Hillary Clinton was pilloried and battered for days on end for not uttering a peep about the Michael Brown slaying, the Ferguson disorders, and most importantly race. Clinton took heat on this for the simple reason that she almost certainly will run for president and likely win. It would look pretty peculiar for a presidential candidate, especially a Democratic presidential candidate, and likely winner not to say anything about America's eternal flashpoint issue. But it was worth the wait for her to speak out. Clinton skipped the platitudes and echoed the uncomfortable truths that black men are routinely profiled, disproportionately pack America's jails and prisons, and get longer sentences than white males.
This
took courage because presidents and presidential candidates have avoided race
like the plague not just in the case of Ferguson and the Brown killing, but
whenever racial controversy inevitably flares up. Racial issues have seeped
into presidential debates only when they ignite public anger and division.
Race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the
campaign trail for the past two decades for a good reason. No president or
presidential challenger, especially a Democratic challenger, would risk being
tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems.
The double standard on race has been especially troublesome to President Obama.
From the moment that he announced his presidential bid in 2007, he knew that
race would be a minefield that could blow up at any time and the explosion could
be even more harmful to him. That was the case when he knocked a Cambridge
police officer for the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Gates, and the few
times that he cautiously addressed other controversies from the slaying of
Trayvon Martin to Ferguson.
No matter how loud the deafening the silence from presidents and contenders
about race is, its painful consequences can't disappear. In each of its annual
State of Black America reports the past decade the National Urban League found
that blacks are less likely to own their own homes, die earlier, are far more
likely to be jailed disproportionately and receive longer sentences, receive
less or poorer quality health care and earn far less than whites. They attend
failing public schools, and are more likely the victims of racially motivated
hate crimes than any other group.
The report also found rampant discrimination and gaping economic disparities
between Latinos and whites. In the past decade, the income, and education
performance gaps between blacks and Latinos and whites have only marginally
closed, or actually widened. Discrimination remains the major cause of the
disparities.
Shunting race to the back burner of presidential campaigns invariably means
that presidents shunt them to the backburner of their legislative agenda. Yet,
presidents have not been able to tap dance around racial problems. Reagan's
administration was embroiled in affirmative action battles. Bush Sr.'s
administration was tormented by urban riots following the beating of black motorist
Rodney King. Clinton's administration was saddled with conflicts over
affirmative action, police violence and racial profiling. W. Bush's
administration has been confronted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, voting rights,
reparations, and affirmative action battles, gang violence, and failing inner
city public schools.
This won't
be the case with Clinton. She tipped her hand on this at an NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet in Charleston, South Carolina during
the 2008 presidential campaign when she publicly vowed to do everything from
aggressively fighting hate crimes to strengthening voting rights. It was the
kind of civil rights speech that top Democrats in campaigns past have sprinted
from giving like the plague. Two
months before that she intimated that racism drove public policy in how
Americans dealt with the HIV/AIDS plague and said that if young white women were dying
at the rate young blacks are from AIDS, there would be a national outcry.
Clinton's aim was to send a forceful message to her
then chief Democratic presidential campaign rival Barack Obama that she -- not
he -- was the real civil rights candidate. This was hardly the case since Obama
had to walk the tightest of tight ropes on race as an African-American and with
the wolves ready to pounce on any utterance from him would supposedly prove that
he would tilt toward blacks once in the White House. Yet, Clinton did stake a
bold, aggressive, and challenging in your face approach to frontally
confronting racial issues. There almost
certainly will be more Ferguson-like tests on race for Clinton in the 2016 race
for the White House. The odds, though, are great that she'll get it right again
as she did this time on Ferguson and race.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a frequent MSNBC contributor. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network. Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: twitter.com/earlhutchinson
