Nation of Cowards: Black Activism in Barack Obama's Post-Racial America

Introduction

1 Introduction Is America a Nation of Cowards or Has Attorney General Eric Holder Lost His Mind? In my previous writings . . . I called for the framing of issues in a way designed to appeal to broad segments of the population. Key to this framing, I argued, would be an emphasis on policies that would directly benefit all groups, not just people of color. My thinking was that, given American views about poverty and race, a color-blind agenda would be the most realistic way to generate the broad political support that would be necessary to enact the required legislation. I no longer hold this view. The question is not whether the policy should be race neutral or universal; the question is whether the policy is framed to facilitate a frank discussion of the problems that ought to be addressed and to generate broad political support to alleviate them. So now my position has changed: In framing public policy, we should not shy away from an explicit discussion of the specific issues of race and poverty; on the contrary, we should highlight them in our attempt to convince the nation that these problems should be seriously confronted and that there is an urgent need to address them. These issues of race and poverty should be framed in such a way that not only is a sense of the fairness and justice of combating inequality generated, but also people are made aware that our country would be better off if these problems were seriously addressed and eradicated. —William Julius Wilson 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. —Eric Holder 2 Nation of Cowards It just so happened thatweheardthemediacommentarysurroundingAttorneyGeneralEricHolder ’snow(in)famous“racespeech”before we actually got the chance to hear the speech itself. The first black attorney general in U.S. history, Holder used his position as the nation’s top law enforcement officer as a bully pulpit to warn Americans that racism is still alive and well in the nation. The mainstream media and blogosphere fixated on the excerpt from the 2009 speech in which Holder characterizes American as “a nation of cowards” on the issue of race. The mounting attacks against Holder—the bulk of which were coming from a mostly white and politically diverse group spanning from GOP celebrity Rush Limbaugh to liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd1 —created the impression that Holder was speaking out of anger andcynicism.Theunfoldingwhitenarrativeinthedominantmediacast Holder in the role of the prototypical “angry black man”—a term used to describe a racially embittered black man who displaces self-imposed socioeconomic failings onto whites. More specifically, Holder’s detractors argued he was ignoring the significance of Barack Obama’s historic election as the first African American president as well as his own historicappointmentasthefirstAfricanAmericanattorneygeneral .Surely, white racial cowards would not have elected a black man to the highest and most powerful post in the country—if not the world—and supported another as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. With only a few notable exceptions within conservative black political circles, the African American side of the debate was unfolding in a radically different way. In the eyes of most, Holder was not an angry black man with a bone to pick with white folks. Rather, he was a brave and insightful black leader speaking truth to power. Whether they admitted it or not, whites continued to enjoy race privilege at the direct socioeconomic expense of African Americans and other non-white ethnic minorities. Holder was being attacked because he dared to hold whites accountable. In the black narrative, Holder emerged as a heroic figure, offering a salty dose of racial “straight-talk” to balance out Obama’s lofty “hope” rhetoric. When we reviewed the speech in its entirety for ourselves, we found both perspectives to be lacking in certain respects. On the black side of the debate, most commentators emphasized the lasting socioeconomic impact of slavery and Jim Crow to black self-determination as introduction 3 if Holder’s speech was aimed exclusively at condemning whites. Even as Holder was undoubtedly trying to illuminate the link between white oppression and black self-determination, he was hardly giving African Americans a free pass on culpability. He makes clear in his speech that racial cowardice cuts across race...