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Ever since the glory days of the civil rights era, Americans have been told repeatedly that a person's race is not a legitimate reason to discriminate against him or her; it is, as it were, only skin deep, and we should confine ourselves to judging people by their character alone.
In the main, this message has been received, consumed, and totally internalized. We now have a black President. Before that, we had two black Secretaries of State in a row; have wealthy black businessmen and entertainers; and think nothing of seeing a black doctor, lawyer, or a black in any other professional-grade job.
The young are even more truly color-blind, apparently not even considering their race when contemplating whom they'd like to date. Black, brown, yellow, white, red - it's all the same when the lights are out.
This view that race no longer matters much has been utterly false according to our newly-appointed black Attorney General. Said Eric Holder to his subordinates:
In things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards... We, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.
Perhaps Mr. Holder, unlike virtually every other American, does not watch television. Anyone who paid attention to the past two years of campaign coverage might be excused for a small degree of skepticism at his statement that Americans don't talk about race enough.
Hardly a newscast went by without pointing out the historic! nature! of this campaign! of the First BLACK Man for President! Thrills ran up legs near and far.
The only debate against comparisons of Barack Obama with Abraham Lincoln was whether, in reality, he was actually more like Jesus Christ. We vividly recall a major speech he delivered on the subject of race which received a great deal of comment at the time though it's clearly been forgotten, at least by Mr. Holder. Might Mr. Holder be well advised to study the sayings of his boss?
In fact, insofar as any Americans refrained from discussing the Historic Blackness of Barack Obama, it was for a darn good reason: let the word so much as escape your lips in any way other than in sycophantic praise, and every pundit on the planet instantly deemed you a racist of the worst sort.
In fact, the same is true for each and every black person of national renown: anyone who wants to keep job or reputation dare not breathe anything that might even appear to be anything other than adulatory. Even criticizing black officials in a totally non-racial way, such as pointing out Mr. Obama's total lack of governing experience or bemoaning Rep. Rangel's cheating on his income tax, was decreed to be racist.
Concerning people of color in less exalted environs than the Oval Office, positively the last thing opinion-makers will allow is any discussion of race as it relates to anything in the real world.
Why do blacks disproportionately commit crimes? Why is the black illegitimacy rate so high? Why are inner-city schools so bad and their streets so mean? There's one acceptable answer: the monstrously monumental monolithic racism of American whites.
Blaming anything else is, well, racist - even if it's being said by Dr. Bill Cosby, who as Mr. Holder must have overlooked, is more than somewhat black himself.
As with any sermon, though, the Rev. Holder did not want his audience to leave thinking "What a great sermon!" but rather "I must do something!" The Associated Press reports:
He told hundreds of Justice Department employees gathered for the event that they have a special responsibility to advance racial understanding. [emphasis added]
Time does not permit us to research the legislation which established the Justice Department and FBI, but we were under the impression that the employees of those agencies had a special responsibility to advance the cause of justice. All that is now as dead as J. Edgar Hoover.
These erstwhile gun and handcuff agents of what used to be called the FBI will now sally forth as card-carrying agents of the Federal Bureau for Racial Understanding, buying the world a Coke and with "Kum-Ba-Ya" falling from their lips. The terrorists and mafioso whom they formerly pursued must be trembling in their boots - particularly those who prefer Pepsi.
After all, Eric Holder is not your ordinary blowhard, he's the boss, and can fire his G-persons if they are insufficiently diligent in their newly designated goal of promoting racial understanding.
Meanwhile, as advised by our Attorney General, we know just what to do next time we're mugged on the mean streets of New York: start a conversation about race. Or is that not quite what he meant?