Posted on 02/24/2009 10:58:30 AM PST by Coleus
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says that Americans are not part of the “land of the free and the home of the brave” but instead a “nation of cowards” when it comes to race. In a February 18 speech to Department of Justice (DOJ) employees, he 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. 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."
Why do we need to talk more about race, if race only means skin color? (And it does.)
Holder even admitted in that speech that racial discrimination in America is almost dead. “As a nation we have done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace,” he told DOJ employees on the occasion of black history month. “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.” That doesn’t sound like cowardice to any rational person. It sounds like harmony. So what’s the big deal, then? What’s with the “nation of cowards” remark? The civil rights movement to radicals like Holder had little to do with ending discrimination and a lot more to do with using race-baiting as a means of centralizing political power. That explains how Holder can tell DOJ employees that the current racial harmony is nothing more than a “polite, restrained mixing that now passes as meaningful interaction but that accomplishes little.”
Accomplishes “little”?
Yep, that pretty much sums up Holder’s view of the civil rights movement. It accomplished little, Holder says, unless we agitate for a “very legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action.” We’re “cowards,” Holder says, because most Americans are content with equality under the law and racial harmony. And he called on DOJ employees to use "the artificial device that is Black History month [that] is a perfect vehicle for the beginnings of such a dialogue" to agitate on race. The hook on which Holder hangs his racial agitation agenda is the fact that most people — black and white — still choose to live in neighborhoods where the mean skin pigmentation is similar to their own. He says of the civil rights movement in the 1960s that “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.”
Holder gins up the agitators with the assumption that it’s necessarily discriminatory for African-Americans to decide to live in a community that is majority African-American (and for whites to do the same). The publicly stated purpose of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s was for African-Americans to be able to eat, work, and live wherever they wanted for whatever reason they wanted. They wanted freedom and equality under the law. But not everyone involved with the civil rights movement supported these goals. Manning Johnson was a participant in the civil rights movement as well as a 10-year member of the Communist Party, USA, which attempted to exploit and misdirect the civil rights movement as a means of agitating and dividing the American people. Johnson, an African-American, broke with the Communist Party and its agitation and noted that the goal of Moscow was to divide on the basis of race as a means of seizing political power.
Johnson stressed in his classic book on civil rights, Color, Communism and Common Sense, that having people of a certain ethnic group settle together is not necessarily racist:
Some people describe New York City as a "melting pot." At best, this is only wishful thinking. The numerous racial and national groups are as easily identified today as ever. The geographical areas where each group settled or resettled remains. Thus, there are in New York German sections, Italian sections, Irish sections, Jewish sections, Puerto Rican sections, Chinese sections, Negro sections, etc. In short, there may be found as many sections as there are national groups or races. National, social, cultural, linguistic, religious and other common factors effect this sectional cleavage. Parades and gala affairs in national costumes are not uncommon. The same may be said of every part of our country. Though these national, racial and religious differences divide them like five fingers on the hand, yet they are one solid fist as Americans…. Negroes band together in sections like other races and national groups much for the same reasons. Like other racial and national groups, they can buy land, build communities, settle in any section of the country. Like other racial and national groups, they can make their sections as nice and attractive as possible. The maximum business, cultural, sanitary and social services are within their reach as with other groups.
The Communists, through propaganda, have sold a number of Negro intellectuals the idea that the Negro section is a ghetto; that white Americans created it, set its geographical boundaries; that it is the product of race hate and the inhumanity of white Americans. Therefore, it is a struggle of Negro against “white oppressors” for emancipation.
Naturally, those holding such views have no community pride, no interest in doing anything to improve its services because that would be aiding and abetting ‘segregation’ and maintenance of the ‘ghetto.’”
The view expressed by Holder represents the latest "seedy undercurrent" of this distorted view of civil rights, which has nothing to do with true freedom equality under the law. His agitation would lead to less racial harmony, more excuses for individuals of all racial groups not to improve their neighborhoods and personal lives, and a much more powerful government.
