On the Clintons and ‘listening’

benfell

It seems that Bill Clinton, campaigning for his wife, didn’t handle the situation well when a Black Lives Matter protester disrupted his appearance:

[Bill] Clinton sparked aggressive backlash on Thursday [April 7, 2016] for defending [his 1994 crime] bill after a group of protesters accused him and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of playing a key role in locking up blacks for minor drug offenses.

“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and send them out in the street to murder other African-American children,” he told the protesters. “Maybe you thought they were good citizens, she didn’t. She didn’t.”

“You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter,” he added. “Tell the truth.”[1]

Reacting on Facebook, Michelle Alexander wrote,

Bill Clinton says that he “almost” wants to apologize for his remarkable episode yesterday [April 7] — you know, when he embraced long-debunked, racially coded “super-predator” rhetoric, compared Black Lives Matter protestors to Republicans and insisted that they support murderers, and blamed his crime bill on black politicians. Personally, I am not demanding an apology from Bill Clinton. Instead, I would like to say thank you. Thank you, Bill, for giving the nation a ten-minute tutorial on everything that was wrong (and apparently remains wrong) with the “New Democrats” and their approach to racial politics.[2]

Alas, according to Alexander, “much of the mainstream media seems to be buying (yet again) much of what Bill was selling yesterday [April 7].”[3]

I would prefer to allow Blacks to speak for themselves and I have to emphasize that what I say in this post, I do not say in coordination with any Blacks, which is what Linda Alcott would recommend I do in this case.[4] For reasons I’ve previously explained, I do not speak here or anywhere as an “ally.”[5]

That said, I want to support and expand upon what Alexander has said. She is right but, because (I suspect) she was writing for her medium, her post offers little hint of just how right she is.

First, to the extent that Blacks and the poor have been disproportionately imprisoned in a deeply flawed system[6] that refuses to address underlying poverty and lack of opportunity,[7] and have instead been targeted in propaganda as scapegoats, objects of fear, and as “undeserving,”[8] they, their families, and their communities have been subject to profound additional harm.[9] I’m not sure it is even possible to grasp just how much harm has been done by the anti-crime and anti-welfare policies Bill Clinton signed into law and that his wife, Hillary, the current candidate, supported.[10] His formulation of human beings in a hierarchically invidious monism of “good” and “evil” shows that contrary to his “almost” apology on the day following his clash with Black Lives Matter,[11] he is not listening. And when his wife, with a couple extra days to think about it, emphasized only that “I think what Bill said is that we should all be listening to each other” and then claimed that she has “been listening,”[12] she demonstrates that she is still not listening.

Hillary Clinton is the likely Democratic Party nominee in a two-party system that silences other voices. She denies that she is an establishment candidate even though she collects vast amounts of Wall Street and fossil fuel industry funding,[13] has been first lady both of the state of Arkansas and in the White House, senator, and a secretary of state. Bill and Hillary Clinton are heard. They know they are being heard. So their plea to “listen to each other”[14] really means that they want to talk rather than listen. And if they were listening, they might be substantively responding to the enormous damage their policies have done.[15] Instead, they are blatantly disingenuous in their plea “that we should all be listening to each other.”[16]

