The Third Rail of Politics - Race

I find it a bit disingenuous that both sides of the political spectrum are spending time on Senator Harry Reid and his observation about Barack Obama that was reported recently:

“He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately.”

Now Harry Reid is a lot of things. Socialist, buffoon, and thief come immediately to mind – but I don’t think that Harry Reid is a “racist” in the classic definition of that term. But like all racists he sees and evaluates people by outward appearance rather than the content of their character or intellect.

I think that like most democrats Reid looks at a black person and immediately assumes that there is a 90% chance that he can count on their vote. Reid no doubt believes that he has earned that vote because of his stated feelings about minorities. Reid no doubt believes that he has purchased minority loyalty with legislated programs that you and I pay for but mire minority populations in poverty. I’m equally sure that Reid believes that he will earn the everlasting loyalty (and more importantly votes) of blacks by destroying the American health care system in favor of a one-size-fits-all wretched government administered fiasco. Given that, I don’t think Reid is a by-the-book racist, I think he is actually much worse.

As a cold political observation, Reid’s words were largely correct. Anyone who has gone and sat for awhile in an inner city shopping center would understand that there is an underground and utterly destructive culture largely confined to the black community. Our inability to confront that fact and the completely irresponsible and cowardly behavior of American leadership (including those who happen to be black) has sentenced this underground population to poverty, ignorance, and despair. If someone like comedian Bill Cosby tries to confront this – he is savaged by the left wing. As a result the promise of America remains out of reach for millions who self-identify as hyphenated Americans. Those people are also largely unelectable to public office except in some areas largely confined to inner city populations.

We don’t need to argue endlessly about what is and isn’t racist and who is and isn’t a racist. Rather we need to focus on the very real reasons why some people even after the expenditure of trillions of dollars over decades – still can’t make it in America. Harry Reid is certainly part of the problem, but not in the way most pundits are discussing the subject. Until we can honestly discuss race without people going high order, we can’t fix the associated problems.

Conservative Resistance – Day 435
Days until the November Congressional elections - 293