In a wide-ranging speech before the NAACP’s 107th annual convention in Cincinnati, soon-to-be Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton took note Monday that the gains African Americans have struggled to achieve over the past several decades have been considerable. But while she cheered that positive history and praised activists who have made civil rights achievements possible, she added a big “however” based on current events:
So as the president has said, indeed as he exemplifies, we’ve come a long way, but you know and I know that we have so much further to go. We were cruelly reminded of that with the recent deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two more black man killed in police incidents, this time in Louisiana and Minnesota. And then in Dallas, five police officers killed while serving and protecting peaceful protesters, targeted because they were police. And then, of course, yesterday, three police officers murdered in an apparent premeditated ambush in Baton Rouge.
This madness has to stop. [...]
The deaths of Alton and Philando drove home how urgently we need to make reforms to policing and criminal justice … how we cannot rest until we root out implicit bias and stop the killings of African-Americans.
Because there is, as you know so well, another hard truth at the heart of this complex matter. Many African-Americans fear the police.
I can hear you, some of you in this room. And today, there are people all across America sick over what happened in Baton Rouge and in Dallas, but also fearful that the murders of police officers means that vital questions about police-community relations will go unanswered.
Now that is a reasonable fear, isn’t it?
Clinton made clear that there is “no justification, no looking the other way” for killing police and said she would, as president, bring the full force of the law down on anyone who kills an officer. At the same time, she said, the criminal justice system needs extensive reform to address the disproportionate law enforcement scrutiny imposed on African Americans, as well as the unfair sentences exacted against them.
Clinton laid out a short roster of policy reforms designed to reduce the toll of lethal encounters between police and black Americans. Among them: requiring compilation of accurate data on in-custody deaths; creating clear federal use-of-force guidelines; and supporting independent investigations when police kill civilians. She also offered support, once again, for universal background checks for all gun purchases.
In addition to those specifics, she delivered a commitment to reducing mass incarceration that, beginning with the war on some drugs launched by President Richard Nixon more than four decades ago, has vastly expanded the percentage of imprisoned Americans—particularly black male Americans—and reinforced the school-to-prison pipeline that has disproportionately incarcerated blacks and other people of color compared with whites.
Besides decrying gun violence, Clinton also pointed to the violence caused by racial inequalities in the health care system, noting that black children are 500 percent more likely to die from asthma than white children:
Imagine if those numbers were reversed and it were white kids dying. Imagine the outcry and the resources that would flood in.
Few people in the audience needed to imagine that scenario. They know all too well.