It looks like Nevada Sen. Harry Reid has become our newest national scapegoat. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Despite the bad rap it gets, scapegoating, when done properly, is actually a brilliant spiritual technology. Consider the Hebrew Bible’s use of the scapegoat — the original case from which the term derives its name.
According to Leviticus 16:21, the scapegoat was the animal over which Aaron, the ancient High Priest, confessed “all of the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat”. Scapegoating in the Bible allows people to confront their failings and then rewards them for doing so, by watching them carried away.
Contrary to the popular use of the term, the goat is not blamed for anything! He is merely a vehicle for transporting the people’s sins once they have admitted to in fact having sinned.
Far from offering an easy out, one which lays blame upon an innocent or unwitting victim, the Biblical ritual of the scapegoat demands real awareness of the sins committed by the entire community. The success of the ritual hinges on the community and its leaders’ willingness to take responsibility for the wrongs they have done. In fact, it is precisely the opposite of the way we usually think about making a scapegoat of someone – just ask Senator Reid.

As we all know by now, Reid commented on then-candidate Barak Obama being more like to succeed in his bid for the presidency “thanks in part to his “light-skinned” appearance and speaking patterns “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” And for this, he is being labeled a racist? Talk about blaming the goat!
Reid’s comments may be unwelcome because they suggest that we are a racist nation, more willing to embrace an African-American who is “less black”, but that doesn’t make him a racist. He never said that is how things ought to be. He simply remarked that is how they are. If anything, Reid’s comments demonstrate his acute sensitivity to the fact that we have a very long way to go on race issues in this country and that “whiter” is still better.
I don’t know if Senator Reid is right, but I know that all the attention focused on his comments distract us from the substance of his claim, letting us all of the hook when it comes to really important questions about how we think about “blackness”, “whiteness”, who succeeds in this country and how race figures into that result.
After all, why ask ourselves these questions when we can just blame one person? Why make use of a scapegoat in the biblical sense when we can sacrifice a single individual and appease our collective conscience?
When the bible directed Aaron to use a scapegoat, it was a way to unite the community in a moment of reflection and accountability. What was once a beautiful and powerful ritual has become an ugly and dangerous version of playing the blame game and seeking cheap grace and given scapegoating a bad name just when we need it most.