“Can you tell us what the term white privilege means to you, and can you give me an example from your life or career when you think you have benefited from it?” a Drake University student asked the Democratic presidential front-runner at Fusion’s 2016 Brown and Black Forum in Des Moines. He responded with the (irrelevant) fact that he had a diverse staff back when he was mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland.
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Clinton replied, “Look, where do I start?”
Clinton went on to say she strongly supported President Obama’s recent proposed gun control regulations, and she also discussed the white terrorism seen in the Oklahoma City bombing by McVeigh and the “communities terrorized by gangs”.
“We have laws and we must be guided by those laws, but we shouldn’t have armed federal officers showing up at peoples’ homes, taking women and children out of their beds in the middle of the night”, she said, according to prepared remarks.
She said that she “knew [she] was a lucky person” growing up, but didn’t begin to connect that luck with a sense of race or wealth privilege until she had two experiences-the first of which happened when she was 11.
“I think they are divisive, they are sowing discord and fear”.
Should everyone get to go to a $33,000 dollars a year college?
“I never really knew what was or wasn’t part of the privilege”, she said. “And I just felt like, I have a different kind of life”.
Clinton stopped short of promising Ramos that she would not deport unaccompanied children or immigrants without a criminal record, but instead promised that they would be provided “due process” under her watch.
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Anguiano called that response “ridiculous”, and criticized Clinton for not addressing the blog post’s shameless Latino-pandering. Jorge Ramos and Alicia Menendez will serve as moderators with Akilah Hughes and NY magazine writer Rembert Browne joining as questioners. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders andMartin O’Malley have confirmed their participation in the event.
