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Empower Yourself
There is so much discussion in the political world these days about Clinton's 1996 comment about bringing the super predators to heel, and Bill Clinton's subsequent defense of her comments a few days ago. I must admit that I understand Bill Clinton's defense. At the time Hillary Clinton made that comment, we saw on television every night news stories about violence in the inner cities, drive-by shootings, crazy crack addicts, innocent people being shot and killed while sitting on their stoops or walking to school. As a white woman, it was understandable to me then and now that there was something problematic in the black community, and something needed to be done. As Bill Clinton said, "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African American children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't."
That is the easy reaction to this political hot topic. Twenty years later, however, we should be able to look back with a different perspective and reflect on what happened in the early 1990s. Today, one thing that strikes me about the coverage at that time AND today is that the news implies that the violence in the 1990s stems from black populations going wild; from bad black males who are out to hurt their communities in order to earn money, power and fame; from some natural internal deviance that had to be tamed. So based on this narrative, Clinton and the Conservative Republican Congress passed laws that put more black men in prison, that demanded harsher sentences for crack cocaine than powder cocaine, that pushed people off welfare and made them more desperate, that cut funding for programs like after-school care that could provide safe environments for kids as well as offer mentoring. Twenty years later, there is enough evidence to show that Clinton's policies did more to hurt poor people and the black community, all based on the idea that it was bad individuals rather than policies that were the major cause of violence. "On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton made the economy his top priority and argued persuasively that conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert attention from the failed economy. In practice, however, he capitulated entirely to the right-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced former president Ronald Reagan’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes—ultimately doing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did. " (1) As a white woman, I can never understand the full import of the policies that destroyed our inner cities and contributed to the violence that disproportionately affected the black communities. But there are people who have researched it. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. Poverty? Yes. Globalisation? Yes. Poor education? Yes. The break up of the family? Yes. A lack of opportunity? Yes. And there are so many other reasons. Each community has its own diverse history and factors that contribute to the problems faced by its communities. The problem for me is that none of our candidates are talking deeply about why these social problems exist and how to solve them. We know what the Conservative candidates want and will do--namely cut taxes for the wealthy, cut government programs that serve the poor, eliminate government agencies that protect our environment, round up immigrants and send them home, take away voting rights for minorities, hand more control of the services people rely on to for-profit companies, eliminate a woman's ability to regulate her own body and control her future by ending abortion and access to contraception; in other words, they want to cut more and more programs to push more people into poverty (no, they don't SAY they want to push people into poverty, but 35 years of tax cuts and government program cuts have done just that). I've watched the debates, and I don't know what Democrats will do. Sure, they won't do a lot of what the Republican conservatives would do, but I want our Democratic Party to have a vision, to offer solutions that people can get behind. How will they counter the negative effects resulting from the existing free trade agreements? Do they really expect manufacturing to return to the US, and if not, how DO Americans compete in the modern world? What is the role of government? Why was Reagan wrong when he said "the nine most terrifying words are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help?' " This blog is about empowerment, and if anyone needs empowerment these days, it is Democrats. Thanks to the Clintons, Democrats have lost their way and embraced the memes and philosophy of conservatives. I'm willing to forgive and understand Clinton for her super predator comments; we all make mistakes. But her answer--and her husband's defense of her answer and his policies-- shows a lack of reflection. It was a knee-jerk defensive response when it could have been an opportunity to reflect on the unintended consequences of policies that seemed to be appropriate at the time. Most importantly, it could have been an effort by Hillary Clinton to show that she has learned, evolved, and matured in her understanding of the policies in the 80s and 90s so that she would respond as president in a more refined and nuanced way. But she didn't. And I worry that, like her husband, she will argue "persuasively that conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert attention from the failed economy," but then just continue with the same old mindset and the same old policies that brought us to the economic decline that has diminished the middle class, destroyed many black communities and motivated so many people to rise up in protest of the status quo that Republicans and Democrats are offering us. (1) http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
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AuthorI am a yoga instructor, author and activist. I wrote The Diamond Tree to inspire women to take chances. Even if the outcome of any given risk is different than expected, there is something for the community and the individual to gain from it. Archives
May 2020
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