Trump's full history of racism

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1927: Donald Trump's father Fred is arrested for "refusing to disperse" at a KKK rally. Donald Trump claims that it wasn't his father, never lived at that address, etc. Five different newspaper accounts show that it WAS his dad, marriage records confirm the same address, and the 7 arrested were "berobed" and wearing Klan gear.

1940s-1960s: Fred Trump becomes well-known for his blatant segregation, keeping Black people out of his desirable units and forcing them into the project units. White folk singer Woody Guthrie, who lived in a Trump building for two years, wrote multiple lyrics about how racist Trump and his building projects are.

1972:
Donald Trump takes over his father's empire and continued the segregation policies, only it's illegal now. A government sting after many complaints finds that Donald Trump's men are claiming apartments aren't available when Black people come around, but apartments are suddenly free when White people are there. Four Trump agents admit to coding applications to show which applicants are Black, a superintendent says he was told to send Black applicants to the central office but accept White applicants on site, and three doormen admit to being told to discourage Black persons from renting at their properties.

Elyse Goldweber, a Justice Department lawyer, states that Trump told her during a break in the deposition, “You know, you don’t want to live with them either.”

1975: When Trump finally settles the housing discrimination case and is forced to open up all his properties to Black renters, he claims he "won" because he won't have to "rent to welfare recipients"....continuing the false narrative he'd been pushing the last two years that all the Black people he had been keeping out were just welfare recipients.

1978: The federal government charges that Trump has continued to discriminate against Black renters, citing more complaints.

1980s: "And isn't it funny. I've got black accountants at Trump Castle and Trump Plaza. Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. . . . I think the guy is lazy. And it's probably not his fault because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It's not anything they can control." - Donald Trump, as quoted by the president of Trump Plaza

1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, told the New Yorker that when he worked for Trump in the 1980s, Black employees would be shuffled off the casino floor when Trump and his wife came around.

1983: An NAACP anti-discrimination lawsuit charges that several Trump properties in New York City are still over 95% White.

1989: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.” – Donald Trump in an NBC interview

1989: Just days after their arrest, Trump spends $85,000 to take out full-page ads across New York newspapers with racially charged attacks against the five young Black men accused in the "Central Park 5" trial, calling for the death penalty, attacking the defendants with race-baiting assertions, and mocking Mayor Koch’s call to "end hate in our hearts.

1991: Trump Plaza is fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Gaming Commission for consistently removing the Black dealers whenever Robert LiButti, a racist high roller associated with the Gambino family mafia, came in. The jury heard evidence that LiButti stated frequently used offensive slurs for Black people and women and “did not want women, blacks or other minorities dealing or supervising his games,” and Trump’s casino management complied.

1993: During Congressional testimony on Indian gambling, Donald Trump claims that the Indians in question "don't look like Indians to me", states that the Indian casinos will be cesspools of organized crime, and mocks the ability of "Indian chiefs" to stand up to mob figures. The committee is flabbergasted and one congressman states: “In the 19 years I have been on this committee, I have never seen such irresponsible remarks,”

1996: After having spent years trying to block Indiana from getting casinos, Trump tries to get one of the new licences approved for Gary. In order to head off a Black businessman competing for the license, Trump makes a deal with 8 minority investors, mostly Black men, to join in on his bid so that he'll get the approval of the state of Indiana. Once Trump gets the license, he drops all the Black investors, giving them nothing, and goes on alone. He also dropped a commitment he had made to give 7.5% ownership in the casino to a charitable foundation in Gary, which was 80% Black at the time. Trump was sued by the minority investors, eventually settling with six of them for $2.2 million and having the other two awarded $1.3 million by the court. However, the charitable money he had promised was never seen by the charities he had pledged it to.

1996: Trump is sued by 20 Black workers for turning back on a promise he had made to hire primarily minorities at the casino.

1990s: Trump is accused by his ex-wife of having kept a book of Hitler's speeches next to his bed and reading it every night. Trump denies that he ever read the book, but admits to owning it.

2000: As the Mohawk Nation tries to get permission to build a casino in New York, Donald Trump creates a fake nonprofit charity which begins taking out racist ads against the Mohawks. In the ads, Trump claims that gambling creates social ills, that Indian casinos are especially violent, that Indians have a history of criminal activity, and shows images of syringes and cocaine, implying the Indians. The ad asks, "Are these the kind of neighbors we want?" Trump is fined $250,000 for violating election law when it is found out that he was behind the ads.

2004: Trump accuses Kevin Allen, a Black contestant on The Apprentice, of being too educated and "intimidating" and uses that as the reason to fire him.

2005: Trump suggests ”an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African-Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”

2005: When Randal Pinkett, another Black man, won the competition, Trump asked him to share the title with the White runner-up. He was one of six contestants who later came forward accusing Trump of racist and xenophobic behavior.

2011: Trump enters politics by claiming that Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya and is ineligible to be president. At various times he claims special insider knowledge that Obama's birth certificate is false and that he is really an African by birth.

2011: Trump claims Obama was a poor student and needs to release his college records, stating, "I'd like to know how does he get into Harvard, how does he get into Columbia if he isn't a very good student...the word is he wasn't a very good student."

2011: Trump claims about Obama, "the people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don't know who he is. It's crazy."

2011: Trump tells Obama to, "Get off the basketball court."

2011: Trump implies that President Obama only got into Columbia and Harvard Law due to affirmative action, casting aspersions on his intellect and qualifications.

2011: Trump falsely claims that Obama issued a statement for Kwanza but forget for Christmas.

2011: “I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks.” - Donald Trump on Albany’s Talk 1300

2013: "Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and hispanics-a tough subject-must be discussed."- From Trump's twitter

2013: “Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won’t see another black president for generations!” - From Trump's twitter

2013: After the Central Park 5 are shown to be innocent and released from prison, Donald Trump continues to attack them, saying, "what were they doing in the park anyway?"

2013: Tweets that “the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our cities is committed by blacks and Hispanics.”

2014: When a settlement was made compensating the Central Park 5 due to their unjust imprisonment, Donald Trump wrote an editorial for the New York Daily News denouncing the payments, saying "these young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels" and strongly implying they were actually guilty.

2014: Trump goes on a rant during a campaign event where he claims that Mexican immigrants are "rapists" who are "not you" and says they are bringing drugs and crime into the country. Later, defending the rant during an interview, he calls Mexican immigrants "killers".

2014: “Our great African American President hasn’t exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore.” - from Trump's twitter

2014: "President Obama has absolutely no control (or respect) over the African American community-they have fared so poorly under his presidency." - from Trump's twitter

2015: Trump tweets fake statistic from White nationalists claiming that 81% of White murder victims were killed by Black people. The actual number is 15%.

2015: Trump claims he saw thousands of Muslims on Jersey City roofs cheering the falling of the towers, though no one has ever reported seeing such a sight and the television footage Trump claims he saw does not exist. This is one of dozens of lies Trump makes about Muslim people, immigrants, and refugees. At least four Muslims are assaulted by people who yell vocal support of Trump's anti-Muslim policies either during or immediately after the attack

2015: Trump claims that Black youth are "a point where they've just about never done more poorly, there's no spirit, there’s killings on an hourly basis virtually in places like Baltimore and Chicago and many other places...There’s no spirit. I thought that President Obama would be a great cheerleader for the country. And he’s really become very divisive."

