> I also doubt she was targeting black kids consciously . Even if many people (including herself) tended to think of gang members as young and Black.
If she thought gang members were predominantly young and black and she talked about combating them like the mob, labeling them as super predators with no empathy or conscience etc… what do you think she was consciously imagining? This is a weak defense if ever there was one.
She probably thought something like “Gang members are bad because they kill people. Let’s stop gang members from killing people.”
Without thinking through the the nuances of the long history of racial oppression that led the gang members to become criminals in the first place.
The same way that people who were combating the mob didn’t consider the history of oppression that lead to the creation of the Sicilian mafia.
I would argue that in this situation she was shortsighted and yes lacked empathy. But I don’t think there was any conscious racial animus there the way quoting “black super predators” makes it sound. I doubt she considered the racial component at all.
Associating the phrase "predator" specifically with black and hispanic criminals was already well-established in politics. Particularly because of the the Willie Horton ad from 1988.
I absolutely believed both then and now that she intended it as a racial comment. And her only reasonable defense would have been, "...but not ALL blacks..." However the policies that her husband pursued lead to the largest increase in blacks behind bars in history to that point, and had the effect of devastating black communities. So even that excuse would be thin.
(Note, Bill Clinton is also the one who flew home during the 1992 primary campaign to witness the execution of a mentally retarded black man. About which he said, "Nobody can accuse me of being soft on crime.")
I’m not going to argue that it’s impossible that she was using the term as a dog whistle.
But people have been referring to criminals of every race as predators well before 1988 and they have continued doing to this day.
If you look at usage of the word predator, my bet is it is associated with generic criminals (particularly sexual criminals) far more frequently than it’s deliberately used as a dog whistle.
When Clinton made this speech, it aired on C-Span and would have been forgotten but for opposition research. I think it’s very unlikely, she deliberately chose the word to send out a dog whistle to racists who happen to be watching the ostensibly liberal President’s wife on C-Span.
I think the more likely explanation is that a speech writer thought it sounded punchy because they’d heard it being used, and she didn’t think twice about using the term to refer to gang members.
That doesn’t mean that many uses of the word don’t have racist meanings. Or that it’s impossible that Clinton used it with racists invent. It does mean that it’s a big logical leap to say:
Some racists refer to young Black criminals as predators, and Hilary Clinton uses the word to refer the superset of young gang members, therefore Hilary Clinton deliberately and with racist intent used the word specifically to refer to young Black gang members.
Particularly to the level of confidence that you’re quoting her as saying “black super predators”.
Notably Bill Clinton is never on record as having used the word, and he is the one who met with the guy who coined it.
If he inteneded to co-opt the word to use as a racist dog whistle, why did he never use it himself? And why did his wife only use it the one time?
Do you have a source for it being opposition research?
As far as I can tell, https://www.democracynow.org/2016/2/26/whichhillary_blackliv... describes the event where it resurfaced. Now maybe the activist had the information planted. Maybe not. But I've disliked her since meeting her in 1994 (at Dartmouth College, for a speech on health care). Disliked her more when she ran for Congress. Disliked her more again when I donated to Barack Obama's campaign to make sure she didn't become President in 2008. Disliked everything that I heard of her as part of Obama's cabinet. And also disliked her in 2016.
And as context, here is my bias.
I correctly predicted what Trump would be, but could not bring myself to support Hillary because I don't know which I consider worse. Even today, despite the Jan 6 events, I'm not sure that the worse candidate won in 2016.
If Trump gets back in office and manages to dismantle Democracy, then Trump was in retrospect worse. But if he fails at take 2 like a buffoon should, then I prefer how things actually turned out over Hillary's blend of hypocritical incompetence.
If she thought gang members were predominantly young and black and she talked about combating them like the mob, labeling them as super predators with no empathy or conscience etc… what do you think she was consciously imagining? This is a weak defense if ever there was one.