Harry Reid, whatever you think of him, deserves better. He’s no racist. Here’s what he is:
*Naïve and careless. A “private conversation” during a presidential campaign with national reporters always looking for bombastic outtakes for a book?
*A victim of political correctness Nazis and hypocritical, GOP exploitation. We all know what the Senate Majority Leader meant when he noted that then-Senator Barack Obama was “light-skinned” and sans a “Negro dialect.” However awkward and archaic his phrasing, it was Reid’s way of explaining why Sen. Barack Obama was, indeed, the first truly viable African-American presidential candidate in history.
In effect, Reid said that Obama wasn’t threatening to white America, still the largest voting block and still not colorblind. Obama wasn’t a race hustler. He wasn’t about playing the white-guilt and reparation cards. He appeared to transcend race. He seemed to many to personify the sense that America really was trying to figure out exactly where it fit in this diverse world not entirely to our liking. And the way candidate Obama looked and sounded, fair or not, was incredibly relevant. Among those who know what Reid meant: Barack Obama.