BALTIMORE (AP) — Attorney General Eric Holder says subtle, institutionalized racism has a more “pernicious” effect than the occasional bigoted outburst.
Holder spoke about the different forms of racism during a commencement address Saturday at historically black Morgan State University in Baltimore.
Holder is in the final year of his tenure as attorney general and has addressed racism more strongly of late. His comments Saturday came on the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that desegregated public schools.
Holder noted that in some schools districts, “significant divisions persist and segregation has reoccurred,” including through discipline policies that affect black males more than whites.
He says the Justice Department is working to reduce racial disparities in sentencing. And he says some states have placed new restrictions on voting that disproportionately impact African-Americans.
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We had a discussion a while back on the Hive that is relevant to this story:
And other discussions that were spun off from the Donald Sterling issue e.g.:
In a recent post, Ta-Nehisi Coates called this “elegant racism.” It is a good read:
Maybe Holder read the Atlantic article as it seems he was making pretty much the same point. It’s a good point. Another example of this “subtle, institutionalized racism” would be the military’s rules on the subject of female African hair.
And it is all around us. It’s far too easy to pin all the racism on the Red states because of their rampant Obama Derangement Syndrome. But (as I’ve said before), geography – and education, come to that – have nothing to do with anything: There are dumbass rednecks everywhere, and that includes that miserable, whining 1-percenter Donald (“I’M GONNA SUE IF I CAN’T KEEP MY SLAV-UHHH, BASKETBALL TEAM!”) Sterling!
We need a wider definition of “blasphemy” to include slander against anyone.