Holder Calls on Nation to 'Examine its Racial Soul'

Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. today called on the nation to “examine its racial soul,” during a speech commemorating Black History Month.

Holder, the first African American to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcer, offered a drab picture of American progress in race relations, as he spoke before a standing-room crowd in the Justice Department’s Great Hall.

“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,” Holder said.

He continued, “Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

His speech recalled the one given by President Barack Obama, last March, when he described "a racial stalemate" of black anger and white resentments that has distracted the country from overcoming issues that squeeze the middle class and exacerbate the divide. Holder also spoke of the enduring racial divide, and he suggested ways of bridging it.

“As a nation we should use Black History month as a means to deal with this continuing problem,” Holder said. “By creating what will admittedly be, at first, artificial opportunities to engage one another we can hasten the day when the dream of individual, character based, acceptance can actually be realized.”

Holder said too often debates over race-related issues are too simplistic, and “left to those on the extremes who are not hesitant to use these issues to advance nothing more than their own, narrow self interest.”

“There can, for instance, be very legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action. This debate can, and should, be nuanced, principled and spirited,” Holder said.

But such a debate must start with the premise that African-American history is American history, not “divorced from the whole,” Holder said.

Holder said the American education system must adapt in ways that more clearly impart the roles blacks have played in law, culture, science, athletics, industry and other fields -- knowledge that is critical to gaining “an understanding of the American experiment,” Holder said.

“Black history is given a separate, and clearly not equal, treatment by our society in general and by our educational institutions in particular,” Holder said.

Holder, a former federal prosecutor, D.C. judge, and U.S. attorney, spoke of his own success as a measure of those who came before him.

“I stood, and stand, on the shoulders of many other black Americans. Admittedly, the identities of some of these people, through the passage of time, have become lost to us -- the men, and women, who labored long in fields, who were later legally and systemically discriminated against, who were lynched by the hundreds in the century just past and those others who have been too long denied the fruits of our great American culture,” Holder said.

Comments

[nora]

Holder's phrase "nation of cowards" applies to everyone of every race in the nation. Not sure why An Old Judge assumed that he was specifically calling whites cowards. Methinks it is An Old Judge who sees the world in strictly divided black and white terms, not Holder.

[Matthew V.]

Ditto ... May God bless "An Old Judge" and his comment. Every one knows about Bushisms and Sharptonism.

[Observer]

Old Judge, I think you may be overreacting to a soundbite. If you read the whole speech, he actually seems to be *criticizing* the tactic used in racial discussions of "labeling [opponents] in a morally dismissive way."

For example, he complains that our interracial social intereactions are limited because "We know, by 'American instinct' and by learned behavior, that certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks, at best embarrassment, and, at worst, the questioning of one’s character."

He further acknowledges that there can "be very legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action," but that "the conversation that we now engage in as a nation on this and other racial subjects is too often simplistic and left to those on the extremes who are not hesitant to use these issues to advance nothing more than their own, narrow self interest."

And he is clearly targeting the "same old race-mongering" (bilaterally, including folks like Al Sharpton) when he says: "Our history has demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with, and would like to not have to deal with, racial matters and that is why those, black or white, elected or self-appointed, who promise relief in easy, quick solutions, no matter how divisive, are embraced."

I'm not sure Holder should have used the phrase "nation of cowards" (because it would predictably be sound-bit and misinterpreted), but the overall speech actually *is* advocating a new type of racial discussion. To the contrary, some would say that it is your comments, seemingly delivered in knee-jerk, reactive fashion without reading the actual content of Holder's remarks, that are more of the same.

[An Old Judge]

Holder stated, "in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."

I am agog. A multi-millionaire lawyer, twice-graduated from Columbia University, married to a physician, with a resume dripping with life at the highest levels of our society, who was appointed by our country's African-American president, has the audacity (and lack of self-awareness) to call us a nation of cowards. He would not be where he is, nor would our President, if we were truly a nation of cowards.

This is typically terroristic speech warfare, designed to silence anyone who opposes the declarant by labeling them in a morally dismissive way. This is not the change that I perceive America voted for; this is the same old race-mongering perfected by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in a slightly better suit.