Begging For The Black Vote In America

US, New York City – The overwhelming majority of African American voters in recent elections have sided with the Democratic Party, but to no avail. Across all indicators, conditions for Blacks in America have worsened. Blacks are the least employed, least educated, and most incarcerated group.

By all accounts, the Democratic Party has failed tremendously to uphold its promise to Black citizens, who have been gifting their votes and received nothing in return.

However, contemporary Black voters, particularly young people, demonstrate a greater understanding of their bottom caste status in an American society that falsely purports itself to be democratic. Young activists in the Black community have lately challenged politicians, in an attempt to hold them responsible – or else the community will withhold its vote.

As the US nears presidential primary season, Hillary Clinton, once again, finds herself in a bind. She, along with her husband, the former President Bill Clinton, have a despicable reputation in the eyes of African Americans. Under Bill Clinton’s administration, the mass incarceration epidemic became fully entrenched in American social policy.

Clinton solidified the War on Blacks that began with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. His presidency invited the privatization of prisons. For Bill Clinton, catching Black men and women and locking them away in jail for months, years, decades, life, or killing them in prison under the death penalty was just another way for capitalists to profit on Black bodies.

Hillary Clinton lobbied lawmakers to back the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994. Not only did the bill provide 9.7 billion US dollars in prison funding, it was the largest crime bill in US history. Subsequently, under the Clinton administration, from 1992 to 2000, the number of prisoners in the US increased nearly 60 percent.

Black Lives Matter Movement Activists confronted Hillary Clinton on this very matter, urging with her to own up to her role in African Americans’ disadvantaged situation in America today. They also asked where her heart was in the matter, what her mistakes were, and what she would do differently.

In true politician form, Hillary Clinton was unwilling to engage in that discussion with the African American youth. She took no ownership of her role in strengthening the prison industrial complex under the Clinton administration wherein so many African Americans’ lives were ruined.

In the interview with the activists, Hillary Clinton was just as passive and nonchalant as she was while millions of Black men and women lost precious spans of their life in jail, in prison, on parole, and on death row; meanwhile, Clinton’s prison investments and her Wall Street cronies raked in millions of dollars.

One Blacks Lives Matter activist said: “America’s first drug is freeing Black labor and turning Black bodies into profit.” The young activist further compared the mass incarceration system to the atrocities of American slavery.

In this vein, Bill and Hillary Clinton are modern day slave owners who brought slavery back to America. That is why there are beloved by their billionaire friends. That is why Bill Clinton got two terms of eight years in office. That is why the billionaires have been trying since 2008 to get Hillary into the presidency.

The ones who have already chosen who is going to be the next president anyway, the game being rigged and all. But unfortunately for Hillary, even with her silver spoon, she will need more than support from billionaires to sneak into the oval office. She will need support from both Black and Latino voters.

But Hillary feels that she is entitled to Black and Latino support. She does not feel she needs to earn their respect. She feels no remorse for putting so many Black and Latino people in prison. She is not sorry. There is ample blood on her hands, and she is proud.

Julius Jones, founder of Black Lives Matter chapter in Worcester, Massachusetts, said of Clinton:  “She was not willing to concede that the inherent anti-Blackness in the policies that were enacted to address problems is the cause of the problems we have today.”

Instead of addressing her role of destabilizing Black communities, Hillary Clinton instead felt she should assume a position of superiority over Black people. She talked down to the Black activists, lecturing them – the people who themselves are facing racism and discrimination – on race in America.

Hillary Clinton said: “There has to be some positive vision and plan that you can move people toward. Once you say, you know, this country has still not recovered from its original sin, which is true, once you say that, then the next question by people who are on the sidelines, which is the vast majority of Americans, the next question is, well so what do you want me to do about it? What am I supposed to do about it? That’s what I’m trying to put together in a way that I can explain it and I can sell it. Because in politics, if you can’t explain it and you can’t sell it, it goes on a shelf.”

In other words, Black people are getting shot by government workers (police) and Hillary Clinton wants the victims to come up with a plan to stop the brutality. She  wants Black people to solve the problem that whites, including whites in government, began and continue to prolong.

In a delusional breath, Clinton maintains that the majority of Americans are not involved in racism but “on the sidelines.” Clearly, she has no knowledge of white privilege. The majority of whites in America are not merely on any sidelines, but are benefiting from the War on Blacks – while Black people are being shot and put in jail, white people are getting jobs, buying houses, and starting families. The constant plundering, policing, and disruption of one group enables the other to thrive unfettered.

America’s problem is not being inclusive of Black people, but Hillary Clinton urges Black people, and not the person who wants to be president, to have a goal to solve America’s problem. She implicitly puts the burden of the problem on Black people. Her reasoning collides with Republican narratives of personal responsibility. Clinton thinks it is Black people’s responsibility to get white people to stop shooting them.

What use is a presidential candidate if every time you ask them about an issue, they retort: “Well so what do you want me to do about it? What am I supposed to do about it?”

All Black people in America want is to be treated like citizens and not to be target practice for capitalists’ bullets.

Black Lives Matter activists asked Hillary Clinton very simple questions: If you become president, are you going to stop the brutality or not? Are you going to stop putting Black people in prison or not? Are you going to stop shooting Black people are not?

Hillary Clinton would rather evade these direct questions. For Hillary Clinton, Black people, the prisoners of American injustice, should come together as a movement, work on solutions, and pass them to the warden.

The Democratic Party should have their hands full in their attempts to gain the Black vote during the 2015-2016 US presidential election season. For decades, white Democrats in the US have taken the voting loyalties of most African Americans for granted.

After this conversation with Black Lives Matter activists, there are no further questions the Black community should have for Hillary Clinton. Black Lives Matter activists no longer need to chase her and ask for answers. If Hillary Clinton wants the Black vote, she should come to the Black community and tell us what she has done for us lately – not a mere attendance at a civil rights rally in the 1960s – and what she can do for us now.

All we can conclude from this discussion is that since Bill Clinton was in office, nothing has changed in heart and mind of the mass incarceration queen, Hillary Clinton.

Through her blind eyes, Hillary Clinton sees no link between the Clinton administration’s policies and the social problems of Black mass incarceration. She sees no wrongdoing in her actions. We can only conclude that since Hillary Clinton sees no evil in her actions, she should also see no reason to get Black votes in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.