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Race in the United States & the Death Penalty

By Steve Hall

"Shades of Prejudice," is the title of an OpEd in today's New York Times.  It's written by Shankar Vedantam, a journalist and Nieman Fellow at Harvard.LAST week, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, found himself in trouble for once suggesting that Barack Obama had a political edge over other African-American candidates because he was ?light-skinned? and had ?no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.? Mr. Reid was not expressing sadness but a gleeful opportunism that Americans were still judging one another by the color of their skin, rather than ? as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy we commemorated on Monday, dreamed ? by the content of their character.The Senate leader?s choice of words was flawed, but positing that black candidates who look ?less black? have a leg up is hardly more controversial than saying wealthy people have an advantage in elections...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 19, 2010 (boomark / email).