Eric Holder, Deceiver?

"Attorney General Eric Holder [EH], a Clinton administration retread, wants to revive Bill Clinton's National Conversation on Race. (What's next? Hillarycare?) Holder recently told his Justice Department employees that the [US] was a 'nation of cowards' for not talking more about race. ... 'If we are to make progress in this area, we must feel comfortable enough about racial matters that continue to divide us.' ... The Clinton-era Conversaton also purported to be frank, and we know what that meant: a one-sided litany of white injustices. ... Not only do colleges, law schools, almost all of the nation's elite public and private high schools, and the mainstream media, among others, have 'conversations about ... racial matters'; they never stop talking about them. ... Education bureaucrats maintain an incessant harrange on white racism because they see the writing on the wall: most students are indifferent to race and just want to get along. If left to themselves, they would go about their business perfectly happily and color-blindly, and the race industry would wither on the vine. ... Holder told his [DOJ] employees that they had a special responsibility to advance racial understanding, according to the Associated Press. ... Its assumption was that racial disparities in cops' stop-and-arrest rates reflect police racism, not racial disparities in crime rates. ... For instance, the homicide rate for black men between the ages of 18 and 24 is well over ten times that of whites. And disparities in other violent-crime rates are just as startling. In New York City [NYC], one of the nation's safest large cities, 83 percent of all gun assailants were black during the first six months of 2008, according to victims and witnesses, though blacks make up only 24 percent of the city's population. Add Hispanic perps, and you account for 98 percent of all shootings in [NYC]. The face of violent crime in cities is almost exclusively black or brown. That explains why someone might feel a sense of trepidation when apporached by a group of black youths. ... If blacks and Hispanics performed at the level that whites do, the US would lead all industrialized nations in reading and would lead Europe in math and science, according to a study publiched in the Phi Delta Kappan in 2005. ... Likewise, after their first year of legal education, 51 percent of blacks labor in the bottom tenth of their class; two-thirds reside in the bottom fifth. Blacks are four times as likely to fail the bar exam on their first try. ... Closing the educational achievement gap will be difficult as long as the black illegitimacy rate is nearly 71 percent, compared to a white rate of 26 percent. ... Skin color is a proxy for [bad] behavior. If inner-city blacks behaved like Asians--cramming as much knowledge into their kids as they can possibly fit into their skulls--the lingering wariness towards lower-income blacks that many Americans unquestionably harbor would disappear", Heather MacDonald (HM), 19 February 2009 at: http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=3971.

"For all their talk about moving beyond race, liberals sure like to talk about it a lot. ... Holder proudly noted that our schools and workplaces have been successfully integrated through forced busing and affirmative action, but complained that the country remains 'volutarily socially segregated.' ... The dialogue that Holder, Clinton, and Obama want is really a monologue. The only acceptable way to discuss race is to attribute all racial problems in the [US] to 'white racism'--past and present, conscious and unconscious. ... Talk show host Peter Boyles correctly calls the word 'racist' a 'conversation stopper.' Once you are called this, continuing with the conversation can only have negative consequences. ... As the co-discoverer of DNA and a Nobel Prize winner, James Watson was one of the world's most respected scientists. That was until he suggested that there was a link between race and intelligence. ... When David Horowitz tried to run and ad opposing reparations for slavery in dozens of college newspapers, many refuse to print it. ... Americans of all races need to stop acting like cowards and challenge the liberal orthodoxy on race--even if that means that Al Sharpton and the New York Times might call them names", Marcus Epstein, 23 February 2009 at: http://www.vdare.com/epstein/090223_holder.htm.

I agree in part with EH and HM. We should talk honestly about race. Then end 40+ years of affirmative action programs and fantasies about why Negroes haven't achieved economic parity with whites. I'm so old I remember what we were told would happen in Africa when white colonialism ended. Didn't. In 1966 or 1967, my brother introduced me to Al Sharpton. Really. My brother went to school with Reverend Al. Al begins, "When I was a slave". I interrupted, "Al, how old are you? Slavery ended over a hundred years ago". Al looked at me funny. I said I would not be intimidated by such ahistorical nonsense. Al taken aback, said, "You lack humane knowledge". I said, "what does that mean"? Al didn't respond. I doubt Al had ever been challenged that way before. One kid in "our group", a Negress, was the only one in our IGC classes. Her background: one parent a dentist, the other a college professor. In tenth grade she left our school with a fully paid scholarship to a well-known Connecticut private school. Why not? She had over 150 IQ. She later got a fully-paid scholarship to Radcliffe. She is now a professor at a university in New York City. In about 1990 Jesse Jackson (JJ) said when approaching an elevator, he always gets in the car with a white or Asian as opposed to a black male. It's safer. Does this make JJ racist? Thomas Sowell (TS) wrote of "educational mismatch" decades ago. TS is a Negro. Is he racist too? 55% of California Berkeley's students are Asian? Is that bad? If each is in the top 10% of his high school class and gets 1400 on the entrance exam, I see no problem. See also my 1 September 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/09/dead-elephant-in-living-room.html.