Hillary Clinton to Young Black Voter Asking About Diversity: âWhy Donât You Go Run For Something, Thenâ
At a Tuesday campaign stop in Minnesota, Hillary Clinton was stopped by a young Somali-American voter who had some questions about the Dem frontrunnerâs past remarks about race and diversity policy. Though itâs difficult to hear, the moment gets measurably more tense when Clinton says, âYou know what dear, we have a different opinion,â regarding Abdi Warsame, a Somali-American Minneapolis City Council representative, which does not seem to impress the young woman.
As the clearly skeptical but quite calm voter speaks with Clinton, Mark Dayton, the Governor of Minnesota,* tries to usher her away. âWe gotta give somebody else a chanceâ to speak to Clinton, he says, clearly trying to diffuse a situation that seems to be going down an unfavorable path for her. Clinton, though, keeps talking as the young woman expresses her dissatisfaction with Warsame. âWell, why donât you go run for something, then?â she says.
Phrased any other way, in any other context, Clinton might have been encouraging a young woman to run for office. In this case, though, she comes off as lightweight hostile to an even-keeled black voter who has some very valid questions about Clintonâs history with black constituentsâincluding, according to The Hill, a question about her damaging 1996 speech calling black youth âsuper-predatorsâ (which Clinton recently denounced).
The voter responds with what sounds like, âI am working for a Somali American. Thank you.â
âWell, good!â says Clinton, laughing awkwardly.
The not-quite-confrontation comes at a time when Clinton is trying to appeal to black voters while atoning for past actions that alienated themâactions that arenât easily forgotten. The âsuper-predatorâ speech in particular was part of her public support for then-President Bill Clintonâs tough 1994 crime billâwhich led to the current epidemic of mass incarceration for blacks and Latinos that plagues the United States to this day.
Last week, after a Black Lives Matter protestor in South Carolina confronted her about the âsuper-predatorâ speech, Clinton told the Washington Post in a statement, âLooking back, I shouldnât have used those words, and I wouldnât use them today⊠We need to end the school-to-prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.â
Update, 1:45 PM: The Minneapolis City Pages identifies the woman in the video as Stacey Rosana, a Black Lives Matter activist and Democratic organizer who is working on a campaign for Ilhan Omar, a progressive, 33-year-old Somali-American refugee running for Minneapolis House District 60B. If Omar wins, she will become the first Somali-American Muslim woman ever elected to public office.