A nation of cowards

If Attorney General Holder wanted a conversation about race he may have to ask himself some questions. First a preface, if you are African American and reading this please read what I write and not what you think I meant. I speak in no code words, I do not try to hide behind anything in this essay. I will mention things that are controversial but part of any conversation on race will contain controversy.

Every liberal politician likes to say we need more dialogue about race. I don't agree. I think we talk too much about race. If AG Holder wants more conversation about race, he needs to be willing to hear opinions he doesn't agree with without calling them racist or extreme. Larry Elder is an African American columnist who writes from the center right. On Townhall.com the following columns are present:
Elgin Baylor: The hero and the race card (a discussion about elgin Baylor)
Obama the magic negro (he discusses a song based line in the LA Times)

Walter Williams is an economist who also writes from the right (mostly libertarian). He has the following columns right now
A minority view

Thomas Sowell is another economist who writes from the right. He also on occasion writes on racial topics. On Townhall I don't see any of his pieces strictly on race. My challenge is this: read any of the three and ask yourself if a white columnist had written any of these pieces would he be called a racist by the popular press?

I will agree with AG Holder on his statement partially. I do not have in depth conversations about race with friends I have that are black. There is a reason. If I don't know how they feel on different subjects I do not want to offend them by saying something that is construed as offensive. I do the same things in conversations with women. I tend not to mention generalizations related to gender. It is simply too easy to be misunderstood and considered to be sexist or racist. Many issues should be discussed at greater length. Just a few I can think of are racial profiling, why sentencing to black males is perceived to be more severe, the general mistrust society has of young black males. These are important issues and can be discussed by blacks, but if a white takes them on they risk either their friendship or their livelihood if they disagree with the popular societal belief. If we could discuss race more openly more discussion is needed about race based preference and the destruction they do to blacks, we could discuss why out of wedlock births are destroying blacks in our inner cities. When these subjects are brought in the main stream the person bringing it up is generallly attacked at great length.

I wrote last year about Don Imus and his idiotic comments about the girls on the basketball team. While I don't consider his comments to be a serious discussion about race, I will point out that if you make similar remarks about a white male, a southern male, a Christian fundamentalist, or a Republican politician you will not lose your job you will get a television show. I don't mean to say that those subjects should also be taboo, far from it. When Imus made his remarks he should have been regarded as what he is, a loud mouthed comedian who frequently makes stupid remarks. If the adolescents that consider him to be funny, want to listen let them do what they will. If his employer thinks it is too far, they will act. They did not consider it too far until the race hucksters came out of the woodwork. That is a subject for another essay, if we had a more serious discussion on race men like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would have to get actual work.

Some years ago Rush Limbaugh made comments on a football pregame show concerning Donovan McNabb and his relationship with the media. Those comments were at the time not taken up by his fellow panelists, some of whom were black former players. I want to stress here his comments were in no way connecting race with performance, only that the national media elevates his performance based on his race. The point itself can be agreed with or disagreed with, but was in no way racist. The comments actually were entirely about the sports media and not McNabb himself. The substance was never debated only the fact that he made the comments. I think it would have been interested to have some substantive comversation about the point, which at the time I disagreed with. As the years have unfolded I think he was right.

Just this week the New York Post had a cartoon with a chimp in it. Is was regarded as racial. While it is not advised to ever have a chimp, monkey or any other such animal in a cartoon with the president because of obvious comparisons, I saw no racial basis in the cartoon at all. The point being made was against the stimulus package. Obama nor his advisers wrote the stimulus so how could it have been about them? There is not obvious racial comparison. In this case the perceived offense overrides the message the cartoonist intended. Whether the cartoon gets its message across or not can be up for debate, the automatic outrage is a deterrent to serious debate about race. I don't think this cartoonist nor any other will publish any kind of cart0on about race any time soon, (nor about chimps). It is simply not worth the risk. That being pointed out the cartoons some time back about Condeleeza Rice that were blatantly racial were never elevated to this level of controversy however. This again is another problem. Political beliefs can be a factor in deciding whether a subject is racist or not.

Whites and blacks alike need to face very uncomfortable aspects of our cultures and relationships with each other. I agree that changes will need to be made long term. Until controversial opinions are tolerated from whites, this will not happen. The risk is simply too great.