Harry Reid Not Only Told Us How it Is, He Reminded Us of What We Do Not Want to Be Reminded of How a Lot of Individuals Think ..

Yesterday when Roland Martin interviewed President Obama on TV One and asked him about Harry Reid the President went onto say that he is on the right side of the issues, a personal friend of his and that he used "in-artful" language. This is exactly what you would expect a quintessential statesman like Obama to say; in fact, it is the same thing that you or I would do, if we were in our right minds, when someone uses "in-artful" language to us on the job, but we knew them over the years. Put yourself in Obama's situation; if you knew someone like Harry Reid for years and they were trying to extol your virtues and said that you do not use "Negro dialect", would you defend them? The answer to that question would explain why you did not get that promotion last week.

It is difficult for an African-American in the corporate world, even more so if you work for the federal government. Is Harry Reid out of touch, of course, is he a bigot, well the President tells me that he is not and that he has championed for our rights before so I have to accept his version of it; see I don't Harry Reid personally, had never heard of him before this whole thing. But I am smart enough to know that the president's lack of a Negro dialect, the fact that he does not subscribe to Ebonics, and that he is a clean cut light-skinned man is some of the reason that Americans felt comfortable with voting for him. As we like to say, "it is what it is", and we know what the truth is even though we do not necessarily like to be reminded of it.

When I go to work and speak to customers and I talk to my boss I am not a Negro, nor am I a nigger, in fact I am not even Black or an African-American, I tuck all of that away and put it out of sight and I assimilate myself and put myself in a position where people are comfortable with dealing with me. Then when I go home to work I put on Gucci Mane so I can hear some bass and do 70 on the freeway; it is what it is, a n* has to breathe. The difference between us, and individuals like Barack Obama is that they can do this full time, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. If you think about it he has to he lives in the White House, which is a full time job; but I don't think a lot of us think about that when we criticize the president for not coming around as much as we would like for him to. They may listen to some acid jazz or classical music; we already know that Michelle Obama shops at J Crew, which I had heard of but never thought of going into. Most African-Americans are not comfortable with that level of assimilation, which is why most African-Americans are not where they're at and the rest of us are left to exploit our own culture to make money.

We like to complain about what we cannot get as African-Americans but we can get those things; we just can't come across as typical African-Americans to get them. I see it for myself, those who play that game better than I do get a lot further than I have in life. See these types of articles do not do well on Associated Content unless you do a lot of networking to get your peers in the door, which I do, but they make the status quo around here uncomfortable. "Should I leave comments, should I just read it and turn away, I am curious", that is the problem that we have in America with talking about race. Whites would like to say something to you but they do not want to offend anyone and do not want to get into an argument with anyone and there are times when we would like to be offended and would like to get some things off of chest and there should be some dialogue. The president had also stated that people should be upset with him if he does not fix the economy because he is not there just because of the novelty of his being an African-American and said that the average Black person figures that Harry Reid is not up to date on the latest terminology and Roland Martin stated that he doesn't necessarily use the word Negro himself.

These are parts of the interview that you will probably never hear about because the press is still fixated on Harry Reid's comments. Obama probably put it best when he suggested that race is always used in the context of one person getting one up on the other person. When Obama said that Blacks figure that Harry Reid "is still using the word Negro" you had to laugh at the irony. Yet I often wonder if the rest of us are able to do this; "oh well they're just doing something that most post-contemporary Whites no longer do, they don't know any better but they're not mean spirited". It is like turning the other cheek; if you can do it surely you'll tell your coworker later on or complain to your spouse about what happened at work. In his own defense this wasn't something that Harry said to Obama personally.

Rather than continuing to throw around hyperbole about about what Harry Reid may or may not have meant it may be better to just accept this for what it is and realize that there are still some communication barriers among the races, particularly for older individuals whose heart is in the right place but aren't sure how to relate to how things have changed. I'm old enough to remember what it was like to be called a nigger and how that hurt but do not necessarily see it the same way today as I did then. Perhaps it is because you rarely hear the word anymore, even among ourselves though clearly it was chic to use the word back in the nineties and even going into this new millennium. I'm not even sure how many rap artists use it anymore; Nas' album that he was going to title nigger was supposed to be provocative but ended up being untitled yet when you heard it things just weren't the same. That would have been provocative perhaps back when NWA was throwing it around in the eighties, as a concept, but just seemed dated. I don't know, perhaps the best a Black person can do when they hear about someone who doesn't use Negro dialect or that is clean cut is just laugh; or in Barack's case, give them a job ...