Eric Holder’s parting shot: Police abuse scandals mean the nation has “failed” (Salon)

[inanna]

Holder’s frank comments, plus the president opening up about being mistaken for a valet, show a new candor on race

Attorney General Eric Holder got himself virtually muzzled early in President Obama’s first term, when he called the U.S. “a nation of cowards” for our inability to deal frankly with issues of race. On his way out the door, he’s not worried about his critics. He told MSNBC’s Joy Reid that ongoing troubles in limiting police violence mean “we, as a nation, have failed. It’s as simple as that. We have failed.”

It’s a grim verdict, but it’s hard to quarrel. Holder was a deputy U.S. attorney back in 2001, when the Justice Department announced it would not prosecute the New York police officers who famously fired 41 shots at unarmed immigrant Amadou Diallo, hitting him 19 times. Though Justice concluded it couldn’t make a civil rights case against the officers, Holder warned at the time: ”We must learn from this deeply troubling incident. Mr. Diallo, an unarmed individual who committed no crime and no act of aggression, unnecessarily lost his life.”

<snip>

On the same day the president opened up to People and said “There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional” who hasn’t been mistaken for a parking valet, Holder’s exit interview shows a new comfort with candor about race in Obama’s second term. It may make heads on the right explode, but so be it. Michelle Malkin is already howling about first lady Michelle Obama’s story of being mistaken for a store clerk by a Target shopper on her incognito trip there in 2011.

In the interview with Reid — which is running in New York magazine and airing on “The Reid Report” — Holder talks passionately about voting rights setbacks in recent years, calling out the Republican Party for its support of voter suppression measures, while praising GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner for his work to restore the Voting Rights Act.

Link: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/17/eric_holders_parting_shot_police_abuse_scandals_mean_the_nation_has_failed/

[nichomachus]

1. Eric Holder gave us "too big to fail." So he can STFU n/t