The U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid finds himself in hot water today because he once asserted (before Barack Obama was elected President) that the fact Obama was “light-skinned” could speak without a “Negro dialect” meant he could have a serious shot at running for president. The comments were reported in a new book called Game Change.
Reid is now apologizing to anyone who will listen. But choice of words aside, it seems that much of the controversy lies in the fact that Reid was saying that skin color and accent matter in politics. The only astonishing thing about this controversy is that we claim to be astonished by it. Everyday life and several small warehouses of observational and experimental studies show that features, skin tone, hair texture and accent matter enormously in American social and political life — as they do in many parts of the world. It’s an aspect of racism that makes nearly everyone uncomfortable, because most of us prefer to think about race using broad categories — white or black. But within the umbrella of “black” or “African-American,” there exist whole caste systems with profound effects on school performance, job hiring, health outcomes and, yes, politics.
