Holder: America Is "A Nation of Cowards"

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1:53 PM, Feb 18, 2009 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB

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Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that despite advances, the United States remains "a nation of cowards" on issues involving race.

"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, a nation of cowards," Holder said in remarks to his staff in honor of Black History Month. His comments appear on a transcript provided by the Justice Department.

There was a lot of fuss kicked up when Phil Gramm called America a "nation of whiners," but Phil Gramm was not an administration official or a representative of the people -- and being called a whiner is considerably less offensive than being called a coward. Not to mention the fact that this seems like a fairly smug charge from a man who is serving as the first black attorney general and at the pleasure of the first black American president.