The Attorney General has some harsh words for his fellow citizens:
Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States Wednesday as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing unresolved racial issues.
In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” said Holder, nation’s first black attorney general.
Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”
Let us put aside for the nonce the country’s chief law enforcement officer extending his public portfolio into the lives of private citizens on weekends. Let us ignore, for now, the constitutionally protected right of American citizens to associate freely with whomever they choose. Let us even concede arguendo that we, as average Americans, don’t talk enough about race.
Having done that, let us brush right past the tedious work of defining how much talk about race is “enough” in a country with African Americans serving as president, attorney general, in both houses of congress, in the judiciary at every level, and in statehouses and boardrooms throughout the country. A country that offers an unparalleled equality of opportunity based on merit. A country that is ceaselessly reminded of the ongoing legacy of its national birth stain.
Let us focus instead on Mr. Holder’s cowardice charge on “unresolved racial issues” – whatever those are – and examine its underpinnings: If Americans are reluctant to talk with one another about race, could it have anything to do with the fact that there is only one “approved” narrative on race, it is imposed by those most conscious of race as a social construct on those least conscious of it, and that any deviation from the heterodoxy leaves one instantly subjected to mau-mauing as a racist – the most witheringly pernicious public characterization possible. Let us ponder the insistence of those in ethnic studies departments of academies throughout the land that to be born white in this country is to be born privileged, and therefore born innately racist. There’s nothing you can do.
You pig.
So, maybe it’s cowardice. Maybe there’s just nothing left to say. Maybe people would rather decline the opportunity to be “spoken to” on weekends without the option of speaking back. Maybe they don’t like being told that they “just don’t get it,” that they never can.
Maybe people should be free in their private lives to think their private thoughts, so long as their public actions impose no burden upon anyone else without being accused as cowards.
Maybe the attorney general should stop flogging his pet agendas from the bully pulpit and get back to doing his paid work.
STILL MORE fine commentary in replies to Holder–this time from a black perspective by James McWhorter, writing in the New Republic at:
http://www.tnr.com/political/story.html?id=ce688a73-1019-485c-886f-7bbbda916e11
Those who seem obsessed with racism usually are: their own, primarily. It’s sad, really.
Those who travel widely and have lived overseas generally don’t consider America to be a very racist society. In fact it’s one of the world’s few functioning multi-racial democracies.
The rate of illegitimate births is rising among all groups, it indicates a general social decline more than racial differences. I think it’s a result of the reduced role of Biblical faith. Some social commentators describe present American society as ‘post-Christian’, presently it strikes me more as aggressively anti-Biblical. This is especially apparent in academia and media.
FbL, thank you for your work in teaching, it’s a usually thankless effort with mostly heartistic rewards. About the prevalence of absent fathers among student failures: I think it’s been established that the single most common factor among the US prison population is not single parentage or even family income, but illiteracy. Of course there is a plausible link of absent fathers (lack of family discipline) with poor study habits, but I also think that if first and second graders had effective literacy instruction and learned to read before third grade, there would be a huge difference in school (and life) fortunes.
A famous British doctor who is also a columnist (sorry I forget his name, something with a capital T in it) wrote that in his years of interviews with incarcerated patients, many of them had never had the experience of sitting down as a family for a single meal. This may be incredible for many of us (it sure is for me), but it makes sense: he writes that the act of having a regular mealtime together forces us to learn to moderate our physical urges to the needs and schedule of others, in this case our own family.
There are serious problems in American society that need urgent attention. Racism isn’t one of them.
Best regards, Peter Warner.
Nagoya, Japan.
First off, Skipper…
Copy cat… Beat ya by a day…
But how interesting is it that Lex, a man of education and learning, who has tread the halls of learning, both in professional and personal pursuit of knowledge, and one-each grunt, whose education consists mostly of observations regarding the human condition, should both raise their hackles at the same point?
I think that Mr. Holder’s issues are not with the racial cowardice of the Nation; I think that they are with Mr. Holder.
Peter W./
That would be a British psychiatrist Anthony Daniels who writes under the pen name of Theodore Dalrymple. Practically everything he writes is pure gold as far as I’m concerned.
Kris, did yer Mom look like this guy?
Please see: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/lg.cgi?page=g&GRid=8108825
Maybe this link will work:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi.bin/fg.cgi?page=g&GRid=8108825
Better late than never.
For the record. Very turned off by that statement. Insulted really. Screw you “Eric”.
re- “to be born white in this country is to be born privileged, and therefore born innately racist. There’s nothing you can do.”
Let me see. Holder and Obama are 1/2 white, therefore, they are 1/2 racist?
b2
To be born American is to be priviledged; all else is nonsense in these days. Mr. Holder is an ass, and I suspect that he is a payoff to certain individuals who seek to make their not-insubstantial living from stoking the fires of discontent: Rev. Jackson, are you listening?
Holder’s black ancestors are from Barbados, which means he is not what we used to refer to as American Negroes. Thomas Sowell and Alan Keyes are actually American Negroes, whose ancestors were dragged over here before 1808, and prolly earlier, so their families have been here lots longer.
oh, sorry about the bad links. I was trying to link the pics of Ernest Evans from find-a-grave. He commanded USS Johnston in the Battle off Samar, and got a posthumous MoH for doing so. He looks very Cherokee in his official midshipman picture. Having known a Cherokee or two, I imagine some of his men going, “OMG we’re all gonna die!” and Evans responding, “So?
Good write up on him at Wikipedia
Sheesh. I’d never heard his tale, thanks JTG.
Will Holder discuss these five racial issues?