‘Obama savagely oppressed Black people and that won’t change with the next president’
The mass incarceration and police terror afflicting Black Americans isn’t just some bad policies being enacted, it is happening because this system has nothing to offer the young, Carl Dix of the US Revolutionary Communist Party told RT.
RT: With quite a few of controversial statements made by Hillary Clinton back in the 1990's. Do you think her views towards African-Americans have really changed since then?
Carl Dix: Look, what we’re dealing with here is a US presidential election and the key question is not the individual candidates, it’s the system that they are trying to become the leaders of. All of these candidates are auditioning to be the commander-in-chief of the US global empire, and they will carry out the crimes against humanity internationally and in the US that the system needs to continue to exist.
And that is what Hilary Clinton was doing in the 1990’s, today – it’s called putting on a different face, saying: “Oh, I am concerned about black lives,” and all like that. But this system has never been concerned about Black lives and it will never be concerned about Black lives no matter who is the president. You’ve had an African-American president for seven years, but police have continued to brutalize and murder Black people and others and gotten away with it.
RT: Clinton says she wants to put an end to African-American youngsters being let down by the system. Do you expect her to deliver on this promise if she is elected?
CD: This is rhetoric. No politician who is going to be considered as a serious candidate to be the commander-in-chief of the US global empire can come up with a system that would work in the interest of the African-American youth, Latino youth, or youth of any other nationality. They go particularly to Black people - mass incarceration and police terror – it isn’t just some bad policies being enacted, it is because this system has nothing to offer the youth.
The factories that their parents and grandparents worked in have now moved halfway across the world, where they can exploit some people in Cambodia or Bangladesh even more viciously than they did people here. And that is leaving inner-city youth, especially Black and Brown youth, with no legitimate ways to survive. And the program for dealing with those youth has been police prosecutions in prisons. And whoever is president is going to continue presiding over there.
The experience with Barack Obama gave us that in spades. We got a Black president and people though he was going to do something for Black people. And what he did for Black people is to continue to preside over a system that heaps savage oppression on Black people. And that is what we’re going to get… no matter who ends up as President.
People who want to do something about these horrors coming down - not only on Black people, but on women, on immigrants, and on every front - have to not rely on lining up with the ballot box and pulling the lever for the donkey, which is the symbol of the Democratic Party. They need to take to the streets in mass determined resistance, and they need to connect up with a movement for revolution that the Revolutionary Communist Party is building, led by Bob Avakian.
RT: One of the main topics resonating among activists in the US is police brutality and sometimes the sheer discrimination against black youths in America. Has Clinton ever addressed the issue?
CD: Both [Hillary] Clinton and [Bernie] Sanders have talked about wanting to do something about mass incarceration. Both of them have been national, political figures for a couple of decades now at least. Neither of them have done anything around that. Now they are both willing to talk about it now, because that is the role the Democratic Party has historically played, trying to take people who are dissatisfied with the way things are and convince them that if you want to do something about the ills that are coming down on you, get behind the Democrats. People have done that. They have done it in spades: they have elected Black officials, mayors, congress people, even a President. Now Hillary Clinton is poised to try to be a female president. None of that is going to address these horrors…
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
