While NAFTA disproportionately affected Black communities, I have limited time here and so will focus on the most egregious example: welfare reform.

If you read the awfully-written "It Takes A Village" you will see that at every moment Hillary is repeating the argumentative tropes in favor of welfare reform. And I am not exaggerating to say that TANF was the greatest legislative assault on Black people in the modern era.

Who led the charge, intellectually? Charles Murray. Who defended Losing Ground and Murray? Bill Clinton, saying "He did the country a great service."

In case some of the pro-Hillary commenters don't remember, Charles Murray wrote The Bell Curve, which was the greatest pop culture assault on Black life since Birth of a Nation.

The climate during welfare reform was racist to the core. Welfare recipients were read as Black women stealing government benefits--a trope developed by Murray and Reagan.

The Clintons did absolutely nothing to challenge this. Nowhere in "It Takes a Village" does one read an indictment of institutional racism or the right-wing's hatred of Black women.

Children's advocates universally agree that TANF was terrible for low-income and working mothers and families. Between the family cap, a massive expansion of privatization, and the five-year limit on benefits, the kids that were hurt the most were Black kids.

But you won't hear any of that from the Hillary-defenders. She served in Obama's administration! She defends him! Black people love Obama!

So now Black people are incapable of critical thinking? Please. Don't homogenize our people. We are diverse. We are large and we contain multitudes. Most of all, there are significant class differences among us. If you don't know anybody who had their lives torn apart by welfare reform, then another Clinton administration seems just fine to you.

But if you recognize that welfare reform created an existential threat to low-income Black mothers and you centralize low-income Black mothers at the core of your political approach, and the choice is between Bernie and Hillary, the choice becomes pretty clear.

Bernie voted against welfare reform, that pernicious assault on Black women and Black kids in particular. Hillary was for it.



Just wanted to point out that while I spend three paragraphs talking about Charles Murray here, his name appears nowhere in the comments.

Seriously folks, up your game. You don't have to constantly reaffirm your received beliefs.

And I've been asked multiple times to support the widely-known fact that Hillary supported welfare reform.

Here you go:

http://www.nytimes.com/...

BTW-- I apologize re: Trix. They came at me with a highly hostile tone and it was late.

