Deconstructing Eric, or, The Keepers of the Blame
Our Attorney General is right. We are a nation of cowards, fearing an honest discussion of race. But, unless he’s breaking utterly with rigorously observed convention, he’s dead wrong about what that discussion would look like. A newly open conversation about race and public policy is the last thing an Eric Holder wants.
In fact, Mr. Holder’s intent was to preempt just this possibility, which he reasonably fears as an unintended consequence of Barack Obama’s remarkable success. That success shatters the very assumption upon which it is most dependent–that America is inherently and uniquely racist, forever incomplete thereby. Holder finds himself tasked with performing the traditional February rite of reinforcing this assumption–as the first black attorney general serving the first black president. That’s one hell of a contradiction. It’s going to take a nation of millions to obscure it. Thus Attorney General Michael Scott’s suggestion that every day be a nation-wide Diversity Day:
…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.
When I saw the scare-quote screen crawl (I shall start calling them scare-crawls) on a television across a room, “Atty General Holder Says US ‘Nation of Cowards’,” I assumed Mr. Holder had renounced the fear-mongering on behalf of “security” that has overtaken the Nation since 9/11. Something about the courage required by liberty and the cowardice required by tyranny. Perhaps he even had the nerve to suggest the terrorist threat has been exaggerated by those seeking power and wealth. I imagined myself defending him to you. This is, after all, only what he should be saying. But Holder wasn’t there to calm a panicked nation; he was there to panic a calm one:
If we allow this attitude to persist in the face of the most significant demographic changes that this nation has ever confronted — and remember, there will be no majority race in America in about 50 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.
But this is nothing new. The remarkable thing about Wednesday’s speech was that the Attorney General broadened the mandate of the U.S. Department of Justice:
But we must do more, and we in this room bear a special responsibility. Through its work and through its example this Department of Justice, as long as I am here, must — and will — lead the nation to the “new birth of freedom” so long ago promised by our greatest president. This is our duty and our solemn obligation.
Mr. Holder did not reveal any plans for how he will “lead the nation to [Lincoln's] ‘new birth of freedom’ “; probably because he has none. Of course he may think we’re not ready for them. As if this immodest language isn’t disturbing enough, Holder combines it with an attempt not to merely prompt debate but to direct it:
I fear however, that we are taking steps that, rather than advancing us as a nation are actually dividing us even further. 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
This is a false accommodation. That there “can be” a “very legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action”; is given, and not by the Attorney General. The implication is that current debate is heading for “illegitimate” territory, deliberately reinforcing white anxiety and black resentment that holds opposition to affirmative action as racist until proven otherwise.
To limit the debate is to control it. Holder, arguing like a good (or just fair) lawyer, needs to place the status quo he defends between two arbitrary “extreme” boundaries. Thus certain opinions are “simplistic” (of course he could be talking about the stubbornly crude logic of disparate impact and quotas–his call to frankness and depth included neither) or “extreme”, serving “narrow self-interest.”
It is a monologue Holder desires, alternating between narrow, meaningless poles toward a safely predetermined end, mouthed by a multitude distracted by false choices. The product of a collective, conditioned mind. But this much is obvious. What is more interesting is the unintentioal but more revealing subtext, inaccessible to the author, incapacitated as he is by status, position and, appropriately enough, chauvinism. Holder’s speech revealed the potential conflicts facing a civil rights movement-turned-industry by Barack Obama’s stunning, rapid rise.
Those who most fear the reality of a “transformation” to a “post-racial” America are those who’ve most benefited from the decidedly racial nature of recent American politics–again, embarrassingly demonstrated with Obama’s success. The end game of affirmative action and discrimination-through-litigation is revealed as long overdue. The intent of the “conversation” about race, now more than ever, is to deligitimize that challenge by declaring it unfit for conversation.
If we should start taking seriously the “post-racial” nature of Obama’s rise, we might start asking that it mean something beyond assigning a professional and political premium to certain individuals based on Obama’s myth of “race and inheritance.” But the obvious advantage that race played for the inauthentic son of slavery and segregation contradicts the myth. The notion of a white American jackboot forever on the neck of our culturally most powerful–black Americans–was questionable before Obama’s remarkable campaign and the ecstatic reception of his inauguration. Now it is farcical.
But it isn’t only that Barack Obama renders the white/black reparations dynamic absurd. The nascent Diversity State finds itself too soon and too totally triumphant. The bogey of white oppression threatens to become no longer plausible, and those groups assigned varying stature within the hierarchy of grievance are already eyeing one another uneasily.
