama, whom he privately explained was 'a light-skinned' African-American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.'”

Reid confirmed and issued an apology for his remarks.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it's worse that he apologized because he meant what he first said. By apologizing just means he's sorry he got caught. I'm Latino and people always say what they really feel around me and then say, "sorry, I meant those kinda Mexicans not you." I'd rather they just said what they feel so I know where I stand with them.

H. Rambsy said...

Yeah, because he meant what he said. He just didn't mean for us to hear it.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting.

Embracingmyvoice said...

I wrote a column about this incident in my school newspaper. When I read the online comments people made regarding my column, I was astounded by the amount of people who saw no fault in the Reid's insulting assumptions.

The comments ranged but the one that struck me as the most incomprehensible is how anyone could justify Reid's use of the term Negro. It was disrespectful and not to mention inaccurate. At this point in time, used outside of a historical or educational context the word negro is considered to have racist connotation. Shouldn't he have known that being that he is a so called intellectual?

Though there were many things about the comments I received and the situation in general that really rubbed me the wrong way was that he alluded to the fact that all black people use and or recognize the same dialect. There are certain phrases and colloquialisms that members of the black community can and do recognize and had he said that, I would have understood. But I do not appreciate the fact that he made it seem like all black people speak one dialect. Last time I checked, there is no one dialect that any One race or group of people speaks. I would like to further the discussion on this topic. What are your thoughts guys? Thanks.

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