Obama forgives Reid; In 2002, he demanded Lott's ouster. (Reid: Obama has a "Negro dialect")
By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
01/09/10 5:55 PM EST
washingtonexaminer.com
Today, President Obama announced that he has forgiven Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., for saying that Obama was an acceptable presidential candidate due to his light skin and lack of "Negro dialect."
The racially charged remark hearkens back to the Christmas break of 2002, when Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., was hounded out of his majority leader position after he remarked favorably on former Sen. Strom Thurmond's 1948 run for president on a segregationist third-party line.
So one obvious question: what did Obama have to say about that incident after Lott apologized?
The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not waste a moment this weekend sending members of the press a clip of what then-State Senator Obama said at that time. It comes from the Chicago Defender, a left-leaning newspaper that has long chronicled that town's racial politics. Obama's statement on Lott, as recorded by The Defender:
"It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator (Thurmond) for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we still have to do," said Obama. He said: "The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party."
Lott, in praising Thurmond on his 100th birthday, appeared to identify himself with the institutional racist movement that Thurmond had represented long ago. Reid, on the other hand, implied that a dark-skinned person with a "Negro dialect" is unworthy of the presidency. The two comments are not identical, and both can be taken in more than one way. But Obama's reaction to the two is so starkly different that one cannot but see partisanship at work even here. |