2015: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” – Trump press release

2015: “Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican Illegals because of his wife." - Trump's twitter

2015: When a Black Lives Matter protester is beaten up at a Trump rally, Trump states, "Maybe [the protester] should have been roughed up. It was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” This is one of numerous times that Black or Latino protesters are beaten up or called racial slurs during Trump rallies.

2015: Trump tells evangelicals that they shouldn't support Ted Cruz because he's Cuban

2016: "There are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously." - Trump's twitter

2016: When asked a question about the vocal support that David Duke had given him, Trump refuses to reject the support and twice pretends that he doesn't know enough about David Duke and the KKK to comment. It is later shown that Trump has known Duke for at least 20 years and spoken about him in public before.

2016: Trump's twitter account is shown to be repeatedly re-tweeting at least 75 statements of members of the "White Genocide" movement, who claim that White people need to band together to prevent the "genocide" that other races are subjecting them to.

2016: Trump repeatedly refers to Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" in order to mock her disputed Native American ancestery and his supporters begin responding with "Indian war whoops" whenever he speaks her name at rallies.

2016: Trump makes a crazy string of racist attacks against the judge presiding over his Trump University case, claiming the judge cannot sit on his case because he's "Mexican", despite the judge having been born in Indiana and lived his entire life in the USA.

2016: A Reuters opinion poll finds that Trump supporters are "much more likely to describe Black people as "criminal," "unintelligent," "lazy" and "violent" than supporters of other candidates, with half of Trump supporters using one or more of those words.

2016: When Black protesters are removed from his rallies, Trump begins repeatedly referring to the "good old days" when they'd "rip him out of his seat so fast" and "used to treat them very, very rough" and "be carried out in a stretcher folks", obviously hearkening back to how police abused Black protesters during the Civil Rights Movement of Trump's teenage years.

2016: Trump receives the endorsement of White Nationalist organizations and blogsites the Daily Stormer, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance, Hunter Wallace, the Virginia KKK, the American Freedom Party, and the League of the South. The Trump campaign even names William Johnson, chair of the White Nationalist organization "American Freedom Party", as one of their national delegates for California.

2016: Despite over 40 years at the top of the business world, "No black or Hispanic executive has ever played a prominent public role in the Trump business organization...the Trump team has not presented to the press the name of a single key executive who is either Hispanic or African American."

2016: Trump claims: "Crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse. Look what is going on in Chicago and our inner cities. Not good!"

2016: Trump strongly implies in an interview that Putin will respect him more than Obama, because Putin uses "the N-word" to refer to Obama.

2016: Trump confuses Ben Carson with Barack Obama during a rally.

2016: Trump claims, “Look at how much African American communities are suffering from Democratic control. … Fifty-eight percent of your youth is unemployed, what the hell do you have to lose?” The actual figure for Black youth unemployment was 19%.

2016: Trump claims during a presidential debate: “African Americans and Hispanics are living in hell. You walk down the street and you get shot.”

2016: While giving a campaign speech in a town literally named after a slaveowner, Trump states, "We're going to rebuild our inner cities because our African American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they've ever been in before. Ever, ever, ever.”

2016: Trump claims, “You go into the inner cities and you see it's 45 percent poverty, African Americans now 45 percent poverty in the inner cities.” This is nearly double the true figure.
 
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ⒶⓁⒾⒶⓈ

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You lost your integrity at #1...Nevermind that youre claiming the man is a racist because of where his daddy was arrested almost 90 years ago which is dumb as fukk already because it is not proof of his sons current beliefs.

You completely ignored this part as well
The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that "Native-born Protestant Americans" were being "assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.

:lolbron:So His father was protesting other Cacs...90 years ago....and thats your "proof"....should i even bother looking at the rest if the opening is such garbage
 

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You lost your integrity at #1...Nevermind that youre claiming the man is a racist because of where his daddy was arrested almost 90 years ago which is dumb as fukk already because it is not proof of his sons current beliefs.

You completely ignored this part as well

:lolbron:So His father was protesting other Cacs...90 years ago....and thats your "proof"....should i even bother looking at the rest if the opening is such garbage
Go ahead and look at the rest yeah.
 

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Go ahead and look at the rest yeah.

Why? Clearly the OP has no idea what "PROOF" means....The list is all opinions,feelings and conjecture or outright fabrication...there is no finding of fact there .....................its all :trash:

RACISM>> the Belief in the superiority or inferiority of a race over another

PROOF>>>evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement

FACT>>True verifiable piece of information

now we got that cleared up lets wade through this cesspool of feelings ,idiocy and propaganda

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” – Trump press release
Its NONSENSE..Muslim is NOT a racial group

1975: When Trump finally settles the housing discrimination case and is forced to open up all his properties to Black renters, he claims he "won" because he won't have to "rent to welfare recipients"....continuing the false narrative he'd been pushing the last two years that all the Black people he had been keeping out were just welfare recipients.
Conjecture..The case was settled with no finding of guilt ... the facts were never determined
1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, told the New Yorker that when he worked for Trump in the 1980s, Black employees would be shuffled off the casino floor when Trump and his wife came around.
Unconfirmed allegations ..from someone who was paid for a story..the trump group has had THOUSANDS of people work there but no one will confirm this mans story..he remains the single source...WHY??
1989: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market. If I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I believe they do have an actual advantage.” – Donald Trump in an NBC interview
Does not meet the criteria for racism..he had an opinion..It may be wrong...or you dont like it but i dont see how or where he said anything about black people being inferior.
1989: Trump spends $85,000 to take out full-page ads across New York newspapers with racially charged attacks against the five young Black men accused in the "Central Park 5" trial, calling for the death penalty, attacking the defendants with race-baiting assertions, and mocking Mayor Koch’s call to "end hate in our hearts
I saw the ads..he didnt mention a single word about their race..alot of NY residents felt the same way about the death penalty during the crime waves back then...Its the police who set those boys up and lied ....Did trump lock those boys up NO..did he testify in court against them NO
1991: Trump Plaza is fined $200,000 by the New Jersey Gaming Commission for consistently removing the Black dealers whenever Robert LiButti, a racist high roller associated with the Gambino family mafia, came in. The jury heard evidence that LiButti stated frequently used offensive slurs for Black people and women and “did not want women, blacks or other minorities dealing or supervising his games,” and Trump’s casino management complied.
This actually proves the Gambino Mob is racist and sexist...not Trump....OMG the Mafia can be so racist..who knew

1996: Trump is sued by 20 Black workers for turning back on a promise he had made to hire primarily minorities at the casino.
Anybody can be sued by anyone for anything.....thats NOT a fact....Post the verdict..the finding of facts... NOT the lawsuit...Oh wait

1990s: Trump is accused by his ex-wife of having kept a book of Hitler's speeches next to his bed and reading it every night. Trump denies that he ever read the book, but admits to owning it.
Are you SERIOUS...Having a book is proof that you read..I have read parts of Hitlers Mein kampf ..that doesnt mean im gonna be a black neo nazi anytime soon

2016: Trump's twitter account is shown to be repeatedly re-tweeting at least 75 statements of members of the "White Genocide" movement, who claim that White people need to band together to prevent the "genocide" that other races are subjecting them to.
Retweets are proof he has a twitter account.....he has millions of followers..some are bound to be sketchy

2016: Trump receives the endorsement of White Nationalist organizations and blogsites the Daily Stormer, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance, Hunter Wallace, the Virginia KKK, the American Freedom Party, and the League of the South. The Trump campaign even names William Johnson, chair of the White Nationalist organization "American Freedom Party", as one of their national delegates for California.
That is only proof that they prefer him to hillary...But it doesnt prove he shares their racist views...did he say he likes them??
2016: Despite over 40 years at the top of the business world, "No black or Hispanic executive has ever played a prominent public role in the Trump business organization...the Trump team has not presented to the press the name of a single key executive who is either Hispanic or African American."