  1. [1]Allegra Kirkland, “Bill Clinton Expresses Regret Over Clash With Black Lives Matter Protesters,” Talking Points Memo, April 8, 2016, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-clinton-addresses-clash-blm-protesters↩
  2. [2]Michelle Alexander, [Facebook post], Facebook, April 8, 2016, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=984486031639354&id=168304409924191↩
  3. [3]Michelle Alexander, [Facebook post], Facebook, April 8, 2016, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=984486031639354&id=168304409924191↩
  4. [4]Linda Martín Alcott, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” in Who Can Speak? Authority and Critical Identity, Judith Roof and Robyn Wiegman, eds. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1995), 97-119.↩
  5. [5]David Benfell, “Squatting on the University of Missouri quad,” Not Housebroken, November 11, 2015, https://disunitedstates.org/?p=8296↩
  6. [6]Dan Simon, In Doubt: The Psychology of the Criminal Justice Process (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2012).↩
  7. [7]Steven E. Barkan, Criminology: A Sociological Understanding, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006); Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).↩
  8. [8]Herbert J. Gans, The War Against The Poor: The Underclass And Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic, 1995).↩
  9. [9]Ernest Drucker, A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: New, 2011).↩
  10. [10]Musa al-Gharbi, “Hillary’s atrocious race record: Her stances over decades have been painful and wrong,” Salon, April 3, 2016, http://www.salon.com/2016/04/03/hillarys_atrocious_race_record_her_stances_over_decades_have_been_painful_and_wrong/; Peter Edelman, “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,” Atlantic, March, 1997, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97mar/edelman/edelman.htm; Alana Semuels, “The End of Welfare as We Know It,” Atlantic, April 1, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/↩
  11. [11]Michelle Alexander, “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote,” Nation, February 10, 2016, http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/; Charles M. Blow, “‘I’m Not a Super Predator,’” New York Times, February 29, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/opinion/im-not-a-super-predator.html; Allegra Kirkland, “Bill Clinton Expresses Regret Over Clash With Black Lives Matter Protesters,” Talking Points Memo, April 8, 2016, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/bill-clinton-addresses-clash-blm-protesters; Eliza Webb, “Hillary Clinton has a race problem — and it’s resurfacing at a dangerous time,” Salon, February 26, 2016, http://www.salon.com/2016/02/26/hillary_clinton_has_a_race_problem_and_its_resurfacing_at_a_dangerous_time/; Cornel West, “Why Brother Bernie Is Better for Black People Than Sister Hillary,” Politico, February 13, 2016, http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-african-americans-cornel-west-hillary-clinton-213627; ↩
  12. [12]Hillary Clinton, quoted in Sara Jerde, “Hillary Clinton Responds To Bill’s Clash With Black Lives Matter Protesters,” Talking Points Memo, April 10, 2016, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-responds-bill-black-lives-matter-protesters-exchange↩
  13. [13]Nicholas Confessore and Amy Chozick, “Wall Street Offers Clinton a Thorny Embrace,” New York Times, July 7, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/08wallst.html; Nick Confessore and Jason Horowitz, “Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches to Wall Street Animate Her Opponents,” New York Times, January 21, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/us/politics/in-race-defined-by-income-gap-hillary-clintons-wall-street-ties-incite-rivals.html; James Downie, “Hillary Clinton’s unbelievable defense of Wall Street contributions,” Washington Post, November 15, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/11/15/hillary-clintons-unbelievable-defense-of-wall-st-contributions/; Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger, and Anu Narayanswamy, “Clinton blasts Wall Street, but still draws millions in contributions,” Washington Post, February 4, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clinton-blasts-wall-street-but-still-draws-millions-in-contributions/2016/02/04/05e1be00-c9c2-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab993f_story.html; Patrick Healy, “Wall St. Ties Linger as Image Issue for Hillary Clinton,” New York Times, November 21, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/wall-st-ties-linger-as-image-issue-for-hillary-clinton.html; New York Times, “Hillary Clinton Botches Wall Street Questions,” November 15, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/opinion/hillary-clinton-botches-wall-street-questions.html; Nadia Prupis, “Greenpeace, Sanders Hold Ground Against Clinton in Fossil Fuel Feud,” Common Dreams, April 1, 2016, http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/01/greenpeace-sanders-hold-ground-against-clinton-fossil-fuel-feud; Janell Ross, “Hillary Clinton invoked 9/11 to defend her ties to Wall Street. What?” Washington Post, November 15, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/11/15/hillary-clinton-invoked-911-to-defend-her-ties-to-wall-street-what/↩
  14. [14]Sara Jerde, “Hillary Clinton Responds To Bill’s Clash With Black Lives Matter Protesters,” Talking Points Memo, April 10, 2016, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-responds-bill-black-lives-matter-protesters-exchange↩
  15. [15]Musa al-Gharbi, “Hillary’s atrocious race record: Her stances over decades have been painful and wrong,” Salon, April 3, 2016, http://www.salon.com/2016/04/03/hillarys_atrocious_race_record_her_stances_over_decades_have_been_painful_and_wrong/; Peter Edelman, “The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done,” Atlantic, March, 1997, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97mar/edelman/edelman.htm; Alana Semuels, “The End of Welfare as We Know It,” Atlantic, April 1, 2016, http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/↩
  16. [16]Hillary Clinton, quoted in Sara Jerde, “Hillary Clinton Responds To Bill’s Clash With Black Lives Matter Protesters,” Talking Points Memo, April 10, 2016, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-responds-bill-black-lives-matter-protesters-exchange↩

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