This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ʻwoke’ and all that stuff. You should get over that quickly.
―President Barack Obama, October 29, 2019
About a week before the Democrats’ 2016 Super Tuesday primaries, Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizer Ashley Williams spent $500 on a ticket. “I shut down a private Hillary Clinton Fundraiser last night in Charleston, South Carolina,” bragged Williams as she recounted her notorious escapade.
“She [Clinton] said that ‘we need to bring them to heel.’” To Ashley, this proved that Clinton was “pathologizing, demonizing and also criminalizing Black youth.” She added, “I found these comments really racist,” apparently after having watched the viral version of a video that had been stripped of context.
The new identity politics targeted Hillary Clinton, who got 94% of the votes cast by Black women, only 2% shy of Barack Obama’s percentage. Those four-million Black women knew what they were doing.
Bill Maher said at the time of this incident, “You people [William’s supporters] need to learn the difference between an imperfect friend and a deadly enemy. You want to tear Hillary Clinton down? Great, then enjoy President Trump.” The new identity politics has escaped from the campus and is damaging Democratic and national politics. Its adherents have good intentions but don’t know what they’re doing.
That’s not the only reason this is the dark side of identity politics. The Williams/BLM attack on Clinton was likely the result of a setup by a high-powered political consultant who was able to manipulate the dark dynamics of identity politics. I’ll return to that shortly. First, let’s see how Williams and BLM went wrong.
The Clinton Attack
Soon after the confrontation at the Clinton fundraiser, Williams appeared in a seven-minute segment on MSNBC. She told the host, Tamron Hall, “We cannot continue to pretend that Hillary Clinton wasn’t involved in laying the foundation for mass incarceration in our society.” (Actually, that was done by Richard Nixon in 1972.)
Ashley Williams, just like Bernie Sanders and Ta-Nehisi Coates (see chapter 7), quotes some of Clinton’s words, but they are completely out of context. Then she interprets them as racist, asserts evil intentions and finally charges Clinton with causing mass incarceration.
Clinton’s accusers concluded that Clinton was deliberately being evil to further her and her husband’s political careers. That’s right, Williams and Coates believed that the Clintons grossly insulted Blacks—the most loyal part of their base—and effectively sent a million to prison in order to win racist votes.
The only thing missing? Evidence.
Evidence
I’ve made some strong claims: Hillary Clinton did not call Black people super-predators, nor did she lay the foundation for their mass incarceration. To avoid the failing I accuse Williams of, I must back up these claims with solid evidence. That’s only fair. So bear with me as I check Williams’ three assertions during her interview. These are:
- Clinton called Black people in general super-predators.
○ “You called Black people ‘super-predators.’ I’m not a super-predator, Hillary Clinton.”
- Clinton used that term in 1994 (which implies she did it to support the crime bill).
○ “I know that you called Black youth super-predators in 1994.”
- Clinton is responsible for mass incarceration.
○ “We want you to apologize for mass incarceration.” Hillary Clinton was “involved in laying the foundation for mass incarceration in our society.”
Assertion 1: Super-predators. In her 1996 news conference, Clinton referred to gangs, then mentioned “the mob” (mainly Italian) and drug cartels (mainly Latin American) and then said, “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predators.” She never once mentioned race, and only spoke of super-violent kids, not kids in general, and certainly not nonviolent adults as Williams implied when she said, “I’m not a super-predator, Hillary Clinton.”
But why was “super-predators” even a topic? The reason is the crime wave that underlies this story.
Between 1985 and the early 1990s, a dramatic violent crime wave really did sweep through both White and Black communities. It hit males under 25, particularly teenage males under 18. This was largely the result of a crack cocaine epidemic and easier access to guns. The results can best be seen in the Bureau of Justice’s homicide statistics.
As the table shows, for males under 18, White homicides and White homicide victims more than doubled in eight years, which is horrible enough. But the Black community, which started out with much higher crime rates, saw the homicide rate nearly quintuple and the victimization rate triple.
As a result, everyone from Jesse Jackson to the FBI to academics and Hillary Clinton became focused on teenage violence. Of course, inner-city Blacks were most distraught about their children killing and dying for drug gangs. That’s why Clinton was talking about federal programs to bring this situation under control. These programs were generally supported by Black communities. But where did she get that awful term, super-predators?
Visiting New Jersey’s maximum-security prison, John Dilulio, one of the more sensationalist academics, spoke to a life-term Black inmate who told him, “I was a bad-ass street gladiator, but these kids are stone-cold predators.” Dilulio took this vivid phrase, “stone-cold predator” and turned it into the comic-book moniker, “super-predator.”
Dilulio used his new term in the title of his November 1995 essay, “The Coming of the Super-Predators.” Newsweek picked it up for a December 1995 issue and used it again a month later. Just days later, Hillary Clinton used it at a press conference.
Dilulio acknowledged the problem was worst for inner-city Black communities. But he also pointed out that there were 200 teenage Latino gangs in L.A. and that some White working-class fathers in Philadelphia were asking their district attorney what she was “going to do to control their children.” I cannot find any evidence of anyone using the term as a code word for Blacks in general or even for Black children or violent Black children.
The modern concept of “super-predator” as a code word for all Black children or, as Ashley Williams implied, for all Blacks, may have originated with Bernie Sanders and his high-paid campaign strategist—I’m coming to that soon.
