2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThis is an honest question and I expect honest answers. Please and Thank You.
It seems to me there is a warm and firm bond between the Clintons and African American community.
What are some of the specific pro AA things the Clintons have done (either or both) that has the African American community so attracted to and trusting of the Clintons?
I personally can't name any but I am sure their must be some.
I have also heard Bill Clinton was called the first Black President. Why?
As a Sander's supporter I would like to hear about these things so I can better understand Hillary Clinton's rock solid support with this demographic.
Also can I please request refraining from any negative Clinton feedback in this thread? There are many other threads for negative feedback but I would like to keep this thread positive and informative.
randys1
(16,286 posts)but I am not African American so I wont speak for anybody.
How I know it is insincere or at a minimum laced with contempt:
rock solid support
dead giveaways
Agschmid
(28,749 posts)randys1
(16,286 posts)Agschmid
(28,749 posts)randys1
(16,286 posts)Reminds me of the time I posted on my old Randi Rhodes board that I was a racist.
I explained that as a white person in America, I am by default, by definition, and that I am working not to be, just like as a male I am misogynist, by default, and so on and so on.
One of my best Black friends who has since died, dammit, responded to "I am racist" with "There's a cure for that"
you reminded me of Greg, my friend, thanks for that
portlander23
(2,078 posts)onenote
(42,700 posts)Bill Clinton appointed 9 African Americans to cabinet level positions during his 8 years; his initial Cabinet had five African Americans, including the first African Americans to be named to head the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Veterans Affairs.
Clinton name more African-Americans to the federal judiciary in his eight years than had been named in the previous 16 years combined.
Fourteen percent of Clinton's presidential appointees were African American.
By the way, I found this by searching the Internet for about 90 seconds. Which is why I question the sincerity of your raising the issue. If you really wanted the information, you could have found it without waiting for someone else to dig it up for you.
Also, you might google Toni Morrison and Clinton to find out why Bill was sometimes referred to as the First Black President.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)African American was at its lowest level in a generation under President Clinton:
Poverty which disproportionately affects African Americans and Latinos was at its lowest level in a generation under President Clinton:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-since-1990/
African American home ownership was at its highest level in a generation under President Clinton:
Bread and Circus
(9,454 posts)TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)so what?
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)What does that have to do with the fact that the poverty level and African American unemployment was at its lowest level in a generation and African American home ownership was at its highest level in a generation under President Clinton?
In the future, please respond to what I wrote and not what you would have wanted me to have written.
Thank you in advance.
DianeK
(975 posts)and you are duped by his art
Bread and Circus
(9,454 posts)First off I am sincere. Second if I just googled this info how am I to know what to trust? There is a lot of crap. Third off apparently this was a good exercise for you because it appears you learned something too. And finally if I just googled it myself we wouldn't have this thread to share with the rest of the board.
If you think I am insincere because I argue with people because I think they are wrong then you just don't know mw well enough.
I am nothing if not fair.
Response to onenote (Reply #7)
Awknid This message was self-deleted by its author.
JaneyVee
(19,877 posts)This doesn't even include her civil rights work, senate work, coalition building, or fighting AIDS in Africa: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1251703663
Bread and Circus
(9,454 posts)Uncle Joe
(58,355 posts)African American community.
The police and African American community have gotten along swell since then.
Bill Clintons claim that 100,000 cops sent the crime rate way down
A bigger debate has taken place over whether the COPS program had much of an impact on the crime rate. The results vary depending on whether the research is done by a criminologist or an economist, or from within the government or outside of it. But overall the answer is maybebut only modestly.
(snip)
The Pinocchio Test
The former president asserts too much cause and effect here. He did put (maybe) 100,000 police officers on the street; the crime rate did go way down. But COPS program was not the primary or even secondary factor in the dramatic reduction in crime during the 1990s the precise reasons for which remain a mystery. (One analyst even has posited that the legalization of abortion in 1973 played an important but rarely understood role two decades later.)
We wavered between two and three Pinocchios, but ultimately settled on Three. While some studies have found a modest impact on the crime rate, Clintons statement clearly suggested the COPS program was the primary reason for the fact the crime rate went way down. He needs to be more careful about how he frames the impact.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/09/26/bill-clintons-claim-that-100000-cops-sent-the-crime-rate-way-down/
My own gut feeling about the crime rate drop and it's not mentioned in the WAPO article is that demographics also played a role as the nation got older with baby boomers aging.
