Last week at the University of Virginia, Attorney General Eric Holder had what The Daily Caller labeled a “friendly interview” and was asked if he would take back his 2009 remark that Americans are a “nation of cowards” on racial issues. “I would not take that back,” he replied.
In 2009 he spoke to his agency employees at an event celebrating Black History Month and said, “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial, we have always been and we – I believe continue to be, in many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. Certain subjects are off-limits and that to explore them risks at best embarrassment, and at worst, the questioning of one’s character.”
In the interview last week he outlined his agenda for using his legal clout to equalize outcome for blacks.
The Daily Caller – During his tenure, Holder has greatly expanded the range of race-related lawsuits filed against companies, schools and governments.
For example, his department recently threatened to sue schools where African Americans are disciplined differently than Asian or white students. His agency has extracted billions of dollars in payments from banks after unintentional racial differences were detected in their lending patterns. He has also rolled back drug penalties imposed on African Americans.
Holder’s boss, President Barack Obama, recently told The New Yorker that he supported a reform of marijuana laws, partly because many Africans Americans have been jailed for violating those laws.
During the interview, Holder also threatened to sue states if his deputies see a racial purpose behind voter-identification laws that have already been approved by the Supreme Court.
Holder also hinted at a wave of new lawsuits amid the growing diversity caused by immigration.
“We have demographic changes in this nation the likes of which we have never seen before,” he said. “That could be a very divisive thing… on the other hand, if we do accept the new nation that we are about to become, that could be a very positive force.”
Holder’s office has not publicly pushed back against the president’s decision to reduce enforcement of immigration laws.
The looser enforcement has boosted Obama’s support among Latinos, but has also increased job-competition for young African Americans.
Only about half of young black men who have not completed high school have full-time jobs.
So let me see if I understand this correctly. We have a black President. We have a black Attorney General. We have blacks in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats. And at the time he made his original remark in 2009, the Republicans had a black leading the party – Michael Steele. And yet we are a nation of cowards when it comes to racial matters? The only cowards I see are Obama, Holder and others in the current administration. Cowards judge all that they see by what they are and, to my mind, that makes Holder and Obama the biggest racists in the country.
If Holder believes that equalizing racial outcome is A.) A good thing and B.) His job, then perhaps he should do something about the disproportionate number of blacks who murder blacks. He could start in Chicago, where a young black male is statistically more likely to die violently than is a soldier serving in Afghanistan.
If Holder is concerned about how many young black men without a high school diploma have full-time jobs then perhaps he should ask himself why so many young black men do not graduate high school. Hint: It has nothing to do with school discipline. Perhaps if he and other leaders in the black community were more concerned with the destruction of the black family unit than making sure they don’t pay the penalty for smoking dope, there would not be so many blacks who drop out and become burdens to society. When you coddle people, make excuses for them and publicly announce plans to remove laws because they violate them, of course they are going to meet your very low expectations.
If Holder truly believes we are a nation of cowards then he need look no further than his boss and his own office. Obama and Holder are personally responsible for needless deaths through their criminal actions in the Fast and Furious scandal and the embassy attack in Benghazi. They are both obviously afraid to allow the public to know the truth about these events. As Mark Twain said, “A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.” But we haven’t even got half the truth about these scandals; only lies.
And one last thing about this. At the conclusion of his interview last week, Holder, who calls others cowards, declined to take questions from reporters.
The idea that some laws should be removed because of the number of blacks who violate them is ludicrous. In spite of what Obama and Holder think, racism is not rampant in America. Since when does violating a law make that law a component of racism?
I would go so far as to say attitudes such as they display have done a great disservice to the black community.
Attitudes such as theirs go hand in hand with Jeremiah Wright’s attitude that I wrote about last Friday. Make excuses, set low expectations, and blame racism for the condition of the black community. It’s always someone else’s fault.