Go into the homes of blacks of a certain age and you’ll see hanging on the wall in a prominent place the photos of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bill Clinton … who, early on in his tenure in the White House, was proclaimed by Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison “America’s First Black President.” I wonder what the author thought of him eight years later as he was leaving office?
In a craven — and successful — attempt to prevent Congressional Republicans from getting to the right of him (and thereby cast him as simply a “tax-and-spend” liberal), Clinton led the charge in terms of locking up more Americans of color — virtually creating the modern-day carceral state — than any other president either before or since. And for good measure, he yanked the social safety net out from under poor Americans, leading to a rash of infant deaths.
He put in place welfare reforms that were so severe and punitive that young mothers were taking the chance of leaving their children at home alone (one later cried, “My boyfriend said that he would be right over to baby sit!”) to go to their jobs out of fear of losing whatever meager benefits they were receiving if they didn’t show up for work. It was a number of years — and a larger number of deaths — before the Department of Health and Human Services finally took the simple step of providing vouchers for adequate childcare. It was only then that the deaths declined.
But my real beef with Bill is, why, upon his reelection, didn’t he attempt to undo some of the devastating and damaging policies he helped to put in place during his first four years in office? After all, he couldn’t run again. Or was he (and Hillary) — even back as far as his second term — contemplating her run?
As the 2008 and now 2016 presidential elections amply prove, of course they were. They are perhaps the most calculating couple in American history and probably the brightest to boot. Hillary has even alluded to a tepid apology of sorts directed at blacks for Bill’s betrayals, but she is somewhat fearful that a sincere apology to persons of color would hurt her with her white base.
Ah, American racial politics, and as I said, the Clinton’s always have their finely calibrated fingers in the wind.
But it’s because of that brightness, that skill level, and that sometimes disingenuousness that Americans of color should forgive the Clintons, even if we can’t forget their past transgressions against us. The plain and simple truth is, Hillary losing to Trump is too awful to contemplate. We have to hold our noses if we must, but we, for our own self-interest, have to vote for her.
And actually, a Trump victory would eventually prove to be worse for the white Americans that are championing him than it would be for persons and families of color. The math is simple: Those families that have more would stand to lose more from a failed presidency.
And no matter what the demagogue says on the campaign trail, he’s not going to be able to build a wall along our border with Mexico, let alone make them pay for it, nor is he going to bring China to heel. Thankfully, we would still have a Congress, no matter how much it’s currently despised by the American electorate.
What a Trump victory would do is to hasten the political realignment our country so desperately needs, even if it would be tantamount to “burning down the village to save it.” He would decimate the Republican Party, split it into two warring halves, something that many progressives posit wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
Even a Hillary victory would only forestall that realignment that the census (and the deep political divide in the country) so accurately predicts and portends. It’s just that with Hillary at the helm for eight years — followed by yet another Democrat 2024 that would be a true progressive — the havoc wrecked on the body politic would not be so devastating, so cataclysmic, so downright scary as a Trump presidency.
I know this is a long shot, but a Hillary victory perhaps would give those white Americans that are so fearful a chance to get used to the inevitable change that is coming — change they can only put off, change that’s barreling down the tracks like a freight train, change they can’t stop.
Hey, it’s not my fault white folks quit making white babies in sufficient numbers to continue to rule the country. So, for all of the aforementioned reasons, I’m willing to forgive the Clintons and vote for Hillary — even though I can never forget what Bill did.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.
2 Responses to “MANSFIELD: Forgiving the Clintons”
Bill Wiltrack
…I miss Barack already…
Kay F Lenear
I miss Barack already too. Maybe somehow…