Jeremiah Wright
"For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of America."
Michelle Obama
"America is a nation of cowards when discussing race issues."
Eric Holder
What do these three people have in common? They either are or have been close personal advisors to President Obama. When they speak to him, he listens. Individually, these statements are bothersome. Taken together, they are warning signs of a potentially troubling pattern.
Eric Holder is a very smart, very well educated man, and a lawyer by training. He is a person that understands that words have meaning. He is not just some over the top, hyperbolic preacher, or a person whose words can be explained away by saying that they were taken out of context.
He couldn't be more wrong. It is a mark of maturity and greatness of this country that we elected an African American as our chief executive. And it is the supreme irony that he has his position because of our maturity and greatness. Racial issues were discussed in the main stream media and in the blogosphere throughout the campaign and we faced those straight up. The Bradley Effect turned out to be as relevent as Y2K-- a whole lot of nothin'. As a country, we finally and conclusively determined that race didn't matter.
America has lost a measure of confidence in this financial crisis. We will in time get it back. Especially at this time, we need to have people around our president that will remind him (and us) of our greatness-- not insult us in the most vile way. We have our faults, but cowardice isn't one of them.
I agree that Holder's choice of words was unfortunate. But I wholly disagree with you that he was wrong about what he said. I don't think one can say conclusively that Obama's election proves that race no longer matters. As one saw in the 1983 Chicago mayoral race when Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago in a stunningly close race (he was, after all, a Democrat in a city that has not elected a Republican mayor in over 100 years), the mere fact that a black man wins doesn't support the conclusion that race was not relevant. Given the shocking ineptitude and perversion of the Constitution at the hands of the last administration, one might argue that Obama would have won by a much larger margin if race were not an issue. Who knows? The best one can say is that race "might not" have mattered in the Presidential election. I think it is naive to conclude that this proves our society is "post-racial," as the pundits like to put it. The reluctance to directly confront that reality is what Holder was talking about. "Cowardice" is perhaps a bit of a harsh way to characterize it, but his point is a solid one.
ReplyDeleteHolder definitely used careless words. On the other hand, does anyone in the real world think that Racism is dead? We know it is still out there, it is just a whole lot less than it used to be.
ReplyDeleteThe Michelle Obama quote is pretty silly to bring up now. Is Fox News still peddling this nonsense?
Finally, a comment upon Rev. Wright. Remember Obama wasn't in church when Wright made his outrageous comment? Truth be told Obama joined that church because it is the home of Chicago's Black upper crust. I think he really is not really devout. He reminds me of Reagan in that regard. Both Obama and Reagan talk religion but like Reagan (who rarely attended church), I suspect Obama uses religion to appeal to religious voters.
Regards,
Demosthenes