In his first major speech since being confirmed, the nation's first Black attorney general, Eric Holder, told an audience celebrating Black History Month at the Justice Department that the nation remains "voluntarily socially segregated." In the nation’s capitol, where it is all to often that speeches are full of bull, this straight-talking assessment, which he called the American people “essentially a nation of cowards” in failing to openly discuss the issues of race. And of course he has received much criticism.
We usually spend the month of February by paying lip service to the nation's annual observance of as Black History Month. And it would have been easy for him to simply praise Blacks whose sacrifice helped pave the way for our democracy; or to point to the triumph of both President Obama's election and his own nomination and confirmation as the first Black attorney general in U.S. history. Instead, Mr. Holder used his speech to demand that Americans confront our unfinished business on the uncomfortable subject of race.
Attorney General Holder urged Americans of all races, Black, Brown, Red, White and Yellow, to use Black History Month as a time to have an honest national conversation to discuss aspects of race which are ignored because they are uncomfortable. This kind of straight talk is what we need, not only in Washington, D.C., but all across the nation. It's not easy to talk about it. We have to have the guts to be honest with each other and ourselves, accept criticism, and accept new proposals. Yes we have had past public debates on the issue but they have been often too simplistic in not really getting past self imposed walls and barriers. And most of the times these debates have been left to those on the extremes who are not hesitant to use these issues to advance nothing more than their own narrow self-interest. But most importantly they should be conversations and not debates. We can never move forward until we get past our past. We are all different. And we need to accept that difference, but we are much more alike than we are different.
Excerpts from the speech: "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.
"We average Americans simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation's history, this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.
"As a nation we have done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace. We work with one another, lunch together and, when the event is at the workplace during work hours or shortly thereafter, we socialize with one another fairly well, irrespective of race.
"And yet even this interaction operates within certain limitations. 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.
"And outside the workplace the situation is even more bleak in that there is almost no significant interaction between us. On Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago. This is truly sad.
"This will be, at first, a process that is both awkward and painful, but the rewards are, I believe, potentially great. The alternative is to allow to continue the polite, restrained mixing that now passes as meaningful interaction, but that in reality accomplishes very little."
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