Clinton: “Well, Don, if I could, I think being a white person in the United States of America, I know that I have never had the experience that so many people, the people in this audience have had. And I think it’s incumbent upon me and what I have been trying to talk about during this campaign is to urge white people to think about what it is like to have “the talk” with your kids, scared that your sons or daughters, even, could get in trouble for no good reason whatsoever like Sandra Bland and end up dead in a jail in Texas.”
The Secretary went on to recount her personal and professional experiences towards racial awareness.
So did senator Sanders.
Bernie Sanders: “So to answer your question, I think it’s similar to what the Secretary said. When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car. And I believe that as a nation in the year 2016, we must be firm in making it clear. We will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system.”
The senator got some flak for using the word “ghetto” and for saying when you’re white “you don’t know what it’s like to be poor.”
The next day he clarified by saying what he meant was whites don’t understand police oppression in black communities.
It was an interesting moment for me and for viewers to, as Esquire Magazine put it, watch two white people forced to grapple with their whiteness.
But at least they tried.
And the question accomplished what Tom Joyner tells me to do on this show all the time, “Make em think, Don Lemon.”
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Don Lemon to Presidential Candidates: ‘What’s Your Racial Blind Spot?’ was originally published on blackamericaweb.com