The order now threatened by diversity is not pre- but post-civil rights. That minority became synonymous with oppressed, and “underrepresented” synonymous with denied, once only enhanced the power of the dominant minority, which extracted concessions from a still comfortable majority (that could still afford them and held an expectation of final conciliation). Smaller minority groups were content to follow the leader and accept a subordinate position. But what happens to that dynamic in a “post-racial” (“post-white”) America where the majority of individuals have a birthright claim against the white plurality and no sense of obligation toward a black population that is culturally dominant, politically favored and stubbornly lagging in professional and scholastic achievement?
It was therefore Holder’s purpose to preclude any challenges to black America’s position atop the hierarchy of grievance. Black equality is more than simple equality. Holder is here to defend the primacy of his faction as the vanguard of a revolution now triumphant:
In addition, the other major social movements of the latter half of the 20th century — feminism, the nation’s treatment of other minority groups, even the antiwar effort — were all tied in some way to the spirit that was set free by the quest for African American equality. Those other movements may have occurred in the absence of the civil rights struggle, but the fight for black equality came first and helped to shape the way in which other groups of people came to think of themselves and to raise their desire for equal treatment. Further, many of the tactics that were used by these other groups were developed in the civil rights movement.
By more false accommodation he allows that feminism, anti-war protests and other minority rights movements “may” have happened without the black civil rights movement–insinuating that they probably would have not. When Holder goes on to assert that black history is too little studied, and that “African American history is American history”, he declares that black history is more than American history, and greater than any other group’s American history.
The line is that we must continually revisit the sins of the past to understand our present. But in reality the better things get in the present, the more the self-interested must recourse to the dismal past, and the more the present has to be compared to an ideal of race relations that has never existed and may not be possible. There is no historical precedent for America, and nothing like her at present.
The regions from where America’s “disadvantaged minorities” originate cannot compare in wealth, opportunity or liberty. Resentment of this humiliating reality feeds into that encouraged by the dishonest class of political opportunists represented by Holder. The language of civil rights has become an affront, no longer condemnatory of practice but of a people and a nation: the long history of Western civil liberties is only begun with the American civil rights movement and invalidated by the interlude of American slavery. “Simplistic”, indeed.
We are in the late decadent phase of the civil rights movement. Declaring victory and demobilizing is not an option–this would involve the voluntary surrender of power, something that does not happen. Power is only surrendered under coercion or dissipated over time. The latter threat panics Holder and friends. Pretext must be found to justify power. Enemies, if they don’t appear, must be found. First, they are said to be hiding among us. Then, the enemy hides latent within each of us. Our eternal vigilance against “hateful” thought is a population regulating itself on behalf of power.
Holder’s acknowledgement of the problematic nature of diversity reveals an internal contradiction. By unmindful incrementalism we went from the noble ideals of equality and tolerance to their near-opposite: diversity as a goal in itself. Even now one cannot suggest publicly that a policy of ethnic diversifying is no more legitimate than one of ethnic cleansing, and no more fair. And while ethnic cleansing has a long, sordid history, ethnic diversifying has none at all.
A multiracial democratic republic worthy of the name will defend equality before the law against those who equate it with equality of results. It’s too late in the game to deny that fairness in hiring and education produces racial inequality–inequality that, as we’ve seen, does not necessarily benefit the majority. Ethnic diversity and democracy are thus at odds. This was once a given; now it is heresy. But it is heresy only because we think it’s awful that it should be so. Thus far we have chosen not to reconcile a diverse population to democracy, but to reconcile democracy to a diverse population. This may be inevitable. But, as the truth is always worth knowing and no subterfuge lasts forever, we would do well to call the Attorney General’s bluff.
I don’t know, Mr. Dale.
When I heard this quote from Holder I too was greatly suspicious remembering that it was that manifest race-warrior Lani Guinier who, when nominated by Clinton, was saying the exact same thing: “We don’t talk enough about race,” with she of course being the absolute archetype of the kind of person who loves open talk about race for the sole reason that it then allows them to accuse everyone not agreeing with them of being racist, and thus justifies their jobs in the race industry.
But … I at least don’t know that any of that fits Holder, does it? Not even to the least degree?
