I grew up in the Bronx in the ’50s and ’60s. When I would refer to Negroes as “colored people”, my mother would correct me by saying, “They’re not colored, they’re born that way.”

With this latest brouhaha, I can’t help but wonder if we have lost the ability to discriminate between “racial” comments and “racist” comments. While I can certainly grant that Senator Reid’s comments would qualify, in my mind, as racial, I don’t see that they rise to the level of racist. The latter implies some significant level of negative feeling.

I have a lot more of a problem with people trying to move “Negro” into the steadily growing category that includes “the n-word”. Negro is a racial word; “the n-word” is racist.

After all, these were “private” comments. The media is not allowed to report on the contents of a private conversation especially when it’s the Senate Majority Leader discussing the gradients of acceptable negridity of his party’s candidate.

He earned the right to say it though.