:trash::trash::trash::trash::trash:
 
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Why? Clearly the OP has no idea what "PROOF" means....The list is all opinions,feelings and conjecture or outright fabrication...there is no finding of fact there its all :trash:

RACISM>> the Belief in the superiority or inferiority of a race over another

PROOF>>>evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement

FACT>>True verifiable piece of information

now we got that cleared up lets wade through this cesspool of feelings ,idiocy and propaganda


Its NONSENSE..Muslim is NOT a racial group


Conjecture..The case was settled with no finding of guilt ... the facts were never determined

Unconfirmed allegations ..from someone who was paid for a story..the trump group has had THOUSANDS of people work there but no one will confirm this mans story..he remains the single source...WHY??

Does not meet the criteria for racism..he had an opinion..It may be wrong...or you dont like it but i dont see how or where he said anything about black people being inferior.

I saw the ads..he didnt mention a single word about their race..alot of NY residents felt the same way about the death penalty during the crime waves back then...Its the police who set those boys up and lied ....Did trump lock those boys up NO..did he testify in court against them NO

This actually proves the Gambino Mob is racist and sexist...not Trump....OMG the Mafia can be so racist..who knew


Anybody can be sued by anyone for anything.....thats NOT a fact....Post the verdict..the finding of facts... NOT the lawsuit...Oh wait


Are you SERIOUS...Having a book is proof that you read..I have read parts of Hitlers Mein kampf ..that doesnt mean im gonna be a black neo nazi anytime soon


Retweets are proof he has a twitter account.....he has millions of followers..some are bound to be sketchy


That is only proof that they prefer him to hillary...But it doesnt prove he shares their racist views...did he say he likes them??





:trash::trash::trash::trash::trash:


I applaud your efforts Stephen.

9b207f8d46a7b3c9df8cd8e965e0a161292555634259d7427b89d506f2b3d723.jpg



I don't think we even have an Obama Stan with the dedication that you have in defending monsieur Trump or the slave patrols...eh...police.

Good job boy.
 

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A quick trip down memory lane reveals that Clinton has a history of employing race in a divisive, cynical manner.

Based on what happened the last time Hillary Clinton ran for President, we should expect that at some point Black people will get thrown under the bus again, especially if it helps Clinton gain or maintain power.

Painting Obama As Not ‘Fundamentally American’

Throughout the 2008 election season, racist and bigoted smears about Barack Obama circulated online, and bubbled up into mainstream conversation about the campaign in the traditional news media. Two of the most prominent lies about Obama, which persist to this day, were that he is secretly a Muslim (playing on fear-mongering and bigotry about Islam), and that he was not really born in America. Both of these ideas paint Obama as “other” and outside the mainstream, drawing their potency from fears about Black people gaining power. People generally associate these memes with the right wing. But the truth is that for the entire Democratic primary, not only did Hillary Clinton’s campaign do nothing to push back against the racist fear-mongering about Obama, it actually fed this atmosphere and helped it grow. It was a part of their strategy from early in the campaign.

Back in March of 2007, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn wrote a campaign memo that proposed painting Barack Obama as un-American or “other”:

“His roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values ... Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century ... Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t.

In December of 2007, Billy Shaheen, the co-chair of Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign, raised the issue of Obama’s drug use as a young man, and the possibility that Obama could be attacked as a drug dealer. He said he was talking about how Republicans would attack Obama, but his statements had the effect of injecting racist stereotypes into the campaign: “It’ll be, ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’ There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks.” It is a tried and true tactic: floating an idea to which you claim to not personally ascribe, with the effect of getting the idea to circulate.

The next day, Clinton privately apologized to Obama for Shaheen’s comments and claimed she had nothing to do with them. Obama didn’t accept the apologybecause he believed Clinton’s campaign was circulating emails claiming he was a Muslim. According to Reggie Love, Obama’s personal assistant at the time: “The candidate [Obama] very respectfully told her the apology was kind, but largely meaningless, given the emails it was rumored her camp had been sending out labeling him as a Muslim.”

In February 2008, the Drudge Report posted a picture of Obama in traditional Kenyan/Somali clothes (including a turban, which helped reinforce the “secret Muslim” smear). Drudge said the picture was circulated by the Clinton campaign. David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager called it “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.”Initially, the Clinton campaign did not deny having sent the photo, instead playing dumb about the possible impact of the photo and attacking Obama over it: “If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely.”

Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a member of Congress and Clinton surrogate, when asked about the circulation of the photo, implied that Barack Obama is native to Kenya: “I have no shame, or no problem, with people looking at Barack Obama in his native clothing, the clothing of his country … if we’re supporting a woman or an African American for president, we ought to be able to support their ability to wearthe clothing of their nation.”





Then there’s Hillary Clinton, herself, more subtly doing the same. In March 2008, in an interview on 60 Minutes, instead of defending Obama against the “secret Muslim” smear, Clinton carefully and strategically left room open for doubt, saying“I take him on the basis of what he says,” and then when pressed, saying he’s not Muslim “as far as I know.” Clinton could have clearly and unequivocally denounced the smears against Obama, but she didn’t.





In contrast, when presented with a similar question, the Republican front-runner John McCain unequivocally dismissed such claims, rebuking and taking the microphone away from a participant in a town hall who asserted she couldn’t trust Obama because he is an Arab.

“He Would Not Have Been My Pastor”

Barack Obama’s connection with his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, became a major controversy in the 2008 presidential campaign because of his strong, controversial, and sometimes radical statements on America and U.S. policy. Tapes were obtained showing the reverend saying “God Damn America” instead of the expected “God Bless America,” and speaking frankly about the treatment of Black people in America. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons were reflective of what you’d hear in a Black church anywhere in America, and despite the caricature perpetuated at the time, Wright was neither a separatist nor anti-white.

While there is reason to believe that the Jeremiah Wright tapes may have come from those associated with the Clinton campaign, what’s certain is that Hillary Clinton used guilt by association to further “other” Obama as un-American and downright scary to white people. It was also a way to attack the legitimacy of Obama’s church and faith, working in conjunction with the “secret Muslim” smear.

Hillary Clinton used the selective view of Reverend Wright’s message to go in on Obama (watching the totality of Wright’s sermon leading up to “God Damn America” paints a very different picture of the man and his message – a raw, but truthful account of America’s failures on race, foreign policy, and much more, and not dissimilar from what you’d hear today from Black Lives Matter activists).

