There was Hillary Clinton, up there in the Bronx of all places, at Pelham Prep, where high-achieving students of color learn discipline of mind and body to stake a claim in the world beyond.
Young Aleatha WIlliams and her family had apparently known the erstwhile presidential candidate Clinton for some time and has taken to referring to the Senator as Aunt Hillary.
It's pretty disgusting to think that a scene like this, some weeks back, would have been the last thing on the Senator's mind, as she so aggressively was courting votes of (in her own words, more or less) hard-scrabbling white voters from West Virginia.
It was a strategy that deliberately and calculatedly put dark-hued folks (of the kind that predominate in so many neighborhoods of New York City, particularly Brooklyn and parts of the Bronx) way into the back of the back burner.
And just as it stings to know that race was used so coldly in this campaign, so it also pains to feel that this Aleatha Williams was used, taken advantage of, in a sense, in order to take the first steps of a political comeback, to win back voters in those very districts where countless women and men remain offended by the behavior of the Clintons, Hillary and Bill, in their campaign against Barack Obama.
Now we know that there were a good number of black elected officials, especially members of Congress, who stuck with Hillary Clinton through the long, tedious and sometimes embarrassing process of the campaign; but the strongest of them had the good sense and conscience to say, from time to time, that what they were hearing from Hillary and Bill was just "dumb," as Charlie Rangel of Harlem put it.
Of course, he couldn't say crass and racist.
It is supposed here that some of those black elected officials, especially those in heavily black districts, will pay a price for what they did, particularly when they neglected to speak out as the Clintons crossed the line of decency in their Karl Rove-like playing of the race card.
There are some black elected officials who, with considerable nerve, are still accusing Obama of being sexist and not doing enough to reach out to the strong Hillary supporters.
Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas is apparently one of those and she recently questioned Obama (in a session recently that Obama had with black Congressmembers) about what he was going to do to reach out.
According to notes taken by Brooklyn Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (who herself had been a staunch supporter of Clinton even though her district went for Obama), Obama said the following:
"If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it.”
Rep. Diane Watson of California did not appreciate thos last three words and is said to have told Obama, "Don't use that terminology." (read an online account). Wow.
Relative to all this, we saw an interesting YouTube post showing the price Sheila Jackson Lee has begun to pay for her backing of Clinton. Her constituents are angry and resentful, and they booed her loud and long to show their feelings.
Is this, in greater or lesser degrees, what's in store for others, in Brooklyn and elsewhere, who took the same route?
[photo of Clinton was taken by AP at the Pelham Prep graduation.]