As one who has somewhat followed the legal scene my (still admittedly distant) sense of his career is that if anything he has consciously shied away from being a race warrior at all, and pretty much from the start and for the most part kept his nose not in the political but very much instead in the very serious prosecutorial-career/legal one. (Not denying his folding for Clinton on the Marc Rich thing.)
Seems to me that just assuming the worst here smacks just a bit of the kind of reflexive thing that has made people so sick of partisans like Rush Limbaugh or his equivalents amongst the Democrats. It’s just so old, and given our straightened circumstances and how new Obama and Holder are in their offices, so prematurely negative. If the last eight years have taught us anything it seems to me that one never knows who is on the side of the angels.
Look, for instance, at what Holder said beyond his quote about race not being talked about enough and honestly: Clearly, he rather carefully indicted not just one side or another for trying to take advantage of doing otherwise, but talked about the self-interest that exists amongst extremists on *both* sides. And this would not only just logically include those who are in favor of extreme and never-ending affirmative action, but indeed would seem to include them by virtue of Holder himself *specifically* then saying that he thought affirmative action was a perfectly fair subject of debate.
For all we know, it seems to me, Holder *isn’t* an affirmative action baby, and personally doesn’t like it because he’s felt an unfair sting at wrongly being thought otherwise and so *wants* such things talked about. Or perhaps he *is* an affirmative action baby, and still wants more open talk about it because he proudly feels that his affirmative action push only let him in the door but that the entirety of his later career undeniably shows that he made a very great deal of himself thereafter all on his own.
We just don’t know I don’t think, and it’s not only potentially politically wrong to be jumping to conclusions but intellectually too. Give the man a chance. Certainly, and rather startlingly too given how almost unique its been and coming out of nowhere it seems, Obama can appear to have pioneered a very very different role for prominent African-Americans today by very clearly not wanting to pre-imminently be identified by his race. And it seems to me not illogical that many others manifestly sophisticated ones such as Mr. Holder might like that model too.
And I’d put it this way too: What if in fact Mr. Holder has closely followed what debate there has been on race in this country and *has* been persuaded that whites have been unduly bullied into silence on the issue, and has accepted the consequent wisdom that this is not healthy? What does one *expect* him to have said in such circumstances other than what he *did* say? By using the word “cowards” after all doesn’t it seem that he was *intentionally* putting himself into a box whereby he is only going to be able to attack the truly extreme speech that might appear in the future if he wants to escape being called a terrible hypocrite? And doesn’t he appear sophisticated enough to know that?
I don’t know what’s in his mind, but I do think it can be a damned funny thing to be attacking someone whose mind is so unknown on a subject when, as you admit, all they are doing is saying things you *agree* with.
Indeed, regardless even of whether you believe they are being genuine or not, isn’t that something that ought to be *welcomed*?
Cheers,
Mr. Dale’s thesis is belied by the seething anger regarding race relations he is barely able to contain in his post.
It’s particularly interesting to hear tell of how blacks worry that if we had an honest discussion of race it would inevitably “involve the voluntary surrender of power, something that does not happen. Power is only surrendered under coercion or dissipated over time.” The pretext here is about white victimization — in the post-racial world Mr. Dale imagines he inhabits whites are currently the powerless victims of racism, not blacks or minorities. Blacks, women, and minorities have the power, and they must be forced (“coerced”) into giving it up — and that assumption is fully on display in Dale’s strident and angry tone throughout. This is a man aggrieved: were he black he’d be a militant black nationalist calling for “coercion” to end racism, he’s the white man’s Rev. Wright.
Which again, belies his entire thesis, e.g., that Holder’s intention wasn’t “to calm a panicked nation; he was there to panic a calm one.” Race relations in the US have given rise to an incredibly complex pattern of seething resentments running in multiple directions (only one of which is, a fairly common one among whites, is on display in Dale’s post). To say that we’re a nation that is “calm” about racial issues but for Mr. Holder’s remarks displays a fairly stunning level of inattention to how one’s own (i.e., Dale’s) rage is itself indicative of a racial situation in the US that is most decidedly less than calm.
An honest conversation, not had by cowards, would acknowledge that the kind of rage and resentment on display here isn’t a legitimate declaration that racial problems are behind us (or would be but for the pestering of people like Holder) — it’s one of the symptoms that problem is still with us, alive and well and fully on display in this posting. Dale isn’t speaking truth to power, he’s angrily expressing one side (and only one side) of a complex story, and doing so in a rhetorical tone that is decidedly unhelpful if we really wanted to talk (rather than vent at each other) about race.
