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Hillary's atrocious race record: Her stances over decades have been painful and wrong | SALON
Hillary’s atrocious race record: Her stances over decades have been painful and wrong"The idea that she is or ever has been a stalwart advocate for black empowerment is absolutely ludicrous"
MUSA AL-GHARBI - SUNDAY, APR 3, 2016
Musa al-Gharbi is a political philosopher affiliated with the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflict (SISMEC). Readers can connect to his work and social media via his website: www.fiatsophia.org
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/03/hillarys_atrocious_race_record_her_stances_over_decades_have_been_painful_and_wrong/
__________________________________
(snip)
...just a few short months ago Hillary Clinton was going out of her way to distance herself from the Obama administration because she believed it was politically expedient to do so. Now, under threat from Sanders’ insurgency, she is cynically trying to sell herself as Obama’s right hand. But of course, the moment she locks down the nomination she’ll go back to drawing contrast–the Clintons have always been leaders at “vote capturing.”
But perhaps the most disturbing of all is the insinuation that Hillary Clinton has some kind of proud and storied legacy in the service of black empowerment. She doesn’t. Consider the comparative records of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders:
The Chicago Years
While attending the University of Chicago, Sanders served as a chapter chairman for the Congress for Racial Equality. In this capacity, he worked to end segregation in schools and housing—activities for which he was arrested.
What was Hillary Clinton doing while Sanders was organizing sit-ins and demonstrations? Well, she was also living in Chicago at the time, but she was working for the other team: in 1963-64, Clinton was a volunteer and supporter for the campaign of Barry Goldwater.
For those who don’t know, Goldwater’s claim to fame is that he was the first Republican to win the Deep South since Reconstruction. He achieved this feat by vowing to undermine enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, and to prevent further erosion of white privilege. His campaign was so disgusting that many Republican leaders, such as George Romney and John Rockefeller, refused to endorse his candidacy even after he won his party’s nomination...Yet, this is the man who inspired Hillary Clinton to get into politics. And she was campaigning for him while Bernie was campaigning for desegregation.
(snip)
Of course, it’d be easy to write this off–after all, it was a long time ago. However, the Clintons’ tenure in the White House doesn’t look so great in hindsight either:
The Clinton Administration(s)
Bill Clinton’s deregulation of banks and Wall Street helped bring about the 2008 financial collapse that profoundly and disproportionately obliterated black wealth. In the wake of this disaster, and despite their long and sordid history of discrimination and predatory practices against people of color, Hillary Clinton continues to defend the institutions responsible (and is richly rewarded for doing so).
(snip)
And then, of course, there are the Clinton-era “tough on crime” measures, which Hillary Clinton actively lobbied for. While Sanders ultimately voted for the bill for the sake of its assault rifle ban and domestic violence protections, he first took to the senate floor to passionately denounce the draconian sentencing provisions contained therein, which he aptly predicted would be exercised primarily against America’s poor, largely people of color. In contrast, Hillary Clinton referred to the criminalized as animals, describing them as “super-predators” which have to be “brought to heel.”
(snip)
Later in that same cycle, it would be Clinton supporters who first began circulating rumors that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and might be a secret Muslim (launching the “birther” movement). Not only did Clinton fail to denounce these claims from her supporters (then later hypocritically bash Donald Trump for doing the same), her campaign actively attempted to capitalize on this paranoia, dog-whistling that Hillary was “born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century” and bragging about the edge she held over Obama among non-college-attending white Americans.
Little Has Changed
Then again, 2008 was almost eight years ago, right? What about today?
Consider that one of the people currently attempting to slime Bernie Sanders on Clinton’s behalf is her long-time friend and ally, David Brock, who infamously led the hatchet-job against law professor Anita Hill when she accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. For Hillary Clinton to sell herself as a champion of women and African-Americans while closely associating herself with someone like Brock is deeply unsettling…much like Clinton taking foreign policy and national security guidance from the same consulting firm that formulates strategy for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
(snip)
One could go on and on. These are not instances of occasional misspeaking or malformed policies—instead, a consistent pattern of words and actions persisting over decades. This is not to suggest Hillary Clinton is racist, at least not any more than most white people, but the idea that she is or ever has been a stalwart advocate for black empowerment is absolutely ludicrous.
(snip)
69 replies
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"As an African-American, I have struggled to understand why so many of my black brothers and sisters seem to prefer Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders."
Here's a photo of the author.
major assumptions can be made about about my identity as the poster of the article, and the visible color of my skin negates my authority to create an OP on the subject.
quite a way to create a discourse.
not.
Race baiting ...
I'm mixed.
What do I have YOUR PERMISSION to post, SIR?
I think I saw, incredibly, an attempt to argue here once for a racial qualification to even post critique of Hillary Clinton on racial issues at one point.
Don't know if anyone's still trying to make that particular blob of horse puckey fly, but wow was it fascinating to watch.
From what I've seen, this DU-specific line of argument is not about substance, but rather who is racially qualified (or disqualified) to speak. Apparently everyone is qualified to approve of Hillary Clinton's record and policies on race-related issues, but critique of her or approval of That Other Person Running requires pre-approval by a select group of DU posters. Or something? It's weird.
You neither speak for "the mainstream of Black communal thought" nor have any insight into the motives of people posting the wide variety of political opinion on Hillary or Bernie on this site.
