Except for white people.
President Obama announced the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday, lamenting the “bittersweet” exit of one of his original Cabinet members but saying his extensive portfolio on civil rights earned him the title of the “people’s lawyer.”
“He believes as I do that justice is not just an abstract theory,” Obama said of Holder, from the White House. “It’s a living and breathing principle.”
Progressives, however, argue that Holder did more on civil rights than any attorney general in decades. They point to his work to counteract the Supreme Court’s overturning of the centerpiece of the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing Justice Department civil rights investigation into the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Holder has also led the administration’s efforts to scrap mandatory minimum prison sentences, which Obama has called racially biased.