Byron York sums up Dean's problem...it's not race, it's a missing backbone.
Educating Dr. Dean When Al Sharpton attacks, Dean is afraid to fight back.One striking thing about the exchange with Sharpton was that Dean alluded to, but chose not to use, the most common-sense explanation for the racial makeup of his state administration. Vermont is an overwhelmingly white state, he might have explained; there are very, very few black people there. In the 2000 census, the state's population was 608,827. Of that, 3,063, or 0.5 percent, were black. In Vermont's capital city, Montpelier, according to the census, there were 52 black people in 2000.
Dean might have said that his cabinet did not look like America — in a phrase famously associated with a Democratic president — because Vermont does not look like America. Dean might have further explained that, although his motives might be good, the simple demographic facts of life in Vermont meant that he could not have much experience working with a racially diverse population.
Obviously, that would be a non-starter at the Brown and Black Presidential Forum. If he had stated the obvious, Dean would have undermined the months of confident proclamations about race that he has made on the campaign trail. So he invoked Martin Luther King and attempted to educate white folks a bit more.
Hat tip to Deacon.