I will call for white people, like myself, to put ourselves in the shoes of those African-American families who fear every time their children go somewhere, who have to have ‘The Talk,’ about, you now, how to really protect themselves [from police], when they’re the ones who should be expecting protection from encounters with police.Despite the impression created by the media, a relative handful of innocent blacks are killed by police each year, and few of these killings rise to the level of deliberate murder. As discussed last week almost twice as many whites are killed each year by police as are blacks. Meanwhile, five hundred blacks, including a lot of children, are murdered annually by other blacks just in the city of Chicago, and if it weren't for the police that number would be far higher. The point is, black parents who fear for their children's safety have much more to fear from other blacks than they do from the police. For Ms. Clinton to suggest otherwise, is demagoguery.
She goes on to say:
I’m going to be talking to white people, we’re the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries coming from our African-American fellow citizens.Unfortunately, she doesn't explain exactly why whites have to listen to blacks or how listening will solve any of the intractable problems blacks face in their lives. How will white attentiveness solve the problem of fatherlessness in the black community, or poor school performance and drop-out rates, or drug and alcohol abuse? What can whites do to bring jobs to inner cities or motivate blacks to take what jobs there are and to stick with them? How can white people listening to black concerns do anything to fill the spiritual emptiness in many black lives?
These are the problems which, when they go unmet, lead to despair, degradation, and crime, but nothing whites can do will solve those problems. Only blacks themselves can solve them, and it's condescending of Ms. Clinton to suggest that blacks are unable to reverse these dysfunctions without white intervention.
She has a history of patronizing blacks, of course. Here she is, for example, evidently of the mind that unless she adopts a black tone of voice her audience won't listen to her: Hillary's just pandering to the African American community to gin up votes, but set that aside. Let's all, white and black, watch and listen to a talk show host named Stacey Washington. She makes a lot more sense, and says a lot more of value, than does Ms. Clinton.
