Nation Of Cowards

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a blunt assessment of race relations in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday called the American people "essentially a nation of cowards" in failing to openly discuss the issue of race.

You know the wing nuts are going to go, well, errr.... nuts over this.

I, on the other hand, happen to agree with Mr. Holder. We have been cowards. Oh, we can work with other races. But do you see yourself hanging out with other races after work? Even our TV shows still show a racial divide. There are TV shows for blacks. There are TV shows for whites. But there are very few TV shows that are homogenized.

When I was in the Navy, this divide was very obvious among the enlisted on medium to large ships. The blacks would gather together in one common room, while the white enlisted would gather together in another. Now, that was back in 1983. Maybe today it's different. I don't know. I just know that when it comes to actually living with other races, we've hardly even begun to eliminate fear and bias.

I rarely think of myself as a "white" person. I strictly think of myself as a person. That is, until I was the lone white person in a room full of blacks. Then I was aware I was white. Yet, when going through my training as a Chemical Dependency counselor, I was taught that many blacks see themselves as a black person, not just a person, even when they are in a room full of only other blacks.

So, yes, Mr. Holder is correct. As a nation, we've a long way to go still.