Bill also supported three strikes and you're out legislation, this also had a positive effect on the African American community, I'm sure many are praising it to this day.
Clinton Hails 'Three Strikes' Sentence : Crime: He says federal life term proves worth of the bipartisan-backed crime bill. He urges similar support to adopt his anti-terrorism legislation.
(snip)
The President argued that Congress should summon the same bipartisan spirit responsible for passage of last year's crime bill to enact this year's anti-terrorism measure, welfare reform and other legislation backed by the White House.
(snip)
"Just a year ago this week we ended six years of partisan stalemate in Washington by pushing a tough, sweeping crime bill through the Congress. Narrow interest groups on the left and the right didn't want the bill to pass, and you can be sure the criminals didn't either," Clinton said. Law enforcement officials supported the measure, he said, "and so did I, because it puts the government firmly on the side of the people who abide by the law, not the criminals who break it."
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-08-20/news/mn-37177_1_federal-crime-bill
Welfare Reform in the 1996 election year also helped the African American Community and women, by "breaking the cycle of dependency" particulary that of single mothers although some people disagree with this.
In 1996, after constructing two welfare reform bills that were vetoed by President Clinton,[18] Gingrich and his supporters pushed for the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), a bill aimed at substantially reconstructing the welfare system. Introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr., the act gave state governments more autonomy over welfare delivery, while also reducing the federal government's responsibilities.
It started the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which placed time limits on welfare assistance and replaced the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. Other changes to the welfare system included stricter conditions for food stamps eligibility, reductions in immigrant welfare assistance, and recipient work requirements.[19]
(snip)
President Clinton found the legislation more conservative than he would have preferred; however, having vetoed two earlier welfare proposals from the Republican-majority Congress, it was considered a political risk to veto a third bill during a campaign season with welfare reform as a central theme.[18] As he signed the bill on August 22, 1996, Clinton stated that the act "gives us a chance we haven't had before to break the cycle of dependency that has existed for millions and millions of our fellow citizens, exiling them from the world of work. It gives structure, meaning and dignity to most of our lives".[20]
(snip)
Frances Fox Piven said that the problem with AFDC was not a problem with the welfare system, but with low-wage work:
Logically, but not in the heated and vitriolic politics created by the attack on welfare, a concern with the relationship of welfare to dependency should have directed attention to the deteriorating conditions of the low-wage labor market. After all, if there were jobs that paid living wages, and if health care and child care were available, a great many women on AFDC would leap at the chance of a better income and a little social respect.[29]
Three assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mary Jo Bane, Peter B. Edelman, and Wendell E. Primus, resigned to protest the law.[30] According to Edelman, the 1996 welfare reform law destroyed the safety net. It increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters, and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely. It moved mothers and children from welfare to work, but many of them are not making enough to survive. Many of them were pushed off welfare rolls because they didn't show up for an appointment, because they could not get to an appointment for lack of child care, said Edelman, or because they were not notified of the appointment.[31][32]
Feminist critics, such as Barbara Ehrenreich, said that PRWORA was motivated by racism and misogyny, using stereotypes of lazy, overweight, slovenly, sexually indulgent and "endlessly fecund" African-American welfare recipients. PRWORA assumed that out-of-wedlock births were "illegitimate" and that only a male could confer respectability on a child, said Ehrenrich. PRWORA dismissed the value of the unpaid work of raising a family, and insisted that mothers get paid work, "no matter how dangerous, abusive, or poorly paid".[33]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act
These are just a few examples with Bill and like minded Democrats reaching across the aisle to the Republicans in order to benefit the African American community.
Thanks for the thread, Bread and Circus.
BlueCheese
(2,522 posts)Here's an article:
http://www.salon.com/2002/02/21/clinton_88/
Bread and Circus
(9,454 posts)Cut me some slack... but that single parent and eatin' McDonald's is my childhood too. I just always thought that was just being poor. I didn't know it was a black thing.
Anyways yeah I don't have much to add. Just wanted to throw that out there.
I liked the article though. Thanks for the link.