According to a new book authored by reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Reid privately praised then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 as a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” Despite apologizing, Reid has thus far failed to clarify and explain what exactly he meant by these remarks.
(The Atlantic, January 8, 2010, “The Juiciest Revelations In ‘Game Change’,” By Mark Ambinder, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/01/the-juiciest-revelations-in-game-change/33226/)