Recently President Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, said that the United States was a “nation of cowards on matters of race.” For my taste he paints with too deceitful a brush. I believe that what he is really saying is that “White Americans” are cowards on matters of race.

Surely those Black Americans who marched at Selma and Montgomery were not cowards nor were those who faced Bull Connor’s police dogs, nor were those who integrated lunch counters and as Freedom Riders and faced down angry cursing and beatings at bus stops throughout the south, nor was the writer of the letter from the Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a coward.

And what are we to make of the fact that some of the faces of those freedom riders and those integrating the lunch counters were white? Are they too to be classified as cowards?

Perhaps it is fair to accuse some of us Americans of being racist. It may be fair to even accuse some of us of being racially insensitive. And it is probably fair to lay the blame at our feet for segregating ourselves on weekends and in our churches on Sunday.

But the word “coward” has never been honestly applied to America and Americans. It didn’t apply at Valley Forge, at Gettysburg, Remagen Bridge or Inchon. It didn’t apply in Vietnam when my helicopter crew volunteered to fly through enemy fire into “hot-Landing-Zones” to evacuate the wounded and never cared what the skin color was of those we saved.

As a Black American, I take exception to the charge that on matters of race we are a nation of cowards. If racism is ever conquered on this globe, I believe it will be courageous Americans who will lead the way. Attorney General Holder owes all Americans an apology.