The Clinton legacy is black impoverishment—so why are we still voting for Hillary?
–Michelle Alexander, author, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
African-Americans have few reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton. No one understands this better—and says it more forcefully—than Michelle Alexander, civil rights activist, author, and professor of law. She has studied the public life of the Clintons, chronicled their catastrophic impacts on black lives, and observed their self-serving, hypocritical pandering to the African-American community.
The Clintons have always cultivated a warm affection for African-Americans. One iconic image shows Bill riffing on his saxophone for Arsenio Hall. Another pictures Hillary hugging parishioners in black churches. Similar beguiling images appear daily in the media as her presidential campaign progresses.
The affection seems to be mutual. It was apparent in the primary elections across the South, where black voters gave Hillary Clinton overwhelming majorities. But their loyalty is tragically misplaced: the Clintons’ affection is not matched by a serious commitment to relieving the poverty, prejudice, mass incarceration, and second-class citizenry suffered by much of the black community today.
The Clintons’ affection is simply a political expedient. They have relied on the black vote in virtually every election either of them has faced over the past 24 years, but their respective incumbencies have savaged this faithful community.
“From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted—and Hillary Clinton supported—decimated black America.” Those are Michelle Alexander’s words, accompanying her recent online essay, The Clinton Legacy is Black Impoverishment–So Why Are We Still Voting for Hillary? (The article appeared in print form in the Nation magazine on February 29 under the title, “Black Lives Shattered.”)
The case is compelling for African-Americans to withhold their votes from Hillary Clinton.
Millions of young black men molder in prisons today because the “War on Drugs” is waged disproportionately against black Americans. They serve absurdly long sentences for minor drug offenses, non-violent and victim-free. This is the core of mass incarceration, and millions more are on parole or probation.
Branded as felons, these people will be monstrously handicapped for the rest of their lives. Their criminal records will relegate them to menial, low-paying work; will encourage their return to damaging lifestyles; will impede their access to drug rehabilitation programs, educational benefits, food stamps, and public housing; and in many states will deny them the right to vote. Their lives will indeed be shattered, and the effects will ripple through their families and communities.
The result, nationwide, is the maintenance of a race-based caste system that began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, and is now sustained by mass incarceration.
This is the story Michelle Alexander tells so well in her arresting book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
The Clintons are prominent among the several drivers of mass incarceration. The War on Drugs was undertaken in the Nixon years, deliberately targeting black Americans. Subsequent administrations sustained the effort, militarizing police forces to stiffen it, but when the Clintons took aim at the White House in 1991 The New Jim Crow came into view as the bleak future of black America.