By Lee A. Daniels

The racial controversies that exploded on two fronts last week – the one involving a racist cartoon in the New York Post; the other involved a speech given by the nation’s new Attorney General  — continued to throw off sparks this week.

As the Reverend Al Sharpton sought to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to punish the News Corporation, owner of the Post, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People yesterday formally announced plans to hold demonstrations in front of Fox local television stations in dozens of cities across the country protesting the Post’s February 18 publication of a cartoon showing two white police officers shooting an ape to death and making a sarcastic reference to the Obama Administration’s Stimulus bill.

Tuesday in New York City the leaders of four civil rights organizations held a midday news conference on the steps of its City Hall to press their demands that media baron Rupert Murdoch, owner of the New York Post, institute substantive changes in the paper’s news-coverage policies and employment practices. The news conference was the latest development of the firestorm that erupted last week when the Post published a racist cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as an ape being shot dead by two white police officers.

Leading the news conference were the Reverend Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, Marc Morial, president and chief executive of the National Urban League, Benjamin T. Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and John Payton, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In addition, several New York City Council members and other community leaders also attended the event to urge a reform of the Post’s practices.

The Post had in its February 24 edition published an apology from Murdoch – which followed a printed apology, itself controversial, last week from the paper’s editor. But those speaking at the news conference said apologies were not sufficient. Payton said that the Murdoch apology in effect “acknowledges” that the cartoon was racist and “should not have run in any newspaper. So,” Payton continued, posing a question to the throng of reporters and others, “now, what are the procedures that [Murdoch] will put in place to make sure no other highly offensive cartoon appears. We’ve had enough of this.”

View video at NY1.com, “Murdoch Issues Apology Over Post Cartoon; Sharpton Continues Call For Boycott.”

Separately, Attorney general Eric H. Holder, Jr.’s characterization last week of America as “a nation of cowards” when it comes to talking frankly about race continued to provoke heated debate. On Monday Payton forcefully defended Holder’s intent and tactics in the speech as one of several guests on the nationally syndicated Diane Rehms radio talk show. The other guests were Robert Woodson, president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the US Civil Rights Commission, and Rinku Sen, president of the Applied research Center, of Oakland, and the publisher of ColorLines Magazine.

Attorney General Eric Holder

Woodson and Thernstrom sharply criticized not only Holder’s choice of words but the very notion that Americans need a more candid discussion of racial issues. Instead, they asserted that the discourse on race had been hijacked by “the Left” and that those who “deviated” from, as Thernstrom put it, “the standard civil rights line” were punished by being called racists.

However, Rinku Sen said that white Americans are clearly “reluctant to talk about race” and that reluctance is one reason what she called the “structural roots” of racial inequality still have such a powerful negative influence  on the opportunities available to Americans of color.

Payton added that Holder’s use of the phrase “a nation of cowards” was deliberately intended to provoke a discussion. “Of course, he wasn’t saying that every single person in the United States is a coward (in talking about race)” and then went on to point out that the initial discussion in the media the very week of Holder’s speech about the Post cartoon proved Holder’s point. Payton said the widespread initial reluctance in the media to describe the cartoon as racist was “dishonest. There were a lot of people who wanted to pretend  that it [wasn't]. This was an easy one [but] we did not engage in an honest discussion at the beginning of this easy one”.

Visit Diane Rehm’s radio talk show web site for transcript and audio of the segment.