So how racist is Bill Clinton anyway?

Helluva an answer.

It should embarrass any right-thinking Democrat (and has to make you wonder how in line Hillary is with Bill on this. 100% I'd say.)

The Daily News has a good article on the speech that perfectly captures the neo-racism of the Clintons.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-bill-clinton-sounds-donald-trump-jab-article-1.2593606?cid=bitly

zoinks, don't even bother trying to read it. It's like a different language for you.

To answer your question, see the Michelle Alexander interview on the Bernie Sanders thread, above.

wait. what? which? what sanders thread above what?

ama confoozed

I think she is talking about this.   I posted it on a different thread:

https://youtu.be/tFHNzlx24QM

Yup. Thanks, Nan. 

That was an incredibly powerful and informative interview.  Thanks for posting it.  

only partly through it at this point, but yes....

I remember when I first heard Alexander after her book came out.  I was just blown away, by her, and the simplicity and clarity of her thesis.

Nothing about either Clinton's perspective or actions is "neo" racism, there's no revision in policy or practice here. It's the same as it ever was- simple and plain.  Clinton's no more racist than any other 'caring and compassionate' liberal politician when confronted with modern political exigencies. He just happens to be a more polished purveyor of supremacist doctrine. Michelle Alexander does an excellent job of representing the current viewpoint of a host of African American political observers regarding the viability of either party and this article by Chris Hedges (not for the faint of heart) places Sanders' campaign exactly where it should be.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_sanders_phantom_movement_20160214#.VuSAlf_a16Q

if there's one thing I hate is when someone I admire intellectually (Ms. Alexander) admits to a glaring piece of ignorance that then makes you kind of question everything about her.

She never heard of Bernie Sanders until he announced for Prez?

AYFKM?

flimbro said:

Nothing about either Clinton's perspective or actions is "neo" racism, there's no revision in policy or practice here. It's the same as it ever was- simple and plain.  Clinton's no more racist than any other 'caring and compassionate' liberal politician when confronted with modern political exigencies. He just happens to be a more polished purveyor of supremacist doctrine. Michelle Alexander does an excellent job of representing the current viewpoint of a host of African American political observers regarding the viability of either party and this article by Chris Hedges (not for the faint of heart) places Sanders' campaign exactly where it should be.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bernie_sanders_phantom_movement_20160214#.VuSAlf_a16Q

Hedges states the obvious -- that win or lose, the power structure will attempt to neutralize or destroy Bernie's movement.  He knows that, his supporters know that.  Yes, it's an ongoing process and as Bernie said yesterday, win or lose, "We will continue that revolution."

(at 14:17)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEWwGAh6tx4

With regard to Michelle Alexander, she hasn't "endorsed" Bernie but she is "supporting" him. Not sure what the difference is.

"With regard to Michelle Alexander, she hasn't "endorsed" Bernie but she is "supporting" him. Not sure what the difference is."

That is the only problem with this, but she is clear on the problems some of us are having with the Clinton Presidential Legacy.

Is that their 'platform?"  Just because this President had a good result for his economic practices, doesn't mean he had the social issues under control. You don't just jail and hide your problems. Come to think of it, denying and hiding problems seem to be the Clintonian response to lots of their issues. 

Unfortunately, a response doth not a platform make.

And elsewhere, Seelbach tells me to go to her website. Re. the content:Talk about promises!

Bill keeps coming back to his racism to defend it. When you jail minorities instead of lift them up and help them, you are a racist. Period.

What fascinates me about the political bosses/machines are how much power they exert in our world currently, and throughout history, and yet how little they are included in what one learns about social studies/history at school (at least in my time).

springgreen, how much have you worked with the population you want to lift up? I have. And the answers are not easy. Some of the harshest critics of these guys I found when working in Harlem for 7 years were the adults in the black community. Were they racist also?

sprout said:

What fascinates me about the political bosses/machines are how much power they exert in our world currently, and throughout history, and yet how little they are included in what one learns about social studies/history at school (at least in my time).

