Former Attorney General Eric Holder Discusses Democracy and Civil Rights

Click on the above image and again on the YouTube page for the video.

Click on the above image and again on the YouTube page for the video.

by Kate Campbell

Eric H. Holder Jr., the 82nd U.S. attorney general, spoke to more than 500 Swarthmore College community members on May 12, 2021 as part of the initial event in a series sponsored by the President’s Fund for Racial Justice and the Social Responsibility Committee of the Board of Managers. (Ed. note: several people have asked if that talk would be available on-line, and it is through the above link.)

Holder, the first African American in that role, serving from February 2009 to April 2015, discussed a wide range of topics, including the state of the American democracy, civil rights, and voting rights.

"Eric Holder was a natural choice to kick off this series on the challenges of citizenship in a multiracial democracy,” said James Snipes ‘75, chair of the Social Responsibility Committee of the Board of Managers.  “Throughout his career, as a lawyer, judge and attorney general, he has shown an extraordinary commitment to civil rights, and voting rights in particular.  He set the bar high for the programs that will follow.

The remote event featured a conversation with Holder and Professor of History Allison Dorsey, with questions moderated by Tristan Alston ’22, Sonia Linares ’22, and Daniel Torres Balauro ’23 and an introduction from President Valerie Smith.

“I am hoping our conversation will generate some solutions as to how we move past this particular crisis in democracy,” Dorsey told Holder, who was named to Time magazine’s list of Most Influential People in 2014. Dorsey shared not only her insight and perspective on Black voter suppression history in the U.S. and the Black struggle for freedom and pursuit of equality during Reconstruction and the modern civil rights movement, but also her growing anguish for the well-being of her students, as well as longstanding concern for her two grown sons and grandchildren.
 
“I want to stress that many of the young people that I know right now … are living in a moment where the revival of violence at the hands of law enforcement has been overwhelming,” Dorsey said.

Holder acknowledged the psychological toll that the events of 2020 and the historic realities of race in America have taken on Black citizens. Despite the past year’s events relating to police abuses, Holder said he remains optimistic that the energy behind the growing social justice movements will continue to inspire change for the better in the country.

“We’ve certainly made progress,” said Holder. “If we deny that we’ve made progress, we don’t recognize the sacrifices that people made, the lives that were given, to make our lives better than they were 100 years ago. There’s no question about that.”

Dorsey responded that, “Historians tend not to talk about "progress" so much as we talk about change over time.” Through her lens as a historian, Dorsey said, “I'm frequently having the sensation that I'm sliding in time.” This sense of sliding in time, she said, relates to her apprehension that “we are moving backward in terms of civil rights, not forward in a progressive fashion." 

Holder said he recognized the magnitude of change still urgently needed for equity: “We’re not even close to the place where we need to be as a society.”

In a remarkably candid anecdote, Holder shared that even as the third-longest-serving attorney general in U.S. history, he has had “to talk with my son, as my father had with me, to tell me how you interact with the police. If you get stopped, where you keep your hands …”

Holder urged audience members to increase their engagement in their communities and in government organizations. “Regular, powerful citizens can be involved in the process and have an impact,” said Holder. “We should never underestimate the power we have and young people especially. … The largest voting bloc in this country is young people.”

He referenced several studies showing the bias that exists for voters of color, including a University of Pennsylvania study that revealed non-white voters are seven times more likely than white voters to wait in line for more than an hour to vote.

The discussion explored Holder’s position as chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee and on the role of gerrymandering throughout U.S. history up to the most recent election.

“What I’m looking for is to make sure that we have a process that is fair,” he said.
 
Gathering together as citizens to demand change and participating in the process is crucial, he said. Dorsey agreed and emphasized that everyone has a stake and needed to be involved.

“There’s no question that 2020 was a moment,” Holder said. “But the question really is going to be, does the moment lead to a movement.”

How Every English Letter Can be (Annoyingly) Silent*

letters.jpeg

English is maddening, and it's not sorry. English can be such an intractable heel, especially when it comes to its spelling: for every rule explaining how a letter is pronounced in a given situation, it often seems like there is a herd of exceptions, mooing about how the rule doesn't apply. Letters persist in words, despite not playing any discernible role in the word's pronunciation. It's maddening for those of us who are peeved by such things.

*HAVE A GO -*

A

The a in bread (as well as in tread) does nothing. You might as well spell it bred except that then it looks too much like the past tense of breed. So don't do that.

B

Most silent b's come at the ends of words and just after m: bomb, climb, comb, crumb, dumb, lamb, limb, numb, plumb, thumb, tomb. Just when one starts to feel comfortable with the relative regularity of these, debt and subtle show up like a couple of toughs.

C

C may as well cede all power to s in words like science and scissors, but we'll also point out that it's not doing much of anything in acquire, indict, or muscle.

D

D is shirking its auditory duties in handkerchief and mostly doing the same in handsome. Its appearance in Wednesday can only be seen as some kind of cruel joke.

