Talking about race is still a perilous business in American politics, even if you have a four-decade record of civil rights activism
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), appearing before the Democratic National Committee winter meeting this morning, was illustrating the diversity of the Democratic party by painting the touching scene of FDR's final train ride from Georgia to Hyde Park. Then she stumbled.
"There were farmers and black Americans, whatever the name was in those days, Afric- uh -- large numbers of African-Americans, poor people, middle class people, everyone. . . they lined the tracks to pay their respects," Pelosi told an audience at the Capitol Hilton.
Pelosi haters, and there are plenty of them, are likely to compare the remark to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's private comment that President Obama didn't speak in "Negro" dialect.
In fact, her gaffe couldn't have been more different.
Reid was privately using anachronistic, offensive language he'd never use in public, thinking his comments would never see the light of the day.
Pelosi, it appears, got into trouble for the opposite reason: She was trying to come up with the most PC way of describing African-Americans in a public forum -- in hopes of offending no one -- and wound up with a very un-PC quote that is likely to cause at least some offense.
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