THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama's attorney general Eric Holder has branded the United States a "nation of cowards" who are "voluntarily socially segregated" along race lines.
Mr Holder, the first African American to hold the post of top justice official, said that although the US was integrated in the workplace, its people spent their weekends and private lives in "race-protected cocoons".
"Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad," said Mr Holder
Speaking to members of his department to mark Black History Month, an annual national celebration of African American achievement, he added: "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," he added.
His comments took some of the sheen off the celebratory mood America has felt since electing its first black president in November.
But Mr Holder was echoing a plea President Barack Obama made to the nation during his campaign last year to break a "racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years".
The president, the son of Kenyan and a white Kansan, has described himself as "post-racial", but Mr Holder clearly thought the nation has a long way to go before it meets that goal.
Mr Holder, 57, who was born in New York to parents hailing from Barbados, cited the president's words and urged his colleagues to loosen their inhibitions about discussing race. Obama's Attorney General Claims US Is 'Voluntarily Segregated' >>> By Alex Spillius in Washington | Thursday, February 19, 2009
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