- Aug 28, 2015
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First and foremost, Ta-Nehisi Coates is a brilliant journalist and I agree with him on the case for reparations. Everyone should read his groundbreaking piece in The Atlantic titled The Case for Reparations. It highlights why the African American experience is unique in every way, from slavery and Jim Crow, to the Civil Rights era and today's lasting effects in the black community from such devastating chapters in U.S. history.
Like Coates, I too wish Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley would support reparations (especially since African Americans vote over 90 percent Democrat), however this isn't the case. For the record, I support reparations.
However, when Coates asks why Bernie Sanders fails to address white supremacy, and completely ignores Hillary Clinton's "abysmal" record on racial justice, as well as numerous other ties held by both Clintons to the structural injustices currently faced by African Americans, Latinos, and other communities, then some context is needed.
There's only one leading Democratic candidate in 2016 who embodies white supremacy, privilege and financial ties to the economic and political system defining these concepts. The other leading Democratic candidate is named Bernie Sanders, and his political philosophy has been likened to Martin Luther King's by Dr. Cornell West, Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, and rap artist Killer Mike.
Therefore, let's look at why Hillary Clinton, not Bernie Sanders, should be singled out as furthering white supremacy and privilege.
Hillary Clinton ran a controversial 3 a.m. ad against Barack Obama in 2008 that Harvard's Orlando Patterson believes contained a "racist sub-message." Upon viewing the images within Clinton's political advertisement, Patterson wrote that "I couldn't help but think of D. W. Griffith's 'Birth of a Nation.'"
Read more
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/hillary-clinton-reparations_b_9047760.html