Clinton Speaks About America’s Continuing White Racism and White “Privilege”

In a June 2015 address at the Conference of Black mayors (in San Francisco), Mrs. Clinton said the following:

“Race remains a deep fault line in America. Millions of people of color still experience racism in their everyday lives. Here are some facts. In America today, Blacks are nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage. In 2013, the median wealth of Black families was around $11,000. For white families, it was more than $134,000. Nearly half of all Black families have lived in poor neighborhoods for at least two generations, compared to just 7 percent of white families. African American men are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men, 10 percent longer for the same crimes in the federal system. In America today, our schools are more segregated than they were in the 1960s.

“How can any of that be true? How can it be true that Black children are 500 percent more likely to die from asthma than white kids? Five hundred percent! More than a half century after Dr. King marched and Rosa Parks sat and John Lewis bled, after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and so much else, how can any of these things be true? But they are. And our problem is not all kooks and Klansman. It’s also in the cruel joke that goes unchallenged. It’s in the off-hand comments about not wanting ‘those people’ in the neighborhood. Let’s be honest: For a lot of well-meaning, open-minded white people, the sight of a young Black man in a hoodie still evokes a twinge of fear. And news reports about poverty and crime and discrimination evoke sympathy, even empathy, but too rarely do they spur us to action or prompt us to question our own assumptions and privilege. We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America. We have to name them and own them and then change them.”