Explicit white supremecist notions have been replaced quite quickly in our nation’s history with strident claims of white victimization with regard to race. This is itself quite remarkable and worthy of discussion given persistent white-black wealth gaps, income gaps, education gaps, health gaps, discrimination in housing, discrimination in hiring, and so on. To think of whites as the victims of current discrimination is to value the anecdotal over the statistical, it is to pay attention to how it “feels” to be white in a country working to eliminate long-standing (and only quite recently, weakly, and still inadequately addressed) injustices that tilted social outcomes in favor of whites rather than listening to the data. Losing favored status often feels to whites an awful lot like being discriminated against (even when it isn’t). Just leveling an previously skewed playing field, losing an unfair advantage, is experienced as being disadvantaged and leads to the kind of rage on display here.
Again, for Dale to claim this is a “calm” nation with regard to race relations is transparently false and belied by every angry word he’s written. Were Dale to contribute to an honest discussion he’d fess up to how his own anger colors his perceptions and admit that it (the anger) may be contributing to a less than honest conversation.
The response made by afrjc largely confirms Dale’s premise. Dale pointed out that “conversations” about race are always one-sided and carefully directed by ensuring that any deviations from the script will be shouted down with accusations of racism. Afrjc responds by accusing Dale of white rage proving that any conversation about race cannot be undertaken without accusation. Afrjc also confirms Dale’s premise by providing the only acceptable script:
“To think of whites as the victims of current discrimination is to value the anecdotal over the statistical, it is to pay attention to how it “feels” to be white in a country working to eliminate long-standing (and only quite recently, weakly, and still inadequately addressed) injustices that tilted social outcomes in favor of whites rather than listening to the data. Losing favored status often feels to whites an awful lot like being discriminated against (even when it isn’t). Just leveling an previously skewed playing field, losing an unfair advantage, is experienced as being disadvantaged and leads to the kind of rage on display here.”
The only acceptable script for a monologue masquerading as a conversation about race is to attribute every black failure and instance of inequality to white racism and oppression and to justify every unconstitutional abuse of state power as a proper remedy for these problems. As afrjc lectures Dale, the role of whites in a conversation about race is to “fess up to how his own anger colors his perceptions and admit that it (the anger) may be contributing to a less than honest conversation.” In other words admit how wrong you are and submit to the script. Dissent from that script equals racism, apparently a seething rage-filled kind of racism according to afrjc.
The problem with this script (and I believe the problem that Dale had with it as well) is that the “playing field” has been leveled for some time now. The pursuit is no longer equality, but diversity for its own sake (as pointed out by Dale). Simply citing aggregate data does not prove oppression. If thirteen percent of the population accounts for roughly fifty percent of the violent crime, has a illegitimacy rate of nearly seventy percent, and drops out of school at alarming rates how could that group possibly have the same earning power and job opportunities of a group that does not behave so poorly. Felons and high-school dropouts fare poorly regardless of race; thus a group with a disproportionate number of each will likely be poorer as a group.
Ultimately those who dissent against the acceptable script are really in opposition to the use of state power to impose an equality of results where there is not an equality of merit. It is not racism or rage over losing an unfair advantage. It is opposition to an ever intrusive government that panders to whoever is most friendly to unconstitutional expansion of its powers.
Growing up in rural Oregon in the 50′s and 60′s, I was unaware that the town had a law that no black folks were allowed to be within the city limits after dark.
In highschool, I wrestled athletes from the big city, and discovered that asians and blacks smelled different that the whites.
I listened to lovely Mrs. Smith, a highschool teacher, tell us that ugly Americans were eating all the food in the world and that there would be food riots because by 1990 we would have eaten all the world’s food supply. Americans were causing the next Ice Age, and we would have sucked up all the world’s oil supply before the year 2000.
Mom had hand-sewn the canvas cover that covered our 15′ trailer, we lived on a mountainside, and some of my best times were spent swinging through the tops of trees in the forest.
When the bra-burning feminists told me I couldn’t be one of them, I would derisively reply, “Hey, remember when that SOB abandoned you and the kids? I was there, I was one of the kids.”
Later, a pet peeve became the liberal chant, “We can’t ever know how you feel, but…” THIS is the liberal LIE designed to keep us from having a conversation.
I can say to you, “I know how you feel.” It is OKAY for me to say that. If you say, “You CAN’T know how I feel.”, then I reply, “How do YOU know what I CAN and CAN’T know?” Are liberal elitists the final arbiters of what the rest of us can and can’t know, or understand?
