Posted by
Bill Crawford on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 4:14:46 PM
Anybody who has any questions about Eric Holder's recent treatise on race relations in America should look into the repsonse to the six Republican Governors who are thinking about refusing any money from the stimulus bill, because of all the strings attached to the federal money.
They are being chided from many directions for, among other things, "slapping the face of their Black citizens". So a fiscal response is now a race problem.
This is at the heart of why this White person would rather have his teeth drilled than engage in a heart to heart on race relations in this country: whenever I do, no matter what the skin color of the one I have it with, I run into a wall of orthodoxy that supplants me as the evildoer and can't be bargained with or talked about.
When I am presented with a set of premises where I am the problem, a priori, I choose to not engage. My problem is, I will not approach this with what is considered to be the correct level of guilt that Democrats do. It has been determined by many people in the political dialogue that I own this guilt and there is nothing I can do about it.
When I approach a conversation on race without this guilt, I am often condemned outright for doing so. The fact that I am told this and continue to do so (because I don't accept the premises) just makes things worse.
Obama was supposed to be the one who transcended this issue. I don't accept that. As long as I beleve that I am the one who is past this iissue, and this administartion continues to chide the likes of me for it, there will be no constructive communication on race.
There will be eventually. When the liberal orthodoxy that grew up on civil rights finally gets past all this and comes up to where I am- because I grew up color blind, there will be some sort of equanimity. Not until then.
Are we clear on this, Obama? I am not the problem. You may not be, either. But the people you have surrounded yourself with certainly are.