Clinton claimed that Wright blames America for 9/11. She went on to say that leaders have a choice of minister and that she would not have chosen to be a part of Rev. Wright’s church. Further, she used the opportunity to try to link Obama to Louis Farrakhan, as well as Hamas.

She attacked Obama’s association with Rev. Wright not once, but on severaloccasions. And she launched these attacks after Obama’s deeply moving “A More Perfect Union” speech, where he both denounces some of Wright’s rhetoric, while speaking to the reality of race in America and Black Liberation Theology.

As Obama tried to move on from the manufactured controversy around Jeremiah Wright, the Reverend was thrust into the spotlight again with a highly publicized appearance at the National Press Club – which, it turns out, was organized by a longtime Clinton ally.

Hillary Clinton didn’t mention that Jeremiah Wright had been Bill Clinton’s guest at the White House, at an event where Hillary Clinton was present.

Appealing to Whites

In 2008, Clinton had been counting on Black voters, much as she is now, as the primaries move to states with more diverse electorates. But after Barack Obama’s victory in South Carolina in 2008 made it clear that most Black voters were supporting him, the Clinton campaign began making the argument that Obama was not electable because he was not winning enough support from white voters. The Clinton campaign implied, over and over again that, as a Black man, Obama could not attract the support of the white people (many of them racists, apparently) supporting Clinton’s campaign.
 

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Just as South Carolina’s polls were closing, Bill Clinton made the following statement when asked about the strength of Obama’s campaign: “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice in ’84 and ’88, and he ran a good campaign. And Senator Obama’s run a good campaign.” The implication was clear. Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns succeeded in garnering many Black votes, but never secured enough support from white voters to win the nomination or the presidency. By comparing Obama’s campaign to Jesse Jackson’s campaigns from 20 years earlier, Bill Clinton was dismissing Obama as “the Black candidate” who was perhaps running a good protest candidacy but could not possibly expect to win the nomination. It turns out this wasn’t just an off-the-cuff comment – it was an attack that Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn had suggested in a strategy memo earlier that day.

Speaking in West Virginia (a state that is 94% white), Bill Clinton said: “Florida won, and won anyway, because of people like you, in places like this. So don’t let anybody tell you she can’t win. They want you to vote in low numbers, so she doesn’t get ahead in the popular vote. If you vote in high numbers, we’re gonna roll through this thing.”

Discussing this clip on MSNBC, David Shuster asks Pat Buchanan (who is notorious for pushing white supremacist ideas into the mainstream): “Hey Pat, when he says ‘people like you,’ and he’s in West Virginia, what is he talking about?” Buchanan: “You mean that’s directed at me? … He’s talking about – frankly – he’s talking about the white working class, the silent majority, the middle Americans.

Governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter and surrogate, said: “You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”

By May, after most observers had already concluded that Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton was still trying to undermine his candidacy by arguing that he wasn’t getting enough support from white voters. She put that argument in the most explicit terms yet: “There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again, and how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me … I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” Clinton’s comments not only made the case that a Black candidate could not appeal to white voters; they also played on nasty stereotypes about Black people and other people of color by equating “white Americans” with “hard-working Americans.”





Even after being widely criticized for these comments, Hillary Clinton continued to make the argument a few days later to voters in West Virginia. “I’m winning Catholic voters, and Hispanic voters, and blue collar workers, and seniors, the kind of people that Senator McCain will be fighting for in the general election. Now, some call you swing voters, I call you Americans.” Did you notice which group of voters was missing from Clinton’s list?

The Clinton strategy in West Virginia appears to have paid off. Clinton won West Virginia, and 21% of the voters were white people who said race was a factor in their voting, with that group supporting Clinton overwhelmingly, 84% to 9%.

Media Outlets and Political Leaders Called Clinton Out

This pattern did not go unnoticed at the time. While many who might have otherwise spoken out likely limited their criticism – not wanting to anger a powerful political dynasty – many prominent Democratic and Black commentators and politicians did call it out.

When Hillary Clinton attacked Obama for having weak support among white people in May 2008, her comments were denounced in no uncertain terms by many prominent Democrats and media commentators. Here is a sampling:

The New York Times (which also endorsed both Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns):

Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones … We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” She added: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses.

From an article in Black Star News:

Racists should decide the Democratic nomination,” Issac J. Bailey wrote Friday in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News. “Sen. Hillary Clinton didn’t use those words in an interview with USA Today, but she came close.”

On Salon.com, Joe Conason asked “Was Hillary channeling George Wallace?Hillary’s reckless exploitation of racial division could split the Democratic Party over race — a tragic legacy for the Clintons.

From the NY Post:

Muriel Offerman, a North Carolina superdelegate who has not disclosed her choice, said, “That should not have been said. I think it drives a wedge, a racial wedge, and that’s not what the Democratic Party’s about.

In isolation, many of these moments could be explained away as an innocent slip-up or a Clinton surrogate or supporter going off-message. But together, they form an overwhelming and unmistakable pattern (and I haven’t even mentioned some of Bill Clinton’s divisive remarks and many of the divisive and racially inflammatory statements made by Clinton supporters and surrogates like Andrew Cuomo, Bob Kerrey, Geraldine Ferraro, Harriet Christian, Bob Johnson, Lanny Davis, and others).


Fast Forward Eight Years: Has Anything Changed?

I can’t easily forget this history. I’ve spent 13 years working in progressive politics and have seen first-hand the strange dance between the so-called Black vote and the Democratic establishment. Black people are sold a promising bill of goods by a candidate who claims to be concerned about our interests. After the election, attention on our communities’ needs largely disappears until the next election comes around.

Hillary Clinton’s decision to use race-based attacks to undermine Obama says something about who she is. It’s one thing to miss the mark on policy – to not foresee consequences of a policy you support 20 years into the future (Michelle Alexander and others have covered how Secretary Clinton’s policy positions have been quite damaging to Black America). It’s another to actively play upon prejudice and fear in the pursuit of power, and in the course of doing so help to perpetuate a destructive status quo that continues to wreak havoc on people’s lives.

In 2008, Secretary Clinton damaged Obama’s candidacy by validating right-wing racist memes and smears, and she could have cost him victory against Republicans in the general election. She also helped hamstring the President’s ability to battle racism by supporting and legitimizing the right-wing fear-mongering that Obama would have an agenda to work for Black people at the expense of everyone else.

If we support Clinton in the primary now, without confronting this history, it excuses and rewards this behavior, affirming that there is no political cost to throwing Black people under the bus, and making it more likely that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats will continue to use racism for political gain.

A Chance to Walk the Talk

Over the last few months, Black activists took the streets among a chorus of people calling for Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, to resign. After Emanuel was implicated in the coverup of the brutal killing of Laquan McDonald (against a backdrop of his overseeing predatory and unaccountable policing in his city for years), Hillary Clinton had a decision to make. Would she stay out of the fray, support the push to hold Emanuel accountable, or use her credibility to validate him? She chose the final option, claiming she had confidence in Emanuel to handle the situation, saying “He loves Chicago and I’m confident that he’s going to do everything he can to get to the bottom of these issues and take whatever measures are necessary to remedy them.” This move, which undermined the efforts of those working as a part of the Movement for Black Lives, came after Clinton embraced “Black Lives Matter” and claimed that she would work to increase police accountability.