The old time political bosses and machines hardly exist anymore. If they did we wouldn't have a person like Trump as a leading candidate, so it's not so clear that they were completely bad.

I learned about the bosses and machines as a teenager by reading the papers, watching the news on TV and participating in political campaigns.

gerryl said:

springgreen, how much have you worked with the population you want to lift up? I have. And the answers are not easy. Some of the harshest critics of these guys I found when working in Harlem for 7 years were the adults in the black community. Were they racist also?

Among the teaching I have been doing since 1965 when, as a fourteen-year-old, I went to inner city Cleveland on my own on the rapid transit to tutor reading at a place called Karamu House, I spent the next half century teaching in inner cities including Newark, New York. Boston, Trenton, and  among the rural poor in northen New England. It was sometimes marked by racism, including upstate New England kids finding my darker skin and semitic features not that great to them. Other than that, I didn't see much black-on-black racism.

@gerryl; There was a lot of antipathy in the white, middle class community toward the poorer New England kids, though. It wasn't racism. It was just snobbery.

gerryl said:

springgreen, how much have you worked with the population you want to lift up? I have. And the answers are not easy. Some of the harshest critics of these guys I found when working in Harlem for 7 years were the adults in the black community. Were they racist also?

That was my recollection.

I worked in Central Commercial and Norman Thomas HS in Manhattan. 95% minority. Central Commercial at 42 St moved to a new building at 33 St and was renamed to Norman Thomas.

It was a great school then. A commercial school but we managed to get jobs to over 90% of the kids who did not go to college. The graduation rate was high. We lost kids but almost all kids we lost were due transfers. There were three courses of study. It was primarily a girls school then. Very, very few boys.

Distributive ed - retail work such as Macy's, Bloomingdale's, the fashion and clothing industry and the flower industry. Any kid in that group got a job in those three industries due the connections the school and the teachers had.

Secretarial Studies - secretaries, admin assistants, etc. Again job placement was almost guaranteed.

Accounting - bookeepers, etc. Same with the job placement.

Norman Thomas had an IBM Sys/3 computer but sadly we never really got a good computer program going.

However, the kids and their parents loved Clinton. Maybe the parents and kids were too stupid to realize that Clinton was a racist, eh, spring? Aren't we happy you can enlighten us.

BG9 said:

gerryl said:

springgreen, how much have you worked with the population you want to lift up? I have. And the answers are not easy. Some of the harshest critics of these guys I found when working in Harlem for 7 years were the adults in the black community. Were they racist also?

That was my recollection.

I worked in Central Commercial and Norman Thomas HS in Manhattan. 95% minority. Central Commercial at 42 St moved to a new building at 33 St and was renamed to Norman Thomas.

It was a great school then. A commercial school but we managed to get jobs to over 90% of the kids who did not go to college. The graduation rate was high. We lost kids but almost all kids we lost were due transfers. There were three courses of study. It was primarily a girls school then. Very, very few boys.

Distributive ed - retail work such as Macy's, Bloomingdale's, the fashion and clothing industry and the flower industry. Any kid in that group got a job in those three industries due the connections the school and the teachers had.

Secretarial Studies - secretaries, admin assistants, etc. Again job placement was almost guaranteed.

Accounting - bookeepers, etc. Same with the job placement.

Norman Thomas had an IBM Sys/3 computer but sadly we never really got a good computer program going.

However, the kids and their parents loved Clinton. Maybe the parents and kids were too stupid to realize that Clinton was a racist, eh, spring? Aren't we happy you can enlighten us.

I did not say Clinton was a racist, although I think Hillary doesn't have that Appalachian tendency toward stereotyping that Bill has. I think he might have a cultural history problem of coming from a region that is southern, and hasn't really gotten beyond that. To his credit, he tries to get past it, but he isn't totally aware of his bias and it oozes out when he's stressed or tired. He comes from an historically sort of sharecropper culture that feels competitive with African Americans.

