Clinton paired antiracist and racist statements in the same speech

Evidence

Bill Clinton did not greet the million Black men or hear their exclamations of racism’s persistence on October 16. Instead he gave a racial progress speech at the University of Texas, pleading in the heart of evangelical America for racial healing, egging on the mass evangelical crusade for racial reconciliation in 1996 and 1997. Crusading evangelicals would go on to preach that the so-dubbed problem of mutual racial hate could be solved by God bringing about mutual love. Clinton, at least, did recognize in his Texas speech that “we must clean the house of white America of racism.” But he surrounded one of the most antiracist statements of his presidency with two of the most racist statements of his presidency. Instead of relaying statistics that Whites usually suffered violence at the hands of Whites, Clinton legitimized the “roots of white fear in America” by saying that “violence for … white people too often has a black face.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 1152

Categorization

• SEED: An essay could examine how assimilationist politicians sandwich antiracist statements between racist ones, making the antiracist phrase a rhetorical cover.