AlterNet
By Tim Wise, CounterPunch. Posted March 2, 2009.
Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder blamed personal cowardice for our racial divide, rather than institutionalized inequities.
It was all too predictable that Attorney General Eric Holder would be attacked for his recent remarks about race in America. To suggest that the nation is still haunted by the specter of racism is unacceptable it seems, especially since, with the election of President Barack Obama, we have ostensibly entered the "post-racial" era.
But in truth, the nation's chief law enforcement officer deserves criticism more for what he didn't say than for what he did.
Specifically, Holder blamed personal cowardice for our racial divide, rather than institutionalized inequities, thereby minimizing his own department's role in solving the problem; and he blamed everyone (and thus no one in particular) for being cowards, thereby letting white Americans -- who have always been the ones least willing to engage the subject -- off our uniquely large hook.
This combination of power-obliviousness (ignoring discrimination and unequal access to resources, while focusing merely on attitudes) and color-blindness (suggesting that everyone is equally at fault and equivalently unwilling to discuss racism) is a popular lens through which to view these matters. Indeed, the Oscar-winning film Crash was based almost entirely on these two tropes.
But such a lens distorts our vision, and obscures true understanding of the phenomenon being observed.
The racial divide about which Holder spoke, particularly in terms of the neighborhoods where people live, is not the result of some abstract cowardice to engage one another.
Full Story: http://www.alternet.org/rights/129505/
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