For years, Eric Holder has bellyached over the unwillingness of this “nation of cowards” to have an “honest” discussion over race.  The George Zimmerman verdict is the latest occasion that Holder has exploited for renewing his call on this score.

Though a loathsome man, he is correct about this much: Americans, of all races, are indeed unwilling to speak truthfully about this charged topic.

Of course, to a large degree, this unwillingness is due precisely to the bullying tactics of the Holders of the world—i.e. just those people who incessantly bemoan our dishonest treatment of all matters racial while castigating those who dare to speak honestly about race.  Still, when a person is right, he’s right: candid talk on race is long overdue.

In the spirit of straight shooting, then, I submit the following observations.

Blacks were enslaved in America, it is true.  Yet to know only this is to know next to nothing. It is like knowing that George Washington led a band of colonists that killed English soldiers without knowing anything else about the context in which this killing took place—i.e. the colonists were waging a war for independence that they felt was their last resort after other attempts at conciliation were tried and failed, etc.  More accurately, to know only that blacks were enslaved in America is like thinking that George Washington and the colonists were the only people in the history of the world to have ever killed!

An honest discussion of race must mention the stone cold fact that for millennia, well before the first white man ever stepped foot on the African continent, blacks were enslaving blacks.

An honest discussion of race must mention that there never could have been a Trans-Atlantic slave trade had it not been for, not just the cooperation of Africans, but their zealous participation in it.  Moreover, such was their zealotry that when whites—that’s right, whites!—tried abolishing the practice via the awesome power of the English empire in the 18^th century, Africans resisted their efforts.

An honest discussion of race should mention that slavery was a universal practice up until—but only until—whites, white Christians, specifically, revolted against it (And it wasn’t just Africans, but Arabs and Asians as well, who fought mightily to keep alive their trade in human flesh).   In fact, it was the mass enslavement of the (white) Slavish that eventually gave rise to the very word “slave.”

An honest discussion of race should mention that for about 250 years, 1.5 million Europeans had been enslaved by (Northern) Africans.  Honesty demands that we mention as well that in early America, it was common practice for whites to be sold into slavery.  Furthermore, whites, not infrequently, children, would be abducted from the streets of England and made to endure passage to the New World aboard ships, and on voyages, that were in many respects comparable to, if not worse, than those suffered by Africans. The word “kidnap” actually stems from this practice of stealing young English kids—another tidbit that should be included in any honest discussion of race.

An honest discussion of race should mention that in the antebellum South, there were literally thousands of free blacks who owned slaves.

An honest discussion of race should mention that, materially speaking, the black minority in America has managed to achieve a standard of living far greater than that of blacks—or anyone else—living anywhere else in the world.

An honest discussion of race should mention that at only 13% of the American population, blacks contribute much more than any other group to the nation’s crime rate. When it is considered that it is a minority within this minority of 13%–namely, black males who are neither small children nor elderly—that perpetrate the bulk of this crime, an even more alarming picture comes into focus.

An honest discussion of race should mention that the Trayvon Martins of America are influenced by a degenerate black underclass subculture that has been romanticized by Gangsta’ Rap and Hip Hop while, at best, ignored by Eric Holder and his fellow “anti-racists.”  An honest discussion of race would consider that this culture of criminality and violence compels not just whites to “profile” young black males; it compels blacks to do the same—even if it is only in unguarded moments when blacks like Jesse Jackson confess to their fears of other blacks.

An honest discussion of race would take stock of the hypocrisy of advocating for a colossus of “affirmative action” programs for blacks while decrying “racial profiling,” or discrimination of any kind in which race plays a role.

An honest discussion of race would draw our attention to the obscene levels of black-on-black, as well as black-on-white, crime.  Regarding the latter, there can be no racial harmony when the members of one race repeatedly besiege those of another with violence.

These are just some of the things that should be included in any genuinely honest discussion of race in America.