Henry Louis Gates Provides A Teachable Moment For Eric Holder

America had the opening exchange in that honest and frank conversation on race that Attorney General Eric Holder challenged Americans to engage in last February. But I doubt that he liked the results.

Shortly after his confirmation as United States Attorney General, Eric Holder condemned America as a “nation of cowards.”

“Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial,” he said.

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle, it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race-conscious, and yet is voluntarily socially segregated.”

President Barack Obama shared Holder’s view of America when, last week ago, he described the arrest of his friend and fellow race baiter Henry Louis Gates as stupid. His working assumption was that his friend could only have been treated thus because of the color of his skin. This was also Gates’ view. To Obama, the truth was so self-evident that he didn’t even need to be fully informed of the circumstances. The conversation that followed exposed the hollowness of the racial-industrial complex that now defines the modern civil rights movement.

The truth is that Henry Louis Gates, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and yes, Eric Holder and Barack Obama need to preserve the facade that America is a racist country for personal and political purposes. What would Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton do for a living without their racial protection rackets? The culture of victimhood keeps African-American votes safely in the pocket of Democrats.

Sadly the racialism of Henry Louis Gates and the other aforementioned indignitaries does harm to the very people whose cause they pretend to champion. Too many people have a vested interest in keeping African-Americans in their place and blaming whitey for their condition.

I recall reading a where-are-they-now story in Newsweek magazine about a survivor of Hurricane Katrina. The woman was about 30 years old and had born numerous children without benefit of marriage or even confidence of paternity. She had not attended high school, let alone graduated. But, Newsweek told us with a journalistic straight face, she was going to get her life together and become a nurse.

Oh really?

To become a nurse, this woman would have to do something she hadn’t done in nearly 20 years – attend school. She would have to graduate from high school, gain admission to college, and then get admitted to nursing school, no mean feat. Then she would have to graduate from nursing school. Assuming that she really could muster the personal discipline that had eluded her for her entire life, she would be looking at about a decade of full time schooling.

That’s not likely to happen. But, if she fails, she has a carefully crafted, pre-fabricated excuse to fall back upon. She was discriminated against. Jesse Jackson told her so. Al Sharpton agrees. The foundation of Henry Louis Gates’ Harvard career was raised upon that bedrock. That assumption would be the starting point for any conversation on race that would satisfy Eric Holder’s definition of courage.

Excuses are seductive and addictive because they offer relief from personal responsibility. But people who resort easily to excuses do not succeed. Sports coaches who routinely blame their losses on the officiating don’t win many games. By supplying prefabricated excuses for failure, the Henry Louis Gates’ of the world do far more to keep their people down than The Man ever could.

This episode also proved that African-Americans aren’t the only ones vulnerable to racial profiling. The Cambridge police sergeant who arrested Gates was a victim of profiling, as was the woman who made the 911 phone call reporting a break in. In fact, racial profiling against people of pallor has become the only socially acceptable racism permitted and it’s practiced at the highest levels of government.

How’s that for honesty Mr. Holder?