Assertion 2: Was it 1994? When Williams “shut down” Clinton’s fund-raiser, she accused Clinton by saying, “I know that you called Black youth super-predators in 1994.” Broadcast journalist Tamron Hall echoed this on MSNBC, saying, “Ashley Williams confronted Hillary Clinton over the word [super-predator] … when she was advocating for a landmark crime bill signed in 1994 by then-President Bill Clinton.”
To illustrate this, Tamron showed the same video clip I discussed in Chapter 7 with reference to Ta-Nehisi Coates. As you will recall, the clip clearly shows the date as 01-28-96. So both disruptor Williams and MSNBC host Tamron were off by two years. Neither The Atlantic nor MSNBC did even the simplest fact check of a damning but obviously wrong claim. That is how the new identity politics gains traction.
Hillary Clinton could not have used the term to lobby for the crime bill, as the term had not been invented yet. Besides, in 1994, she was totally absorbed with her attempt to pass universal healthcare.
Assertion 3: Mass incarceration? Williams said, “We [BLM] want you to apologize for mass incarceration.” Then on MSNBC, she said, “Tamron, we cannot continue to pretend that Hillary Clinton wasn’t involved in laying the foundation for mass incarceration in our society.”
It’s not a matter of pretending. Clinton played no part whatsoever in “laying the foundation for mass incarceration” for any number of reasons, including:
- Mass incarceration started 20 years before she arrived.
- Mass incarceration quadrupled before the 1994 crime bill, and the combined federal and state imprisonment rate for Blacks (but not for Whites) stopped increasing five years after it passed.
- Hillary did not persuade any members of Congress to vote for the bill.
- Joe Biden had been working on the bill for two years before Bill Clinton was elected.
- Had the Democrats not passed the 1994 bill, it is absolutely certain the Republicans would have passed a bill with more money for prisons and less for inner-city programs.
All that Williams and BLM seem to know about mass incarceration is that (1) it happened, and (2) it’s a bad thing.
Enter the Dark-Side Consultant
Tamron twice asked why Sanders was not getting equal treatment, considering that he actually voted for the 1994 bill. Williams twice gave a scripted non-answer. Here’s the real story.
You may recall Tad Devine from Chapter 18. He worked for Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, in support of a Ukrainian dictator. Then Devine became Sanders’ chief strategist. In an October 2015 article, Bloomberg News reported “he [Devine] is already familiar with the array of issues that Sanders might soon deploy against Clinton” and that the “Sanders camp has also been combing the record of Clinton’s statements.”
Devine himself said at that time, “Her remarks back then about the evils of urban gangs filled with ‘super-predators’ with ‘no conscience, no empathy’ are unlikely to endear her to the Black Lives Matter movement.” Tad Devine and Bernie Sanders, in October 2015, were already thinking about using Black Lives Matter to attack Clinton.
Three months later, Sanders came out with his “Racial Justice” position paper—a perfect title for attracting racial-justice activists. That paper stated, “We must address the lingering unjust stereotypes that lead to the labeling of Black youths as ‘thugs’ and ‘super-predators.’” Apparently, Ashley Williams, a Sanders supporter, took the bait.
Sanders’ Roles in 1994 and 2016
Disturbingly, Sanders knew the score. He knew that most Blacks supported the 1994 bill, including two-thirds of the Black Congressional Caucus. He knew that he himself had spoken on the floor of the House multiple times in support of the crime bill.
- “Many of us are in agreement that the 100,000 new police officers are going to be a real help.”—Sanders, January 14, 1994
- “The State of Vermont will receive … $6.5 million for drug and crime enforcement; $3 million for our cities and towns …”—Sanders, April 11, 1994
When Sanders first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006, his campaign website declared:
Note that $186 billion is six times the size of the 1994 crime bill. On the floor of the House, arguing for the bill, he had said:
“It is my firm belief that clearly there are people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them.”
—Sanders, April 13, 1994
The term super-predator had not yet been invented, and I’m not saying Sanders was wrong, but this is not much different than what Clinton said, except that his “put behind bars” is harsher than her “brought to heel.” And Sanders actually was using “deeply sick and sociopathic” to help sell the 1994 crime bill.
In April 2016, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Sanders was asked what he thought about Bill Clinton defending his wife’s use of “super-predator.” Sanders replied, “We all know what the term meant in the context that it was said years ago. We know who they were talking about.” Someone in the audience yelled, “Black people.” And Sanders said, “That’s exactly right.”
But it wasn’t right, and he knew it. He knew the term referred to violent kids of any ethnicity caught up in murderous violence and not to “Black people.” Bernie Sanders lied. It’s that simple.
Once again, a White guy and his megabucks political trickster had conned a Black audience. It’s well worth noting that nationally, few Blacks fell for such nonsense.
Conclusion
MLK’s civil-rights-based identity politics and today’s new “identity politics” are polar opposites. One built alliances with liberals to fight against society’s most conservative forces, and the other—“identity politics”—attacks liberals. One moves us forward; the other polarizes us.
Because the new identity politics is so often focused on finding fault with “imperfect friends,” it’s easy for dark-side political strategists like Tad Devine to use it against even the best Democrats. Once again, polarization only hurts democracy and helps Trump.
Ripped Apart
