This was an aggressive speech by Clinton and a major departure from her 2008 run, when, after an embarrassing loss to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses, she went on the attack in New Hampshire, with ABC News reporting it this way:

“While the senator was vague, her campaign pointed out to ABC News examples of Obama’s liberal positions, including his 2004 statement to abolish mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes.”

On Tuesday, the day before his wife’s speech, Bill Clinton had weighed in. As the Guardian reported:

“Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has called for an end to mass incarceration, admitting that changes in penal policy that happened largely under his watch put ‘too many people in prison and for too long’ and ‘overshot the mark.’”

The Guardian goes on to explain:

“In 1994 Clinton championed a crime bill that laid down several of the foundations of the country’s current mass incarceration malaise. Vowing to be ‘tough on crime’ — a quality that had previously been more closely associated with the Republicans and which Clinton adopted under his ‘triangulation’ ploy — he created incentives to individual states to build more prisons, to put more people behind bars and to keep them there for longer. His also presided over the introduction of a federal three-strikes law that brought in long sentences for habitual offenders.”

Hillary Clinton’s speech on Wednesday was indeed a remarkable and audacious one for the candidate, and went far further than many of her Republican rivals would dare to go (although there is growing bipartisan consensus around prison reform), but the unacknowledged and unexplained shift in the middle of a heated moment could quite reasonably raise doubts of sincerity or commitment to execution.

The black community in America has been betrayed by Democrats and Republicans alike — it has been betrayed by America itself. Therefore, it can be hard to accept at face value any promises made or policies articulated. History demonstrates that too many forked tongues have delivered too many betrayed covenants.