It’s no secret that race relations are at an all time low in our country. As a result of this, the topic of racial justice (or injustice) is a huge topic during the current presidential race. Both candidates have made their stances pretty evident on this topic.
During the first debate, the moderator, Lester Holt, asked how the candidates would heal this divide. Secretary Clinton pointed out that race still determines so much including how people are treated in the criminal justice system. She has been very careful and tactful in her wording of this topic. She uses phrases such as criminal justice reform, police training, racial profiling, and gun control. She puts a lot of the responsibility of the injustices on the government and police.
Secretary Clinton does a great job of lifting up African-Americans, and brings up the point of how ridiculous it is that they are not always treated justly. She said in the debate that “it’s just a fact that if you’re a young African-American man and you do the same thing as a young white man, you are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. So we’ve got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” She strategically gets people fired up about racial justice, and, therefore is very effective when it comes to this topic.
The other tactic Secretary Clinton uses is pointing out Mr. Trump’s failure to acknowledge these issues. She criticized his praises of “stop-and-frisk” as well as his focus on saying how violent and awful a lot of African-American communities are. She brought up many instances of Mr. Trump acting as a racist towards different groups of people. This in turn puts emphasis on how much better she could heal the injustices due to race in our country.