Eric Holder: Chief Justice John Roberts Is Wrong On Race
BI | 5-19-2014 | Sahil Kapur
May 19, 2014, 8:13 AM
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder speaks on stage during the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco, California August 12, 2013
In a rare move, Attorney General Eric Holder took direct aim at U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on issues of race during a commencement speech Saturday.
"Chief Justice John Roberts has argued that the path to ending racial discrimination is to give less consideration to the issue of race altogether. This presupposes that racial discrimination is at a sufficiently low ebb that it doesn’t need to be actively confronted," Holder said, speaking at the historically black Morgan State University. "In its most obvious forms, it might be. But discrimination does not always come in the form of a hateful epithet or a Jim Crow-like statute. And so we must continue to take account of racial inequality, especially in its less obvious forms, and actively discuss ways to combat it."
Holder was referring to the Bush-appointed justice's famous quote from a 2007 ruling: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
The attorney general referenced the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding Michigan's ban on race-conscious admissions policies in public education or employment, in which Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent against the 6-2 opinion and also criticized the frequently-quoted line from Roberts.