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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

This sort of "all blacks must be poor and perpetually victims of racism" narrative was exploited very well during the Democratic Primary by the Hillary campaign. And then Trump happened. It was and is shameful.

And yet, the fact is that among those 75% of blacks who aren't poor, a much higher ratio of them as compared with whites (even poorer whites) will fall victim to a great many life-impacting negatives, from poorer quality of treatment by medical professionals to discrimination in finance. The difference is definitely related to racism.

Also, his anecdote certainly isn't typical for poor folks or black folks, and especially not poor black folks. Overall he has a decent point regarding the "poor, racism beaten" stereotype, but it's not very well argued, in my view.

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I don't recall Hillary Clinton ever pushing the "all blacks must be poor and perpetually victims of racism" narrative. If anything that sounds like a caricature to me considering Donald Trump said the following.

> “You’re living in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?”

I mean, one candidate was recruiting campaign surrogates to get out the black vote while the other was asking black people "what do you have to lose?" I don't see much of a comparison.

I think that there's an argument to be made that Hillary didn't rally the Black vote well enough, because she assumed that it would transfer to her as part of a new permanent Democratic majority instead of being an artifact of enthusiasm for the first Black president. In other words, she took them for granted. I didn't see much pandering from her at all. The most shameful race-related story of the Democratic side was when Bernie was libeled as a racist by Black activists with thinly disguised connections to the Clinton campaign.

Hillary made strategic missteps, I don't think that portraying Blacks as victims was one of them.

Your point may be that the Democrats have played this game too long and turned off working-class whites, creating an opening for a populist, politically incorrect Republican who only has to agree to keep his hands off of Social Security and Medicare and he's "liberal enough." I think there's some truth to that.

Hillary didn't rally the black vote well enough during the general, but that's one failing among many of hers as a candidate in that election. I was referring specifically to the campaign for the nomination, in which she and her campaign successfully cast Bernie as a racist, as you note, and did so in part by portraying him as though he thought poverty caused racism instead of racism contributing to the poverty of black folks. There were other factors at play (e.g. Lewis' remarks about not remembering seeing Bernie around during civil rights protests and activities), but those are separte, if related, issues.

But, yes, you are also spot on regarding the Democrats' malfeasance in "play[ing] this game too long," too.

Interesting. I wonder if the Clinton campaign tried to get too clever against Bernie by dividing his support -- tell Blacks he's not committed to civil rights, tell Hispanics he's anti-immigration, tell women his supporters are all "Bernie Bros." This way, it would be hard for him to catch fire outside of white males, making the math hard for him. She may have won the battle but lost the war: the message that she's not the candidate for the white working class resonated too well, and she didn't do enough to pivot back to the Rust Belt when it mattered -- giving Trump an opening to "pick the lock" on the great Democratic firewall.

That and there were plenty of black folks pissed off at the "all blacks are poor" character of the campaign (in fairness the Bernie campaign was terribly tone deaf and made it all too easy for her to do what she did).

Even during the democratic primary there's not much of a case to be made that her campaign sought to portray Sanders as a racist. We even have emails that show her campaign's strategy was largely focused on wooing over black leaders during the primary[1]. Also, several staff members from Sanders' campaign admitted they did not do a lot to appeal to black voters, having already assumed they were in the bag for Clinton[2]. She drew comparisons between her own campaign's efforts at outreach and his[3], comparisons which have been proven to be true. Saying she cast Sanders as "racist" is both misleading and ignores the fact that his outreach to black voters was provably lackluster.

[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-w...

[2] http://fusion.net/story/323539/how-bernie-sanders-lost-black...

[3] https://secure.politico.com/story/2016/02/hillary-clinton-sp...

None of these things contradicts what I wrote or supports your assertion.

Then prove to me she was casting Sanders as a racist.

Show me how Sanders' campaign was not lackluster when wooing black voters.

> I didn't see much pandering from her at all

This one was hilarious and disgusting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ESQvJ-qlsk

H: "I always carry hot sauce in my bag" (referencing a lyric in a recent Beyonce song)

Radio host: "I just want you to know, this is going to look like pandering to black people"

H: "... Is it working?"

She's clearly joking about something she's talked about since 2012 (carrying Tabasco sauce in her purse) suddenly becoming culturally relevant. What's so disgusting about understanding a radio show's audience?

I think you have this a little backwards. It's Trump who portrayed black communities like that.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/20/politics/donald-trump-african-...

> I think you have this a little backwards. It's Trump who portrayed black communities like that.

lol no. But as you are pointing to a CNN article it makes sense you would think that, if thats where you were getting your news. They were trying to influence the election just as much anyone (aka the Russians), but apparently that doesn't bother anyone.

Trumps literal argument for why blacks should vote for him was "What do you have to lose?".

Independent source - AP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jasg-_E5M

Did it work?

The article is for the quotes which are accurate. It's Trump who said African Americans have 'nothing to lose', described the conditions in which they live as the 'worst ever' and portrayed the communities in which they live in outright dystopian terms. So I think that's a 'yes' and not much of a lol.

re: "What do you have to lose?" - This is simply the very valid argument that many big cities have been Democrat-run for the last 50 or so years, and saying the equivalent of "its not working, stop voting that way".

It doesn't matter what the argument is, it suggests that they are doing very, very poorly. We were discussing whether Trump employed this rhetoric. Yes he did and it was the centerpiece (and nearly totality) of his campaign's black voter outreach. The premise is that conditions for African Americans are a disaster. I'm not sure what there is to dispute here.

All the black folks I know, including myself, did not take it like that. The point, being made in front of an all white audience, as it was, looked a lot more like a reinforcement of the well trodden belief among conservative folks that black people's problems are due to Democratic mismanagement, their own rotten culture, and not racism (because racism hasn't been real since the 60's)

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