Ken Berwitz
Black voters have been remarkably loyal to the Clintons formore than 25 years. It\’s true that we eventually lined up behind Barack Obamain 2008, but it\’s a measure of the Clinton allure that Hillary led Obama amongblack voters until he started winning caucuses and primaries. Now Hillary isrunning again. This time she\’s facing a democratic socialist who promises apolitical revolution that will bring universal healthcare, a living wage, anend to rampant Wall Street greed, and the dismantling of the vast prisonstate-many of the same goals that Martin Luther King Jr. championed at the endof his life. Even so, black folks are sticking with the Clinton brand.
What have theClintons done to earn such devotion? Did they take extreme political risks todefend the rights of African Americans? Did they courageously stand up toright-wing demagoguery about black communities? Did they help usher in a newera of hope and prosperity for neighborhoods devastated by deindustrialization,globalization, and the disappearance of work?
No. Quite theopposite.
When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, urban blackcommunities across America were suffering from economic collapse. Hundreds ofthousands of manufacturing jobs had vanished as factories moved overseas in searchof cheaper labor, a new plantation. Globalization and deindustrializationaffected workers of all colors but hit African Americans particularly hard.Unemployment rates among young black men had quadrupled as the rate ofindustrial employment plummeted. Crime rates spiked in inner-city communitiesthat had been dependent on factory jobs, while hopelessness, despair, and crackaddiction swept neighborhoods that had once been solidly working-class.Millions of black folks-many of whom had fled Jim Crow segregation in the Southwith the hope of obtaining decent work in Northern factories-were suddenlytrapped in racially segregated, jobless ghettos.
On the campaigntrail, Bill Clinton made the economy his top priority and argued persuasivelythat conservatives were using race to divide the nation and divert attentionfrom the failed economy. In practice, however, he capitulated entirely to theright-wing backlash against the civil-rights movement and embraced formerpresident Ronald Reagan\’s agenda on race, crime, welfare, and taxes-ultimatelydoing more harm to black communities than Reagan ever did.
