OPINION:
The Democratic race for the White House has become silly — it’s based on false, happy, politically-correct narratives instead of basic truths and realities.
Former President Bill Clinton tried to address some of those truths last week, when he was asked by Black Lives Matter protesters to defend his 1994 Crime Bill. He did — and the crowd and the media largely panned him, as it doesn’t fit today’s narrative (that everything wrong in black communities is because of longer prison sentencing, the over-policing of their neighborhoods by an overly white force, the militarization of cops, and, above all, institutionalized racism).
Nope, Mr. Clinton suggested (God forbid) that the African-American community itself is partly to blame for higher crime rates, and black-on-black violence exists. This a huge no-no in the Democratic Party.
Mr. Clinton began by defending former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of the word “super predator” — a term Mrs. Clinton used in 1996 to describe gang members who were responsible for much of the violence in minority communities during the crack cocaine epidemic.
“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out into the street to murder other African-American children,” Mr. Clinton began. “You are defending the people who kill the people whose lives you say matter.”
Mr. Clinton was spot on.
Before he passed his Crime Bill (the one that Black Lives Matter activists feel was the undoing of their population), The Washington Post reported that in Washington, D.C., alone, murders had climbed from 147 people in 1985 to 194 people in 1986 and 225 people in 1987.
Between January 1987 and October 1988, nearly 500 children had been shot and stabbed and almost 1,400 kids under the age of 15 were arrested in the anti-drug effort called Operation Clean Sweep — they were trying to sell crack to raise some cash and make their gang bosses happy.
In America today, more black men are killed by black men than any other demographic — 90 percent of blacks are killed by other blacks, according to the FBI’s 2015 crime statistics. By comparison, blacks killed by whites is 8 percent; whites killed by other whites is 82 percent; and whites killed by blacks is 15 percent.
The truth is: Blacks tend to kill other blacks, and these trends have been seen for decades. Crime in their neighborhoods is the highest, and that’s why their neighborhoods are policed.
But those are things that can’t be said in Democratic politics.
Not to miss an opportunity to win some of the minority vote — of which Sen. Sanders’ badly trails Hillary Clinton — Mr. Sanders went on the offensive this weekend, bashing the Clintons’ for their comments.
At a Sanders’s campaign event in Harlem’s Apollo Theater on Saturday, Mr. Sanders was asked about Mr. Clinton’s recent spat with Black Lives Matter protesters and the “super predators” term.
“Unacceptable,” Mr. Sanders said to cheers in the crowd. “I think we all know what that term meant in the context that it was said years ago. We know who they were talking about.”
A member in the audience shouted: “Black people.”
“That’s exactly right,” Mr. Sanders said. “And I think that the president owes the American people an apology for trying to defend the indefensible.”
I’m with Mr. Clinton on this one. Not so sure an apology is warranted. But an understanding is.
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