Sometimes a paradox will yield its meaning to someone willing to invest just a little thought.
Take, for instance, the observation that a vacuum cleaner that sucks, doesn’t.
Or consider the fact that it is impossible for someone to be the “most mediocre” in a given field, since that person would then excel at mediocrity.
The paradox propounded by Attorney General Eric Holder last week is hardly as benign as either of those examined above.
Speaking in commemoration of Black History Month, Mr. Holder – the first black U.S. Attorney General, appointed to that position by the first black U.S. President – insisted that the absence of rancorous racial debate is a symptom of deeply entrenched racial problems in American society.
At least, that’s my take-away from the following statement:
“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. Though race related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race…. [I]f 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.”
For a generation, Americans have aspired to assess individuals on the basis of character and achievement rather than skin color. Now the most powerful lawyer in the world has described the effort to build a color-blind society as a reflection of some embedded national character flaw.
Taken by themselves, Holder’s words were hardly the stuff of militancy. But the gratuitous insult (are we really a “nation of cowards” because we have better things to do than rummage around in search of racial resentments?) and the speaker’s posture of incurable grievance leave me with a weary suspicion that the Obama administration, rather than putting Jesse Jackson-style race-hustling out of business, is prepared to escalate it by several orders of magnitude.
What Holder said may ultimately be less important than the audience to whom he said it: He was addressing a gathering of tax-supported legal predators, the kind of people whose professional prospects – beginning with basic job security – would brighten considerably were the United States to undergo a prolonged spasm of racial conflict. Continue reading . . .
