Does Hillary Clinton have a racism problem? Some people think so. At the very least, Ryan Cooper writes in The Week, it's strange that Hillary is getting so much praise from groups like the #BlackLivesMatter movement for simply telling them what they want to hear right now, especially in light of the problematic racist undertones of her 2008 primary campaign against Barack Obama:
Many of the demands posed by activists focus on rhetorical gestures of support and solidarity (a notable feature of the Netroots confrontation last weekend). But this raises this issue of trust: A very charming, cynical person could simply promise support using the right words, win the election, then forget all about it.
Does the Hillary Clinton of 2008 sound like someone who's genuinely committed to the cause of racial justice? If she has changed her views, now would be a good time to explain.
One particularly blatant example of Hillary's racial pandering in 2008 is this USA Today interview in which she cites her "much broader base" of support (among white voters) compared to Obama as reason why she would be a stronger nominee. Clinton touted an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."
Jim Geraghty recounts Hillary's obsession (fueled by longtime Clinton associate Sidney Blumenthal) with finding the so-called "whitey tape," believed to be a video of Michelle Obama making racially incendiary remarks about white people.
According to Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book Game Change, "Blumenthal was obsessed with the ‘whitey tape’ and so were the Clintons, who not only believed that it existed but felt that it might emerge in time to save Hillary. ‘They’ve got a tape, they’ve got a tape,’ she told her aides excitedly."
So there's that. On the other hand, Hillary (or a campaign aide posing as her) wrote "black lives matter" during a Facebook Q&A.