Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said Monday that white people should recognize their privilege and “practice humility” when tackling the issue of “systemic racism.”
The former secretary of state participated in a Q&A session on the Facebook page for The Grio, a news website that caters to black readers. When asked by MTV News’s Jamil Smith how she plans to “engage white voters” in fighting for racial justice, Mrs. Clinton said she’s going to speak to “every kind of audience” and push her “breaking every barrier” agenda to “make major new investments in communities of color that have been left out and left behind.”
“As I said in Harlem the other day, ending systemic racism requires contributions from all of us — especially those of us who haven’t experienced it ourselves,” Mrs. Clinton wrote. “White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers that you face every day. We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility, rather than assume that our experiences are everyone’s experiences. So I’m going to keep spreading this message — and not just in front of African-American audiences. I’m going to keep talking to every kind of audience about this.”
In an answer to another question about police brutality, Mrs. Clinton said it’s “outrageous” that black men are “far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men found guilty of the same offenses.”
“Can you imagine if the situation was reversed and white people faced that kind of injustice?” she asked. “Things would change very fast!
“We need to strengthen bonds of trust between communities and police by banning racial profiling, investing more resources in officer training, making body cameras available to every police department, and strengthening the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division that holds police departments accountable,” she wrote. “And there are so many police departments out there who are doing this right, with officers who put their lives on the line everyday to keep us all safe – we should build on those best practices and apply them everywhere.”
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