A Nation of Cowards?
by Donald Devine
Issue 127 - March 4, 2009

So Attorney General Eric Holder called us a “nation of cowards” regarding race. Who does this liberal Democrat think he is attacking our country? I could not wait to get to the office to read the whole speech and get the ammunition to read him the riot act as just another unreformed leftist!

I was crushed. After reading the speech, it was not exactly Bill Cosby but it made several extremely important concessions that coming from a high-ranking liberal-Democratic African-American official could help change racial politics in the U.S. in a direction this conservative reactionary would find very positive.

What about the “nation of cowards” grenade? Conservatives would phrase this as the fear of “political correctness.” What we mean by this term is that Americans are not courageous enough to talk the truth about political matters - very much including race - so they mouth meaningless platitudes rather than face reality and deal with the real issues. Mr. Holder expresses the same idea in different words:

we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race. It is an issue we have never been at ease with and given our nation’s history this is in some ways understandable. And yet, if we are to make progress in this area we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us.

Americans must become comfortable enough – yes brave enough – to talk straight on race and not hide behind political correctness. What conservative would disagree with that? And note that he says “we” which presumable means both races. Indeed, his speech was for Black History Month and his audience was disproportionately African-American.

More important, the Attorney General makes an incredibly important concession regarding the debate on race in the area of equal opportunity employment.

As a nation we have done a pretty good job in melding the races in the workplace. 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.

As a former official in charge of this program for the Federal Government, this writer considers this as light-years from the assumption of most Equal Employment Opportunity law enforcement that the workplace is a sea of racism and the majority is assumed guilty and the minority member innocent before the fact. A very large number of EEO claims in the government – and probable the private sector too - are spurious and are settled by employers regardless of the facts simply to avoid the character-damning charge of racism.

To be sure, Attorney General Holder did not propose elimination of or more refined enforcement of EEO laws. But this is an enormous concession from the Democratic official who oversees prosecution of such matters. In fact, he qualifies his concession even further:

And yet even this interaction [in the workplace] operates within certain limitations. We know, by "American instinct" and by learned behavior, that certain subjects are off limits and that to explore them risks, at best embarrassment, and, at worst, the questioning of one’s character. And outside the workplace the situation is even more bleak in that there is almost no significant interaction between us. On Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some fifty years ago. This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle 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.

Still, he concedes a great deal here also. He recognizes that even raising race risks character assassination. Regarding segregation over weekends, one could ask whether this big time Washington K Street lawyer-lobbyist has ever been to a weekend baseball game, or football or basketball event and seen the races enjoying these together. But he does have a point. The two races do live in different neighborhoods and they do pretty much live separate private lives. But he even concedes that this is voluntary – and one might add voluntarily by both races.

Holder’s is not an Al Sharpton guilt trip aimed solely at white behavior. Indeed, it seems partially aimed at him, or should be.

We still speak too much of "them" and not "us". There can, for instance, be very legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action. This debate can, and should, be nuanced, principled and spirited. But the conversation that we now engage in as a nation on this and other racial subjects is too often simplistic and left to those on the extremes who are not hesitant to use these issues to advance nothing more than their own, narrow self interest. Our history has demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with, and would like to not have to deal with, racial matters and that is why those, black or white, elected or self-appointed, who promise relief in easy, quick solutions, no matter how divisive, are embraced. We are then free to retreat to our race protected cocoons where much is comfortable and where progress is not really made.

Some conservative critics of the speech took “extremes” as criticism of the mainstream right but that merely makes Holder’s point about the “American instinct” to take offence. The attorney general specifically aims at both “black or white” and, while he may consider conservative solutions to end racial preferences simplistic, he does not say so. Indeed, he here makes the second even more important policy concession - that debate on the question of affirmative action is “legitimate” – again made by the most important government official on these matters. If people generally were willing to accept this concession, it might actually be possible to work toward the color-blind justice most conservatives support.

Why does all of this matter? Attorney General Holder was blunt:

If we allow this [negative] attitude [on race] to persist in the face of the most significant demographic changes this nation has ever confronted – and remember, there will be no majority race in America in about fifty years - the coming diversity that could be such a powerful, positive force will, instead, become a reason for stagnation and polarization. We cannot allow this to happen and one way to prevent such an unwelcome outcome is to engage one another more routinely - and to do so now.

Even if all immigration stopped tomorrow and those here illegally were sent to their homelands immediately but on some reasonable timetable, it would only delay this reality for a few additional years. White Americans just do not have enough children anymore to replace themselves. In fact, the possibility of ending immigration much less mass deportation under this Democratic Administration is zero so – like it or not - fifty years is probably an accurate forecast.

Mr. Holder does not mention it but this likelihood is not an unmixed blessing for African-Americans. To accept his challenge to be courageous about race, the fact is that U.S. Hispanics even without immigration are increasing child-bearing at a rate one-quarter higher and so have already passed blacks as the largest minority and these two groups are much more in conflict over similar resources than either are with whites. It is likely whites as the largest single group will decide political matters by choosing their favored coalition partner. That is what will happen if politics is determined upon group loyalties, which is why it is important to discuss these matters frankly and tolerantly to avoid a polarization that would threaten America’s generally peaceful society.

I nominate a person Mr. Holder mentioned favorably in his speech to lead the discussion. I had the pleasure not long ago to listen to a Toni Morrison interview over National Public Radio about her new book A Mercy. She is, of course, an African-American and a Nobel Laureate. She came across as the only person in America who gets it. She told the astonished interviewer she wrote her novel in an effort to "remove race from slavery." What an idea! In gathering research for the book, she read White Cargo by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh, and was surprised to learn that many white Americans are descended from slaves:

Every civilization in the world relied on [slavery]. The notion was that there was a difference between black slaves and white slaves, but there wasn't. White slaves, called indentured servants, were people who traded their freedom for their passage to America. The suggestion has always been that they could work off their passage in seven years generally, and then they would be free. But in fact, you could be indentured for life and frequently were. The only difference between African slaves and European or British slaves was that the latter could run away and melt into the population. But if you were black, you were noticeable.

It seems absolutely critical if the races are to live in peace and harmony with each other, as Ms. Morrison courageously understands, that blacks recognize that whites were slaves too. In fact, one whole race, their American Slavic neighbors, was so numerously enslaved that they were in fact named after their slavery, “Slav.” Almost every American ethnic group was in slavery at one time in their history or indentured or segregated or subjugated to another until relatively recent times and it was the (mostly white) West that was the first to outlaw it. But Morrison also recognizes the equal importance for whites (and Hispanics) to realize they were slaves too and that it was a great injustice to do the same to others here.

Morrison’s most important contribution is to recognize that slavery and racial relations generally cannot be treated abstractly but need to deal with real individual human beings. When she wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning Beloved, she realized that the key to writing about slavery was to focus on single characters rather than 300 years of history. "I realized that I could do it if I had a single narrative about people. If I simply entered the minds and the bloodstream and the perception of individuals, then it was manageable."

Individuals—that is the conservative solution - to get back to individuals and away from the group rights that have cursed so much of the rest of the world. Heritage has its importance but the secret of Western civilization has been individual equality before the law. Mr. Holder would most probably not concur but he is correct that the Americans who do agree need to become courageous enough to state their position and defend it in frank but polite discourse - not hide behind their own version of political correctness.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.