“Rhymes With Right” seems to think that Trent Lott, whose “courtly compliment” to his colleague implied that we would have been better off all these years with a segregationist president, misses the point rather badly. Whether skin color and speech patterns are correlated with electoral success is an empirical matter, well within the capabilities of a competent grad student in political science to assess. Whether we would have avoided our many problems over the past several decades having elected a racist in 1948 is a speculative matter, but has embedded within it a set of value judgments from which there is today universal disagreement.

This amounts to a difference that makes a difference as I see it.

Likewise, although Reid’s observations about the racial facts of our politics are both true & inoffensive – he’d be a poor politician if he didn’t know that Obama’s appearance & speech matter – I can think of better ways of justifying them than by saying that he was just saying everyone knows is true. “I’m just saying what everybody knows is true” (like “Whatsa matter? I’m just saying what everybody’s thinking”) are the excuses of boors everywhere. It’s not always & everywhere best to say everything you know, or think you do.

Still, the main thrust is right. The right’s attempt to make hay out of this is worse than childish. Cornyn’s amazing claim that Lott’s praise of Thurmond is relatively innocuous reveals something more unattractive than just minor social gracelessness; it’s the real story here.

And yes, the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot, just more GOP slinging of crap hoping something sticks to the wall. We are not upset by Sen. Reid’s comment. Not surprised by it either

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, and even as it is obviously not a good thing, it is understandable. The African American experience has, and continues to define us. It is an ethnicity that against all odds has persevered – holding on to its singular heritage, carrying with it both the dysfunction of genocidal brutality, and the wisdom and innovation of a people who have found ways to not only hold on to their identity but continually push the boundaries of what is culturally possible under centuries of oppression.

And America is what it is because of our racial history – both our greatest expressions of freedom and our worst savage excesses. Obama is an exemplar of this contradiction. He is what he is both because of and despite of who he is, and who we are. As a country we have been through so much, and from the beginning have reached for the highest rung despite it always being just beneath our grasp. As such our narrative has been one of epic triumph – and epic failure. The two define each other tragically. Even as we elect the first African American to highest public office, we have people casting the most vile and racist attacks – their seething hatred couched as it often is behind thin veils of humor.

As expressed in the words Obama himself reiterated, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”, humanity is searching for freedom, even as it is far from there yet. There is no evidence that any such objective morality exists, but as defined by the basic human impulse to apply one’s own aspirations to those of his fellow man, our biological predisposition is indeed toward empathy and fairness.

Harry Reid is a leader of the party that, although having not always done so in the past, currently spends much of its time seeking ways to redress the imperfections of our past, expressed as they are in the social and demographic stratifications we see at present. Where its opponents see equality and freedom, it sees inequality and struggle. So it would stand to reason that he would see the historic achievement of Obama’s election in the context of a society still struggling to attain what it would ultimately like to see but presently finds itself incapable of adequately fulfilling.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by MarkARKleiman: RBC: Harry Reid’s “gaffe” http://bit.ly/4wX7DM...