Earth to Eric Holder

The Spine ^ | 2009/02/19 | Marty Peretz

[neverdem]

I like Eric Holder. And, no, despite what Peter Wehner wrote in today's Contentions, Holder is not responsible for the pardon given Marc Rich in the late dusk of the Clinton administration. This was Bill Clinton's smarmy move, and his alone.

But I, too, am mystified by Holder's remarks, reported by the Associated Press and CNN today, basically denying the progress that Americans have made in their relentless and ongoing march to racial equality. Here is one snippet (and it is not a distorting snippet) of what Holder actually said: "we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." That is, "a nation of cowards" on racial matters. Or another snippet: "On Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009, does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago." The "in too many ways" in my first citation and the "in some ways" in my second are attempts at protective hedging. But they hedge nothing.

Holder was eight years old half a century ago. The desegregation of schools had barely begun. The "dream" of Martin Luther King, Jr. was still ringing in the people's ears and he had only recently been murdered. Black men and women did not figure in our national politics. Black teenagers did not then reasonably aspire to do well at school -the odds were against them--or hope to graduate, as Holder did, from Columbia University (as Barack Obama also did) and from the Columbia Law School. There were no black generals or managing partners of law firms or presidents of the best institutions of higher learning or CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and not many black people at all in the solid middle class. And almost none in the upper middle class. How many blacks were actually rich or even super-rich? No, America is not racial paradise. But it is more integrated, much more integrated than Great Britain and France which used to disdain our bigoted traditions and habits. No longer, believe me, no longer.

But since Eric Holder has laid down a challenge of honesty I'm willing to play by whatever serious rules he puts down. Still, I want to pose two queries to him.

One is about multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism was a program set down for all Americans by black intellectuals, black activists and their white allies. It has been a success, at least among younger whites who listen to (and play) black music, read black novelists and poets, hang black art in their apartments, study black history, dress according to black fashion. When was the last time you saw an African American in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Or at a classical music concert at Carnegie Hall? If we're being honest let's address this issue.

The second is more serious. It is the relative paucity of black undergraduates and graduate students in the fields of mathematics, the life sciences and the hard sciences. I am not raising the issue of intrinsic intellectual proclivities. No, not at all. In fact, I have been concerned--like the old SNCC activist Bob Moses--for the whole half century that Holder evokes with this matter. The sciences are the key to upward mobility. Look at how the expansive world of computers has precisely expanded the economic and intellectual life of millions of people. Why are young African Americans not in the universe of the sciences? Who is responsible? Who will take up the cause?

The tremendous black presence in the White House and elsewhere in Washington is an exhilarating development. I'm willing to look at everything. I hope my friend Eric Holder is too?

I am not bragging. But I thought you might care to know that I am a recipient of the W.E.B. DuBois Medal (2000).

Posted: Thursday, February 19, 2009 6:26 PM

[neverdem]

IIRC, wasn't Marty Peretz a big liberal pal of Al Gore?

The sciences are the key to upward mobility.

That's the last statement I would expect from a leftist. The left almost always strikes me as promoting nonsensical art and ignoring real science, e.g. the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis versus observed temperature and sunspot activity, the stem cell debate with useless human embryonic stem cells versus adult stem cell therapies, etc. You can have your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

[gitmogrunt]

Eric Holder?...isn’t he the co-pilot on Farakhan’s mothership?

[Reagan Man]

>>>>>I like Eric Holder.

I do not. Holder's a racist, just like Rangel, Jackson sr, Jackson jr, Clyburn etc etc etc... and by his silence, Obama too.

[romanesq]

Marty of course the Clinton pardon was Clinton’s idea but Holder was his loyal despicable follower to the end.

Holder even tried to get others to back a recommendation as cover for himself and others refused.

