America’s long struggle with race is far from finished.
Hillary will:
End the era of mass incarceration.
Protect immigrants’ rights and keep families together.
Defend every American’s right to vote.
“We can’t hide from any of these hard truths about race and justice in America. We have to name them, and own them, and then change them.”
Hillary, JUNE 20, 2015
The story of America is a story of progress. But more than a half a century after Dr. King voiced his dream for a more equal America, and civil rights activists marched and died for the right to vote, America’s struggle with racism remains far from finished. Race still plays a role in determining who gets ahead in America—and who gets left behind.
Hillary knows that racial inequality is not merely a symptom of economic inequality. We need to address both. As president, Hillary will fight to break down all the barriers that hold Americans back and build ladders of opportunity for all people.
As president, Hillary will:
Dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. In too many communities, student discipline is overly harsh, with too large an emphasis on suspension, expulsion, or even police involvement—disproportionately impacting students of color and those with the greatest economic, social, and academic needs. Hillary will work to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline by providing $2 billion in support to schools to reform overly punitive disciplinary policies, calling on states to reform school disturbance laws, and encouraging states to use federal education funding to implement social and emotional support interventions.
End the era of mass incarceration. America’s criminal justice system is out of balance. Keeping nonviolent offenders behind bars does little to reduce crime, but it does a lot to tear apart families and communities. One in every 28 children now has a parent in prison, 1.5 million African American men are missing from their communities, and Native Americans are incarcerated at a rate 38 percent higher than the national average. Hillary will work to cut mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses in half, apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactively, and eliminate the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine. She will prioritize treatment and rehabilitation—rather than incarceration—for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders. And she will end the privatization of our prisons.
Read more: Hillary’s remarks on criminal justice and mass incarceration at Columbia University.
Strengthen bonds of trust between communities and police. African American men are far more likely to be stopped and searched by police, charged with crimes, and sentenced to longer prison terms than white men found guilty of the same offenses. From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable. Black lives matter. Everyone in this country should stand firmly behind that. Hillary believes that effective policing and constitutional policing go hand-in-hand—we can and must do both. As president, Hillary will invest in law enforcement training programs on issues such as implicit bias, use of force, and de-escalation. She will also create national guidelines for use of force, provide federal matching funds to make body cameras available to every police department in America, and support legislation to ban racial profiling by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials.
Read more: 9 things you should know about Hillary Clinton’s plan to reform our criminal justice system.
Protect the right to vote. Hillary has laid out her vision to help more Americans exercise their right to vote and defend against the systematic, deliberate efforts to stop millions from participating in our democracy. As president, she will fight to repair the Voting Rights Act and implement universal, automatic voter registration so that every American will be registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out.
Protect immigrants’ rights and keep families together. America’s immigrants continue to earn lower wages, lag behind in education achievement, and face discrimination in their lives. And millions of undocumented immigrants—the majority Latino and AAPI—live in constant fear that deportation will tear their families apart. Hillary will fight for comprehensive immigration reform, including a full and equal pathway to citizenship. She will conduct humane, targeted enforcement, including by ending family detention and closing private immigrant detention centers.
Read more: Hillary Clinton gave a major speech on immigration. Here's what you need to know.
End the epidemic of gun violence in our communities. Gun violence is the leading cause of death for young African American men—more than the next nine leading causes combined. Hillary believes we must do more to crack down on gun stores that flood our communities with illegal guns and deprive our children of their futures. That is why she will stand up to the gun lobby and work to build on President Obama’s common sense reforms.
Fight environmental injustice. Clean air and clean water are basic human rights—they shouldn’t vary between ZIP codes. Yet, too many children in low-income housing are exposed to lead, African American children are twice as likely to suffer from asthma as white children, half of Latinos live in areas where the air quality does not meet EPA's health standards—and climate change will put vulnerable populations at even greater risk. As president, Hillary will make environmental justice a priority by working to reduce air pollution, investing in the removal of toxins like lead, developing greener and more resilient infrastructure, tackling energy poverty, and boosting efforts to clean up highly polluted toxic sites.
