Sunday night was my big chance to ask the Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, extended questions about race, inequality and criminal justice reform.
Don Lemon: “As a black man in America, if I were born today I’d have a one in three chance of ending up in prison in my life. Secretary Clinton, on the campaign trail, you are calling for an end to the era of mass incarceration, but a lot of folks in the black community blame the 1994 Crime Bill, a bill you supported for locking up a generation of black men. Given what’s happened since 1994, why should black people trust you to get it right this time?”
Hillary Clinton: “Well Don, let me say this, Senator Sanders voted for that bill, we both supported it. And, I think it’s fair to say we did because back then there was an outcry over the rising crime rate, and people from all communities were asking that action be taken. Now, my husband said at the NAACP last summer that it solved some problems, but it created other problems, and I agree.”
But while admitting the bill was a mistake, she made sure to point out that Senator Sanders actually voted for the bill.
Sanders says he did it because there were other parts of the bill he supported like the ban on assault weapons and the violence against women act.
“So, to answer your question, what you read was a congressman who was torn, who said there are good things in that bill, there are bad things overall. I voted for it.”
But where we are right now is having more than 2.2 million people in jail — more than any other country on earth. This is a campaign promise, at the end of my first term, we will not have more people in jail than any other country.”
Admitting mistakes and explaining why they did what they did was no doubt easier than answering this next question:
Don Lemon: “In a speech about policing, the FBI director James Comey borrowed a phrase saying, ‘everyone is a little bit racist.’ What racial blind spot do you have? Secretary, you first.”
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.”
