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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (327781)	12/10/2002 9:21:14 PM
From: Johannes Pilch	Respond to of 769670

Here are the comments: Byrd, who early in his career was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, used the term on FOX NEWS SUNDAY when asked about the state of race relations in America by host Tony Snow. "They are much, much better than they've ever been in my lifetime," Byrd said. "I think we talk about race too much. I think those problems are largely behind us... I just think we talk so much about it that we help to create somewhat of an illusion. I think we try to have good will. My old mom told me, 'Robert, you can't go to heaven if you hate anybody.' We practice that." Then Byrd warned: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word. "We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much." Now I am no friend of dang Bobby Byrd. Indeed there is scarcely any Democrat that I know of whose is worth even a damn. But I gotta acknowledge the dang facts here. Clearly Byrd was not supporting a racist agenda. That is as clear as a dang bell. He seems to be actually lobbying against what he considers the "illusion" of racism, an illusion he thinks is created because Americans focus too much on racial issues. He demonstrated that not only are there black niggers but that whites can also be niggers and that he himself has seen plenty of them. The idea is that blacks do not have a corner on the term and they are not the only racial group that can be despised. His point is valid and I don't see how it compares to Trent Lott's. Lott was actually supporting clearly racist ideology and he has done it in recent times more than once. I think the word "nigger" is vulgar, a profane word much like "bitch" and many others. We ought not use it for that reason. But the fact is, it is ultimately just another of myriad profanities, and I think Byrd captured the fact that the word is losing its applicability to blacks only. We see blacks themselves using it as but another profanity. More recently some whites are now using it to refer to themselves and to their black friends. Heck, some blacks are using it to refer to their white friends as but a profane term of endearment. See the movie Pulp Fiction. That sort of usage is ocurring in real American life. I once saw a group of Asian kids listening to rap music. These kids were seriously jamming and knew all of the words to the abominable tune, and even they were calling themselves niggers. Byrd was obviously trying to show that racial division is more an illusion than fact, and he was encouraging us to move onward. Once again, I don't think he was being entirely honest, but his message was not fundamentally destructive. His problem is that folks are yet too sensitive about the word "nigger" that when confronted with it they lose their ability to hear anything but the word and its historical meaning. Byrd was saying that meaning no longer really exists. I don't use the word because it is a wee bit too vulgar for me - much like the F word. I think you are correct that a politician using the word probably should suffer, depending upon how he used it. I just don't think Byrd did anything against any people group. He simply discussed the word conceptually and showed its modern application. Lott did something altogether different.