You don't have to wait long in Barack Obama's post-racial America for a teachable moment to come along.

The latest opportunity for the nation's political and media elite to demonstrate its utter cluelessness on race involves an "n-word" that has been hiding in semi-respectability for centuries -- Negro.

Because "colored" isn't an option for thousands of people of my grandmother's generation, they're willing to settle for checking a box labeled "Negro," now available on the same line as "African-American" and "black" on the 2010 census form.

The fact that the U.S. Census Bureau is officially sanctioning the word Negro is causing no end of conniptions among the genuinely stupid of every political stripe.

Many fear that if the federal bureaucracy is given permission to use Negro on official documents -- even for benign reasons like making older black folks feel comfortable -- Jim Crow staples like "mulatto" and "octoroon" will be waiting in the wings for their reintroduction, too.

But racial terms that refer to blacks, whether Negro or African-American, are fungible, especially when filtered through the signifying imagination of an indifferent, white-dominated media.

Last week, right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck went on a classic rant about African-American being a "bogus, PC, made-up term."

To Beck's far left, impeached former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich told Esquire magazine: "I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived."

The definition of black and African-American mean different things to these men, but what comes across even louder than their racial awkwardness is a whiff of defensiveness and wanton ignorance. Neither knows what he's talking about, though that doesn't mitigate their self-righteous bluster.

Back on the Negro front, the erroneous belief that blacks are hothouse flowers who faint at the first hint of racial generalities continues to dictate coverage of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid's hamfisted "no Negro dialect" comments about Mr. Obama.

Sen. Reid has apologized for saying inelegantly what is undoubtedly true about huge swaths of the American electorate. All things being equal, some types of blacks are more "acceptable" than others. America is a color-conscious nation -- period.

As a product of a generation in which positive relationships across racial lines were rare, it would be a miracle if Harry Reid, a Mormon, didn't say something goofy every now and then. It wasn't his church's official position that blacks had souls until the 1970s. He's come a long way.

Watching white media folks getting excised about the fake controversy surrounding Harry Reid's comments on the Sunday morning news shows was hilarious. Gaffe-prone Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele was the lone "black" voice on several of those shows, which tells you that the media's level of analysis on racial controversies remains shockingly superficial.

Mr. Steele lost no time in calling for Mr. Reid's resignation. Evoking the fate of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Republican, Mr. Steele accused the Democrats of having a double standard.

Sen. Lott was forced to resign after he praised Sen. Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat bid for the White House in 1947. Mr. Lott said the country "wouldn't be having all of these problems" today if the segregationist party had won. Mr. Steele forgave Mr. Lott at the time and insisted an apology was sufficient, but he considers Mr. Reid's statement beyond the pale.

It was the content of Mr. Lott's comments that showed the content of his character. Michael Steele saw nothing wrong with nostalgia for segregation.

As the only "Negro" in America who seems remotely upset by Harry Reid's ill-chosen words, Michael Steele has once again proven himself to be the most opportunistic man of any color in politics. Black folks and Republicans are more embarrassed by his constant clowning and flip-flopping than Harry Reid's gaffes.

There's a very large elephant in the room and it's standing in a big pile of racial hypocrisy.

Tony's Take on Comix by Tony Norman is featured exclusively in the Opinion section on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.