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The strangest thing about what Harry Reid said was how he said it.

According to a new book on the 2008 presidential campaign, the Senate majority leader opined that the United States was ready for a "light-skinned" African American president who has "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

Excuse me, but did he just say, "Negro dialect?"

The word "negro" has not been used unironically in this country since about 1965. "Dialect" strikes the ear wrong, too, as if Reid were a member of the Oakland school board during its misguided Ebonics phase. Even for a U.S. senator, he sounds out of touch.

As for the substance of Reid's comment, it starts with a basic truth: Barack Obama's appearance and speaking style were factors in his electability. That's true for many politicians -- ask Sarah Palin, and she'll wink and say "you betcha!"

More particularly, and less comfortably, Reid offered a realistic analysis of the political landscape.

Anyone who doubts the importance of skin tone in this country should think back to Time magazine's deliberate darkening of O.J. Simpson's photograph after his arrest for murder, or rent Spike Lee's film, "School Daze." Anyone who thinks accent and idiom don't matter should listen to Rush Limbaugh mockingly imitate Jesse Jackson's intonation or mimic people who pronounce "ask" as "ax," and ask themselves what message he's trying to send.

So a politician did that rare thing and spoke an unpleasant truth within earshot of a reporter. After that, well, things get complicated.

Same old politics

In Washington, it was politics as usual. Republicans said that Reid should lose his leadership post, just as their own man, Trent Lott, did a few years ago.

Never mind that Lott, who had a history of palling around with neo-segregationists, got canned after saying we'd all be better off if paleo-segregationist Strom Thurmond had been elected president, or that Lott actually got pushed out by the Bush administration, which seized the moment to put someone it preferred in the job. One controversial remark involving race is the same as any other, the chorus sang, happily pretending that content and context make no difference at all.

The Democrats, meanwhile, would have complained lustily about the remarks had Reid been a Republican, context and content be damned. But Reid is one of their own, and everyone knows that with an historic health care reform bill on the line, Obama and company would not cut him loose for anything short of lighting a cross on the White House lawn. As it was, the president -- who has said similar things about his own audience-specific speaking style -- quickly accepted Reid's apology and tried to move on.

And context really did play a role in Reid's rapid absolution. The fact that his record on race is better than Lott's bought him a degree of credibility on the topic that his predecessor lacked. Members of a given group often get a pass when using certain loaded words or phrases, as rap lyrics and the cast of "Jersey Shore" frequently remind us. Reid doesn't have that level of group-member privilege, but he did have some capital in the bank, which seems likely to help him hang on to his job.

Talking about race is not easy in this country. It's telling that other excerpts from the book, "Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime," have been overshadowed by the Reid quote.

In fact, the stories are almost lurid, and Obama seems to emerge as the dull, safe choice in the election. A senior aide to Hillary Clinton ends up saying, "This woman shouldn't be president." McCain staffers discuss the "threatening possibility: that Palin was mentally unstable."

There's ugly stuff about the McCains' marriage, and a description of Rielle Hunter's horrible behavior that pales in comparison to the trashing of John and Elizabeth Edwards themselves.

Here in Greensboro, the preoccupation with race prevails far too often, and in every direction. Politics and assumptions and old grievances kick in before people really listen to what others are saying. Even something as great as the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, set to open in two weeks at the site of this city's finest hour, seems to polarize people as much as it brings them together. Sometimes it seems that we are running in place.

And yet we have made progress. We did elect an African American president, caveats and all. We will open that museum. Maybe tomorrow, on which we mark the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., we can think of his admonition to approach our problems with "a strong, demanding love" and apply some of the demands not just to others, but ourselves.

Edward Cone (www.edcone.com, efcone@mindspring.com) writes a column for the News & Record on alternate Sundays.