A Nation of Cowards???

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Linda Chavez
Linda Chavez 
A Nation of Cowards
2/20/2009

A Nation of Cowards

We're a nation of cowards -- or at least the attorney general of the United States thinks we are. In a speech at the Justice Department celebrating Black History Month, Attorney General Eric Holder said: "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." It seems a rather peculiar statement coming from the first black attorney general, moreover, one appointed by the first black man elected president.

Holder's complaint is that, "We, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race." But is that really what the country needs: an extended conversation on race? Bill Clinton proposed a similar idea back when he was in office. He called it a National Conversation on Race and hosted several town hall events around the country with lots of media hype. There was much finger-pointing -- at whites, of course -- and little serious analysis of the real challenges the black community faces.

The problem is not that we talk too little about race but that our discussion is often irrelevant to the problems at hand. When Holder and Clinton talk about confronting racial issues, what they really want is a national therapy session in which whites admit that their prejudice and discrimination -- past and present -- is responsible for all the ills that beset blacks today.

Well, sorry, it just isn't so. And if we're going to have an honest discussion about race, let's begin by defining the problem.

Holder calls others cowards?  

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

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2/20/2009  Old news.