Open race talk brings mixed reviews

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- Reaction has been mixed to African-American History Month celebrations staged by the White House, where black officials talked openly about race, analysts say.

Speeches by prominent black Obama administration officials such as Attorney General Eric Holder and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson this month openly referenced racial divisions in the United States. The move may have been an attempt to expand the racial dialogue U.S. President Barack Obama called for during the campaign, but there were some negative reactions to the speeches, The Washington Post reported.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said Holder's Feb. 18 remarks at a Justice Department program was like a lecture on race by Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, writing, "Barack Obama's election was supposed to get us past that."

"They definitely have to be careful," Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution, told the Post. "Better to have the president and his top African-American aides serve as role models and achieve the broader objective by indirection."

Meanwhile, the Southern Poverty Law Center in a new report said the number of U.S. hate groups has grown by 54 percent since 2000, identifying 926 hate groups active in 2008, CNN reported.