Amazing. Sen. Harry Reid had the nerve to describe President Obama as being “light-skinned” and “with no ‘Negro’ dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” “My, my, my, what is the country coming to?” said the news networks.

Since Reid spoke the truth the discussions that followed have been ridiculous.

There is nothing racist about the statement. The word “Negro” is archaic but it is not racist in this statement. Reid probably meant if Sen. Obama had spoken in a voice recognizably black. This is not to be confused with Ebonics. 

The adage that I grew-up with, “If you’re white, you’re alright; if you’re brown, stick-around,’if you’re black step-back,” is in Reid’s observation. What’s the news here? Why is it that America cannot stand to hear the truth? America has a thin skin when the truth about race is spoken. President Barack H. Obama — read my lips — would never have been elected if his voice were recognizably black or his skin were black. America needs to get real.

For the Republican Party to try to make this a racist observation is typical Republican. Republican Chairman Michael Steele, who is black, calling for Reid’s removal was the height of duplicity. Steele understands that he had better not get a tan or begin to speak in a voice recognizably black either. He is standing on shaky ground because his “tea partiers” and “birthers” do not want him as head of their party. And yes, let me say it, because he is black, black, black!

No matter how it pains us, America is going to have to have that talk on race. How a sane country fails to see that repairs are needed in a country that has the developmental history of slavery and oppression of some of its people is unfathomable. Instead of programs like CNN’s “Blacks in America,” we need programs on Whites in America and how they got their positions of control and privilege.

The country is going to have to have the conversations for the healing to begin. Our conversations have to be factual. Whites are going to have to examine their complicity in the racism directed at Africans here in America, Africa and the diaspora since 1607. Blacks are going to have to accept their complicity in some of the social problems pounding the black communities that are curable by their own efforts. Only then can we begin to heal.

Thelma Sims Dukes

Jackson