Was the remark subtly racist? No more racist than the census, which will give African-Americans an option to classify themselves as "Negro" when they fill out the 2010 Census.
No more racist than Joe Biden's comment on how Obama was the "first mainstream African-American who [was] articulate and bright and clean and a nice-talking guy" to be successfully campaigning for the White House.
It's certainly not as racist as Newt Gingrich's comment that "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country, and so they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."
Or, this comment from MSNBC Political Analyst Pat Buchanan:
"White men were 100 percent of the people who wrote the Constitution, 100 percent of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100 percent of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100 percent of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks. If I look at the U.S. track team in the Olympics and they're all black folks, I don't automatically assume it's discrimination."
Or, this comment from Vice President Joe Biden, "You cannot go to a 7-11 or Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian Accent."
This nation hasn't just been exposed to a range of racist remarks from political leaders and political pundits in recent years (which Rachel Maddow incorporated into her segment on Reid's remark on January 10), but this nation has heard football commentators like Howard Cosell liken football players to monkeys and heard people like Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder complain about how black people were taking coaching jobs from white people.
This nation has seen Michael Richards become enraged and go off on a seemingly racist rant after he could no longer take the heckling coming from a table of four African Americans and heard Don Imus remark on "nappy-headed hos" and Rush Limbaugh comment about slavery and how the streets were safer 100 years ago.
If I have to pick one comment that sticks out from the media coverage of Reid, Brown University African Studies Department Chair, Tricia Rose, wins.
After Maddow played a montage of racist comments on her show January 10, Rose responded, "I'm actually kind of flabbergasted by the degree to which these vastly different statements with entirely different meanings, contexts, and intents can be collapsed. And it's really quite dangerous, frankly. It's only enhancing what is already a deep level of illiteracy and fear and anxiety about really addressing race."
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