THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama's election did not usher in a post-racial America. Instead, speaking honesty about race is taboo, writes Toby Harnden in Washington
A year ago, Americans were basking in what many believed was a post-racial new dawn. The United States was just about to inaugurate its first black President. Across the world, those who had pronounced the country too mired in its past to elect an African-American were being forced to reassess.
Fast forward to last week and the American chattering classes were engaged in the kind discussion about race that makes one despair. I use the term "discussion" but that's over-egging things - it was really a mud-slinging contest in which Republicans and Democrats shouted tired old slogans at each other.
The matter at issue was comments by Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, made during the 2008 election campaign. Obama was electable, Reid observed, because he was "light-skinned" and did not "speak with a Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one".
Reid knew he was in big trouble and immediately rushed out a statement of apology when his words, quoted in a new campaign book, became public.
He had forgotten that race was a taboo subject.
His use of the term "Negro" was a little anachronistic, though the National Council of Negro Women and United Negro College Fund still exist. But it wasn't exactly the other N-word.
Reid, who is fighting for his political life in Nevada, where polls have him trailing badly in his November re-election contest, has said many stupid things. Three years ago, he declared that the Iraq war "is lost".
Last month he compared Republicans who opposed healthcare reform to those who once clung to slavery.
But this time his sin was really to speak the truth. Part of candidate Obama's special appeal was that he was a black man who made white people feel exceedingly good about themselves - not least because he was half white and had been raised by a white mother and grandparents.
At the same time, Obama showed himself to be at ease among blacks who had, unlike him, lived through the civil rights area and were descended from slaves.
Thus, Obama walked the tightrope between being too black and being not black enough. One of the ways he did that was to alter his tone and cadence depending on the audience he was speaking to - as many politicians do. >>> | Saturday, January 16, 2010
