Archives for 2014

“Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers were three times as likely to be searched by police during a traffic stop as black drivers, instead of the other way around,” she said, “if white offenders received prison sentences 10 percent longer than black offenders for the same crimes, if a third of all white men—just look at this room and take one third—went to prison during their life time. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow Americans & so many of the communities in which they live.”

So Hillary Clinton has (“finally”) spoken out on Ferguson. Mr. Charles P. Pierce (who linked the transcript) is not at all impressed:

… What she said appears to have been written by nine consultants, eight people from marketing, seven lawyers, six ESL valedictorians, and Mark Penn. She feels very bad about the stuff that happened, as stuff sometimes will happen, because it is stuff, and it happens. Or something…

Nia-Malika Henderson, at the Washington Post, thought more of it:

… Whereas most Democrats and Republicans, and eventually President Obama, addressed the militarization of the police, Clinton actually went there on an issue that most avoided: racism and the criminal justice system.

At her speech at the Nexenta OpenSDx Summit in San Francisco, she said “we cannot ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system.” And then she did what few of her prominent fellow white Democrats have done in the context of Ferguson–she acknowledged the well-known statistics that show that blacks get treated differently than whites when it comes to everything from traffic stops to sentencing. But rather than just listing the statistics, she got personal by asking whites to put themselves in the shoes of black Americans…

And Jamelle Bouie chose to go full-metal Slate contrarian:

… The few times President Obama has made serious comments on race, he’s been candid, personal, and conciliatory. He’s either tried to universalize his experience—as he did in his 2008 Philadelphia speech—or contextualize the particular experiences of black Americans, as he did in his 2013 remarks on the George Zimmerman verdict. Put simply, being black lets Obama empathize with black Americans in a way unique to his presidency. At the same time, it acts as a limit on what he can say. Or, as I noted on Tuesday, Obama can’t address racial issues without polarizing the public along racial lines. He tiptoed around Ferguson, but given the rancor caused by his comments on Henry Louis Gates’ arrest or Trayvon Martin’s killing, it was the smart path to take.

Clinton’s statement is neither candid, personal, or especially conciliatory. Instead, it’s a little blunt, and in a good way. She asks for understanding and doesn’t give her listeners a rhetorical escape. “Imagine that,” she says, pushing her audience to conjure a world where white men were targets for law enforcement, and where their lives were routinely derailed for trivial offenses…

… Clinton was talking to white people. And she was asking them, as white people, to show empathy and concern for the conditions of their black fellow citizens. I wouldn’t say this is unprecedented, but it is rare. Especially since there’s no attempt to deflect or blame black Americans for their own problems. Clinton doesn’t mention “black-on-black crime” or give a brief respectability lecture. She simply says, Look at how we treat them, and imagine if it were you.…

I report, you yell at me in the comments decide…

Open Thread: HRC SpeaksPost + Comments (247)