Bill Clinton seems to have the most street cred for a white man among African-Americans that I’ve ever seen. Similarly, I’m reading in the news about the amount of loyalty that many black leaders feel toward Hillary.
What’s the story? I’m happy to see they’ve been so wildly successful at outreaching, but I’m not sure exactly what they’ve done to earn this popularity.
Bill Clinton is widely regarded by black Americans as a white person who really understands and sympathizes with the problems blacks face and has worked to help alleviate those problems. While Hillary Clinton is not as highly regarded individually, her reputation benefits by her association with her husband.
That much I understood, I’m really looking for the story behind the story. How did he end up with this reputation? Has he always made a point of reaching out to blacks?
The idea of Clinton being “the first black president” was crystalized by an article Toni Morrison wrote in the October 1998 New Yorker. Apparently the full text of the article can be found here.
Morrison’s reasoning why:
I would say because he’s not a phony and he is not a racist- he relishes visiting black churches or gatherings or whatnot, is at ease and comfortable there and people can see that. Compare Clinton visiting a black church and Dubya doing same.
Because they’re so loud.
And because they don’t like coffee
I can’t find Chris Rock’s bit on why black people love Clinton, but it’s hilarious.
You mean like the coffee that’s now on my computer screen?
Is there something in the water today? I haven’t seen black people being painted with such a broad brush in one day since the feckin’ neo nazi asshats came to my town and started a goddamn riot.
fiddlesticks and Little Nemo nailed it. I’m a Black guy, and my whole family loves Bill Clinton. He is an extremely effective empathizer, he is extremely comfortable around Black people, and he’s a Southerner. We can all relate to people like that. (My family are big Carter fans as well.) Of all the horrible things that have been slung at ol’ Bill, racist has never been one of them.
He also talks openly about issues of race and civil rights. He had the “One America” initiative that was supposed to bring discussion around race to the forefront (pesky little scandal distracted from that). But perhaps just as importantly, the right treated Clinton like many Black men have been treated in government. We are well aware of the fact that all politicos have their hand in the cookie jar at some point… at least, I would suggest, that many Black folks don’t have a belief that politicians are choirboys. But the right went after Bill on every freakin’ thing… Whitewater, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Travelgate, Vincent (what’s his name), Hillary… and you know all the White guys were doing the same, if not worse, shit. Fucking hypocrites. (As revealed by Newt Gingrich this year, when he admitted to having an affair while involved in the Lewinsky imbroglio.)
Bill was attacked like many Black men have been attacked - not because he truly was a vile human being doing vile things, but because he represented something that conservative Whites despised… and they used the same tactics to take him down. Bill responded like a Black man in the same situation - smiled, gave a soundbite, and kept doing what he was doing.
Essentially, he was a savvy cross-cultural communicator. And he did three things that I felt were masterstrokes as far as connecting him to the Black community as well as young people: going on the Arsenio Hall show wearing shades and playing sax - was it to an Elvis or an R&B song?, admitting to smoking pot, and the famous “boxers or briefs” question. These things may have made him less presidential in some people’s eyes, but I think for a lot of Black folks, it was like, “Hey, he’s a regular person, just mad smart and hardworking.” George W. Bush, for example, is playing a role, and I think Black people can see through that. Hell, White people see through it too.
And if you’ve ever met him, or interacted with him close-up: dude makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world. I shook his hand at a campaign stop in '92. It was the briefest of moments, but I still remember the experience to this day.
There’s a Pit thread right now about “why are blacks so loud”. You have to read that to understand some of the posts (they are in jest, don’t worry).
Maybe it’s because Clinton is so loud.
Okay, that was hilarious.
Hippy nails a few significant personality factors, I think. Plus, there’s this from Obama’s recent book:
“As recently as 1999, the black unemployment rate fell to record lows and black income rose to record highs not because of a surge in affirmative action hiring or a sudden change in the black work ethic but because the economy was booming and government took a few modest measures - like the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit - to spread the wealth around. If you want to know the secret of Bill Clinton’s popularity among Afreican Americans, you need look no further than these statistics.”
We gay people love the Clintons too, even though they never did a damn thing other than making promises, then stabbing us in the back. And they know we’ll vote for them again because, good lord, look at the alternative.
I hope black people do better by them than we have.