Hillary was referring to young African-American males when she spoke of "super predators":

[amborin]

Had this Brooklyn killing taken place 20 years ago, odds are that some people would have seized on it as more evidence that America was being overwhelmed by waves of “superpredators,” feral youths devoid of impulse control or remorse.

Inescapably, superpredator dread had a racial component. What the doomsayers focused on, in the main, were young male African-Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/us/politics/killing-on-bus-recalls-superpredator-threat-of-90s.html

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4558907/mrs-clinton-campaign-speech-super-predators

more here:

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/17/nyregion/youthful-impressionable-and-accused-of-murder.html

[thereismore]

1. "to heel." Like dogs. nt

[bigtree]

2. your premise is flawed

...only her most vehement opponents believe she intended to denigrate black youth.

It's a ridiculous charge which most people have never taken seriously.

[amborin]

3. actually, the premise is accurate; were you in nyc during that time period?

or didyu o read the newspapers during that time? There was overt racialized and racist discussion of the issue of
youth street crime.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. I was in Los Angeles at the time and I'd say your premise is overly limited because she also meant

Latino youth, she spoke of gangs and at that time that meant black and Latino. It's poor minority young men that are being help up as more criminal than other criminals.

December, 1994:
"A record 218 gang killings occurred in 1994 in areas patrolled by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, erasing the record of 207 set in 1991, Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday.

Latino gang killings were up and constituted about 75% of all such killings, Block said. Gang murders among black youths dropped to 50, he said."
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-12-29/local/me-14160_1_los-angeles-county

[amborin]

5. yes, the discourse probably also referred to Latino youth; but there was a frenzy in NY at the time

about so-called "super predators" and there it referred largely exclusively to African-American teens

[RufusTFirefly]

6. Michelle Alexander ("The New Jim Crow") weighs in on this, too

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.”

Michelle Alexander: Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote