On Bill Clinton and Why Black America Must Do Away with the “Honorary Black” Myth

“The love affair between black folks and the Clintons has been going on for a long time. It began back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running for president. He threw on some shades and played the saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show. It seems silly in retrospect, but many of us fell for that. At a time when a popular slogan was “It’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand,” Bill Clinton seemed to get us. When Toni Morrison dubbed him our first black president, we nodded our heads. We had our boy in the White House. Or at least we thought we did.”—Michelle Alexander
“We got Clinton, that’s close. He got negro tendencies.”—Cedric the Entertainer
Consider this one more plea from one more black person who is desperate to rid Black America of the myth of “honorary” black people. It’s true that there are white people who can sing the blues. And it’s true that there are are white people who know all of the lyrics to Outkast’s “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.” There are whites who have been victims of police brutality, white people who live in the projects—and those who don’t, but are still welcome in predominantly black arenas. But we don’t have to dub them “honorary blacks.” Bill Clinton, Justin Timberlake, Eminem, etc. Just let them be white people, even if they’re a white person you really, really like.
I never understood these attempts to baptize certain whites (usually men, whatever that may signify) who had managed to appeal to the black community, offering them up some sort of born-again black card that they never earned and didn’t need. The myth that you can be cool enough, or even enough of an ally, to shed whiteness and don blackness is silly, but also dangerous. Bill Clinton saying things today that Bill Clinton said (with a 1994 crimes bill) many years ago—about problems in predominantly black communities—should not be cause for alarm. And it wouldn’t be, were it not for this dangerous myth that the Clintons are, somehow, specifically good for blacks in America.
Bill Clinton should have never been given the honorary badge, and Michelle Alexander can better explain the myriad reasons why. In a piece for The Atlantic that went up just as the video of Bill Clinton versus a Black Lives Matter protestor began to go viral, Vann R. Newkirk II offers up a slightly more diplomatic reading of Clinton’s bill:
“It seems the best way to describe the 1994 crime bill is that it was a tragedy of groupthink produced under the pressure of real, imminent dangers. The need to fix a crisis gave way to an awful policy that—as awful policies tend to do—further marginalized poor people and people of color.”
Although I’d never claimed him as “honorary,” I admit I was thrown by the vigor with which Clinton defended the bill against the protestor. But that’s only because I could have sworn he just apologized for the same bill, a few months back.
“I signed a bill that made the problem worse, and I want to admit it… our nation has too many people in prison and for too long—we have overshot the mark. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, we now have 25 percent of its prison population… Some are in prison who shouldn’t be, others are in for too long, and without a plan to educate, train, and reintegrate them into our communities, we all suffer.”
I was thrown, but not disappointed, because I never functioned under the myth that Bill Clinton was on our side, let alone one of us. And, as nice as it would be to have such a political figure (especially a white one, since he’d be less likely to get written off as pandering to his race, or you know, a Muslim), it’s time to stop pretending that Clinton (and others like him) are just kidding, or just being tough on crime when they support the labeling of black, underprivileged kids as “super-predators.”
For all of those who have yet to read work by Michelle Alexander, or haven’t gotten around to Ta-Nehisi Coates, I hope those video clips making their way around Twitter will be enough to get blacks to, at least, drop the “honorary black” that has for so long appeared alongside Clinton’s name. By making a statement that boils down to, “But what about black on black crime?!” Bill Clinton has, hopefully, lost such status (mythical or otherwise). For me, right now, he’s no better than those online commentators who appear on every thread about police brutality. He’s the reason that #WhereWasBLM was trending not too long ago, because he seems to believe that protestors aren’t aware of the vast difference (and the relationship) between violence committed by one underprivileged person against another, and violence committed by the state.