(Melchizedek Communique, MC011710) Only one week ago, a big fuss appeared over Senator Harry Reid's use of the word "Negro." But then, on January 12, 2010, Haiti got "blowed up real good" (http://www.shout.net/~bigred/mc011310.html), and the "Negro" vocabulary issue got sidetracked.

Who decides these things? Is there some Central Committee somewhere which can rule on whether "Negro" is allowed into polite language?

Coincident to the Haitian upheaval, a book on Millard Fillmore was released. In "What Would Millard Do?" (http://www.shout.net/~bigred/FOMF.html), the author employs this word "Negro." Will the book have to be recalled?

Stanley Crouch, an African-American, Negro, person of color, opined, "there is something far from backward about the sound of Negro and the magnificent people who used that word to describe themselves. They gave it majesty; they made it luminous. They inspired, organized and led what amounted to our most recent civil war." [1]

But Mr. Crouch might be over-ruled by the "Central Committee on Language" and another word could become forbidden.

Under Barack Obama, the US is obsessed with race but can't talk about it, observes Toby Harnden of Britain's Telegraph newspaper. Senator Harry Reid's "use of the term 'Negro' was a little anachronistic, though the National Council of Negro Women and United Negro College Fund still exist. But it wasn't exactly the other N-word." [2]

There is the routine "discussion about race" proposal, so routine it has become meaningless. "It is time for America to have a discussion about race." Great. What does that mean??

A starting point for such a discussion could be a look at the heyday of Millard Fillmore. What was really going on then? Passions were intense on the two sides: Abolition and Pro-Slavery. But beneath the surface, far more was involved than the fig leaf of the slavery issue.

Sitting astride the colossus was an accidental president, Millard Fillmore, also the pre-eminent forgotten president. Fillmore had been chosen, on the spur-of-the-moment, to be Zachary Taylor's running mate. Then, when President Taylor suddenly died, supposedly due to eating cherries and milk on a hot day, there was a knock at the door of Millard Fillmore. In the midst of intense Compromise debates, he suddenly presided over the national discussion. What did Millard do?

------- Notes -------
[1] "Then & now, I'm a Negro: The people who used that word gave it majesty", by Stanley Crouch. New York Daily News, Jan. 11, 2010
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/01/11/2010-01-11_then__now_im_a_negro.html
[2] "Under Barack Obama, US is obsessed with race but can't talk about it", by Toby Harnden. Telegraph (U.K.), Jan. 16, 2010