2016 Presidential Candidates on Race
On September 26th, 2016 we had our first presidential debate between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. The debate’s moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, explained the format would encompass six 15-minute segments exploring the areas of “achieving prosperity, America’s direction, and securing America”. Let us examine our presidential candidate’s take on race relations. Mr. Holt begins the “America’s direction” segment with this statement:
“The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it's been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we've seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa. Race has been a big issue in this campaign, and one of you is going to have to bridge a very wide and bitter gap. So how do you heal the divide?”
Mrs. Clinton introduced her methods for healing the divide by saying, “Unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system.” She then went on to explain, “We have to restore trust between communities and the police. We have to work to make sure that our police are using the best training, the best techniques, that they're well prepared to use force only when necessary. Everyone should be respected by the law, and everyone should respect the law.”
Mrs. Clinton ended her 2-minute response by explaining the leading cause of death for young African American men is gun violence. According to her “gun violence”, more appropriately stating; black-on-black crime, is a “big contributor to a lot of the problems that we’re seeing today.”
Mr. Trump’s response focused primarily on gun violence; stating,
“We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot. In Chicago, they've had thousands of shootings, thousands since January 1st. Thousands of shootings. And I'm saying, where is this? Is this a war-torn country? What are we doing? And we have to stop the violence. We have to bring back law and order.” Mr. Trump explained further that “you have to have stop-and-frisk” in order to bring the crime and murder rate down.
Do these candidates have a clear agenda on how to bring the topic of race relations into serious dialogue? Do we have to be concerned with the evidence that both candidates related racial divide issues in this country to black-on-black crime; basically implying it is the black/Latino community’s fault for the majority of their community’s problems?
Mrs. Clinton, after Trump’s response on the need for “law and order” to somehow fix the “racial divide”; explained, “it's really unfortunate that he paints such a dire negative picture of black communities in our country.” She continues, “the vibrancy of the black church, the black businesses that employ so many people, the opportunities that so many families are working to provide for their kids. There's a lot that we should be proud of and we should be supporting and lifting up.” Is this a positive light toward a need for race programs implemented within a presidential administration?
Lester Holt’s next question, directed to Mrs. Clinton, involved the implicit bias in policing; asking, “Do you believe that police are implicitly biased against black people?”
She responded, “I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other. And therefore, I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, you know, why am I feeling this way? But when it comes to policing, since it can have literally fatal consequences, I have said, in my first budget, we would put money into that budget to help us deal with implicit bias by retraining a lot of our police officers.”
Donald Trump frequently avoided these questions on race going back to mentioning the effectiveness of stop-and-frisk and assisting police with maintaining “law and order”. Hilary Clinton’s responses called for a sense of realism admitting the “systemic racism” and “implicit bias” among everyone, “not just police”.
Is this a sign of progress?
Do you believe either candidate will help the “implicit bias” or “inherent racism” within police departments and private institutions? Do you believe President Obama has done all he could to “heal the racial divide” within America? Thoughts?
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