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Policies described as race neutral often pose a greater threat to equality than insensitive comments that result in media attention, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told graduates of Morgan State University.

These outbursts of bigotry, while deplorable, are not the true markers of the struggle that still must be waged, or the work that still needs to be done -- because the greatest threats do not announce themselves in screaming headlines, Holder said today at the historically black college in Baltimore, Maryland.

Such threats are more subtle. They cut deeper. And their terrible impact endures long after the headlines have faded and obvious, ignorant expressions of hatred have been marginalized, he said.

Although Holder, 63, didnt specify any racist outbursts, his speech comes just weeks after recordings surfaced in which Don Sterling, the owner of the National Basketball Associations Los Angeles Clippers, told a friend not to bring black people to his teams games or post photos of herself with basketball legend Earvin Magic Johnson.

Within days, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned Sterling from the league and started proceedings to force him to sell the franchise. The comments generated intense media coverage and discussions on social media, including Facebook and Twitter.

Holder, the first black to serve in the highest U.S. law enforcement post, in his commencement address said that threats to equality no longer reside in overtly discriminatory statutes like the separate but equal laws of 60 years ago.

Holder, who delivered his speech on the 60th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed racially segregated public schools, said the more insidious forms of discrimination include zero tolerance school-discipline practices that affect black males at a rate three times higher than their white peers.

Other forms of subtle discrimination include laws that result in stiffer prison sentences for blacks and other minorities than whites, as well as voter-identification statutes that proponents say are intended to halt fraud at the polls, he said. Several states have passed such laws in recent years.

The attorney general said voter fraud has never been shown to exist, and such laws disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans, Hispanics, other communities of color and vulnerable populations such as the elderly.

Interfering with or depriving a person the right to vote should never be a political aim, Holder said. Its a moral failing.

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Holder Warns Graduates of More Subtle Forms of Discrimination