Of course, what Clinton did is what those in power too often do – they protect those who are connected to them, who can help them maintain power. Acting otherwise is difficult, but it’s absolutely necessary if we are serious about addressing systemic racism and other ills in our society. It’s necessary if we’re going to act according to a moral compass rather than that which is politically expedient. And it’s definitely the kind of leadership that Black America needs.

Should Hillary Clinton be the Democratic nominee, I would of course choose her over any of the Republicans running. But I would be doing so understanding who she is, with no illusions about her record and past actions. And today, while we’re in the context of the primaries, I don’t know how Black Americans – or those who care about resolving the scourge of racism in this country – can cast a vote for Clinton, without an honest discussion of this history.
How Can Black People Trust Hillary Clinton After the 2008 Campaign?
 

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The Clintons’ War on Drugs: When Black Lives Didn’t Matter
BY DONNA MURCH
February 9, 2016


In August 2015, an uncomfortable encounter between Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors and Hillary Clinton finally broke the silence of many mainstream press outlets on the Clintons’ shared responsibility for the disastrous policies of mass incarceration, and its catalyst, the War on Drugs. Although a number of prominent academics have written on the subject, little popular discussion of the racial impact of the Clintons’ crime and punishment policies emerged until the opening volleys of the 2016 presidential race.

A grainy cell phone video of the incident showed a handful of young BLM protestors confronting Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. After expressing her ardent feminism and pride in meeting a female presidential candidate, BLM’s Daunasia Yancey forcefully confronted Clinton about her shared culpability in America’s destructive War on Drugs: “You and your family have been personally and politically responsible for policies that have caused health and human services disasters in impoverished communities of color through the domestic and international War on Drugs that you championed as First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.” Yancey continued, “And so I just want to know how you feel about your role in that violence, and how you plan to reverse it?”

Yancey’s question deftly turned Hillary’s use of her husband’s presidency as political qualification on its head: If her deep involvement in policy issues during her term as First Lady qualifies her for the presidency, then she could be held responsible for policies made during those years. The Clintons had used the concept of personal responsibility to shame poor blacks for their economic predicament. Indeed, Bill Clinton titled his notorious welfare to work legislation “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.” Yancey’s question forced the Democratic front-runner to accept personal responsibility for mass incarceration policies passed under Bill Clinton’s administration.

Hillary Clinton’s response to the activists was telling. She attributed the policies of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs to “the very real concerns” of communities of color and poor people, who faced a crime wave in the 1980s and 1990s. Echoing an argument that is gaining greater purchase in certain elite circles as the movement against racialized state violence and incarceration sweeps across the US, Clinton deflected the charge of anti-black animus back onto African Americans themselves. It is hard to interpret her explanation as anything more than self-serving revisionism. As I demonstrate in this essay, the rush to incarcerate was fueled by much less generous motives than the ones Clinton presents. With the Clintons at the helm of the “New Democrats,” their strident anti-crime policies, like their assault on welfare, reflected a cynical attempt to win back centrist white voters, especially those from Dixie and the South Central United States.


A true paradox lies at the heart of the Clinton legacy. Both Hillary and Bill continue to enjoy enormous popularity among African Americans despite the devastating legacy of a presidency that resulted in the impoverishment and incarceration of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class black people. Most shockingly, the total numbers of state and federal inmates grew more rapidly under Bill Clinton than under any other president, including the notorious Republican drug warriors Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. This fact alone should at least make one pause before granting unquestioning fealty to Hillary, but of course there are many others, including her entry into electoral politics through the 1964 Goldwater campaign, resolute support for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, race-baiting tactics in the 2008 election, and close ties to lobbyists for the private prison industry. Nevertheless, until the encounter with BLM protestors in August 2015, few publicly called out the Clintons’ shared culpability for our contemporary prison nation that subjects a third of African American men to a form of correctional control in their lifetime.

The United States’s historically unprecedented carceral edifice of policing and prisons has been long in the making. However, in the 1990s the Clintons and their allies, as the quintessential “New Democrats,” played a crucial role in its expansion. Like their Republican predecessors, punishing America’s most vulnerable populations became an important means to repudiate the democratic upheaval of the postwar years that toppled statutory Jim Crow laws and challenged some of the most enduring social inequities of the U.S. In the three decades that followed the passage of the Voting Rights Act, the drug war and its companion legislation of welfare reform criminalized poor and working-class populations of color in huge numbers, subjecting many not only to the “carceral consequences” of voter disfranchisement but also to permanent exclusion from the legal economy.

While this is often understood as the quotidian cruelty of a brave neoliberal world, very specific political motives underlay policies of extreme cruelty and state sanctioned murder in the late twentieth century.

Although they are rarely mentioned in the same breath, the escalation of America’s drug war in the 1990s and the rise of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and its benighted son Bill Clinton are all intimately linked. Understanding why tough on crime policies and welfare reform became so foundational to the vision of the New Democrats requires a look at the sensibilities that undergirded their strategy for regaining the White House and national power. As the Democratic Party reinvented itself in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan’s sweeping electoral victory in 1984, Al From, an aide of Louisiana Representative Gilles Long with abiding ties to big business, Governors Bruce Babbitt (Arizona) and Charles Robb (Virginia) came together with Florida Senator Lawton Chiles and congressional representatives Richard Gephardt (Missouri), Sam Nunn (Georgia), and James R. Jones (Oklahoma) to launch the DLC in February 1985. The DLC’s coterie of conservative and centrist politicians, who hailed overwhelmingly from citadels of white discontent in the Sunbelt and Midwest, sought to wrest the party away from its alleged liberal dominance.

In terms of structural changes, they targeted the 1968 reforms implemented to the Democratic Party’s nomination process establishing interest group-based organization. By 1982 the Democratic National Committee (DNC) recognized seven different intraparty caucuses modeled on specific demographics, including “women, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, gays, liberals and business/professionals.” The DLC founders wanted to abandon this pluralistic party base, elevate the power of national elected officials, and pursue stronger ties with wealthy corporate donors.

To diagnose the precise causes behind the Democrats’ catastrophic loss of every state in the Union to Ronald Reagan in 1984, with the exception of Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota, the DNC sponsored several research surveys, including one that has been estimated, at that time, to be the most expensive study commissioned in its history. Chair Paul Kirk paid survey researchers Milton Kotler and Nelson Rosenbaum a quarter of a million dollars to conduct a massive survey of 5,000 voters. In focus groups, whites from the south and northern ethnic enclaves described the Democratic Party as the “give away party, giving white tax money to blacks and poor people.” As political scientist Robert Smith has argued, the explicit racist content of Kotler and Rosenbaum’s report proved so embarrassing to Kirk that he suppressed its release and had nearly all of the existing copies destroyed. Nevertheless, the findings made their way into DLC party policy as New Democrat fellow travelers like Thomas and Mary Edsall and Harry McPherson made similar, if more carefully veiled, arguments. McPherson, a former member of the Johnson administration, published a November 1988 op-ed essay in TheNew York Timesentitled simply “How Race Destroyed the Democrat’s Coalition.”