Close the education achievement gap. Every child—in every ZIP code—deserves the opportunity to live up to his or her potential. That begins with a world class education from birth through college. Hillary will double America’s investment in Early Head Start and ensure that every four year old in America has access to high-quality preschool to begin closing the achievement gap. She will modernize and elevate the teaching profession to drive student achievement in our K-12 schools. And her college plan will make college affordable and relieve the crushing burden of student debt.
End violence against the transgender community—particularly women of color. LGBT Americans, particularly transgender women of color, are disproportionately the targets of discrimination, harassment, and violence. As president, Hillary will fight for full LGBT equality. She will will work to protect transgender individuals from violence by improving the reporting of hate crimes, investing in law enforcement training that promotes fair and impartial interactions with the LGBT community, and directing the government to collect better data regarding crime victims.
Revitalize the economy in communities being left out and left behind. It’s unacceptable that so many African American families live in pockets of extreme poverty and that so many African American youths are unable to secure a good job. Hillary’s Economic Revitalization Initiative will invest $125 billion to create good-paying jobs, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, and connect housing to opportunity in communities that have been neglected for too long:
$50 billion to create millions of new jobs and provide pathways of opportunity. As president, Hillary will work to create jobs in communities that are being left out. Her plan includes $20 billion to create youth jobs, particularly for African American, Native American, and Latino youth; $5 billion to create reentry programs that will help formerly incarcerated Americans get back on their feet when they return to society; and $25 billion to support entrepreneurship and small business growth in underserved communities.
$50 billion in infrastructure investments to connect working families to good-paying jobs and opportunity. Too many Americans are trapped in so-called “opportunity deserts,” where a lack of reliable transportation keeps them from accessing good-paying jobs. As president, Hillary will make significant investments in public transit to connect the unemployed and underemployed to jobs they need. She will also rebuild crumbling water systems to preserve public health and create jobs and opportunity for local residents and small businesses.
$25 billion to remove blight from neighborhoods, remove barriers to sustainable homeownership, and connect affordable housing to economic opportunity. Centuries of housing discrimination have excluded people of color from the mainstream mortgage market and cut families off from communities with high-performing schools, safe streets, and good-paying jobs. Hillary will fight to ensure that housing policy and the housing market serve to connect every family to economic opportunity, rather than exclude them. And she’ll empower communities to overcome pockets of blight and give local businesses a chance to flourish.
Hillary has been fighting for racial justice her entire career:
As a young lawyer working for the Children’s Defense Fund, Hillary went to South Carolina to work to stop the incarceration of teenagers in adult prisons, and she investigated school segregation in Alabama at so-called “private academies.”
In Arkansas, she started a legal aid clinic to ensure that poor people had access to real legal representation; she helped start a program to help low income parents prepare their kids for school success, which is now in more than 20 states; and she helped to found the Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund, which helped nearly 40,000 single parents with their education.
As first lady, she continued her advocacy for children and families, helping to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which now covers more than 8 million kids, helping reform the foster care and adoption system, and advocating for the expansion of Medicaid to cover foster kids until they are 21. She pushed for the expansion of Head Start and for breaking barriers for working parents like quality child care and equal pay for women.
As a U.S. senator, she worked to improve pre-K programs and provide parenting help for at-risk families, which is now part of the Affordable Care Act, and she pushed to expand CHIP to cover more kids. She co-sponsored legislation to end racial profiling and implement sentencing reforms to address crack-cocaine disparities. She also fought to restore voting rights for individuals involved in the criminal justice system, expand programs that help people re-enter society when they have served their time, and worked to expand assistance for at-risk kids including intervention and treatment. She also introduced comprehensive legislation to protect voting rights; supported increased funding for HIV/AIDS programs, spotlighting the disproportionate impact on African American women; and worked with then Senator Obama to fight against lead poisoning, holding the first hearing on environmental justice and disparate impacts on the African American community
