Project Logic Ga

Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday that we are “nation of cowards… on race.”  First, you know some news shows would mention this statement and conveniently leave out the “on race” part—never missing an opportunity to enjoy some twisted reporting.  “Our brave troops are not cowards.”

Holder said, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

At a Little League game a few years ago, my friend called his son over and told him, “Get in where you fit in.”  We fell out laughing and the guy said he just want the kid to know school chums or not necessarily coming over for dinner. 

A blog post can get away from a poor writer really fast because I am almost typing a stream of thought about not coming to someone’s house for dinner not because of race but because they let the cat walk on the kitchen counters and the dog eats out of their bowls (yes, it happens in Black, White and other homes.)  How much do you love your pets?  Do you love them better than you love people you don’t know?   Who is the worst Michael: Tyson, Vick, Phelps, Jackson, Savage or Richards. 

While the workplace is mostly integrated, Holder points out that we are “self-segregated” on the weekends and in our private lives. Hold on Holder; Americans have a right to free association.  Black colleges, churches and organizations will always exist as long as they are voluntarily.  When I lived in D.C., we were proud that the city felt like a salad bowl rather than New York being a melting pot—the idea is that the ingredients blended together without losing their individual qualities.

I was in the first integrated first-grade class in my town and I wonder if anyone wanted to know if the Black kids wanted to attend school with people who looked at them in a certain way.  A properly funded “separated but equal” school might have created a smoother transition (like in post-apartheid South Africa) because we weren’t crazy about going to school with them; we just needed better resources.  Before integration, old text books from White schools were sent to Black schools but today we still have fond memories of those all Black institutions—the J.W. Holley High Wildcats. 

Here is an idea: what if a new Holley School was created as a charter school with vouchers and good old fashioned reading, writing and arithmetic.  In the basements of churches and in one room school houses, our parents learned more than their grandchildren get in million dollar schools but then again the motivation and mission had clarity back then; and today many kids are aimless. 

Like President Obama big race relations speech last year, Attorney General Holder got us think about awkwardly diverse discussions.  At the time of his speech, this moderate was in an interesting lunch conversation with some of Georgia strongest conservatives—not a coward among us.    

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1437193,w-eric-holder-black-history-month021809.article