At the core of this anger about the shift in the Democratic Party was not just “race” as an abstraction, which too often functioned as a polite euphemism, but rather black people themselves. Another DNC commissioned study by Stanley Greenberg, who subsequently became a pollster for Clinton in 1992, cited data from Macomb County, a suburb of Detroit, to make this point even more explicitly. “These white Democratic defectors express a profound distaste for blacks, a sentiment that pervades almost everything they think about government and politics,” explained Greenberg. “Blacks constitute the explanation for their [white defectors] vulnerability and or almost everything that has gone wrong in their lives, not being black is what constitutes being middle class, not being black is what makes a neighborhood a decent place to live.”

Bolstered with polling data and the crisis of the Reagan landslide, the New Democrats searched for ways to aggressively distance themselves from “blacks” and to entice resentful white swing voters back into the fold. To do this, the New Democrats appropriated hot button issues from the Republican Party, later deemed “dog whistle politics,” that invoked the specter of blackness without directly naming it. While the turn from welfare to work and personal responsibility is often discussed in this respect, equally important is the extensive role played by Bill Clinton and his allies in vastly expanding carceral policies, including the War on Drugs, the federal death penalty, and national funding for policing and prisons in the years after the Reagan and Bush presidencies.

Associated with the DLC’s early stirrings, Bill Clinton did not become integrally involved until after Michael Dukakis’s presidential defeat in 1988. In a notorious ad campaign that drew on enduring racist imagery, George H. W. Bush won the election by blaming the Massachusetts governor for the brutal rape of a white woman by Willie Horton, a black prisoner participating in a prison furlough program. Bush advisor Lee Atwater created a vicious media blitz that featured a voice-over description of the assault paired with a menacing black and white mugshot of Horton. After contrasting Dukakis’s opposition to the death penalty with Bush’s ardent support for it, the television spot closed with the words “Weekend Prison Passes—Dukakis on Crime.” Atwater’s race-baiting appeal proved wildly successful. As legal scholar Jonathan Simon has argued, George H. W. Bush’s election “marked the emergence, for the first time, of the war on crime as the primary basis for choosing a president.”

Chastened by Dukakis’s defeat, Bill Clinton emerged as the southern golden boy of the New Democrats by 1990. While serving as governor of Arkansas, he became the DLC’s first chair outside the beltway. Clinton traveled nonstop and worked tirelessly to build a national infrastructure that encompassed over two-dozen state level chapters. Two years later, his rousing speech at the DLC’s national conference in Cleveland, Ohio earned him a direct line to the nomination. New Democrat stalwart Sam Nunn’s early endorsement played a key role, as did that of lesser known members of the DLC fold, among them African American Representatives John Lewis (GA), Mike Espy (MI), William Jefferson (LA), and Floyd Flake (NY). In a depressingly familiar pattern from the Reagan administration, the support of an elite sector of the black political class helped to legitimize hard-line anti-crime policies that proved devastating for low-income populations of color.
 

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Prior to his entrée onto the national stage, Clinton’s governorship of Arkansas demonstrated how embracing the death penalty paved the Democrats’ road back to power. After a comparatively liberal first term in which he granted over 70 separate sentencing commutations, Clinton radically reversed his earlier stance after his Republican opponent won largely by smearing him in the eyes of the electorate as considerate of criminals. Upon returning to the governor’s mansion in 1982, Clinton parsed out a meager seven additional commutations over a ten-year span, and none for the death penalty. Indeed, in 1992 amid massive press coverage, Bill flew back to Arkansas days before the New Hampshire primaryto preside over the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a black man convicted of killing a white police officer. Rector had shot himself through the temple, forcing surgeons to remove over three inches of the frontal lobe of his brain. He was so cognitively impacted as a result of the surgery that he set aside the dessert from his last meal to eat after his lethal injection. Rickey even told a reporter that he planned to vote for Bill Clinton in the fall.

As the governor of a southern state, Clinton’s execution of Rector was a powerful symbolic act that refuted incumbent President George Bush Sr.’s attempt to cast Bill Clinton and his running mate Al Gore as soft on crime. In the words of political kingmaker David Garth, Clinton “had someone put to death who had only part of a brain. You can’t find them any tougher than that.” Far from gratuitous cruelty, Rector’s execution and the virulent and racially discriminatory polices that followed it were the ultimate expression that the post-civil rights Democratic Party had repudiated its marginal commitment not only to black equality, but to black life itself. Between 1994 and 1999, nearly two-thirds of the people sentenced to the federal death penalty were black—a rate nearly seven times that of their representation in the American population.

Today, the death penalty haunts the edges of American politics, but at the height of the country’s rush to mass incarcerate, executions became central to the rightward drift of the Democratic Party. Once in office, Bill Clinton made 60 new crimes eligible for the death penalty and fellow Democrats bragged about their specific additions to the list. Joe Biden mused “someone asleep for the last 20 years might wake up to think that Republicans were represented by Abbie Hoffman” and the Democrats by J. Edgar Hoover.

As president, Bill Clinton and his allies embarked on a draconian punishment campaign to outflank the Republicans. “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say that I’m soft on crime,” he bragged. Roughly a year and a half after the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion—the largest civil disturbance in U.S. history in which demonstrators took to the streets for six straight days to protest the acquittal of the officers involved in the Rodney King beating—Clinton passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. At its core, this legislation was a federal “three strikes” bill that established a $30.2 billion Crime Trust Fund to allocate monies for state and municipal police and prison expansion. Like its predecessors, starting with Johnson’s Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, the federal government provided funding to accelerate punitive policies at all levels of governance. Specific provisions included monies for placing 100,000 new police on the streets, the expansion of death penalty eligible crimes, lifetime imprisonment for people who committed a third violent federal felony offense with two prior state or federal felony convictions, gang “enhancements” in sentencing for federal defendants, allowing children as young as 13 to be prosecuted as adults in special cases, and the Violence Against Women Act.

Hillary strongly supported this legislation and stood resolutely behind her husband’s punishment campaign. “We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders,” Hillary declared in 1994. “The ‘three strikes and you’re out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets,” she added. Elsewhere, she remarked, “We will finally be able to say, loudly and clearly, that for repeat, violent, criminal offenders: three strikes and you’re out.”

Like his notorious Republican predecessors, Clinton imposed a toxic mix of punishment and withdrawal of social welfare, but with a difference. The Democratic president actually implemented these policies on a much larger scale than the Republican New Right. According to New Jim Crow author Michelle Alexander, “Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system” that Ronald Reagan had codified into law through the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988, “Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had imagined possible a decade earlier.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, incarceration became de facto urban policy for impoverished communities of color in America’s cities. Legislation was passed to impose mandatory minimums, deny public housing to entire families if any member was even suspected of a drug crime, expand federal death penalty-eligible crimes, and impose draconian restrictions of parole. Ultimately, multiple generations of America’s most vulnerable populations, including drug users, African Americans, Latinos, and the very poor found themselves confined to long-term prison sentences and lifelong social and economic marginality. The carceral effects of the New Democrats’ competition with the Republicans vastly increased the ranks of the incarcerated. State and federal prisons imprisoned more people under Clinton’s watch than under any previous administration. During his two terms, the inmate population grew from roughly 1.3 million to 2 million, and the number ofexecutions to 98 by 1999. Significantly, the Democratic president even refused to support the Congressional Black Caucus’s proposed Racial Justice Act, which would have prevented discriminatory application of the death penalty.

