Hillary Clinton continues to catch flack for her past discretions. Words from a book written 21 years ago has come back to haunt her. In the book It Takes A Village, Clinton spoke about using Black prison labor when she served as first lady when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas.
“When we moved in, I was told that using prison labor at the governor’s mansion was a longstanding tradition, which kept down costs,” Clinton wrote. “I was apprehensive, but I agreed to abide by the tradition until I had a chance to see for myself how the inmates behaved around me and my family.”
Clinton continued by writing, “I discovered, as I had been told I would, that we had far fewer disciplinary problems with inmates who were in for murder than those who had committed property crimes. In fact, over the years we lived there we became friendly with a few of them, African-American men in their thirties who had already served twelve to eighteen years of their sentences.”
The excerpt created a firestorm as Clinton was blasted on social media for her family’s role in using prison labor. Texas, Arkansas, and Georgia don’t pay inmates to work in what is considered slaver labor by many.
Clinton’s past issues led to a deep mistrust within the Black community. The level of mistrust may have caused Clinton to lose voters who turned out in large numbers for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Here is how some have responded to the excerpt that has recently gone viral.
Anyone daring to defend Hillary Clinton for using prison labor because “it was ten years ago” is defending slavery *just ten years ago*
— Brandon?Long (@BLongStPaul) June 7, 2017
Hi. Y’all’s beloved Hillary Clinton owned slaves.
— Bae-ard Rust☭n (@_iAmRoyal) June 6, 2017
someone tell prof cooper that some of us think both hillary clinton *&* white male architects of the prison complex are racists
— ayiticheri (@djaspora) June 7, 2017
I firmly believe that the Hillary Clinton of today feels differently about prison labor than she did 21 years ago.
— Dan (@DKinMN) June 7, 2017