What is it you think his cultural history problem is?

Racism manifests itself in different ways.  Here's what Michelle Alexander had to say about President Clinton:  

And, you know, one of the reasons why I wrote my piece for The Nation is that although, you know, one side of the Clinton story is well known to black folks, the fact that, you know, Bill Clinton was really the first president that ever really embraced black people as human beings.
You know, I think it`s important when people, you know, talk about lots of folks asked me, particularly white folks, asked me, you know, “Why do so many black folks support Clinton when he, you know, his policies were so disastrous for the African-American community?”
And I think many people forget that, you know, we had centuries of slavery where no politician was responsive to our humanity at all followed by Jim Crow`s segregation and, you know, although Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy were allies in some respects, though not all respects, with the Civil Rights Movement and African-American communities, there had never been a president or presidential candidate who actually treated black folks like they were real people who could be viewed and treated as human beings, you know, who weren`t a problem to be solved.
That didn`t treat African-Americans as a problem to be solved, but instead would actually sit down and eat with them and sing in their church and acted like they enjoyed – recognized us as human beings. And that was –that`s a huge thing.
Just as the election of Barack Obama as the first black president is a huge thing for African-American. The community is no small thing for Bill Clinton to reach out to African-American communities in the way he did. And I think many people remember that, especially older African-Americans remember that.
What they don`t know, what they often don`t know or don`t remember and it`s actually one of the reasons why I wrote my book, “The New Jim Crow” in first place is that many people of color don`t know or fully understand how the system of mass incarceration was constructed, why and the devastating consequences for our communities and the Clintons, you know, had, you know, important role.
They escalated the drug war and the “Get Tough Movement” far beyond what the Republicans had done, while at the same time dismantling the federal social safety net and transferring billions of dollars away from child welfare and housing into a prison building boom unlike anything the world had ever seen.
And really the election of Bill Clinton marked the turning point for the Democratic Party where the Democratic Party decided that in order to win over those so-called white swing voters, the folks who had defected from the Democratic Party in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, in order to get those folks, you know, they were going to have to begin proving to that segment that they could be tougher on them than the Republicans had been.
And, you know, I think that`s a part of our political history that is painful I think for the black community to face, but it`s necessary.

http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/all-in/2016-04-01

I don't think those laws were racist. They were probably misguided, but I suspect a lot in the Black community were hoping that 'get tough' approach would be effective. 

gerryl said:

I don't think those laws were racist. They were probably misguided, but I suspect a lot in the Black community were hoping that 'get tough' approach would be effective. 

When those laws were passed, many in the communities supported them. Those who passed the laws and supported them at the time were not racists. They didn't realize the adverse consequential effects.

To accuse Clinton and the black leaders and community members who initially supported this as racists is disingenuous.

gerryl said:

I don't think those laws were racist. They were probably misguided, but I suspect a lot in the Black community were hoping that 'get tough' approach would be effective. 

You hopefully see how it could be misinterpreted.

springgreen2 said:

Bill keeps coming back to his racism to defend it. When you jail minorities instead of lift them up and help them, you are a racist. Period.

If there is no variation in justice dispensed based on race or income, then it isn't racist.  Seems to me the problem that has to be addressed is disparities in justice and disparities in responses to things like drugs.

tjohn said:

springgreen2 said:

Bill keeps coming back to his racism to defend it. When you jail minorities instead of lift them up and help them, you are a racist. Period.

If there is no variation in justice dispensed based on race or income, then it isn't racist.  Seems to me the problem that has to be addressed is disparities in justice and disparities in responses to things like drugs.

But the outcome was racial. Most of those jailed were black, and the percentage of African Americans jailed was highest of all American racial groups.

But the intent was not to jail black men.

gerryl said:

But the intent was not to jail black men.

No, and I don't think Bill's bias is particularly intentional. We already know he does a lot of things unintentionally.

What is it that you are saying?