(NNPA)—After being confirmed as the nation’s first African American U.S. attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. wasted little time putting everyone on notice that he would not tip-toe around the volatile subject of race.
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder declared in a speech at the Justice Department.
There was the predictable uproar on the right and President Obama, while not repudiating his new appointee, told the New York Times, “I think it’s fair to say that if I had been advising my attorney general, we would have used different language.”
And that’s precisely the point. Holder was courageous in directly taking on the issue of race while Obama, in the words of Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson, “runs from race like a Black man runs from a cop.”
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