Stinging Remarks on Race From Attorney General

Feb. 18, 2009— -- The United States is "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race relations, the country's newly minted attorney general said today.

In remarks made during a speech to honor Black History Month, Eric Holder said the country remains "voluntarily socially segregated," making head-turning comments that could spark fierce dialogue and the ire of some conservatives.

"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, essentially a nation of cowards," Holder said at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. "Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.

"This is truly sad. Given all that we as a nation went through during the civil rights struggle, it is hard for me to accept that the result of those efforts was to create an America that is more prosperous, more positively race-conscious, and yet is voluntarily socially segregated."

Holder become the nation's first black attorney general earlier this month.

Addressing reporters after the speech, Holder, 57, said his comments were "a question of being honest," adding that "we have to have the guts" to talk about race issues instead of avoiding them.

"It is an easy thing not to talk about these things. It is a painful thing to discuss them," said Holder, who was raised in New York City by parents whose roots are in Barbados.

In turn, Holder pledged to boost the work and mission of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, saying, "It's a division that has not gotten the attention it deserves, the resources it deserves, and people have not been given a sense of mission."

While Holder spoke about the masses spending more time together, ABC News polls show there has been sharply increased social interaction between black and white Americans in the past few decades. In June, 79 percent of whites reported having a "fairly close personal friend" who's black, up from 54 percent in 1981. Ninety-two percent of blacks reported having a white friend, up from 69 percent a generation ago.

Similarly, a 2005 poll found that 48 percent of whites and 63 percent of blacks said someone in their family had brought a friend of the other race home for dinner -- also far higher than when the data series began in 1973.

Still, three-quarters of African-Americans say they've personally experienced racial discrimination.