Say to some of the black folks, “I know how you feel.” Ever get the spiel about how that person’s ancestors were slaves? Then you point out that the “Dark Ages” were made up of hundreds of years where the average white serf was little more than a slave to the local king. Blacks who choose to be racist will have never considered this.
Get a bunch of people together, then tell them how hard it was on your family, because the male breadwinners were killed in WWII or in Korea, then see how many of them will be willing to write your family a restitution check. After all, did not my family suffer this disadvantage so that others could have the national advantage of remaining FREE in AMERICA?
But the hucksters hiding behind racism, and making a business of it, have been teaching each interest group that it is “owed” by the rest of society.
I was a “green beret” in the 60′s, and was married near the end of my tour of duty, in North Carolina. My best man was a very dark-complected African American, he was my best friend. When Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated, I remember rushing to his room in the barracks, thinking to express my shock and horror. A group of black folks were there, and the reaction was, “What do you want, whitey?” You’d better get out of here before we use deadly force on you. I was certain at that moment that I was in mortal danger. As my friend looked at me, he appeared not to recognize who I was, and I saw only anger towards a white stranger.
The first two comments above seem to be from the race-huckster point of view. Coward? No Mr Holder, I’m an American.
A couple of years before I was married, a black soldier came and asked if he could hang out with me the coming weekend. I told him, “No”, because I was going to go to Whiteville to see a girlfriend. He started yelling and talking about how it was not on the map, and making racist remarks.
I was mystified for a couple hours, until I realized what his rant had been about. I took a North Carolina map to him, and showed him where Whiteville was about 50 miles from Fayetteville, and I showed him an envelope with my girlfriend’s address. I told him that if he wished to go hitchhiking with me, he was welcome. But we both knew the danger to him, in the deep south, if he took me up on that.
I remember this with humor, but I also remember that he never apologized, he just forgave me for the misunderstanding.
I listened to Mr Holder, before I ever heard the gaggle of talk show hosts decrying his remarks. I was offended by his racist remarks, and remember thinking, “This guy is not representing ME, but rather an ideology that he KNOWs is antithetical to the majority of Americans.
Here in our small rural Oklahoma town, I am offended that white judges have ruled that you can’t sue whites who destroyed homes and lives during the race riots a generation ago, claiming some sort of “statute of limitations”. Let me explain. Oklahoma is one of the states that makes all it’s sex offenders register even if their offense was 100 years ago, to include flashers and teens who had underage sex with each other. The law, little enforced, states that if a relative from out of state visits over the weekend, they must have their name published in the local paper, if they have ever been ACCUSED of a sexual-related offense at any point of their lives, in their home states.
A friend of mine, a lady who is black, wrote to the local paper that she was disappointed by the racism inherent in their not writing more about the election of Obama. She ignored the fact that this small-town paper is struggling to survive, and has gone to twice a week, and is composed of one large sheet, with a second half-sheet folded in between. Each page is half the size it would have been 20 years ago. There is NO state or national news in this paper, yet they paid a black lady to attend the inauguration, and they got a half page of copy for that investment.
The sad joke here is that many of those same people will turn on Obama when his popularity goes down. They will begin claiming that they were tricked into thinking that he was black, when in fact he is just one more white guy who looks “sort of black”.
I went to the local newspaper, a couple of times, and talked to my friend, the editor. I pointed out that he can’t afford editorials and letters in print, but I suggested he consider running a carefully-controlled webpage, where people could exchange ideas, and ask questions they would like for some politician to answer. A sort of online “townhall”, where we post the questions, and over time people go and try to research and report back with the answers. It seems to me that we in the south can make a valuable contribution to a national dialogue on race (and other topics).
Unfortunately, this idea has deteriorated into simply posting the contents of his paper online, and selling subscriptions to go read the same on the computer. The only editorials and letters will be what was previously put into print.
Mr Holder, send one of your staff onto this site, to tell us what you REALLY think. And no fair with something like, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended if they misunderstood what I said.”
The CONSERVATIVE-LIBERAL pendulum is SUPPOSED to swing back and forth, so that we can clean each other’s crooks from their midst. But the loss of print media (to the soldout liberalism, and the dying distribution), will force us to rethink the traditional structure of American government. We must find a way to break into a congress/government that has closed ranks to keep the non-elitests out of their business.
Mr Dale, you need to get out more, but overall – GOOD JOB.