Saying What The President Cannot

Attorney General Eric Holder is a good man in general, but his ability to say what President Obama cannot say about race and the brutally racist attacks this administration has suffered through in the last six years is one of his most powerful traits.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” by some of the administration’s political opponents.

“There's a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that's directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There's a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there's a racial animus."

Holder said the nation is in “a fundamentally better place than we were 50 years ago.” 

“We've made lots of progress,” he said. “I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American president of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. 

“But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals,” he said.

He also is one of the few people willing to call Republican voter suppression of black and Latino voters what it is.

The attorney general also pointed to Republican efforts to enact stricter voter ID laws in southern States as evidence that more needed to be done to protect minority rights. Republicans have maintained the efforts are designed to prevent voter fraud, while Democrats say instances of fraud are exceedingly rare, and far outpaced by the minority population that does not have identification that would be unable to vote. 

Holder called the laws “political efforts” designed to make it “more difficult” for “groups that are not supportive of those in power” to “have access to the ballot.” 

“Who is disproportionately impacted by them? Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, older people, people who, for whatever reason, aren't necessarily supportive of the Republican Party,” Holder said, adding that “this notion that there is widespread in-person voter fraud is simply belied by the facts.”

I am grateful for President Obama, but Eric Holder's contribution to civil rights and fighting for them cannot and will not be overlooked by history either.