WaPo | Yesterday afternoon, Hillary Clinton delivered a speech on race in
Harlem. There’s a political context here, of course, which is that
African American voters are central to both the Feb. 27 South Carolina
Democratic primary and the entire campaign for the Democratic
presidential nomination.
But when Clinton speaks about race,
something important happens: we get a revealing view not just of what
she thinks is important, but of how she understands politics, power, and
change.
According to guidance distributed by the Clinton
campaign, today’s speech is going to cover a lot of policy ground,
including criminal justice, education, housing, and economic
opportunity. Clinton will also be discussing “systemic racism,” which is
a key phrase to keep in mind to understand how she sees race, and how
it differs from the way Barack Obama has dealt with racial issues over
the past eight years.”
The idea of systemic racism has symbolic
weight, but it’s primarily practical. It does speak to the fundamental
truth that black people understand and that some whites resist, that
racism exists in a thousand places at once, both those we can see and
those we overlook. Saying you understand systemic racism is a way of
saying that you see the problem as deep, wide, and historically
grounded.
But it’s also a way of saying: This is a problem we,
and the president him or herself, can actually do something about. If
the racism that imposes itself on people’s lives is to be found in
systems, then the way you attack it is to change the way those systems
operate, through changes in law and policy.
