Editor, Commonwealth:
I am a black woman who finds it very disappointing that the black electorate in the South is overwhelming giving away its vote to Hillary (and Bill) Clinton. One needs only to look at the track record of the Clintons when they were president and first lady, respectively, to see the devastating impact their policies had on black lives.
• They are responsible for millions of blacks being imprisoned because of their racist drug law, which is why Mississippi has one of the highest prison rates in the nation.
• Meanwhile, Hillary has received over $100,000 from private prisons.
• The Clintons cut $100 million in drug treatment funding and $130 million in prevention education while increasing funding for prisons by $19 billion.
• They forced poor black mothers off welfare while giving $75 billion to corporations.
• The Clintons returned tens of thousands of sick refugees to Haiti.
• They refused to stop the massacre of 800,000 blacks in Rwanda.
Hillary supporters argue that she wasn’t the president and, therefore, not responsible for Bill’s policies, but she can’t have it both ways. She uses her experience as first lady to argue that she is tested and ready for the job; hence, she must accept responsibility for her role in policies that Bill and she championed. Furthermore, if a Republican presidential candidate were responsible for causing so much harm, blacks would not support him. Therefore, it makes no sense to reward the Democrats, in this case Hillary and Bill Clinton, for helping to destroy black lives.
Furthermore, if a Republican presidential candidate were responsible for causing so much harm, black elected officials would loudly condemn him, but why not the Clintons? However, we should not forget that they also have a pattern of throwing us under the bus when it serves them politically.
Liz Davis
Greenwood
