Holder: ‘We as a Nation Have Failed’

In an interview with MSNBC's Joy Ann Reid that aired today, Attorney General Eric Holder said that "We as a nation have failed." Speaking of the tension between black communities and police officers and whether any progress has been made since 2000, Reid asked Holder why there was still tension between the black community and the police, even after a memorandum he wrote in 2001 addressing the issue.

"It means that we as a nation have failed," he quickly replied. "It's as simple as that. We have failed."

REID: "Well, I'm struggling listening to you by the words of a deputy attorney general going back to about the year 2000, 2001, in a similar case in New York, a young west African immigrant. And at that time, that deputy attorney general Eric Holder issued memorandum explaining why there was not going to be a federal prosecution of the officers acquitted in that killing. And at that time, you said there was a sense of mistrust between black communities and police that needed to be bridged, trust needed to be built up. What does it say that we essentially are in the same exact place now so many years later?" 
HOLDER: "It means that we as a nation have failed. It's as simple as that. We have failed. We have understood that these issues have existed long before even that 2001 memorandum by that then young deputy attorney general. These are issues we've been dealing with for generations. And it's why we have to seize this opportunity that we now have. We have a moment in time. That we can, perhaps, come up with some meaningful change. It's what I'm committed to doing, even in the limited time I have left as attorney general and I'll certainly continue to do it after I leave office. It's what this administration is committed to.vmb(but I also feel that the nation, the nation, I think, is really ready for this kind of change. And I would hope that ten years from now, 12 years from now, we'll not look back on this as a lost opportunity. I think in particular what happened in New York with the whole garner matter. Which I can't get into because it's something that we are still in the process of investigating. That, I think, has galvanized the nation. And I think that we have to take advantage of this, the feeling that exists now in our country. And make it better."