a nation of cowards

is still blind to its uphill climb, is still afraid of itself.Americans who count at least one black friend has jumped 25 percent since 1973. But what about two black friends? Real friends? (Barack Obama doesn’t count.“This is truly sad.” He spoke, with a tinge of bitterness, of the “polite, restrained mixing that now passes as meaningful interaction but that accomplishes little.” Sure, blacks and whites mingle at the workplace or in the marketplace, on the subway or in line at the deli, but voluntary segregation, he assured his listeners, is still rampant.Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot,” he said, “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. We chewed over Barack Obama’s biraciality, his cleanliness and articulatenessHolder's conclusion, that “this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past nor has it been willing to contemplate, in a truly meaningful way, the diverse future it is fated to have” sounds the alarm: America is still segregated, is still blind to its uphill climb, is still afraid of itself.