The columnist is focusing on the side issue of whether blacks had overestimated the extent of their improvement on Clinton's watch, relative to whites. But the important point is that black America wound up much, much better off than they had been, through the course of the Clinton presidency. It's because this improvement was so dramatic that so many blacks could mistakenly think they were now better off than whites. Even though they were mistaken about that, they were correct in their more fundamental assessment of how they had progressed in the Clinton era.
I understand that the point of this piece isn't to educate anyone about what actually happened to blacks on Clinton's watch, but rather to try to benefit Obama's campaign. The author may not be particularly forthright about that goal, but she's amateurish enough with her propaganda that it's obvious. This essay is nothing but a cheap bit of rhetoric meant to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton and her black supporters. But facts can be inconvenient things, and this time the facts are pretty hard to ignore.
When Clinton came to office, the poverty rate for blacks was 33.4%. That's not a typo. More than a third of black Americans were living in poverty. And it had been getting worse for years. Since hitting a low way back in 1974, the poverty rate for blacks had risen by more than three percentage points, over the course of those two decades.
Then, on Clinton's watch, things suddenly changed. The black poverty rate fell in 1993. Then again in 1994. Then again in 1995. And 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000 (before finally rising again after Clinton had left office). By 2000 the poverty rate for blacks was the lowest ever recorded in American history. And this record low wasn't just a little lower than the pre-Clinton low from 1974. It was lower by a mind-blowing margin of 7.6 percentage points!
Little wonder that blacks tend to be fond of Clinton, and even to overestimate the extent of their improving fortunes on his watch. They had watched over the course of eight years as a very substantial chunk of the black community moved from below the poverty line to above it, in an era exactly coinciding with the Clinton presidency. This wasn't love born of Clinton "performing blackness;" it was love born of exceptionally good results.
The improvement wasn't just happening for blacks at the low end of the income scale, either. When Clinton came to office median real household income for blacks (in 2006 dollars) was $26,407. The overall trend had been one of declining incomes since 1978. But that trend reversed in 1993. As with poverty, the trend of improvement continued throughout Clinton's time in the White House (with consistent year-on-year improvements for every year except 1998). Then things again started getting worse after Clinton left office. At the end of the Clinton years, the median black household's income was up to $34,735 (again in 2006 dollars).
With a typical black household earning nearly a third more than they had just eight years later, there's a very obvious reason blacks would be predisposed to think well of the man who was in the Oval Office for that era. That's especially true when his era was contrasted by the dismal periods before and after he came to office.
Nor was the improvement only for poor blacks and middle class blacks. There was improvement right across the board. Median real incomes for black households improved dramatically, on Clinton's watch, for the 20th, 40th, 60th, 80th, and 95th percentiles, too. The Census keeps very detailed records on this, and their numbers are easily accessible online.
Nor was this improvement merely economic in nature. In one social statistic after another, life was improving for the black community in the Clinton years.. For example, there were dramatic decreases in black crime-victimization rates and in black teen pregnancy rates on Clinton's watch, too.
There's a temptation the chattering classes often fall prey to, to assume black political preferences are simply the product of ignorance. This set of assumptions is most commonly seen among Republicans, who'd like people to think blacks don't pick sides, politically, based on a rational understanding of the issues (since the contrary belief would mean Republicans must actually be bad for blacks). Lately, though, I've seen more of this kind of Republican-style recourse to arguments of racial ignorance coming from Clinton-bashing Obama supporters, who are annoyed that Hillary Clinton is still pulling good numbers from the black community, even when running against one of their own.
The enduring love blacks show towards Bill Clinton (and the glow that casts on his wife) is not the product of ignorance among blacks. It's simply a rational product of having lived through the last few decades. The fact is that blacks had been doing poorly for many years before Clinton took office, then had an amazing eight-year run on his watch, and have again been doing poorly in the years since. Misdirection won't change those facts.
It's sad to see such rank dishonesty from Ms. Harris-Lacewell. I'm sure that if she's looking at the stats she knows that she's being deceptive. She knows that the stats tell the tale of rapidly improving socioeconomic fortunes for black people in the Clinton years, after a long era of stagnation before Clinton took office. But she tries to obscure those facts, through rhetoric that would make a right-winger proud, and she embarrasses herself badly in the process.
