Did Bill Clinton Really Do Anything For Black Americans?

AAPP says: For many years Bill Clinton has been hustling black folks and our vote. With all of the "surrogate sleaze" unleashed by Bill and Hillary Clinton we are now learning what many of us already knew. The Clinton era was not an economic boon for blacks, it was an economic bust.



The following is a fantastic article by Melissa Harris-Lacewell on:

The Clinton Fallacy Did blacks really make big economic gains during the '90s?

H/T: news.aol for the link

By Melissa Harris-Lacewell

Hillary Clinton's campaign deployed President Bill Clinton in South Carolina for the specific purpose of delivering the black vote, aiming to remind African-Americans of the good times when Clinton was president. Which raises the question: Why do so many people think the Clinton years were good times for black America?

A hopeful African-American electorate was at the core of Bill Clinton's successful bids for the presidency. In many ways, the scandal-marred, deeply partisan years of the Clinton administration proved disappointing in the face of such early optimism. Welfare reform, the growth of black imprisonment, and the public abandonment of progressive African-Americans like Lani Guinier are some of the most memorable racial disappointments of those years. Even through these disappointments, African-Americans were among Clinton's strongest supporters because many believed Clinton's era was an economic boon.

But there is evidence that Clinton's unmatched popularity among blacks confused many about the true economic impact of his presidency. In a 2005 article I co-authored in the Journal of Black Studies, I analyzed five national surveys from 1984 through 2000. The data show that nearly a third of black Americans held false understandings of black economic conditions during the Clinton years. By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the '80s, barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. This belief is simply wrong. More HERE