Attorney General Eric Holder charged that America is still a "nation of cowards" when it comes to racial issues.
On Thursday, Holder stood by his Feb. 19, 2009, controversial statement, "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot in things racial, we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."
His latest comments came during an interview with the University of Virginia's Miller Center. During the interview, the attorney general was asked if he would take back his controversial comments.
TRENDING: Jihad against Christians is due to … climate change?
"I would not take that back," he said.
Holder also argued that race relations are improving.
"We're certainly doing a lot better than we did," he said.
Noting Obama's election and his own appointment as highest-ranking law-enforcement official in the country, Holder said the U.S. is showing improvement.
He said, "The fact that you have two of us in high office is a sign of progress. We're still striving toward that more perfect union."
As WND recently reported, American Thinker commentator Russ Vaughn charged that Holder's treatment of the "Knockout Game" phenomenon is revealing the White House's racial agenda is more concerned with retribution than reconciliation.
"The Obama administration and the Holder Justice Department are deliberately disinclined to prosecute hate crimes where blacks are the perpetrators and whites are the victims," Vaughn wrote. "It is becoming increasingly disturbing that it is not just the Obama administration and the brown-nosed media that have attempted to sweep this new criminal activity under the rug, but [also] local police departments. It's happening all over the country, and not just in the major urban centers. I call this racialization of the law and criminality the Holder Effect, for it was the relatively new attorney general who famously announced that his Justice Department would side with 'his people.'"
"Unable to ignore it any longer, [the media] play it down – especially the racial aspects of it," Vaughn continues, "because that may put our black president, his black attorney general and all those black and liberal white lawyers in Holder's civil rights division in a bad light because they aren't investigating what appears to be serial hate crime.
"Which of course is true;" Vaughn writes, "our president is silent on what is a matter of growing public concern primarily among white Americans, who constitute, to date, all but one of the victims of this criminal game."
As WND reported, Holder's DOJ actually has acted upon the Knockout Game, bringing up hate-crime charges in only one case: that of Conrad Alvin Barrett of Katy, Texas, a white man who targeted a black victim in December.
WND also reported that journalist and author Jack Cashill, whose latest book, "If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman," covered the racially charged George Zimmerman case, argued that the Department of Justice has taken a troubling direction under Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder.
The department has indicated it may go after Zimmerman with federal civil rights charges.
Besides the Zimmerman case, Cashill cited the Knockout Game and another recent high-profile case the DOJ is pursuing that supports the notion officials are taking a polarized and racial bias in what cases they decide to prosecute.
"Eric Holder is now demanding that schools stop racial profiling students when it comes to punishment," Cashill noted. "The absurdity is that administrators are already bending over backward to not appear racist in their punishments. When it came to the Knockout Game, the federal government decided to prosecute only the white guy who knocked out the black guy as a hate crime and ignored a thousand cases that were contrary to that."
And only a week ago, Holder promised the Justice Department soon will issue new rules widening the definition of racial profiling.
As for any accusations of Holder being a divisive figure?
"I don't apologize for any of the things we've done," Holder said Thursday. "If I've been a lightning rod, I've been a lightning rod of positive change."
Â
Â