http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/19/the-five-jumps-off-of-attorney-general-holders/199385
The Five exploited Attorney General Eric Holder's recent commencement speech addressing the nation's ongoing problems with racial discrimination in order to question whether such discrimination exists at all.
Eric Holder delivered a commencement address on May 17 at Morgan State University, commemorating in part the 60th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ruled that state-mandated racial segregation of schools violated the U.S. Constitution. Holder highlighted ongoing problems in racial discrimination, such as the fact that "African-American men have received sentences that are nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes," and called on graduates to "take account of racial inequality, especially in its less obvious forms, and actively discuss ways to combat it."
Guest host Jesse Watters, a correspondent for The O'Reilly Factor -- a program with infamous coverage ofracial issues -- took issue with Holder's discussion of discrimination in school discipline, wondering "is it drugs" at home that cause black students to act out more than white students and face suspension from zero tolerance disciplinary policies in schools:
WATTERS: Two things that you and Eric Holder said. I think he said that zero tolerance disciplinary policies affect black males more in school? Why is that? OK? Do they misbehave more than white students?BECKEL: Yes.WATTERS: OK, then why is that? His solution is to lower the standards to accommodate the misbehaving black male students. What's the other solution? Maybe address the root cause of the misbehavior. Is it something going on at home? Is it drugs? What's the problem? He wants to lower standards. We want to bring other people up.
Watters went on to question whether racial discrimination truly contributes to higher incarceration rates for black Americans, arguing that the number of "prior convictions" is responsible for the more frequent incarceration of black Americans and longer sentences:
as long as they keep throwing this garbage in the trough for their base to feed on there will not be any advances in race discrimination, if they keep denying it while engaging in it they think they can successfully deny it's existence, kinda like that "usual suspects" line "the greatest thing the devil ever did was convincing the world he didn't exist", seeing any parallels.WATTERS: The other thing that you said and Eric Holder said is that blacks are incarcerated at 20 times more rate for the same crimes as whites. You know what that study doesn't account for? It doesn't account for priors. So if someone has three prior convictions for slanging crack, and a white guy does it and a black guy does it, the black guy with the three priors is going to go away for a longer time.BECKEL: You believe that blacks are put into prison at a higher rate than whites because they're -- not because of the color of the skin?WATTERS: No, I'm taking issue with the study, Bob.