WELL,THERE GOES THE SALES OF BLACK AND WHITE COOKIES!
Hold on, Mr AG. Don't you mean you only want minorities to race agitate, and for whites to just be the object of their derision? I mean, am I wrong?
I suspect if I happened to use the word 'nappy' a lot of very good friends of mine where I work are going to become 'agitated'. In fact, I'll bet they'd be more than a little agitated. I don't think they'll care much that I was following your suggestion. I could end up bruised, limping, out of work, and/or even banned from this site, and no one would want that.
So please, Mr AG. Do you mind clarifying your statement?
I kinda was thinking the same thing -
how about if whites started “agitating”?
BUCHANAN TO OBAMA
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America . Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ‘ 60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude??
Barack talks about new ‘ladders of opportunity’ for blacks. Let him go to Altoona ? And Johnstown , and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for ‘deserving ‘ white kids.? Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America ? Is it really white America ‘s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena . And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.
This needs to be passed around because, this is a message everyone needs to hear!!!
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ‘ 60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants
Actually this is what we should apologize for. This is what stopped the gains being made by black families until the 1960’s.
Mr. Eric Holder: You are a race baiting bigot lacking any noticeable sense of proportion or fairness regarding this issue. I thought you should know that.
In reference to someone accusing someone else of calling Holder a "blue scrotum monkey".
Tell ya what, Eric. Soon as you convince those of your black compatriots, who (on a statistical basis) keep to themselves much more than other races, to fully integrate into mainstream society and give up their destructive, dehumanizing gangsta culture, then we can have all the conversation you desire. Until then, just shut your pie hole.
We are just simply EXHAUSTED from the current gaggle of race baiting “civil rights leaders” most of whom appear to be paranoid opportunists. We are tired. We have to work in order to bankroll LBJ’s “Waw on Poverty”. So excuse me if I go into my “ignore” mode.
I don’t think Holder would like it if the majority of Whites actually spoke up about race. Holder probably doesn’t remember the days when blacks were referred to as “the white man’s burden.”
When was that written? Thanks
3-20-08
Thanks!
They are cowards, both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats because they vote for government actions and then deny what they are doing...not nationalizing a bank, not including “pork” in the stimulus, saying there is not any intention of Nationalizing banks while they merrily go about telling CITI and others how they will run their business and demanding that banks take the $$$ even if they would rather not. I say they are cowards because they chose to follow blindly rather than stand up for their constituents.
Now for the Republicans, who so bravely voted NO, and then SAID NOTHING! Where are the fearless Republicans explaining exactly the government intervention in health care that is included in the stimulus and what it's going to do to the elderly. What about the millions for ACORN? And what about the treatment of our military? A 10% cut in military spending when the military has been running the wheels off all their equipment and needs replacements? And what about the cut to Veteran medical benefits? Supposedly because “retirees use it too much”.. Well, what do you suppose happens when you get older???? Oh yes, lets not forget Mr Dashle and his admonition for the elderly to just accept ill health and go ahead and die. Hopefully Mr. Dashle will show us the way on this and perhaps take Mr. Kennedy, who is getting way too much treatment for a terminal disease, with him. Why aren't the Republicans speaking out about the stealth takeover of our financial institutions. As I write this the newsies strain to define exactly what nationalization is...poor things, it's so hard to make the unplatable look like a good thing. Now it's a "kind of takeover"!
Yes, Mr. Holder, there are cowards in the United States and you bunk happily with them! You are one too! You choose to throw up the distraction of racism rather than attempt to address anything that is really important in this country, like illegal immigration, like the constant invasion of our Souther borders by Mexican nationals. Or perhaps you might spend you time and outrage on the drugs that flood into this country because of your deafness to anything other than race! You are the Attorney General of this country not the the head of the NAACP. In a nutshell racism is over, we aren't buying that any more. Go do your job and shut up preaching to us.
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