race in 2009

Kudos to attorney general Eric Holder, for putting it bluntly: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards". His assertion, made in a speech commemorating black history month, is hard to deny. It's shocking, and bizarre, to think about how much de facto segregation still exists. And it's oddly difficult to rectify - it would seem weird, for example, to actively seek friends of other races. All I can think of is Stephen Colbert's black friend. So that's where we are. Where do we go?

This reminded me that in undergrad I once wrote a paper that we were not a melting pot as oft touted but rather more like a pot of gumbo with a lot of weird shit thrown together, some of it not quite recognizable, but all of it distinct.  The point of which is that there has to be a shift in the national rhetoric and an acknowledgement that no matter how good a concept of a "melting pot" may make some folks, any fine jeweler will tell you they don't want silver melted in with their gold.  Comedians such as Colbert's black friend (and Colbert himself) I truly believe will be the ones that can really implement that change... the court jesters can say what the rest only feel. And it has to be that way, because we cut art from the classrooms.