Robert Tracinski of The Bulwark makes a good point when he warns that the “Republicans will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the next ten weeks trying to convince voters that they should punish Democrats for tolerating or excusing lawless violence.” This was clear during the Republican National Convention. Tracisnki is also correct in advising Joe Biden to tackle the issue head-on, but his recommendation that Biden dedicate a whole month to revisiting Bill Clinton’s 1992 Sister Souljah Moment shows just how out of touch he is with the politics of the left.
In the aftermath of the Rodney King riots, the rapper Sister Souljah made some very impolitic remarks. Most controversially, she suggested it would be a good idea if Black gang members took a week off from killing each other to focus on killing white people. She then appeared at Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Convention in June 1992, the day before Bill Clinton was scheduled to speak. The Clinton campaign team wanted to create some distance from Jackson and they didn’t want to be tarnished by association with Souljah, so the future president took the opportunity to condemn some of Souljah’s most incendiary lyrics and remarks. Jesse Jackson was furious, but the press loved it and has spent the last 28 years celebrating Clinton’s act of independence.
Of course, Bill Clinton did not win an election in November 1992 because of remarks he made five months earlier at the Rainbow Convention. It was a conversation piece in June, well before the party conventions or the debates with Poppy Bush and Ross Perot. Most observers credit Clinton’s laser focus on the economy as the reason for his success, and they’re probably right.
It’s true that Toni Morrison once called Bill Clinton “American’s first black president,” but the Sister Souljah Moment caused lasting hurt. It wasn’t because he had objected to the idea that Black gang members kill some white people for a change, but because he used the stage at Jackson’s convention to seemingly marginalize the movement. It would have been worse if Clinton dwelled on the rapper for a whole month.
The Republicans don’t want to talk about the racial justice protests, so they focus on the looting. The Democrats don’t want to talk about the looting, mainly because it’s a distraction from the need for police reform. Biden’s response has been to praise the protesters and their cause while condemning violence and lawlessness. He will have to go through many iterations of this dance between now and November, but the steps should remain the same.
In the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting in Wisconsin, the Black community is in tremendous pain. Black athletes are boycotting games and practices, not only to protest but also to mourn. It’s hard to focus on your job when you’re overcome with grief.
Biden needs to take this moment to show he can lead us to a better place. He can’t do that by joining the Republicans in making this all about the looting. The last thing we need right now is for both white presidential candidates using the Black community as a punching bag by associating their grievances with lawlessness.
This. Exactly.
In fact, Biden—and old white guy with centrist credentials as solid as any Democratic presidential nominee since…Carter?—is perfectly positioned to (both in his own right and in this historical moment) do the opposite of a Sister Souljah moment.
Biden could go to a mostly white organization (even a policing organization) and deliver a speech that’s an expanded version of the video clip he put out the other day condemning 1) the police shooting of Jacob Blake, 2) the violent rioters in Kenosha, and 3) the armed vigilantes in Kenosha.
Nobody’s better positioned to be able to say, “I remember the ’60s. America, this is not the ’60s. We’ve grown. We’ve moved on. And we’re not going back. We’re going forward, together. My opponent wants to try to divide us against each other so that we don’t notice he and his rich friends are picking our pockets. We’re not going to let him.”
Would be good if his staff took 10 minutes to get acquainted with the dynamic of the violence we are seeing – if they aren’t already aware. Gary Younge is a very smart guy.
https://twitter.com/ava/status/1298983030116110338?s=20&fbclid=IwAR2m5xBC2ZoYCFoWIMo6qq0mttFeVbe33D9atscFCzvSHnQQjTIQx_woPeY
This is an amazing analysis by Gary Younge. God, I wish I could see this kind of deeper contemplation on the national stage. It is mind numbingly frustrating to see virtually no effort to try to convey the larger context of what we are seeing right now. Thanks for pointing to this clip. It is refreshing, yet at the same time tragic that it will fly completely under the radar of those most able to utilize it for the greater benefit of all of us.
Excellent analysis by Younge. It sheds light on how we’re told to essentially avert our eyes from the projection and hypocrisies in the establishment responses to the protests, rioting and looting.
For example, black communities are told that the police are not responsible for high rates of crime; its the “no snitching” campaign that prevents the police from doing their jobs and thereby relieves them of responsibility. They point to “the killings in the black community” and never mention the fact that these are criminal gangs and say, its black people that have a responsibility for stopping it (and they have tried, but can’t do it alone) and not the police.
At the same time, the police have their own version of no snitching, the blue wall of silence, that excuses the “good cops” from remaining silent while the supposed “few bad apples” bring them all down. This is how they justify police remaining silent and, why nothing more can be done to reign in murderous bad cops who seem to be getting bolder every day in visiting lethal violence on black people. Yet the community is held responsible while police are blameless for crime in black communities committed by criminals because of the no snitching, and not one whit of concern is given to the fact that people in these communities often times don’t speak up because they are afraid.
Cops have a right to be afraid and mete out deadly violence in response. But not only do black folk not have a right to be afraid, we don’t have a right to demand change to the official acts of institutions and government actors that righteously engender fear.
They condemned Kaepernick for his own peaceful protest, and yet when violence breaks out, they say we should protest peacefully. When we did, that didn’t work. So what’s acceptable? Or is it really just nothing is acceptable when it comes to challenging their power.
Younge goes much further in highlighting the hypocrisies and the projection arguments used to stifle pushback on institutional racism and government sanctioned violence.
Jesus F$%&#ing Christ, a few minutes ago I looked in at the TV that my wife had on CNN, and under Wolf’s scrubby mug was the chyron, “Does Joe Biden need a Sister Souljah moment?”.
The media is useless.
CNN? Why does anyone watch that garbage?
A Bill Kristol-led outfit gives Democrats bad advice? No way!!!