Representatives from the Black Lives Matter movement finally got some face time with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and things did not go well. Footage from the conversation, which took place in New Hampshire on August 11, was just released and shows Hillary getting testy.
The piece that’s most important, and I stand here in your space and I say this as respectfully as I can,” Julius Jones, one of the activists, said to Hillary Clinton, “but if you don’t tell black people what we need to do, then we won’t tell you all what you need to do.”
“Well, I’m not telling you,” Clinton responded. “I’m just telling you to tell me.”
“What I mean to say is that this is and has always been a white problem of violence,” Jones continued. “There’s not much that we can do [as black people] to stop the violence against us.”
That’s when the conversation got awkward.
“Respectfully, if that is your position, then I will talk only to white people about how we are going to deal with the very real problems,”
Clinton snapped back, eliciting a wide-eyed look of horror from Daunasia Yancey, the founder of Black Lives Matter in Boston who was standing directly to Hillary Clinton’s left.
“That’s not why I mean. That’s not what I mean. That’s not what I mean,” Jones told Clinton. “What you just said is a form of victim blaming. You were saying what the Black Lives Matter movement needs to do to change white hearts is–”
“Look, I don’t believe you change hearts,” Clinton shot back. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate. You’re not going to change every heart. You’re not.”
