The most vicious slur against Democrats that I can recall —the crime-bill myth — is an inside job. Even more unnerving, it’s perpetrators are all sincerely trying to prevent racism. They’re just misinformed.
The crime-bill myth:
The 1994 crime bill initiated or dramatically increased the imprisonment of Blacks as a substitute for the Jim Crow laws overturned by MLK and LBJ. And this was done to win a few racist White votes for Bill Clinton and the Democrats.
That’s horrible! I mean it would have been horrible if it were even slightly true. And since it’s not, it’s about the most horrible slur in the history of the Democratic Party.
This matters now more than ever. Joe Biden was the bill’s main author and started working on it a couple of years before Clinton was elected. And remember what they did to Hillary Clinton who had almost nothing to do with it.
Well maybe you don’t, so let me remind you.
Hillary Clinton was too busy trying to pass universal health care to even think about the crime bill. But a year and a half later, in 1996, she was concerned with the huge spike in violence by children who were being recruited by drug gangs. Newsweek called these gun-toting kids “super-predators” and Clinton repeated the term pointing out that this problem crossed ethnic divides saying the FBI was taking on this problem as it had taken on the Mafia.
But MSNBC showed an out-of-context video clip of her, plainly dated 1996, and claimed it showed Clinton trying to pass the 1994 crime bill — just repeating a mythical charge by Black Lives Matter. The Atlantic did the same when Ta-Nehisi Coates published an attack making the same false charge. And Bernie Sanders told a Black audience that Clinton called all Black people super-predators. No one stood up and defended her.
From there the radical-left myth was picked up for a Trump TV ad and then used by Trump in the first Presidential debate. And then the Russians used it on social media.
So what are they going to do to Biden? I hope the radical left will treat him more kindly, but much damage has been done. Biden was attacked in the primary debates based on the crime-bill myth, and at least half the Democrats are convinced that myth is basically true.
This will make it easy for Trump to again use that myth, this time against Biden, to suppress Democratic voter turnout — which is our key to winning. With radical Democratic backing, Trump’s charge will carry vastly more weight with Democrats.
If we all knew the crime bill myth was malarkey and that Biden, the Clintons, and Sanders were not racist and were, in fact, siding with the Black community, we would all dismiss such phony charges from Trump just as we dismiss all the rest of his lies.
How Can We Undo the Damage?
We simply need to spread the word to Democrats, especially those who continue with the false accusations, about what really happened back in 1994. And to do that we need a short, dramatic, easy-to-remember list of facts that have an emotional impact and prove the myth is pure malarky. So let me show you what my research has turned up.
- Most Blacks (58%) including leading African-American Ministers, the major Black mayors and 2/3 of the radical Black Congressional Caucus favored the bill.
- If it was racist to favor the bill, then most black leaders were racists wanting to reinstate Jim Crow. Malarkey!
- The Black (and White) imprisonment rate had already been on the rise for 20 years. But five years after the bill was passed, that slowed immediately and came to a halt in five years, while for whites it continued for another 15 years.
- A bill that starts just before the end of increasing imprisonment cannot be the cause of it.
- If Blacks fare better than Whites under the bill, it was not racists. Double Malarkey.
- To get the Democratic bill passed, the Democrats had to get five Republican Senators to vote for it. Those five essentially had veto power over the bill. Most compromises with them were made to get the features the Black community wanted most.
- The radical left never ever mentions Republicans and blames everything on Democrats. That’s Malarkey.
Many more points can be made, but those, I think, are the big three. I document them below, but you might like to read Chapter 6: The Crime Bill Myth, which is available here as a free download for your smartphone (your email address not required). That’s from my new book, Ripped Apart: How Democrats Can Fight Polarization to Win.
Blacks Favored the 1994 Crime Bill
The Nation, a radical-left magazine, tells us, “Representative Ron Dellums, co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, voted against it.” But it just happened to leave out that another 23 members of the Black Caucus, including its chairman, voted for the bill. Only 11 voted against it.
Right after saying Dellums voted against the bill, The Nation tells us: “So did 34 Senators,” as if those Senators had been liberal Democrats who agreed with Ron Dellums. In fact, every one of them was a Republican.
This is how the radicals convince us of their mythology but leaving out crucial facts to distort our view history.
So why did the Black Caucus favor the crime bill? The best answer to this question may be a letter sent to the White House by 39 African-American religious leaders from around the country.
STATEMENT BY AFRICAN-AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LEADERS
We believe there is no more important responsibility of society than to raise its children to become upstanding adults. … All of society—including government—must pitch in. That is why we support the President’s crime bill. While we do not agree with every provision in the crime bill,
● We do believe and emphatically support the bill’s goal to save our communities, and most importantly, our children.
● We believe and support the $8 billion in the bill to fund prevention programs such as grants for recreation, employment, and anti-gang and comprehensive programs to steer our young people away from crime.
● We believe in drug treatment to help get federal and state inmates out of the cycle of dependency.
● We believe in programs to fight violence against women.
● We believe in banning assault weapons and preventing these deadly devices from falling into the hands of criminals and drug dealers.
● We believe in putting 100,000 well-trained police officers on the streets of our most violence-plagued communities and urban areas.
● We believe that 9-year-olds like James Darby of New Orleans, who was killed by a stray bullet only days after writing a plea to President Clinton to stop the violence, must have the opportunity to live and learn and grow in safe, decent communities.
For all these reasons, we support the crime bill and we urge others to join us in this crusade.
Although this letter has been widely reported and is easily available, I have never found it reported by the radical-left myth makers.
Another endorsement that is suppressed came near the end of the negotiations over the bill. In July, 10 Black mayors wrote to Black Caucus Chairman Kweisi Mfume saying, “We cannot afford to lose the opportunities this bill provides to the people of our cities.” The signatories included the mayors of Detroit, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Denver.
Shortly before the bill was passed, the homicide victimization rate for Black males 14 and older was more than eight times higher than it was for White males in the same age range. This is why Black communities were so anxious to have more policing. They were not being foolish and they were not falling for an evil Democratic plot. They were facing a vastly worse crime problem than was the White population.
The thrust of the crime bill was to support community policing. That’s what inner-city communities wanted, and what was found to work better.
more to come
Ripped Apart
