Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Mayor Bill de Blasio have taken the disrespect up another level. Earlier this week, both elected officials participated in a skit about de Blasio’s tardy endorsement of Clinton and managed to show their true feelings about the Black vote. The disrespectful joke was a reference to “colored people time,” or “C.P. time,” and reinforces false stereotypes about Black people. I’m tired of the blatant disregard for the Black community! Next week Black people will go to the polls to vote in the Democratic primary for New York State and this false sense of humor is being paraded around the city as funny.
With the overwhelming feeling of disrespect and disregard and that Black people feel directed towards them around the nation by government, law enforcement and elected officials in particular, from Flint, Mich. to the resurfacing conclusion of the war on drugs as a war on Blacks, this joke was deemed okay? This premeditated joke was rehearsed and vetted as presentable. This negligence is the same negligence that was used in fashioning a crime bill that led to mass incarceration because stereotypes and myths about Black people being violent were accepted. It became fact in the American media and was presented in skits that made it alright to call our young people superpredators.
Don’t tell me this joke is okay when we’re looking back at all the signs 20 years from now that we’ve made an error again. Black leaders should condemn them both. Your silence is deafening! This behavior cannot be tolerated by any Black voter heading to the polls. The Black vote is not a joke!