Posted on 04/23/2014 9:42:15 AM PDT by maggief
Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday called Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in the Supreme Court’s latest affirmative action ruling “courageous.”
At an event on diversity within the Justice Department, Holder said it’s tempting to think the struggle to overcome discrimination has ended when people like him or President Obama have reached the nation’s highest ranks. But he said the fight for equal rights is not over.
"[This] great country still has a ways to go before our founding promise of equal justice and equal opportunity is fully realized,” he said.
Holder quoted Sotomayor in the dissent she filed a day earlier in 6-2 Supreme Court ruling that upheld Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined in the dissent. “Just yesterday in her courageous and personal dissent,” Holder quoted Sotomayor as saying that people sholud not “wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society... The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to weigh in on the ruling Tuesday, but noted President Obama has previously said using race as a factor could be appropriate under certain circumstances.
Holder said confronting existing disparities not only requires a dialogue, but principled action “to address and remediate the lingering impacts of racial discrimination.”
The high court’s decision on Tuesday essentially says states have the right to ban affirmative action. A majority of Michigan voters approved the state's ban in 2006. It was the second affirmative action case the justices ruled on in the last year.
In a 2012 interview at the World Leaders Forum, Holder appeared to express support for the race-conscious policy.
“Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices,” Holder said. “The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin. . . . When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”
We still have “a bunch of folks,” (to use a Haaaaaavud educated Obama phrase), that desperately hang onto the racial hatreds of the 1960’s: for example, Revs. Sharpton and Jackson.
For them, nothing has changed since the pre 1960’s, and so they make a living by race-baiting with speeches, accusations, and of course, arm in arm “marches.”
To them, they receive with deaf ears the statement: “If you accuse someone of being a racist, and do NOT back it up with facts, - - - - - - - - - - - then you just might be a racist.”
Just another self serving.......Well I think you get the idea. Yes I know, thinking impure thoughts.
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The way that activist justices like Justice Sotomayor talk, you would never know that the law of the land is an amendable Constitution.
But I think that the real problem is that Sotomayor doesn't want low-information citizens to find out that it is the states, not the Supreme Court or any other branches of the federal government, who uniquely have the constitutional Article V power to ratify new amendments to the Constitution which would enumerate racial protections.
In fact, the states ratified the 15th Amendment to expressly protect voting rights on the basis of race.
So what Justice Sotomayor needs to do if she really wants to limit racial discriminaton on additional issues within the framework of the Constitution, as opposed to twisting the arms of her colleagues to wrongly legislate such rights from the bench, is the following.
Justice Sotomayor needs to work with both state and federal lawmakers to proprose additional anti-racial discirimation amendments to the Constitution to the states for ratification. And if the states choose to ratify her amendments then the states will have less power to discriminate on the basis of race and Sotomayor will be a hero.
Said the BLACK US Attorney General operating under a BLACK US President.
Two ugly racists.
Affirmative action is the most racist thing in the US since Jim Crow laws. It blatantly gives preference to one person over another solely because of race. “You get to drink from the water fountain but you do not because you are white” And of course liberals try to disguise that fact by their obnoxious use of ridiculous wording “affirmative” even though everything about it is negative. And then as usual they call people who are against it “racist”. Disagree on anything liberals support and you are automatically branded a racist even though the things liberals promote are as racist as it gets.
What an illogical (and actually insulting comment) by Mr. Holder.
How is anyone entitled to a special privilege in admission to a State University? I would be the first to agree that a private employer should have the right to favor any applicant on any basis that employer prefers; but Holder is suggesting that the State has a duty to apply his Holder's personal preferences in admission policies.
This is also highly insulting to those, both White & non-White, who have legitimately made the admission standards, by implying that there was something improper in those standards. But worst of all, it encourages excuses, blame, resentment & hatred, among those who did not achieve, rather than introspection, emulation of what works, and better focus on whatever talents any individual actually has. The "entitlement" mentality, is a psychological narcotic, that destroys human potential.
William Flax
What danger or pain could she conceivably have faced for writing that?
I don’t care what the “held-in-contempt-by-congress” holder says. I think the incompetent judge’s dissent was racist and reflective of her inappropriately being appointed.
I am so sick of these jackasses who talk BS like that when some of the richest people in this country are black not to mention like you said they hold the highest offices in this land. Even his senior advisor Valerie Jarrett is black. WHAT “equal justice and equal opportunity” does this jackass think is NOT fully realized?? How many Jewish Presidents have we had so far? ZERO. How many Italian Americans? ZERO. How many Asian Presidents? ZERO. And this jackass thinks blacks still don’t have “equal justice and equal opportunity” in this country??
I have a black president,governor,and mayor.
God,I wish these whiners would just SHUT UP.!!!!!!!!!!
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Where's the courage in that?
As long, of course, as it reflects the liberal view....Conservatives aren't allowed to be "Candid."
What Rosa Parks did was courageous. What the people who ran the underground railroad did was courageous. The people spouting racism in the 21st century where there obviously isn’t any aren’t courageous, they’re sniveling little weenies.
Celina Sotomayor put great stress on the value of education; she bought the Encyclopædia Britannica for her children, something unusual in the housing projects.[12] Despite the distance between the two, which became even worse after her father’s death and which was not fully reconciled until decades later,[11] Sotomayor has credited her mother with being her “life inspiration”.[25] For grammar school, Sotomayor attended Blessed Sacrament School in Soundview,[26] where she was valedictorian and had a near-perfect attendance record.[21][27] Although underage, Sotomayor worked at a local retail store; she also worked at a hospital.[28] Sotomayor passed the entrance tests for, then commuted to, Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx.[29][30] Meanwhile, the Bronxdale Houses had fallen victim to increasing heroin use, crime, and the emergence of the Black Spades gang.[16] In 1970, the family found refuge by moving to Co-op City in the Northeast Bronx.[16] At Cardinal Spellman, Sotomayor was on the forensics team and was elected to the student government.[29][30] She graduated as valedictorian in 1972.[12]
First off attending Spellman as a poor girl from the Bronx is pretty expensive. I’m a few weeks younger than she. Half Puerto Rican. I went to Stuyvesant. No, i didn’t have to pay to get in. Believe me she had all the chances in the world. Shes not speaking about some personal experience. She’s simply politicking. She had plenty of chances to attend free schools here in NYC better,easily way better, than Spellman had she been smart enough.
Sotomayor’s job is not now politics or bending laws to her satisfaction. Her job is seeing that llegal questions ore resolved by the intent of the laws as they were written, not as she would personally like them written. Her personal opinion dhaould not be the deciding issue.
Holder is correct. It is easy to be equality under the law. the Dems used to wear hoods to hide their bigotry, but Soto is an in your face bigot.
What Rosa Parkes done was as a scheming communist trained that way by her parents, and implemented in a calculated chosen time and circumstance. Like Obama. Rosa Parks was no sweet, innocent, altruistic American girl.
It was hyper-emotionalized nonsense, Holder.
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