George Mason University Professor of Women and Gender Studies on Harry Reid, Colorism, and The Right

Yevette Richards Jordan Breaks it Down in a letter to NPR:

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Dear Mr Bolton,

I heard your NPR discussion on the Reid story and I really disagree with your assessment.

First, the Republican argument of equivalency without regard to context between Reid's remarks and Lott's is completely weak, and it seems that some reporters have taken it at face value. I and other Black people I know are completely clear on the difference between the two. Reid was supportive of the possible election of a black president and made a completely legitimate analysis (with the wrong words) of how race plays out in the electorate. Lott, on the other
hand, had wished that Strom Thurmond, the cheerleader for racial segregation, had won the presidency back in the good old days, and said the nation would have been better off for it.

Secondly, I note the hypocrisy of Michael Steele. He said "honest Injun" and not as a backhanded complement of Native Americans nor in the context of a discussion about race. He just threw the term out there twice in public on Fox Television, completely oblivious to its offense. It is simply disingenuous for him to call for Reid to resign over "Negro dialect" comment, particularly since many public Republican figures have used that word and worse stereotypes to
describe President Obama in an intentionally derogatory way with no outrage from the Republican party leadership.

Third, there are numerous studies about the economic and social advantages accruing to light complexioned blacks and immigrants of color over their darker complexioned counterparts. The same holds all over the world. I know of no black person who does not realize that whites and even blacks impute intelligence and therefore worth to skin tone. This problem of colorism goes back to the enslavement era when lighter complected blacks got some advantage over darker complected blacks, and thus emerged from slavery disproportionately
represented in the skilled and educated class. One recent Georgia study showed that in a study of color discrimination students were more willing to give a job to a light complected black with a college degree over a darker skinned black with more advanced education and qualifications.

Of course similar studies demonstrate that whites in general have an advantaged based solely on skin color over people of color. I would venture that this hierarchical structuring of inequality is not surprising to most black people. So I doubt that blacks in Nevada will punish Reid for telling what they know of as the truth, no matter how awkward he said it.

See:

Dark-Skinned Blacks at Hiring Disadvantage, New Data Reveals
http://www.diversityinc.com/content/1757/article/409/?DarkSkinned_Blacks_at_Hiring_Disadvantage_New_Data_Reveals

Joni Hersch, Immigrant Experience: The Relationship Between Color and Pay
http://www.springerlink.com/content/ll56q32x83gm741p/

Yevette