by
Harry Stein
City Journal

On February
18, 2009, less than a month into President ObamaÂ’s supposedly
postracial presidency, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder commemorated
Black History Month by declaring
America “essentially a nation of cowards.” The reason:
“We, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each
other about race. . . . If we are to make progress in this area
we must feel comfortable enough with one another, and tolerant enough
of each other, to have frank conversations about the racial matters
that continue to divide us.” Holder’s words left many
commentators flabbergasted. Too little discussion of race?
Race has long been our national obsession, a pastime more widely
followed than football (which itself regularly gives rise to racial
conflagrations) or Oprah Winfrey (whoÂ’s never averse to fanning
the flames). Liberal commentators refuse to shut up about race;
college students have it pushed in their faces from the first day
of orientation to the de rigueur pieties about “diversity”
and “social justice” at graduation; most every Fortune
500 company has instituted policies aimed at hiring and promoting
minorities, and woe to those recalcitrant managers who adhere to
more traditional standards of merit.

HolderÂ’s
invocation of AmericansÂ’ supposed cowardice on racism was most
notable for its timing. He spoke at what was understood everywhere
to be a celebratory moment. Even most of us whoÂ’d strongly
opposed candidate Obama, shouting ourselves hoarse that his policies
would be disastrous, were gratified by what his election said about
the citizens of this great land: that easily bamboozled as we can
be, we are not bigots. That though parts of our country abandoned
legally sanctioned bigotry a mere two generations ago, we have traveled
farther, faster, than once would have seemed possible, embracing
true racial tolerance – which is to say, indifference to skin
color – more deeply than any other people on Earth.

Yet clearly
this was not the message some in administration circles took from
ObamaÂ’s election, and certainly not the one they wanted Americans
to hear. For the world as they see it to make sense, racism must
be ever-present, since itÂ’s the all-purpose explanation for
every problem that minorities in America confront. It soon became
apparent that this was the thinking Holder brought to his own vital
department. Rarely has the attorney general hesitated to snatch
up the nearest available race card – from his startling decision
early on to drop a case that his predecessors had already won against
members of the New Black Panther Party for intimidating white voters
at a Philadelphia polling place, to his claim that criticism of
himself and the president over the disastrously botched Fast and
Furious program was “due to the nature of our relationship
and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

Which brings
us to the Trayvon Martin case. From the outset, mainstream coverage
overwhelmingly reflected the narrative on contemporary race relations
that Holder and other prominent liberals hold dear: one relentlessly
focused on white racism and black victimhood. As the story went
viral, the media consensus was close to unanimous: 17-year-old Martin
was murdered essentially for the crime of being a black kid in a
hoodie walking in a white neighborhood, and his racist killer was
getting off scot-free. “Rallies Across US Demand Justice,”
ABC
News summed it up. It is evidence of how firmly this version
of events took hold that when, early on, Jesse Jackson likened Martin
to Emmett Till – the 14-year-old black boy slaughtered in 1955
Mississippi, whose smirking murderers were acquitted in an hour
– the appalling comparison went all but unchallenged.

In fact, over
the first few days, as the media covered march after march and rally
after angry rally, those less inclined to jump to judgment prudently
held their peace, lest they risk an accusation of condoning murder
or blaming the victim or (for of course this was implicit) being
soft on racism. But then those stubborn things, facts, began to
emerge, and suddenly the story was no longer so clear. Far from
the classic racist, George Zimmerman turned out to be a guy with
black friends who tutored black kids on weekends. Equally damaging,
he was half-Hispanic – or, as the New York Times hopefully
called him, clinging to the white-racism line, a “white Hispanic.”
Nor was the dead boy necessarily as angelic as heÂ’d been portrayed
– partly by the ubiquitous photo taken when he was just 12.
According to the Miami Herald, heÂ’d been suspended from
school three times for possessing marijuana residue, scrawling “W.T.F.”
on a school locker, and having in his backpack, which was searched
by a school security guard, “women’s rings and earrings
and a screwdriver, described by the staffer as a ‘burglary
tool.’”

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the rest of the article

May
3, 2012

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© 2012 City
Journal