Despite this terrible record of racialized punishment for political gain, the Clintons’ peculiar ability to reinvent themselves has erased memory of many of their past misdeeds. This is nowhere more true than within the African American community, in which a combination of Bill Clinton’s high-profile black political appointments, his obvious comfort in the presence of black people, and the cultural symbolism of his saxophone performance on Arsenio Hall has severely distorted the New Democrats’ true legacy for the black majority. After all, Toni Morrison, African American Nobel Laureate for literature, embraced Bill Clinton as America’s “first black president,” even if only in jest.

At a deeper structural level, the constraints of the two-party system have resulted in the political capture of black Americans inside the Democratic Party, in which no viable electoral alternative exists. Frederick Douglass said of the party of Lincoln during Reconstruction, “The Republican Party is the ship, all else is the sea.” And so it is, with Democrats in the era of mass incarceration. Equally important is the sharp class polarization inside the African American community in which a select group of black elites understands their fate as wholly bound up with the leadership of the Democratic Party. The Clinton presidency is a cautionary tale in this respect. The couple’s close relationships with Vernon Jordan and other black insiders offered an illusion of access that superseded any real concern for how hard-line anti-crime, drug war, and welfare policies affected poor and working class African Americans. As the movement against state sanctioned violence and for black lives grows, it is important to remember that proximity to power rarely equals real power.

In American politics we so often live in an eternal present. Forgotten are the days of the DLC, which was recently dismantled in 2011 at the close of President Barack Obama’s first term. In many respects, the DLC had become archaic, precisely because contemporary Democrats have so fully incorporated, and even expanded, the bitter fruit of the Reagan revolution. Former Federal Reserve Chairman and Ayn Rand enthusiast Alan Greenspan once described Bill Clinton as “the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” More recently, Barack Obama praised Ronald Reagan for correcting “the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s.”

As both parties have engaged in a steady march to the right over the past three decades, it is not surprising that the Clintons have done little more than offer half-hearted mea culpas about their role in the drug war and mass incarceration. In July 2015, Bill Clinton went before the National Association for the Advancement of Color People’s 106th annual convention to admit that his federal drug and anti-crime policy made the problem of mass incarceration worse, especially at the state level. Many journalists interpreted his candor cynically as advance preparation for his wife’s presidential campaign of 2016. As in so many things the Clintons have done, even their disavowals appear to be self-serving. Hillary’s explanation that a crime wave inside low income communities and communities of color motivated her husband’s escalation of domestic wars on drugs and crime hides the Clintons’ shared role in capitulating to racist rhetoric and policy in the 1990s. Indeed, they used the drug war, and mass incarceration more broadly, as a powerful political tool to rebuild conservative white support for the Democratic Party. It is only because the experiences of the incarcerated and the poor have been so profoundly erased that the Clintons can be thought of as liberals (racial or otherwise) in any respect.

As we approach the 2016 election, it would be good to remember the human consequences of the Clintons’ “tough on crime” stance, and how Hillary has tried to replicate this strategy of “strength and experience” again and again to prove both her appropriateness as a female presidential contender and blue dog Democrat. Candidate Clinton has embraced hardness as political qualification, as evidenced by her proclamation “We came, we saw, he died,” about the killing of Muammar Gaddafi; her threat to obliterate Iran; or her embellished Bosnian sniper story. As a mainstream feminist icon, Hillary has more in common with Britain’s Irony Lady Margaret Thatcher, or the European Union’s austerity champion Angela Merkel, than her beloved Eleanor Roosevelt. If the history of the War on Drugs is any indicator, however, outstripping Republican belligerence from the Right will not end well for the rest of us.
The Clintons’ War on Drugs: When Black Lives Didn’t Matter
 

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Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote
From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted—and Hillary Clinton supported—decimated black America.
Clinton mastered the art of sending mixed cultural messages, appealing to African Americans by belting out “Lift Every Voice and Sing” in black churches, while at the same time signaling to poor and working-class whites that he was willing to be tougher on black communities than Republicans had been.

Clinton was praised for his no-nonsense, pragmatic approach to racial politics. He won the election and appointed a racially diverse cabinet that “looked like America.” He won re-election four years later, and the American economy rebounded. Democrats cheered. The Democratic Party had been saved. The Clintons won. Guess who lost?

* * *

Bill Clinton presided over the largest increase in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history. Clinton did not declare the War on Crime or the War on Drugs—those wars were declared before Reagan was elected and long before crack hit the streets—but he escalated it beyond what many conservatives had imagined possible. He supported the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack versus powder cocaine, which produced staggering racial injustice in sentencing and boosted funding for drug-law enforcement.

Clinton championed the idea of a federal “three strikes” law in his 1994 State of the Union address and, months later, signed a $30 billion crime bill that created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces. The legislation was hailed by mainstream-media outlets as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own.”

When Clinton left office in 2001, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison, even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level in 1983. All of the presidents since 1980 have contributed to mass incarceration, but as Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson recently observed, “President Clinton’s tenure was the worst.”

Some might argue that it’s unfair to judge Hillary Clinton for the policies her husband championed years ago. But Hillary wasn’t picking out china while she was first lady. She bravely broke the mold and redefined that job in ways no woman ever had before. She not only campaigned for Bill; she also wielded power and significant influence once he was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. That record, and her statements from that era, should be scrutinized. In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. “They are not just gangs of kids anymore,” she said. “They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”

Both Clintons now express regret over the crime bill, and Hillary says she supports criminal-justice reforms to undo some of the damage that was done by her husband’s administration. But on the campaign trail, she continues to invoke the economy and country that Bill Clinton left behind as a legacy she would continue. So what exactly did the Clinton economy look like for black Americans? Taking a hard look at this recent past is about more than just a choice between two candidates. It’s about whether the Democratic Party can finally reckon with what its policies have done to African-American communities, and whether it can redeem itself and rightly earn the loyalty of black voters.

* * *

An oft-repeated myth about the Clinton administration is that although it was overly tough on crime back in the 1990s, at least its policies were good for the economy and for black unemployment rates. The truth is more troubling. As unemployment rates sank to historically low levels for white Americans in the 1990s, the jobless rate among black men in their 20s who didn’t have a college degree rose to its highest level ever. This increase in joblessness was propelled by the skyrocketing incarceration rate.

Why is this not common knowledge? Because government statistics like poverty and unemployment rates do not include incarcerated people. As Harvard sociologist Bruce Western explains: “Much of the optimism about declines in racial inequality and the power of the US model of economic growth is misplaced once we account for the invisible poor, behind the walls of America’s prisons and jails.” When Clinton left office in 2001, the true jobless rate for young, non-college-educated black men (including those behind bars) was 42 percent. This figure was never reported. Instead, the media claimed that unemployment rates for African Americans had fallen to record lows, neglecting to mention that this miracle was possible only because incarceration rates were now at record highs. Young black men weren’t looking for work at high rates during the Clinton era because they were now behind bars—out of sight, out of mind, and no longer counted in poverty and unemployment statistics.

