Obama’s election and re-election have accomplished what Obama said he wanted, but didn’t really want: the ushering in of a post-racial America. With the exception of die-hard progressives, the vast majority of non-black Americans no longer care about the “civil rights movement,” not because they are racists, but because there are no barriers left: we’ve had a “black” President, “black” Cabinet officials, SC justices, Senators, Congresspeople, medical doctors, academic doctors, lawyers, CEOs, CFOs, star athletes in every sport, star entertainers in every medium. The result is that Holder et al have stopped sounding like people who are pleading for opportunity rights, and have started sounding like people who are whining for success entitlement, and the American people can tell the difference.
There’s also one other aspect, which FReepers may lament (I do), but which has its own unintended consequence. The American public has “moved on” from black-civil-rights to LGBT-civil-rights, and the rights issues of the day no longer are racial but sexual. That sexual activity is a choice and race is not is irrelevant in the public mind: people, in the public mind, are supposedly “born [fill in the sexual blank]” and therefore in the public mind deserve the same opportunity rights regardless of sexual orientation. Racial civil rights are so 20th century; the New Crusade is LGBT, and Holder’s complaints are just an old man’s anachronistic whining, to the public.
I wish that you were right, but no. Blacks still think about race a lot, and nothing is their fault.
Not all blacks, of course, but more than enough of them to matter.