Attorney General Eric Holder got it right. Americans are cowards for not talking about race. But the biggest cowards of all have been politicians and especially presidential ones. They're the ones who've ducked and dodged on race at every turn.
President Obama points up the problem. Holder said that he talked tough about race after Obama laid down the gauntlet in his so called "race speech" last March in Philadelphia. The speech was important and challenging. But Obama made the speech to damp down the furor over his relationship with his controversial former pastor Jeremiah Wright. The only other speech that he made during the campaign that explicitly dealt with race was at the NAACP convention a few months later.
McCain did even worse. He talked about race at the same NAACP convention, and issued a terse statement backing the Ward Connerly concocted anti-affirmative action initiative that was on the November ballot in Arizona and two other states. That was it for him during the campaign. Obama and McCain spoke to a mostly black audience at the NAACP convention. This reinforced the notion that racial issues are by, and for, blacks, with none of the broader policy implications for the country as issues such as health care, jobs and the economy, the war on terrorism and Iraq.
Obama and McCain can't be blamed for their quick in and out on racial issues. Racial issues have seeped into presidential politics only when they ignite public anger and division. In a 1988 debate, Bush Sr. hammered Democratic contender Michael Dukakis as being a card carrying ACLU member, a milksop on crime, and tossed in the Willie Horton hit to drive home the point. In one of their debates in 2000, Bush and Democratic challenger, Al Gore clashed over affirmative action
Race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the campaign trail for the past two decades because no president or presidential challenger, especially a Democratic challenger, will risk being tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems.
Clinton was the one exception. In a speech at the University of California, San Diego in June 1997, Clinton vowed to confront racial issues head on. He announced that he was setting up a panel to help heal the racial divide in America. It was doomed from the start. In this case by the man who announced it, Clinton. He made it clear that the panel was strictly advisory and would not operate independent of the White House. The panel gamely soldiered on and put forth a handful of vague, spotty, and innocuous proposals such as a Council for One America, an education program to inform the public about race, and a call to arms to make racial reconciliation a reality.
The heavy duty stuff as affirmative action, better police-community relations, and reforms in the criminal justice system was mostly window dressing. There was absolutely no chance the White House would propose legislation or issue any executive orders to enact them. Clinton foot dragged for months before he publicly decided to print the panel's findings and recommendations.
The foot drag was no accident. Following the 1960s ghetto riots, a harried Lyndon Johnson with much public fanfare established the Kerner Commission to confront racial problems. The commission bluntly called American society "deeply racist" and proposed sweeping, hard nosed proposals for racial reform. The proposals inflamed many whites. That was too much for Johnson. He disavowed the panel and shelved its recommendations. Clinton advisors wanted no repeat of that. They were scared stiff that a too aggressive push for racial reforms could cost the Democrats in the 1998 mid-term elections and the 2000 presidential contest. That was too much to risk.
In his script for winning elections, Clinton publicly urged Democrats to talk about the economy, strong national defense military preparedness, and tax relief for the middle class. Democratic presidential contenders Al Gore and John Kerry followed the script to the letter. They were virtually mute about criminal justice reform, hate crimes, affirmative action, chronic black unemployment, the gaping health and education disparities, and the racially skewed drug laws during their losing presidential campaigns.
Obama followed the same script. But he had little choice. Any talk of race by him would have stirred doubts, suspicions, and fears that he was not the race neutral, all purpose candidate that he claimed. That would have been a campaign killer.
Yet shunting racial problems to the back burner of presidential campaigns invariably means that presidents shunt them to the backburner of their legislative agenda. That is until they burst into flashpoints of national debate and conflict. When that happens presidents are ill prepared to craft meaningful legislation and programs to deal with them.
Holder dared to challenge the nation on the taboo R word. Just don't expect much more to come of it.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).