Senator Clinton has won a number of flat-out endorsements from influential African Americans. Her supporters include Philadelphia Mayor John Street, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, author and poet Maya Angelou, composer and recording mogul Quincy Jones, and Robert L. Johnson, founder of the influential Black Entertainment Television network. Already she has the important backing of at least seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

In the style of President Bill Clinton before her, she makes regular appearances at black churches where she pays homage to black civil rights pioneers. She artfully uses Bible references and religious imagery to endear herself to black congregations. Last spring Hillary Clinton won glowing praise from the black press when she joined dozens of America’s most famous black leaders in singing “We Shall Overcome” at the sacred shrine of black America, the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Successfully sidestepping charges of pandering to black voters, she deftly shifts to a southern drawl as she sings the popular black hymn:

“I don’t feel no ways tired. We got to stay awake. We have a march to finish.”

In her campaign to lock up black support, there are no qualms about playing the race card. Senator Clinton scored with black voters when she declared in a June debate at Howard University that the country would be more worried about HIV/AIDS if the disease were disproportionately affecting whites instead of blacks. The powerful political impact of her statement was not diminished by the circumstance that her facts were incorrect. The annual federal budget for HIV research is $3 billion. This is more than the nation’s entire appropriation for research on either heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or breast cancer. But Clinton’s assertion that racism drives white-controlled government decisions on the allocations of disease research stoked anti-white anger and won her acclaim among black voters.

Probably no one at the Howard University event, black or white, was aware of the fact that in August 2006 Hillary Clinton was the only one of 20 senators of the Republican-controlled Senate Health, Education, and Labor Committee to vote to gut a plan that would have redirected more AIDS funds to heavily black communities in the South. Her vote prompted the National Black Chamber of Commerce to publish full-page newspaper advertisements denouncing Clinton as being “two-faced” on the issue.

<<  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  >  >>

Printer Friendly Version  l  Downloadable PDF