Weekend Opinionator: A Nation of Cowards, Stimulus-Wielding Chimps and Hip-Hop Republicans: NYTimes

Quoted via NYTimes, by Tobin Harshaw:

Is it morning in post-racial America? According to Attorney General Eric Holder, not even close: “In things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” he told his Justice Department employees in remarks prepared to honor Black History Month on Wednesday. Well, I for one can’t wait for his National Sports Eye Safety Month speech in April, but for now let’s see what he had to say on our self-imposed racial divide:

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,

All in all, it was a pretty tough week for “post-racial” America.

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 fifty years ago. This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race conscious and yet is voluntarily socially segregated. more