E

The word sleeve has an excessive number of e's. We're saying it right now. Sleve or sleev would work fine, but English does not like to leave v's on the ends of words; it props them up with e's, as though they'd fall over otherwise. That v habit explains, then, words like leave and give, but there's no excusing the e in words like imagine.

F

While some people do in fact pronounce the second f in fifth, the first pronunciation given in our dictionary is the one that omits it. Overall, however, f is to be commended for its performance generally. We'd give it an A, if we were on speaking terms with that letter.

G

G has no business being in sign nor phlegm, as far as the modern reader is concerned. It obviously doesn't care. This callousness is also evident in that slew of gn- words: gnarl, gnash, gnat, gnaw, gnostic, gnu. It can be no surprise, then, that g also participates in the likes of such offenses as high, though, and through.

H

The h's at the beginning of heir, honest, and honor have nothing to say. Neither do the ones in rhyme and ghost. That h makes a contribution of a sort in the second syllable of rhythm only goes so far in repairing the letter's record.

I

I doesn't do a blessed thing in business, except to be impersonated by the u in the first syllable. It also does no discernible good in suit, which in a decent orthographic system would be spelled soot.

J

Some of you may be happy to know that we have at this point only one English word in which the j is silent: marijuana.

K

The silent k in a slew of common words demonstrates a callousness for beginner spellers especially: knee, knife, knight, knit, knob, knock, knot, know, knuckle.

L

The most indecent of the silent l words is surely colonel. The word sounds identical to kernel, which is an honorable, respectfully spelled word. L is also silent in could, should, would, as well as in calf and half, and in chalk, talk, walk, and for many people in calm, palm, and psalm.

M

One can get through much of life never encountering m in its silent form. By the time a person is ready for a word like mnemonic they have likely come to accept the vagaries of silent letters.

N

Like silent b's, silent n's tend to come at the ends of words and after m: autumn, column, damn, hymn, limn, solemn. While this might suggest to some that m is a little too accommodating, we would never anthropomorphize letters in such a way.

O

There is the flagrant excess of letters in enough, rough, and tough, where o is among several who have no place being there. Then there is the formerly mentioned ruffian colonel, in which neither o behaves properly and the second o doesn't even bother to try. But in addition to those we then also have jeopardy, leopard, and people. We'll let you draw your own conclusions about o.

P

P is silent before n in a selection of somewhat technical terms, such as pneumonia and pneumatic. And it's silent before s in a different selection of words such as psalm, psyche, and psychology. It boldly says nothing in corps and coup and receipt. In some pronunciations of comptroller it somehow convinces m to join with it in dissembling; the two there impersonate n.

Q

Q tends to function wholly aboveboard as an upstanding member of the alphabet. Most of us are fortunate to encounter its dereliction in lacquer only occasionally.

R

R exists in forecastle only to mock landlubbers. It exists in February only to make us suffer.

S

S is a mostly-reliable letter. Its failings are limited largely to aisle, apropos, debris, isle, and island. We cannot, however, overlook its participation in the hot mess that is bourgeois.

T

T refuses to be audible in ballet, castle, listen, and whistle. In asthma it conspires with h to shun its usual duties.

U

U may appear reasonable, but evidence to the contrary is not difficult to find: build, catalogue, dialogue, colleague, guard, guess, laugh, league, tongue. Note that the second and third of these words have attempted eviction and are meeting with significant success: catalog and dialog are both fully accepted variant spellings.

V

V is at this point the only letter that refuses to be unheard in any established word of the language. And yet a dark cloud gathers on the horizon: in late May 2017 a much-followed and likely sleep-addled Twitter user tweeted out what was clearly a partially developed composition. The Internet seized on the enigmatic final word and discussed it ad nauseam. Of the myriad pronunciations suggested for this non-word, several of the strongest contenders had a silent v.

W

W yields all power to the r that follows it in wrack, wraith, wrangle, wrap, wreath, wren, wrench, wrestle, wrinkle, wrist, writ, write, wrong, and wrought. As if that lot were not enough, w with no apparent logic whatsoever sits idly silent in answer, sword, two, and who as well.

X

We will admit to some small appreciation of x's discretion in its orthographic indiscretion. Its silence seems perhaps calculated in faux and faux pas.

Y

We cannot blame y for its gratuitous presence in beyond. The letter may, in fact, believe itself to be essential in the word. It cannot be ignored, however, that the word would reasonably have its same pronunciation if it were spelled "beond," "beeond," or "be-ond."

Z

There will surely be attempts to blame the French, and yet the following have been fully established members of the English language for centuries now: chez, laissez-faire, and rendezvous. We cannot look the other way, Z.

*The guy who thought and wrote this should get a Nobel Prize. If you have read that alone, now read it again with your near and dear ones, for all to have a peal of laughter.

Thanks to Sally Kellock and Barbara Bruno for sending it.

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