When the race for the White House heads south, Hillary Clinton’s campaign will count heavily on African Americans for a boost of energy to thwart any unexpected surge of support for Bernie Sanders. Bill Clinton will be out front reminding Black voters of the gains they made during his administration. By using his southern charm, the idea is to transfer some of that Black love for Bill to Hillary. After all, “Slick Willie” did have some Black folks calling him the first Black president, before America could elect a real one.
If the Clinton campaign have southern Blacks figured right, they just might be able to gloss over some inconvenient truths. While African Americans did see some improvements in areas of economics and education, at the same time, African Americans were being locked up in record numbers. In fact, part of the Clinton legacy includes the mass incarceration of Black men, hence sentencing millions of African American families to a lifetime of poverty, with no way out. Bill Clinton admitted as much himself.
In a forward to a new book of complied essays by the Brennan Center for Justice, Bill Clinton acknowledges the dramatic incline in arrest, convictions and lengthy prison sentences. Reexamining the results of his 1994 Get Tough on Crime Bill, that included the federal Three Strikes provision 20 years later and his reaction is thus: ” “it’s time to take a clear-eyed look at what worked, what didn’t, and what produced unintended, long-lasting consequences … Too many laws were overly broad instead of appropriately tailored. Some are in prison who shouldn’t be, others are in for too long, and without a plan to educate, train, and reintegrate them into our communities, we all suffer.” And suffer we have.
Although Black America was still trapped in the clutches of the Crack Epidemic, locking people up for decades without access to an education had very predictable consequences. Yet Bill Clinton’s shortsighted Get Tough on Crime Bill overturned the Higher Education Act of 1965, permitting prison inmates to receive Pell Grants for post secondary education while incarcerated. Even though prison sentences were getting longer, some people would get out eventually. Unfortunately, most are so ill prepared for freedom, it wouldn’t be long before they’d be back behind bars.
With “truth in sentencing”, states that sentenced people to long terms in prison with no chance of parole were rewarded with increased federal funds. Clinton’s crackdown on crime also triggered the infamous COPS program, aka Community Oriented Policing Services. Federal money was provided to states to allow them to vastly increase the number of police officers on the streets to generate more arrests, more convictions and more Black lives lost. When Bill Clinton entered the White House, there were 847,000 in prison. When he left in 2000, there were 1,334,000. And many are still there.
Bottom Line: Since Bill and Hillary Clinton have always billed themselves as an inseparable team, a co-presidency or two for the price of one, one would have to presume Hillary influenced and signed off on many of President Clinton’s policy decisions. If Hillary’s strategy is to embrace Bill’s legacy to win favor with Black voters moving forward, Black voters need to remember why they passed on Hillary the first time around. Podcast below!
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