On inspecting news headlines this morning, I was surprised by the presence of a headline that Hillary Clinton and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio were being criticized for making a thoroughly botched attempt at racially insensitive humor at a political roast on Saturday night, proving once again that a humorless technocrat like Hillary shouldn't venture out on stage like she's Amy Schumer - when we finally elect Clinton President in November, it definitively won't be because she could have a majority of the American electorate rolling in the aisles with laughter better than Donald Trump (the mere notion of a Trump Presidency simultaneously make me chuckle uncontrollably even as it scares the shit out of me!!). That said, I find it a little absurd that Clinton would be criticized for a failed attempt at humor over "colored people time," as if she was being utterly insensitive toward African-Americans. Such criticisms are expressly silly and the Sanders campaign, especially on the eve of the New York Democratic primaries, shouldn't be indulging in them!!
Having said this, an encounter last week in Philadelphia between former President (and future first Gentleman) Bill Clinton and some Black Lives Matter protesters, regarding the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act interests me much more, especially in regard to the margin of support that Hillary Clinton has enjoyed within the African-American community and, even more pointedly, among media commentators of the support that Hillary Clinton enjoys within the African-American community. Expressly, I remain befuddled as to why Hillary Clinton was able to thoroughly run away with the Southern state primaries by massive margins against Sanders on the strength of her support within the Black community. Dare I ask, are South Carolina and Mississippi two states in the union that the Black Lives Matter movement and recent media coverage on the killings of unarmed African-American suspects at the hands of White law enforcement officers have inexplicably missed?! To be clear, there is no monolithic Black voting bloc within the Democratic Party, and I am not arguing that some imaginary Black Democratic voting bloc has a slate of issues that it is seeking to advance among Democratic Presidential candidates. However, to the extent that a range of issues appear especially pertinent to African-American voters, among them law enforcement and criminal justice reform, educational reform and housing policy in urban communities, and environmental justice(EJ), I am oblivious to the appeal of either Secretary Clinton or Senator Sanders on this range of "African-American" issues.
Both candidates have, over the larger primary campaign, mentioned reform of the federal criminal justice system, notwithstanding the marginal character of the federal government as a participant in the mass incarceration of African-Americans. Neither candidate has, to my knowledge, advanced any aggressive measures to appeal to the EJ movement - in certain respects, the local character of EJ issues seems to suggest that, short of greater oversight over a broad range of polluting industries, a greater federal role in EJ may not be forthcoming anyway. The preponderant support for public teachers' unions on the left wing of the Democratic Party, to which Sanders has been pushing Clinton over the course of their campaign, may preclude any significant focus by either candidate on aggressive educational reform measures outside of increased expenditures in support of local public education targeting disadvantaged communities, building on existing frameworks in educational reform (e.g. No Child Left Behind, etc.). Finally, beyond aggressive enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VI, governing housing discrimination, it seems improbable to me that either Clinton or Sanders would promote significant changes in federal housing policies directly impacting African-Americans in urban communities - a likely scenario involves vigorous (or vigorously publicized) reactions to well-publicized abominations affecting urban communities, like the widespread lead contamination of water supplies in Flint, Michigan. If, in these respects, the policy slate of African-American voters has been largely ignored by the two leading Democratic candidates in the primaries and we can hardly expect that this will change during the general election campaign for the Democratic Party nominee, then we can hardly say that either Clinton or Sanders should maintain a robust appeal among African-American voters.
Rather, the only explanation that I can advance for the success of Clinton among Southern African-American voters and among older African-American voters outside of the South remains the default option - such voters tend to lean toward a more moderate to conservative political position in relation to the national Democratic electorate as a whole. The latent conservatism of such voters is especially connected to its religiosity, grounded in denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and the National Baptist Convention. In this manner, it makes sense that such African-American voters would be more inclined to throw their support toward a candidate that at least professes the Christian faith and maintains a relatively moderate slate of policy prescriptions rather than support a secular Jewish socialist with (on their face) radical policy prescriptions. As such, it might not make as much sense to attribute as much of Clinton's success to her appeal toward African-American voters or racial/ethnic minorities, in general (or, for that matter, attribute Sanders' failure to appeal these demographics in racial/ethnic terms), than toward a particular, relatively conservative demographic, mistakenly classified in reference to race and/or ethnicity, under the big tent of the Democratic Party. Sanders' record in appealing to African-American millennials in states like Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin seems to suggest as much.
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