Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is likely to be a much better president for African Americans due to her personal interaction with the younger Black Lives Matter and older civil rights movements, and passion to do more than offer lip service, according to a top black scholar.
“If she continues to grow, and refuses to drink from the trough of white privilege, she may achieve something that neither Bill nor Barack can claim: a presidency built on racial transparency and honesty, one that doesn’t lecture black people about what they should do to get themselves together, but instead thrives on principled engagement with black suffering,” penned Georgetown professor and author Michael Eric Dyson in the New Republic.
Clinton with Rev. Jesse Jackson on newrepublic.com.
“In the weird, paradoxical politics of American race, Bill Clinton had greater permission to be black in public than Barack Obama, which is another way of saying it cost Obama far more political capital to revel in race the way Clinton did. No matter the cause, the effect of Obama’s limited ability to maneuver inside the perilous parameters of race means that an even more punishing paradox looms: A white woman shattering the barrier of gender may carry the baton of racial engagement further than he ever could, or did, or was willing to fight to do,” he added in the column titled “Yes she can: Why Hillary Clinton will do more for black people than Obama.”
Dyson writes of traveling with Clinton and watching her react with the Black Lives Matter movement, which approaches the politics of change much differently than the older civil rights movement.
Where Bill Clinton talked a good story about race, and Obama avoided so it didn’t look like he was playing favorites, Dyson wrote that Hillary Clinton is pushing policies that would help African Americans, especially younger blacks, making her a more significant political figure for them.
He also dismissed challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders’ outreach to younger blacks. “Despite the appeal of Bernie Sanders’s economic platform, and his growing sensitivity on race, he is going to lose. They want no part of him,” Dyson wrote.
“In a sense, Clinton has emerged at precisely what seems like a strikingly unpropitious moment. The boring, the tedious, the serious attention to the small gestures that make big impacts are ill-suited to the unruly temper of the times. But this perceived liability may be her strongest asset to the black masses: She can offer strict attention to policy that unapologetically plays to black needs without ever feeling pressure — as Obama has — to disown, to begrudge the style, of explicit black advance,” wrote Dyson.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
