Advancement Project

January 19, 2010

Harry Reid Aside, Can We Deal With Real Race Issues?

Race issues are rarely discussed in a meaningful and substantive way in mainstream print or broadcast media. Yet, somehow, the possibility that a prominent person has revealed personal racial bias in some statement that hits airwaves and headlines often sends the media atwitter.

This happened recently when newspapers and television stations learned that Sen. Harry Reid talked about the supposed benefits of Obama’s light-skinned complexion on his bid for the presidency along with his lack of a “Negro dialect.”

What Reid was talking about was not necessarily his own racism but his perception that White Americans are more comfortable with lighter-skinned African Americans and Black folks who sound more like them.

Since then, pundits have argued about the extent to which complexion and speaking style are factors for Whites in determining their comfort level with African Americans. Some cite social science studies that indicate that a segment of White Americans are more comfortable with African Americans who they think look more like them. As Eugene Robinson noted in the Washington Post this week, there seems to be some correlation between complexion and prominence for African Americans.
Robinson noted that Edward Brooke, the first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction; Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice; Colin Powell, the first Black secretary of state and Obama were, or are, all light-skinned.

We can even add to his list. Maynard Jackson, a light-skinned Black man was the first African-American mayor of Atlanta in 1974 and L. Douglas Wilder, became the first African American to be elected governor in 1990. Both men are light-skinned enough that their race might not even be obvious to many Americans.

Indeed, there is not only racism in America but colorism, which in the case of the United States and much of the world, is a bias that gives light-skinned people advantages over darker-skinned folks even those within the same race. The problem needs to be battled.

This blog, while touching on Reid’s statements, is not intended to weigh the merits of his statement or his odd choice of an antiquated word to describe Black people, but more, it’s intended as a lament and critique of mainstream media where race is concerned.

Institutional and structural racism seem to escape the gaze of the media even though myriad studies document how people of color have less, get less yet are treated more harshly year after year and decade after decade. The attitude about dealing with race seems to be one of: see nothing, hear nothing, and, do nothing. There is a virtual media blackout on covering systemic racial inequality.
Perhaps, the blackout happens because such coverage would not only be damning to one individual but damning to a whole society and belie the idea that America is a country of freedom and equality.
Now, if we can’t move beyond “gotcha” journalism on race right now, it seems far more to important to call former President Bill Clinton to account for his statement, also revealed in “Game Change”, which claims he told Ted Kennedy, in seeking an endorsement of Hillary, that “a few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee.”

Although Obama was born near the end of the civil rights movement, is a Harvard Law alum, was a prominent U.S. Senator and the first serious African-American contender for the presidency, Clinton seemed to be saying: From one White guy to another, c’mon, he’s a Black guy, he’s not ready, he’s not one of us. Besides, not that long ago, people like him used to be our servants, people can’t see them as presidents.

Well, I suppose Obama’s election was a distributing wakeup call to the former president. And it’s truly shameful that this man—so respected by African Americans—could make such a vile and seemingly racist statement and not be condemned for it. Is the mainstream media simply avoiding this far more offensive statement? It seems to us that they are.

This blog was written by staff at Advancement Project, a national civil rights organization that advocates for racial justice.