And one more thing: Viva Elian! you rat ba)(*(*&Y&(*

[ETL]

Eric Holder's role in the pardons of BLA (Black Liberation Army) comrades/Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (Brinks Truck robbery and triple murder):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2165052/posts

Eric Holder, Bill Clinton, Wright's 'Black Liberation' "church", and the pardons of 16 members of the Puerto Rican Marxist terrorist group FALN:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2165024/posts
_________________________________________________________

"Fraunces Tavern is a restaurant and museum in lower Manhattan, New York City. It was built on the site of a former building which played a significant role in pre-Revolutionary activities, and in which, on 4 December 1783, General George Washington bade farewell to his officers at the end of the Revolution, before returning to his home, Mount Vernon."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunces_Tavern
_________________________________________________________

"During the 1970s and 1980s, FALN members set off at least 138 bombs in five major U.S. Cities. Six Americans were killed in those attacks. One of those bombings, in January 1975, was at the historic Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan while patrons were at lunch. The explosion killed four and injured more than 50."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/bill_hillary_and_the_faln.html
_________________________________________________________

"Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the 'oppressed people of Puerto Rico,' the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist revolutionaries. Both groups were organized by Fidel Castro's secret police. The ultimate goal of the FALN and the Macheteros is the creation of an independent Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the island of Puerto Rico."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760

[LibFreeOrDie]

Holder’s father and maternal grandparents came to this country by choice from Barbados. No one dragged them here.

According to his bio on Wikipedia, Holder was identified as a gifted child in the 4th grade, which would have been around 1960, before the Civil Rights Act. He attended Stuyvesant High in NYC, a prestigious public school that requires an entrance exam. No one kept him “in his place.”

Holder can go **** himself.

[Vn_survivor_67-68]

“But I, too, am mystified by Holder’s remarks”

I’m not.....it was simply a call-to-arms to race pimps of all colors in all quarters to up the verbal ante....NOW!....there are other things currently sooo prominent that they must be distracted from

[DoughtyOne]

Holder has a sordid past that from my perspective makes him someone I wouldn’t want anywhere near a government office.

How this person can read Holder’s comments and then say, “I like him.” is beyond me.

You’re right. He is a racist. It’s just my opinion, but I have found that those who are the true racists today, are those who demanded equality years ago.

Reasoned requests for equality have been replaced by trashing every White as a racist. That is in fact a racist stance. “Oh you couldn’t understand...” is a racist remark.

[sheik yerbouty]

It is said that he often does..

[TCats]

Coming soon, legislation mandating “Equal Opportunity Dinner Parties or Barbecues”.

What this guy is really saying is that we (Primarily Whites) not only have to provide equal opportunity and due respect in the workplace but that it must extend to our purely personal time and the choices we make about interpersonal relations. Apparently he is not content to let us all decide these things for ourselves. I think he is suggesting that somehow the Gov’t needs to intrude onto this sphere.

No doubt many reeducation ‘Seminars’ are in store for those who do not see the wisdom of this thinking.

[PhilDragoo]

[sheik yerbouty]

Merde alors!!

[DoughtyOne]

That female on the left is kind of cute, but that miscreant on the right, I’m not sure about him. ;-)

Good one Phil.

[bmwcyle]

I like Eric Holder, Marty Peretz — I don’t.

[Chinstrap61a]

I looked at Mr. Holder's bio and noted that managed to miss devoting any service to his country in the armed forces. He would have been 18 in 1969 when our war was going pretty hot and heavy - most of the rest of us were there or at least supporting those who were there by serving in some capacity.

Whom has he called cowards? Other Armericans fought and bled for their country while Mr. Holder was grooming himself for bigger salaries and higher office

Mr. Holder, you missed out - and you were the coward, not us.

[utahagen]

Yes, Marty Peretz, publisher of the New Republic until a few years ago, is a friend of Al Gore's. Peretz deserves great credit for challenging Eric Holder and for doing so pointedly. I was stunned Peretz had the guts to ask when the last time was that you saw an African American in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That a prominent political liberal like Peretz would write this column is a very positive sign that it is now at least semi-acceptable to hold Black Americans to the same standards as other Americans, and that gratuitous whining will be met with sound counterarguments. Thumbs up to Marty Peretz.

[combat_boots]

“race pimps of all colors in all quarters”

I would like to see these people all loaded into a single square mileage area, like The Island or Lord of the Flies—cut off and forced to deal with each other.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

The last thing blacks want is a frank discussion of racial matters; still less blacks desire there be any action regarding racial matters i.e. immediately removing set asides etc. Any “progress” by members of the black race is based soley upon governmental force. There, that is frank discussion on racial matters.

[bigbob]

I hate it when I can’t read past the first four words of an article without finding reason to disagree!

[IbJensen]

I like Eric Holder.

I don't.

He, like the other administration rats, was picked up from the DC sewer system by Braaack Obomba.