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, Holder 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.
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. Rather, it is about the racist fears of whites, who decades ago began leaving neighborhoods when blacks began to move in.
Most whites are thinking about prejudice! Message boards and Blogs are swarmed most by people with complaints, people with an agenda one-dimensional views about white Americans.
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