Editorial

Stop. Just...Stop. And Think.
By Woodrow Jarvis Hill


So what is it with the Clintons and Black People? Why even bring up talk like this:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.


...well, she's right about a pattern emerging. Just not the one she thinks -- Obama is actually gaining in that group of voters as Rust Belt contests go forward, as Andrew Sullivan points out.

I've tried to be fair. I've tried to be even handed. I've tried to realize that she's being hit by layers of sexism that aren't even being hinted about in the media, much less addressed (c.f. "tears"). People make mistakes. I'll make mistakes, time and again. Hell, it's a point that, perhaps, a man who's interests are such as mine are cannot also stand four-square as a Feminist*.

But enough is enough. Not only do two wrongs not make a right, but there comes a point where people of goodwill must step forward, and speak out against an ongoing trait, a disease that seems to infest her side of this race.
Who I am is informed by many things, but first and foremost, my experiences as a Man of Color. Without the starting gun of racing against a system bent against me, I don't know if I'd ever have seen the others running the same race. From Feminism to GLBT to Religious Freedom, and my current brooding over my "supposed ememy", so-called "rednecks" -- all these groups of Lesser Privliage have my suppport because I've seen what ingrained hate and fear can do, and not just to the Hated.

To Hillary Clinton:

When you run a race that digs itself further into the ground on racial issues, I'm forced to take notice, as is anyone paying close attention to the election. I'm forced to see the ongoing neglect of dealing with people on "your side" with regard to this issue -- from Bob Jonston to your husband to Ferraro -- as more than one-offs, more than missteps. It begins to hint of something systemic to how you see your chances, no matter how infetestimal, for this election. And given your history, given how much you and your husband have done for "my people", I can only imagine that you're doing and allowing these things to be said because it Wins Races.

This is politics, it's true. Sometimes nuance is lost, things are said in the heat of the moment, things are done for a Greater Good that look more than a little seedy and ugly at first. And it's true that you've had decades of slime, especially Sexist slime, thrown at you.

So I don't understand why you feel the urge to prove all the "politics of personal destruction" charges true. Why run a race that is doomed in ways that will only tar and slag your legacy? Is this how you wish to go down in history? Is this all that your years of hard work can, and will, amount to?

These discussions you keep having, about "states that count", and, now, "colors that count", they simply go against the core precepts of the Party who's standard you hope to bear. And moreover, they fan flames of division that many of us hoped your run, along with Senator Obama's, would help heal.

Yes, all this is a footnote in the great American Story. But it is now up to you, Senator Clinton, to decide how that footnote will read.

And I can only urge you, in the strongest of terms, to make it end on a positive, and uplifting, note.