If the election of President Barack Obama promised a racial “uniter-in-chief,” then a speech given last week by Attorney General Eric Holder more than suggested that our nation’s chief law enforcement officer would willingly take up the role as the administration’s highest ranking racial “divider-in-chief.”

Speaking to Justice Department employees -- and all Americans -- in “celebration” of Black History Month, General Holder all but began his speech with the caustic comment that “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, a nation of cowards.”

Indeed, as if the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the civil rights movement and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had never happened, General Holder asserted “this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past.”  According to him, on weekends and away from our workplaces, “America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some fifty years ago.”

In fact, it was clear from the very beginning of his speech that General Holder still sees the United States as divided by race, rather than united as Americans.  That is not only disappointing, but just plain wrong.

Immediately following the historic election of the first black President of the United States, here at CFIF we observed that “voters overwhelmingly answered all of the questions raised for months … concerning whether race still plays a prominent -- or even leading role -- in American politics.  It doesn’t … or at least this presidential election was pretty good evidence that it doesn’t anymore.”

But our hope for change to a post-racial America in which the race card would no longer be played -- or at least less often and blatantly so -- was dashed by the first black Attorney General of the United States, who took to the podium and turned back the clock to racial division.

In General Holder’s view -- announced in the second sentence of his speech, no less -- Americans need to “deal with the reality of electing an African American as our President for the first time.”  And that’s not all.  Americans “need to confront our racial past, and our racial present” because, as he lamented, “a black history month is a testament to the problem that has afflicted blacks throughout our stay in this country.”

That problem, according to General Holder, is blacks, as well as “black history,” are “given a separate, and clearly not equal, treatment by our society in general.”  This, despite the fact that Americans of all colors elected a black politician to be the most powerful man in the world, who then appointed a black lawyer to be the most powerful law enforcement official in this country.

Indeed, the rejoinder to General Holder’s race-conscious America was given perhaps its best voice in a letter to the editor of USA Today written by Louis Ginesi Dominguez.  Not mincing his words either, Dominguez explained that General Holder’s speech “comes as a slap on the face of countless Americans of every color who have jumped over the racial divide for the past 40 years.”

“What on earth does Holder want?” Dominguez rhetorically asked in exasperation.  “Blacks hold high positions in the government and private sector; they are generals in the U.S. Army; they run cities and police departments; they control top spots in sports and entertainment; they lead universities and colleges; and now a black man has taken the reins of the United States of America.  This does not leave much to fight for anymore.  So who and where are the cowards?”

The answer to Dominguez’s last question very well may be General Holder, himself.

General Holder held his speech out as intended “to foster a period of dialogue among the races,” in order “to force ourselves to confront that which we have become expert at avoiding.”  He even spoke of “[i]magin[ing]” a “situation where people -- regardless of their skin color -- could confront racial issues freely and without fear.”

But, in that same section, General Holder makes it perfectly clear that he doesn’t really want a frank discussion about race or the public policies that are inextricably intertwined with it.  Rather, there must be ground rules that the discussion be “nuanced, principled and spirited.”

With those words, General Holder was describing what he would consider to be a “legitimate debate about the question of affirmative action.”  He went further, warning “the conversation that we now engage in as a nation on this and other racial subjects is too often simplistic and left to those on the extremes.”

Can there be any doubt that General Holder would exclude from his frank racial discussion -- as either not “nuanced” or “principled” -- the position that giving preferential treatment based on race in education, employment, etc., (i.e., affirmative action), is unconstitutional?  Never mind that the Supreme Court has often ruled that the 14th Amendment actually means what it says -- that every American, regardless of race, is entitled to “the equal protection of the laws.”

Taking this a step further, can there be any doubt that General Holder would find it “too simplistic” or too “extreme” to believe the Equal Protection Clause means that the “way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race”?  Those were the words used by the current Chief Justice of the United States in striking down policies that used racial preferences for public school assignments in Louisville and Seattle.

You see, though he may say otherwise, for General Holder, we still need to “hasten the day when we truly become one America.”  Until then, just like the necessity of a separate “Black History Month,” racial consciousness “must remain an important, vital concept.”

We couldn’t disagree more.  Quoting the Chief Justice again, this time from a recent voting rights case: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”  We had certainly hoped for change from that status quo.