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ABC News' Jason Ryan Reports: After his speech today on race relations in America commemorating Black History Month, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Monday he and the Acting head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, Matthew Olsen, will...
A.G. Holder: 'Race-protected cocoons'
by Mark Silva
Eric Holder, the nation's first African-American attorney general, addressed the employees of the Justice Department on the occasion of Black History Month today with an assessment that, on matters of race, America remains "essentially a nation of cowards,'' in some ways not much better than it looked 50 years ago.
Look around the shopping mall on a Saturday, he suggestedone of the "race-protected cocoons'' where segregation persists.
Provocative words from the administration of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, one who campaigned not as a black man but as an agent of "change,'' yet who nonetheless presented the United States with an historic testthe election of a black president. During the campaign, Obama directly confronted the question of race with an address calling for fulfillment of that "more perfect union.''
"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards," said Holder, a former federal judge whom Obama made the nation's chief law enforcement officer.
"We, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race,'' said Holder, urging people of all races to use Black History Month as a platform for honest discussion of racial matters, including disparities in health care, education and income.
"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,'' Holder told hundreds of Justice employees, suggesting that, while blacks and whites are integrated in many quarters, they still are segregated in their free time in "race-protected cocoons.''
"Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad," Holder said.
"If we're going to ever make progress, we're going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other,'' Holder told reporters after the speech. "It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified.''
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