Hillary Clinton apologized on Thursday for remarks she made in a 1996 speech, in which she used the word superpredators to describe kids with “no conscience, no empathy” who committed crimes.
A Black Lives Matter activist interrupted Clinton at a private event in South Carolina on Wednesday, asking the former Secretary of State to answer for the remarks and apologize to black people for mass incarceration.
The activist, Ashley Williams, was escorted from the event after Clinton said she’d never been asked about the speech and would be happy to address it.
“In that speech, I was talking about the impact violent crime and vicious drug cartels were having on communities across the country and the particular danger they posed to children and families,” Clinton told the Washington Post on Thursday. “Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.”
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Clinton said she has devoted her life’s work to helping underserved children, too many of whom, she said, are in African-American communities.
“We haven’t done right by them. We need to,” she said. “We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.”
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