Attorney General Eric Holder said in an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid set to air Wednesday afternoon that “we, as a nation, have failed” to make progress on the divide between police and racial minorities.
Addressing current tensions over several police killings of unarmed black men, the host of “The Reid Report” brought up an infamous case from 1999 in which a person of color was shot dead by police.
“In a similar case in New York, Amadou Diallo, a young West African immigrant who was shot in the vestibule of his own apartment building,” she said. “What does it say that we essentially are in the same exact place now, so many years later?”
“It means that we, as a nation, have failed. It’s as simple as that. We have failed,” Holder replied.
Reid also asked the attorney general whether young blacks or Latinos growing up should fear the police.
“I don’t think that they should fear the police. But I certainly think that we have to build up a better relationship between young people, people of color, and people in law enforcement,” he replied.
Holder said there is “misunderstanding” on “both sides,” and that the nation has work to do.
“[I]t’s what we are, as an administration, committed to doing—to building trust that—that does not now exist but that has to exist,” he said. “It has to exist.”
