Skip to footer

Eric Holder: Condemning bigoted remarks isn't enough

Speaking at Morgan State University's commencement address in Baltimore, Attorney General Eric Holder referenced recent high-profile expressions of bigotry in the US, and said public outrage is not enough to fight persistent discrimination.  

  • By Eric Beech Reuters

Attorney General Eric Holder said on Saturday while public utterances of bigotry are roundly condemned in the United States racial discrimination persists in more subtle ways.

Speaking on the 60th anniversary of a landmark Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in public schools, Holder said that public outrage over recent instances of bigoted remarks by well-known people did not mean the struggle for civil rights is over.

"These outbursts of bigotry, while deplorable, are not the true markers of the struggle that still must be waged, or the work that still needs to be done - because the greatest threats do not announce themselves in screaming headlines. They are more subtle. They cut deeper," he said in a prepared commencement address at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

"... We ought not find contentment in the fact that these high-profile expressions of outright bigotry seem atypical and were met with such swift condemnation."

Holder, the nation's first African-American attorney general, didn't mention a specific case but racist comments by the owner of the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, that were made public last month received substantial media attention and were widely condemned by the league, players, public officials and on social media.

Since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Holder said laws that are overtly discriminatory no longer survive the "strict scrutiny" legal standard.

He said the new battleground against discrimination should focus on policies and laws that appear race-neutral but in practice impede equal opportunity.

"This is the work that truly matters - because policies that disenfranchise specific groups are more pernicious than hateful rants," Holder told the graduates at Morgan State, a historically black college.

He cited disciplinary practices in schools that punish black males at three times the rate of their white peers. He also said a report last year by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found that black men receive criminal sentences that are nearly 20 percent longer than white males convicted of similar crimes.

Holder said restrictions on voting that are justified as attempts to curb voter fraud disproportionately disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Eric Holder: Condemning bigoted remarks isn't enough
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2014/0517/Eric-Holder-Condemning-bigoted-remarks-isn-t-enough
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe