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Michelle Alexander: Why Hillary Clinton Doesnt Deserve the Black Vote
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Kid Kamikaze10
Member
I only have one issue with this article. People aren't being coaxed into voting for Clinton.
There are plenty of reasons black folks may want to vote for Clinton. One I've heard quite a bit is that they just don't want to take a chance with Bernie. Whether people want to believe it or not, Bernie is a risk.
A risk of a Republican Win, and a risk for one term.
There are plenty of reasons black folks may want to vote for Clinton. One I've heard quite a bit is that they just don't want to take a chance with Bernie. Whether people want to believe it or not, Bernie is a risk.
A risk of a Republican Win, and a risk for one term.
Every ethnic group (including less visible ones, like German Americans and Scots-Irish Americans) votes differently, on average. There's no need to deny this.
Not sure why people feel this way when we have terms like Christian vote as well.
theignoramus
Member
Like he "begrudgingly" executed a mentally handicapped black man to undermine accusations he was soft on crime.
D
Deleted member 13876
Unconfirmed Member
Well, his stated reasoning was "I won't vote Bernie because he's from a state with a large white majority". That sounds shallow to me.
titiklabingapat
Member
It's as if many of the people that are now admonishing Bill Clinton's policies and compromises back then, and by extension, Hillary's, were too young to fully grasp how messed up of a hand Bill Clinton was dealt with in the 90s....
Michele Alexander is a great writer but she has the benefit of hindsight and many of the compromises done by Bill in the 90s was to prevent utter disaster for whatever the Gingrich congress had their sights on at the time. to simply handwave it and dismiss it as 'those were bad, mmmkay' without any context is just as bad as blaming everything on Obama nowadays.
It always irks me when my fellow LGBT folkcs complain that Clinton signed DOMA and DADT. He only begridgingly did so to prevent an even disastrous constitutional ammendment at the time. Democrats and progressives are their own worse enemy more often than now. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, indeed.
Michele Alexander is a great writer but she has the benefit of hindsight and many of the compromises done by Bill in the 90s was to prevent utter disaster for whatever the Gingrich congress had their sights on at the time. to simply handwave it and dismiss it as 'those were bad, mmmkay' without any context is just as bad as blaming everything on Obama nowadays.
It always irks me when my fellow LGBT folkcs complain that Clinton signed DOMA and DADT. He only begridgingly did so to prevent an even disastrous constitutional ammendment at the time. Democrats and progressives are their own worse enemy more often than now. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, indeed.
I've seen this argument a lot on this forum and while I sort of agree with it it kind of contradicts the idea of politicians having to earn the black vote instead of takin it for granted. A lot of policies around minority issues aren't popular in the general election. Fearing a republican win and voting for the safest choice creates no incentive for politicians to earn the black vote
Yoda
Member
Just one of many categories, if a group of people vote via similar patterns, then it's worth seeing which way said group is leaning towards. To be honest, there isn't very much criticism of Obama in this article, and a lot of what she mentioned is getting remedied (if at all) at a snails pace.
We should have like a black town hall debate series, where we have candidates tell us what they would do to help minorities and specifically the black community. Of course it'll only play after 2 am during BETS after dark videos segment so as to not hurt the candidates chances in the general.
Earthstrike
Member
Yep, You're never getting reparations with a conservative court. You may get it with a liberal court even if the head of the executive never officially supported it.
Septimus Prime
Member
On that note, what would the "correct" answers be? What types of policies do you think would be best here? Since I'm not black, I don't want to claim I understand how leveling the economic playing field (or at least lifting up the bottom) isn't a satisfactory answer, but why isn't it, and what would be better?
D
Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
There was one! The Black & Brown Iowa Forum, here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt3n7ugOj80
Features Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley in a town hall style scenario featuring questions solely from minority voters in Iowa.
Which seems like the failure of progressive groups. As has been pointed out in BLM threads, while blacks are disproportionately affected by issues of police misconduct, there are more white people getting killed by police every year than any other group. But it's been turned into this "white cops shooting black people" caricature that even cases such as Freddie Gray have failed to rectify.
A liberal court is never going to authorize reparations either, either on principle or the pragmatic fact that they have literally no power to do so.
theignoramus
Member
Ending stop and frisk policies nation wide for one.
Better inner city schools. And an end to the death penalty, which has always been racialized.
This isn't a precise answer to your question but Coates latest article may help give you a larger of idea of that particularly dilemma
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
Oh jesus.
My aunt is possibly going insane right now.
My aunt is possibly going insane right now.
My dream candidate would pledge to rebuild low income communities(billions injected into school systems, better support and pay for teachers in those areas), Just repaving the streets in the hood would help with car bills. Day care for working families. immediately start no debt loan programs for students in those schools. Free college for anybody with one drop that can get in.
The black American majority has been almost irreparably fucked due to the current state of affairs. Reparations is obviously off the table, as they can't even leave the native Americans alone. What's left is a solid realistic plan to get blacks on equal footing. Don't forget, a lot of us come from families that were literally bred for generations to do little more than fuck and work, where free thinking was forbidden. We need a plan to invest in the black american before its too late, but its probably too late.
I don't want this to come across as a white dude questioning your vote, but I am curious if there's something that Bernie could do in order to appeal to you. Is there something he hasn't done or has done that has specifically turned you off?
Personally I thought after meeting with Black Lives Matter and even hiring Symone Sanders as national press secretary he did something pretty big that Hillary didn't really replicate as far as I've seen. She's walked back a lot of her old positions but I haven't specifically seen her reaching out the way Bernie has had to.
SolarPowered
Member
Her book has been ALL over the place as of late and it has been recommended on GAF a lot. This is the perfect excuse to do what I should have done a long time ago. Gonna check the book out after giving her article a very thorough read.
Hilary hasn't had to reach because she's been talking about black issues before she even announced she was running.
Tinfoilhatsron
Banned
WTF? Was she really talking about black kids here? Again WTF?
GameAddict411
Member
This is just sad.
Most blacks would not even support reparations over having a fairer system and fixing systemic crime issues and symptoms. I don't see how that matters when the actual problems we're facing right now are only really supported by one candidate.
Just based on the fact that the Clinton fully supported the crime bill and called it the best bill while Bernie didn't support it and stated his reasons for that when he voted for it with the violence against women provision.
Clinton has no such fallback for every other piece of legislation on a race based and class based basis that separates them.
That is before the fact that she is subservient to interests outside of us to begin with.
There's a reason why Coates, despite bringing up Reparations is still voting for Bernie over Hillary
Just based on the fact that the Clinton fully supported the crime bill and called it the best bill while Bernie didn't support it and stated his reasons for that when he voted for it with the violence against women provision.
Clinton has no such fallback for every other piece of legislation on a race based and class based basis that separates them.
That is before the fact that she is subservient to interests outside of us to begin with.
There's a reason why Coates, despite bringing up Reparations is still voting for Bernie over Hillary
No it is not easier to start a new party. If we do not change our voting system and get rid of first past the post, there will always be political monopolies. If you are a conservative, the only power is the republican party. If you are in any way even slightly liberal, its going to be the Democratic party. And that won't change for good, long, long time. The system is rigged in their favor.
I don't want to get into some big defense of Bernie here, because I'm about as far from one of those Bernie stans as possible, but truthfully he's been talking about black issues for a while, too.
I don't want to make assumptions about a group I'm not a part of but I'm not entirely sure that it's the issue swaying the black population from Bernie. I think electability is probably an even larger issue along with some of the other great things people were pointing out in the NH Primary thread.
Anyway, I also didn't really want my particular question to be a Bernie vs Hillary argument. I'm just kind of asking that voter what he would like to see someone like Bernie do in order to reach out enough.
eyeball_kid
Member
So a guy that hasn't had a chance before now in his political campaigns to appeal to minorities shouldn't be given a chance? Guilty until proven innocent? The context given the discussion of minority marginalization makes for some delicious irony, especially given Sanders is a minority (Jew) which is a group who has also been historically marginalized and persecuted.
Hillary doesn't care about you or anyone here. She not only doesn't deserve the black vote, she doesn't deserve any votes.
not to mention that Sanders is in America because, like most American Jews, his family was affected by the Holocaust
that's actually one of his motivators for being in politics, the thought that something as awful as the Holocaust came up legally through government
A Link to the Past
Banned
The idea of starting a new party troubles me - not that it shouldn't happen, but because we'd probably just end up seeing the new party take Democrat votes away, but not enough to be able to win.
I don't think she mentioned it bro
I guess your're too young to remember the "super-predator" scare of the early 90s.
It was not strictly a racist term, at least not completely (if nothing else, white kids got fucked by that shit too) but I seriously doubt this crap would've got traction with mainstream America without at least implying that damn crazy black animals are coming to murder to you. And a lot of people who pushed the idea of the super predator straight up tied it to black kids.
I don't know the exact context of the Clinton's quote there, but I know that she's a smart enough politician to know the racial implication of what she said.
p.s.
It should probably goes without saying but I'll say it anyway - the super predator scare was bullshit pushed by conservative think tanks and publications (that you the weekly standard) and criminologists who were just fucking terrible at their fucking job.
For real, go read about their arguments, they were wrong about pretty much everything, it almost better for those fuckers to admit they were fucking racist.
hydrophilic attack
Member
I'm curious, do you personally feel that black people were fucked over by Obama? In what way, if so?
e: woah, Chichikov is a mod now. That's a pretty good choice I think
She most certainly did, bro, in criticizing Sanders when he was right.
Directly? No. But the term, which was all the rage at the time, definitely had a racial tinge to it:
New York Times said:
Black leaders who support Hillary Clinton slam Bernie Sanders on race issues
Bernie Sanders on The War On Drugs - August last year(aka not in the last 40 days)
Should be a fun few weeks.
Bernie Sanders on The War On Drugs - August last year(aka not in the last 40 days)
Should be a fun few weeks.
The whole thing with lead meant the criminologists were missing the forest for the trees for about a century, it seems like.
Nope. She mentioned it in reference to Coates who did. That's a small tangent which has little to do with the topic of Hillary earning the black vote.
???
What else is she going to do at the moment?
The problem with black voters early on was that Bernie would only talk about his economic policies, billionaires and trillionaires and what not, to the exclusion of everything else especially issues within the black community prevalent at the moment and which were dominating news cycles. This led supporters to talk about his civil rights record and other stuff he's done in the past but didn't mean squat since he hadn't spoken about the issues affecting the black community NOW. Eventually after BLM and other folks called him out he finally started to respond to those issues. However, even now it's not a primary talking point of his but rather he still shifts back to his economic policies.
On the other hand, Hilary has been speaking about those very hot button issues affecting minorities and the black community from the very start. She spoke out when Trayvon Martin was killed, she was speaking to black organizations about the need to deal with systemic racism within police departments, she was talking about Eric Garner. She didn't have to be coaxed into speaking about these issues she was talking about them from the start.
Now, despite everything I just said I'm not against Bernie Sanders but I am trying to display why many black people support Hilary over him. You can talk about the rising tide lifting all ships all you want but if you aren't even going to speak about the issues affecting minorities then it's hard for people to trust you have their back. Also Hilary just announced that she will Campaign With The Mothers Of Trayvon Martin And Eric Garner
Chmpocalypse
Blizzard
"bring them to heel"? Holy shit.
I have read some articles that support and oppose the lead theory and honestly, I don't really have the tools to evaluate them myself. But really, read what is probably most famous article on that subject (The Weekly Standard's 1995 "THE COMING OF THE SUPER -- PREDATORS") to see what level of bullshit we're talking about here.
Fucking "moral poverty" bullshit, but hey, anything so we don't have to deal with actual poverty, right?
Chmpocalypse
Blizzard
Keep in mind, that poster also supports blackbagging and disappearing whistleblowers like Snowden, so shallow reasoning is hardly a surprise.
In other words, she brought up reparations in the article she wrote to state she agrees with Coates. So, yep ...
Reading comprehension, man ... It's right there in the text.
I hate to say it, but this post is pretty close to right.
I'm from California. I grew up in the South Central/Compton parts of LA. Back in the 90s gang violence was not just a talking point in the media, it was a concern within a lot of black communities as well. And hell the Los Angeles Riots had JUST happened. And while the anger and unrest that resulted in the riots was certainly legit (the Rodney King beating), the resulting violence left a lot of black families scared. A lot of black people living in these neighborhoods were for tougher drug/crime laws back then, it's all I heard growing up. It seemed like very few people realized how disproportionately it would effect black communities.
kame-sennin
Member
If you're black, there's nothing pragmatic about voting for Clinton.
theignoramus
Member
Sanders has his issues.
I'm not sure half the Democratic establishment coming out now,after Iowa, to take personal shots at Sanders and his constituency is a good look for Hillary, but whatever.
I'm not sure half the Democratic establishment coming out now,after Iowa, to take personal shots at Sanders and his constituency is a good look for Hillary, but whatever.
Voysa Reezun
Banned
But he signed it. This is, respectfully, a cop-out. He also campaigned on signing it and capitalized politically on this stuff.
She addresses this in the piece.
I think that's fair criticism, and Hilary's characterization of young black men as animals fits right in with the rhetoric from the openly-racist right wing.
She addresses this in the piece.
I find a number of the counter-arguments to this piece that I have seen in this thread to be incomplete or unfair and revisionist in order to prop up Bill Clinton as a great president. He might have been for Silicon Valley. He wasn't for most black people.
And before someone uses the ad hominem of "Oh, you weren't old enough to understand back then," I was a senior in high school by the time Clinton was out of office, so you can lay that particular attack to rest.
Condescending much?
There's a lot pragmatic about a Clinton vote. She's more electable than Bernie in the current US climate and when the opposing viewpoint in this country will fuck you over quite a bit more you tend to want to make sure that viewpoint has the least chance to win.
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