Comments Attorney General Eric Holder's "nation of cowards".”remarks
Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a speech yesterday to Department of Justice employees in which he said, "in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."
The reaction from many on the right has been -- how best to put this? -- about the same as the reaction would be from many on the left if, say, the New York Post ran a cartoon depicting two white cops shooting a chimpanzee dead while making stimulus jokes.
Jimmie at The Sundries Shack:
As for his "nation of cowards" line, well, he can just kiss the fattest part of my backside. America has done more than any nation, ever, to rid itself of racism. We put the very existence of the country at risk to end slavery. We have an entire month dedicated to the history of Black Americans (who, by the way, do come from places other than Africa, thanks very much) and our televisions, radios, and newspapers do far more during that month than they do during, say, the month of May (anyone know what May is?). We still teach schoolchildren about Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, and Harriet Tubman, to mention only a very few. We have elevated a black man and a black woman to the position of Secretary of State. We have rejected our racist past more thoroughly than any nation ever has and we have done more to atone for it than any ever will. No people have ever afforded people of every race and creed a greater opportunity to attain their dreams and live in freedom than we have right here. None ever will.
Holder disgusts me, not merely because of his apparent ignorance, but because of his arrogance. He believes that he, a man who sold his integrity for a little political gain when he pardoned killers, has the moral standing to lecture us Americans. He stood there as the Attorney General of the United States of America and slandered every single one of us without a bit of hesitation.
Jonah Goldberg at the Corner:
I find Eric Holder's comments on race both hackneyed and reprehensible. He says that America is "essentially a nation of cowards" because it doesn't talk about race enough.
First, I think this is nonsense as we talk about race a great, great, great deal in this country. Endless courses in colleges and universities, chapters in high school textbooks, movies, documentaries, after-school-specials and so on are devoted to discussing race. We even have something called "Black History Month" -- the occasion for Holder's remarks to begin with -- when America is supposed to spend a month talking about the black experience.
Second, to the extent we don't talk about race in this country the primary reason is that liberals and racial activists have an annoying habit of attacking anyone who doesn't read from a liberal script "racists" or, if they're lucky, "insensitive."
Thus "cowardice" is defined as refusal to do as your told when that would in fact be the cowardly thing to do.
At Big Hollywood, Bill Willingham writes:
Dear Mr. Holder: serious and thoughtful conversations about race aren't possible in today's American culture, where name-calling and hurled epithets are the acme of discourse. Name-calling is a conversation ender. Always. And here's some more cold water to pour on your notion: Name-calling is the proprietary weapon of the left. There's no equality of blame, no comparison. We on the right aren't "just as bad." . . .
Your side has taken itself out of the game, and until such time as you on the left can get your house in order, you aren't worth a reasonable man's time or effort.
Here's a hint though. Calling everyone a coward isn't a good place to start.
Ace at Ace of Spades:
I think the more pernicious, though less shocking statement in the speech is, "Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul." That is profoundly wrong. The soul of America is not race, it's freedom. America is an idea, a shared set of assumptions more than anything else. We are not loyal to clan, tribe, race, religion or even the land. We are the descendants of people who believed in an idea and welcomed (often imperfectly) those who shared that ideal.
That's not to say race isn't a very important element of America it clearly is. That's mainly because it's one of the most obvious ways in which the rhetoric of America did not match the reality. Yet no one who is remotely honest denies that astonishing progress has been made and continues to be made (see Obama, Barack and Holder, Eric for proof of this) despite the efforts of those who would live only in the past.
Paul at Powerline:
Here is Holder on the crucial issue of "affirmative action" (a coward's name for race-based preferences):
"There can, for instance, be very legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action. This debate can, and should, be nuanced, principled and spirited. But 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."
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