EDITORIAL
Clinton’s barefaced racism
Published May 14, 2008 11:52 PM
In previous editorials this election year, we’ve predicted that in an U.S.
election featuring a Black man as a viable candidate for president, the racism
of both bourgeois parties would increasingly expose itself—requiring a
response and defense of Sen. Barack Obama against racist attacks, despite his
politics. Recent remarks—by no less than his Democratic
opponent—seem to confirm that assessment.
In a May 6 interview with USA Today—one of the most widespread newspapers
in the country—presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said: “I have
a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” citing a Associated
Press article that, according to her, “found how Sen. Obama’s
support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening
again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were
supporting me.” She continued to explain, “These are the people you
have to win if you’re a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win
the election. Everybody knows that.”
Said a day after she faced defeat in the North Carolina primary and a narrow,
two-point-margin victory in Indiana, Clinton’s words hearken back to the
“good old days” of the Democratic Party’s “Southern
strategy.” That strategy attempted to appeal to white voters on the most
racist terms, saying in essence that whites would not vote even for a candidate
favoring the Black population, let alone, today, a Black candidate. Clinton
even took it a step farther when she differentiated the whites who would vote
for her as the “hard-working Americans.”
Stumping for Hillary Clinton in Clarksburg, W.Va., on May 1, former President
Bill Clinton expressed similar sentiments, while attempting to downplay the
racism in them: “The great divide in this country is not by race or even
income, it’s by those who think they are better than everyone else and
think they should play by a different set of rules. In West Virginia and
Arkansas, we know that when we see it.” (Associated Press, May 2)
The very fact that Obama did so well in these two Southern states, mainly among
workers in the cities, shows the fallacy of the Clintons’ racist
arguments.
It’s not surprising that the corporate media have expressed few
denunciations of these false statements compared to the amount of criticism
that followed Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s valid comments on race and justice.
As part and parcel of the capitalist system, the corporate media message is
always the same—let the ruling class whip up racism; it’s a favored
tactic to keep the working class divided. But let the masses call that racism
out, and they must be silenced.
Every election year, capitalist-party candidates try to come across as
“feeling the pain” of working people and as somehow authorized to
speak for them. Once they’re elected into office, though, their actions
rarely reflect the rhetoric. Hillary Clinton should know this best. Her spouse,
Bill Clinton, signed the so-called “welfare reform” bill that cut
off public assistance for some 5 million people—mostly children and their
mothers. Those classified as either Black or white were affected in almost
equal numbers. The result was a huge increase in child poverty. His
administration also ushered in the North American Free Trade Agreement, which
brought reduced wages and sweatshop conditions to workers throughout North
America.
The only time the message of real working people is brought to light in the
corporate media, or reflected in bourgeois politics, is when the people
themselves put up a struggle that can’t be ignored. In a time of economic
crisis affecting all workers, it’s all the more reason to reject racism
and all attempts to divide the working class—because it takes the unity
of all workers to effectively and victoriously fight the system that oppresses
us.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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