Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech on Thursday night at the Democratic National Convention marked two watershed moments. Of course she became the first woman to formally accept the presidential nomination of a major party.
Hillary Clinton said “systemic racism” in tonight’s speech. That’s major.
The way we talk about racism in America is changing.
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
But she also became the first presidential candidate of the two major parties to use the term “systemic racism” in her nomination speech:
I refuse to believe we can’t find common ground here. We have to heal the divides in our country. Not just on guns. But on race. Immigration. And more.
That starts with listening to each other. Hearing each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other’s shoes.
So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.
Even for Barack Obama, a black man qualified to seek the highest office in the country, the conflicts brought forward by systemic racism were unavoidable. But the way candidates talk about it has changed.
Though Obama (and other presidential candidates) has addressed racial divides in his speeches, the term “systemic racism,” embraced in particular by younger activists, was not present in his addresses. The phrase refers to the deep-seated racial inequalities that plague major institutions.
But systemic racism has taken center stage in ways unparalleled in previous elections. Racism has reared its head through Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012 and during his administration — whether it was “birthers” demanding Obama provide his birth certificate, the GOP darkening his skin in campaign ads, or conservative pundits challenging Michelle Obama’s patriotism.
But at the end of Obama’s historic two terms in office, racism isn’t something either party can hide behind.
Donald Trump seized the Republican ticket taking the GOP’s standard dog-whistle politicking to its most extreme limits. By contrast, the Democratic Party distinguished itself as the party of identity politics, embracing racial justice while Trump campaigns for an America that denies it exists.
Indeed, Trump is trying to “make America great again” through divisiveness. But tonight, Clinton reminded us not only that America is great but that we are “stronger together” when we are honest about the things that tear us apart.
By Dylan Matthews
