Hillary Clinton is courting the African-American vote by talking about what a racist society we are, meeting with the divisive opportunist Al Sharpton, and affecting a southern accent in preparation for the Democratic primary next week in South Carolina.
This is how Mrs. Clinton seeks to appeal to black voters:
Citing a litany of racial disparities in everything from arrests to deaths from asthma, Mrs. Clinton said white America finds it “tempting” to believe America has left bigotry behind, because we can then ignore the problem. She must have missed the bipartisan negotiations in Congress on criminal-justice reform, including changes to sentencing for nonviolent offenses. But she was clear about how she would address the disparities she outlined: more federal spending paid for by higher taxes:
“Now even if we succeed on raising taxes on every millionaire and billionaire in America, and believe me, I do intend to succeed at that, we still need to face the painful reality that African Americans are nearly three times as likely as whites to be denied a mortgage.” So even though she knows that higher taxes won’t do much to improve economic opportunity for blacks, she’ll raise them anyway.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to say that Mrs. Clinton's pitch to African Americans can't be taken seriously unless she is willing to address one of the leading causes of the discrepancy between black and white incomes: bad schools. Charter schools could do a lot to help black children, but, having received the National Education Association's endorsement, Mrs. Clinton finds that she is now against charter schools:
Mrs. Clinton had a better case when she railed against what she called the “school-to-prison pipeline.” Because black children don’t get an education that would give them real options in life, she said, many end up in prison. There’s a lot to this, but then Mrs. Clinton refuses to address the main reason that so many black children lack a quality education: failing public schools, with no chance to escape to a better one.
Not too many years ago Mrs. Clinton understood this enough to support charter schools, if not private vouchers. But in this election year she has become a charter critic, attacking them for not taking all comers even if they rescue tens of thousands each year. In return she has received the unusually early endorsements of both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Those endorsements may help her beat Mr. Sanders, but they also create an opening for Republicans in the fall: Her talk about opportunity is empty as long as she dooms poor minority children to failing schools.