MYTH OF BILL CLINTON AS A ‘FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT’

One of the world’s most famous writers, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, once described former President Bill Clinton as America’s first Black President.  In her eloquent defense of the President during the worst period of his presidency, in the October, 1998 New Yorker Magazine, Morrison said of Clinton

Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.

.  Here’s the whole article. The united and unflinching support of African-Americans during the McCarthy-era like investigation of Clinton saved his presidency. 

It was the powerful congressman from Harlem, Charles Rangel, who invited the then first lady, Hillary Clinton (before becoming Hillary Rodham Clinton) to run for the Senate, representing New York state.  In a note written by New York Times’ Adam Nagourney, he quoted CNN’s Larry King as saying the following in an interview establishing Rangel’s indisputable role in her senate run, with the following

Mr. King opened the program by introducing Representative Charles B. Rangel, the Harlem Democrat who has been the chief booster of a Clinton candidacy. ‘’This was your idea, Rangel, so we’ll start with you: How in the world did you think up ‘Hillary for Senate?’ ‘’ Mr. King inquired. ‘’You were the first to say it.’’

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When loud criticism of the expensive nature of his initial attempt to locate his post-presidential office on the 56th floor of the Carnegie Hall Tower, at a cost of $738,700, it was the black community that again came to his rescue, by alluring him to move his office to Harlem.  The Harlem Office with bigger space was leased at a cost of $210,000, thereby saving another bout of media criticism. 

Africans themselves have bought into the Clinton myth.  In Africa, he was the most revered white man that Africans came to believe as the embodiment of decency and god-like qualities.  During his two visits to Africa, he was given an hero’s welcome.  Wherever he went, hundreds of thousands of people came out to welcome him.  Women and children danced in the streets, and waived American flags.  African leaders bent over backwards to welcome him.  Then iconic world leader and South African president, Nelson Mandela, embraced Clinton’s visit and gave him enthusiastic support, telling him that “Africa doesn’t forget their friends.”

The question is were all these embrace and admiration of Bill Clinton misplaced; didn’t he plant the bases for which Blacks assimilated him as their own and defended him at every opportunity from attacks by his detractors?  Of course, the answer is a big YES.  In answering this, you have to understand the dichotomy of the black experience.  We are like dogs that have been starved for weeks, and then a ‘kind’ individual dangles and drops a piece of bone to us: it makes us eternally grateful to that individual.  Even have we embraced bad behavior, “raised by single mother, cheating of a wife, junk-food-loving, jazz-playing, as Toni Morrison wrote, as the basis upon which we have assimilated him as an black man.  Rather a sad commentary on our own values.

Going back to my BIG YES answer, Clinton courted the black community when white politicians of note, including Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan had instituted policies that had ostracized the community, and made it plain to them that their concerns weren’t really of interest to these leaders, who had employed code words to inflame white anger at blacks.  So here comes the white knight in shining armor who dangled that piece of bone to us after almost 16 years of continuous starvation - he courted us, ate with us, went to church with us, sang our songs, danced boogie with us, played saxophone with a black touch.  As governor of the southern state of Arkansas, he brought blacks into his administration.

In his first run for the White House, blacks were overwhelmingly supportive of Clinton, as he paraded a number of prominent blacks as his confidants, including Ronald Brown, Vernon E. Jordan, both of who played major roles in his administration, as well as others, like Susan Rice.  President Clinton was credited with creating more than 22 million jobs during his eight years in office, and most blacks feel a load of gratitude that they benefited in this upward mobility of becoming middle-class families.  He created a commission to discuss race, which fizzled and died for lack of action.  These were hot issue points, in terms of dangling the bone, which mesmerized the black folks about Clinton’s authenticity as one of us.

But let’s look at some of Bill Clinton’s actions. Remember the ‘Sister Souljah moment’ during the 1992 campaign, where Clinton, in an attempt to show his conservative credentials, lashed out at Sister Souljah for her offensive comment, in which she had said in a Washington Post article

“If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?

and then presidential candidate Clinton had quickly interjected

If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.

.  After winning the presidency, you remember how quickly he dropped the nomination of Lani Gunier as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, who had been falsely accused of advocating the creation of “congressional black districts” to ensure more black representation in Congress, a process which is popularly known in political terms as gerrymandering.  We are reminded of how Republican leader, Tom DeLay used this same method in creating more safe seats for Republicans in Texas.  His welfare policy created the problem of black men having to abandon their families, and with his one strike policy in terms of drug possessions, the incarceration rate of blacks increased dramatically during his administration. 

The adulation we Africans have had for him could then be misconstrued as having been misplaced.  The Clinton administration did not lift a finger when over 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus were murdered in a genocidal rage.  As much as we might dislike President Bush’s policies, including this author, we can safely say that he has invested untold billions of dollars in Africa, and fought forcefully for a resolution of the Darfur problem.

We could cite many more instances of this pattern of adopting policies detrimental to black interests, while pulling a wool over our eyes with tokenistic pretensions.  But the wool has finally been lifted over our eyes during this primary campaign, where the so-called ‘First Black President’ has used every occasion to try to marginalize Senator Barack Obama into a black candidate, which he has woefully failed to achieve.  We are left with the impression that all along that his love for blacks was calculated and convenient when it was time to use the black community.  It is now apparent that the Clinton myth as a Black President has been broken, tarnished and dumped in the gutter.  Incidentally, any visit to Africa now would earn him a worst scorn than the one that had been given to President Bush in his first visit to the continent.  I doubt that former President Nelson Mandela would ever deign to meet with him again.