Nor is the theoretical "mainstream" of any communities' thought a disqualifying factor in contrary opinions, for Pete's sake.
You're offering a transparent syllogism:
1. "Black Americans prefer Hillary;
2. therefore opinions not preferring Hillary are not the opinions of black Americans;
3. therefore those opinions may be dismissed."
Literally none of those assumptions are true. You're just starting with the false premise that Hillary Clinton has the permanent, immutable approval of all black people, and compounding it with another false premise that only black people care about racial issues or have any authority to hold an opinion.
I find it hard to believe you actually think any of that is valid argument. If Sanders started out doing better than Hillary among women, would you argue that any women who preferred Hillary were therefore just "outliers," or that men who preferred Hillary on women's issues should not be heard to speak?
I love this idea that there is one valid opinion possible, that it's already been determined, and that you will be policing any attempts to hold contrary opinions, without bothering to offer any substantive basis for any of it.
Is ... is anyone allowed to argue, on any basis, against whatever you've anointed as the valid opinion here? "No," I'm guessing?
Are there other fixed opinions out there no one is allowed to contradict? Is there perhaps a list we could all examine?
I hadn't seen it but did see the Salon article and so put up another OP on it. Maybe between our two OPs, people will learn something.
It's important. 
perhaps benedryl will help.
I knew who he was, and most other black folks in my circle knew who he was...
I also wouldn't put much stock into what Alexander says, since she's trying to break off and create a third party... 
Professor Jeff Cohen asked a most important question.
Reality Check for Democrats: Would Martin Luther King Be Supporting Bernie?
by Jeff Cohen
Common Dreams, February 11, 2016
Corporate mainstream media have sanitized and distorted the life and teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., putting him in the category of a “civil rights leader” who focused narrowly on racial discrimination; end of story.
Missing from the story is that Dr. King was also a tough-minded critic of our capitalist economic structure, much like Bernie Sanders is today.
The reality is that King himself supported democratic socialism – and that civil rights activists and socialists have walked arm-in-arm for more than a century.
The same news outlets that omit such facts keep telling us that the mass of African American voters in South Carolina and elsewhere are diehard devotees of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton – implying that blacks are somehow wary of Bernie Sanders and his “democratic socialism.”
Here are some key historical facts and quotes that get almost no attention in mainstream media:
1909: Many socialists – both blacks and whites – were involved in forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), our country’s oldest civil rights group. Among them was renowned black intellectual W.E.B. Dubois.
1925: Prominent African American socialist A. Philip Randolph became the first president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union that played a major role in activism for civil and economic rights (including the 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom”).
1952: In a fascinating letter to Coretta Scott, the woman he would marry a year later, Martin King wrote: “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic. . . . Today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.”
1965: King wrote an essay in Pageant magazine, “The Bravest Man I Ever Knew,” extolling Norman Thomas as “America’s foremost socialist” and favorably quoting a black activist who said of Thomas: “He was for us before any other white folks were.”
1965: After passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, King became even more vocal about economic rights: “What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?”
1965-66: King supported President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” but urged more – calling for a “gigantic Marshall Plan” for our naton’s poor of all races.
1966: In remarks to staffers at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King said:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. . . . It really means that we are saying something is wrong with capitalism. There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”
March 1967: King commented to SCLC’s board that “the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.”
April 1967: In his speech denouncing the U.S. war in Vietnam at New York’s Riverside Church, King extended his economic critique abroad, complaining about “capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.”
May 1967: In a report to SCLC’s staff, King said:
“We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power . . . this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together . . . you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others . . . the whole structure of American life must be changed.”
August 1967: In his final speech to SCLC, King declared:
“One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. And you see, my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the oil?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Who owns the iron ore?’ You begin to ask the question, ‘Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water?’”
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he and SCLC were mobilizing a multiracial army of the poor to descend nonviolently on Washington D.C. demanding a “Poor Peoples Bill of Rights.” He told a New York Times reporter that “you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.”
A year before he was murdered, King said the following to journalist David Halberstam: “For years I labored with the idea of reforming the existing institutions of the South, a little change here, a little change there. Now I feel quite differently. I think you’ve got to have a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values.”
Unlike what Hillary Clinton professes today, Dr. King came to reject the idea of slow, incremental change. He thought big. He proposed solutions that could really solve social problems.
Unlike corporate-dominated U.S. media, King was not at all afraid of democratic socialism. Other eminent African American leaders have been unafraid. Perhaps it’s historically fitting that former NAACP president Ben Jealous has recently campaigned for Bernie Sanders in South Carolina.
If mainstream journalists did more reporting on the candidates’ actual records, instead of crystal-ball gazing about the alleged hold that the Clintons have over African American voters, news consumers would know about the deplorable record of racially-biased incarceration and economic hardship brought on by Clinton administration policies. (See Michelle Alexander’s “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.”)
With income inequality even greater now than during Martin Luther King’s final years, is there much doubt that King would be supporting the progressive domestic agenda of Bernie Sanders?
Before Bernie was making these kinds of big economic reform proposals, King was making them – but mainstream media didn’t want to hear them at the time . . . or now.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Jeff Cohen is an associate professor of journalism and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). He is the author of Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media - and a cofounder of the online action group, www.RootsAction.org.
SOURCE (with links to original sources): http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/02/11/reality-check-democrats-would-martin-luther-king-be-supporting-bernie
