So should Harry Reid resign?

I am certainly no fan of Harry Reid or his policies but I don't think he should resign his seat over his recent comments:

...American voters would embrace a “light-skinned’’ African American who speaks “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’’

With the exception of actually committing a crime I don't believe there are really any good reasons for a Congressman or woman to resign their seat. That's what elections are for. I don't believe Reid's comments warrant his resignation of the majority leader post either. That's not to say though, that the comments are irrelevant or not newsworthy - they are and there are plenty of things in the statement for one person or another to find offensive or just plain stupid. Even so, I don't think Reid should have to step down over them.

Tactical considerations in the world of hardball politics make the Republican criticism understandable though. Harry Reid is a vulnerable Majority Leader and this is an election year when pivotal issues are at stake; Republicans aren't going to pull any punches. Democrats do the same thing, of course. The faux outrage in these scandals is only as strong as their opportunity to make political hay from whatever they are supposedly upset about though. Democrats and the left have very successfully cornered the race market and only the anointed have the right to speak - sometimes regardless of the offensiveness of any statements. Even fairly innocuous statements in the Race Orbit can be twisted, packaged, and mainstreamed into a club with which to bludgeon your political opponent with. So, in that sense, the gander gets what's coming. While the Trent Lott non-controversy involved statements that were arguably higher on the racism-o-meter the difference between the reactions of the so-called enlightened in the two situations is telling. The defense he gets is fairly straightforward: Reid gets a pass because he is Race Approved.

As with many issues though, the actual realities of the situation don't really matter. What matters is what people perceive rather than what actually is. And people in America perceive that race is a huge problem. I'm not saying that racism isn't a problem - I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether it really is or not because as a society we have decided that it is been told it is by those that know things. Totally by coincidence, I'm sure, those same people have a solution ready: talk about it, endlessly. Well, they will talk about it, we just need to listen.

Many of these pundits, mostly on the left, maintain the importance of the "conversation" on race or racism.  However, they don't mean the type of conversation that most of us think of with a give-and-take and a meaningful sharing of opinion. Instead what they mean is they want a chance to lecture and tell you what they think. You can speak and take part in the discussion as long as you agree with them and parrot their social justice memes.

I saw an interview with Morgan Freeman once in which he said that to end racism we should stop talking about it and I think he's mostly right. The more we talk about and emphasize the small things that make us different rather than the large overarching things which make us the same the more we will perceive those differences and the more they will influence our personal decisions and governmental policies.