To make matters worse, the federal safety net for poor families was torn to shreds by the Clinton administration in its effort to “end welfare as we know it.” In his 1996 State of the Union address, given during his re-election campaign, Clinton declared that “the era of big government is over” and immediately sought to prove it by dismantling the federal welfare system known as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). The welfare-reform legislation that he signed—which Hillary Clinton ardently supported then and characterized as a success as recently as 2008—replaced the federal safety net with a block grant to the states, imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare assistance, added work requirements, barred undocumented immigrants from licensed professions, and slashed overall public welfare funding by $54 billion (some was later restored).


Experts and pundits disagree about the true impact of welfare reform, but one thing seems clear: Extreme poverty doubled to 1.5 million in the decade and a half after the law was passed. What is extreme poverty? US households are considered to be in extreme poverty if they are surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person per day in any given month. We tend to think of extreme poverty existing in Third World countries, but here in the United States, shocking numbers of people are struggling to survive on less money per month than many families spend in one evening dining out. Currently, the United States, the richest nation on the planet, has one of the highest child-poverty rates in the developed world.

Despite claims that radical changes in crime and welfare policy were driven by a desire to end big government and save taxpayer dollars, the reality is that the Clinton administration didn’t reduce the amount of money devoted to the management of the urban poor; it changed what the funds would be used for. Billions of dollars were slashed from public-housing and child-welfare budgets and transferred to the mass-incarceration machine. By 1996, the penal budget was twice the amount that had been allocated to food stamps. During Clinton’s tenure, funding for public housing was slashed by $17 billion (a reduction of 61 percent), while funding for corrections was boosted by $19 billion (an increase of 171 percent), according to sociologist Loïc Wacquant “effectively making the construction of prisons the nation’s main housing program for the urban poor.”

Bill Clinton championed discriminatory laws against formerly incarcerated people that have kept millions of Americans locked in a cycle of poverty and desperation. The Clinton administration eliminated Pell grants for prisoners seeking higher education to prepare for their release, supported laws denying federal financial aid to students with drug convictions, and signed legislation imposing a lifetime ban on welfare and food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense—an exceptionally harsh provision given the racially biased drug war that was raging in inner cities.

 

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Perhaps most alarming, Clinton also made it easier for public-housing agencies to deny shelter to anyone with any sort of criminal history (even an arrest without conviction) and championed the “one strike and you’re out” initiative, which meant that families could be evicted from public housing because one member (or a guest) had committed even a minor offense. People released from prison with no money, no job, and nowhere to go could no longer return home to their loved ones living in federally assisted housing without placing the entire family at risk of eviction. Purging “the criminal element” from public housing played well on the evening news, but no provisions were made for people and families as they were forced out on the street. By the end of Clinton’s presidency, more than half of working-age African-American men in many large urban areas were saddled with criminal records and subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and basic public benefits—relegated to a permanent second-class status eerily reminiscent of Jim Crow.

It is difficult to overstate the damage that’s been done. Generations have been lost to the prison system; countless families have been torn apart or rendered homeless; and a school-to-prison pipeline has been born that shuttles young people from their decrepit, underfunded schools to brand-new high-tech prisons.

* * *

It didn’t have to be like this. As a nation, we had a choice. Rather than spending billions of dollars constructing a vast new penal system, those billions could have been spent putting young people to work in inner-city communities and investing in their schools so they might have some hope of making the transition from an industrial to a service-based economy. Constructive interventions would have been good not only for African Americans trapped in ghettos, but for blue-collar workers of all colors. At the very least, Democrats could have fought to prevent the further destruction of black communities rather than ratcheting up the wars declared on them.

Of course, it can be said that it’s unfair to criticize the Clintons for punishing black people so harshly, given that many black people were on board with the “get tough” movement too. It is absolutely true that black communities back then were in a state of crisis, and that many black activists and politicians were desperate to get violent offenders off the streets. What is often missed, however, is that most of those black activists and politicians weren’t asking only for toughness. They were also demanding investment in their schools, better housing, jobs programs for young people, economic-stimulus packages, drug treatment on demand, and better access to healthcare. In the end, they wound up with police and prisons. To say that this was what black people wanted is misleading at best.



To be fair, the Clintons now feel bad about how their politics and policies have worked out for black people. Bill says that he “overshot the mark” with his crime policies; and Hillary has put forth a plan to ban racial profiling, eliminate the sentencing disparities between crack and cocaine, and abolish private prisons, among other measures.

But what about a larger agenda that would not just reverse some of the policies adopted during the Clinton era, but would rebuild the communities decimated by them? If you listen closely here, you’ll notice that Hillary Clinton is still singing the same old tune in a slightly different key. She is arguing that we ought not be seduced by Bernie’s rhetoric because we must be “pragmatic,” “face political realities,” and not get tempted to believe that we can fight for economic justice and win. When politicians start telling you that it is “unrealistic” to support candidates who want to build a movement for greater equality, fair wages, universal healthcare, and an end to corporate control of our political system, it’s probably best to leave the room.

This is not an endorsement for Bernie Sanders, who after all voted for the 1994 crime bill. I also tend to agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that the way the Sanders campaign handled the question of reparations is one of many signs that Bernie doesn’t quite get what’s at stake in serious dialogues about racial justice. He was wrong to dismiss reparations as “divisive,” as though centuries of slavery, segregation, discrimination, ghettoization, and stigmatization aren’t worthy of any specific acknowledgement or remedy.

But recognizing that Bernie, like Hillary, has blurred vision when it comes to race is not the same thing as saying their views are equally problematic. Sanders opposed the 1996 welfare-reform law. He also opposed bank deregulation and the Iraq War, both of which Hillary supported, and both of which have proved disastrous. In short, there is such a thing as a lesser evil, and Hillary is not it.

The biggest problem with Bernie, in the end, is that he’s running as a Democrat—as a member of a political party that not only capitulated to right-wing demagoguery but is now owned and controlled by a relatively small number of millionaires and billionaires. Yes, Sanders has raised millions from small donors, but should he become president, he would also become part of what he has otherwise derided as “the establishment.” Even if Bernie’s racial-justice views evolve, I hold little hope that a political revolution will occur within the Democratic Party without a sustained outside movement forcing truly transformational change. I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.



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Of course, the idea of building a new political party terrifies most progressives, who understandably fear that it would open the door for a right-wing extremist to get elected. So we play the game of lesser evils. This game has gone on for decades. W.E.B. Du Bois, the eminent scholar and co-founder of the NAACP, shocked many when he refused to play along with this game in the 1956 election, defending his refusal to vote on the grounds that “there is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I do or say.” While the true losers and winners of this game are highly predictable, the game of lesser evils makes for great entertainment and can now be viewed 24 hours a day on cable-news networks. Hillary believes that she can win this game in 2016 because this time she’s got us, the black vote, in her back pocket—her lucky card.

She may be surprised to discover that the younger generation no longer wants to play her game. Or maybe not. Maybe we’ll all continue to play along and pretend that we don’t know how it will turn out in the end. Hopefully, one day, we’ll muster the courage to join together in a revolutionary movement with people of all colors who believe that basic human rights and economic, racial, and gender justice are not unreasonable, pie-in-the-sky goals. After decades of getting played, the sleeping giant just might wake up, stretch its limbs, and tell both parties: Game over. Move aside. It’s time to reshuffle this deck.

Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote
 
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