Brown and Black Forum mixes blunt questions, lighter fare
Three white presidential candidates were put on the spot about racial issues Monday night at the Iowa Brown and Black Forum, in between more conversational questions on sex, pot and Donald Trump’s wedding gift.
The moderators, from the cable TV channel Fusion, repeatedly tried to pin down Hillary Clinton on whether she’d pledge not to deport children.
“I can’t sit here and tell you I have a blanket rule,” she said. “Let me say this: I will give every person, but particularly children, due process to have their story told.”
Democrat Bernie Sanders, whom moderators noted would be the nation's oldest chief executive when starting his presidency, got a standing ovation for his witty comebacks and fiery calls for self-described “radical" ideas. One of them: having “the wealthiest country in the history of the world” pay for college tuition for all.
After Sanders roared one of his usual lines, calling for the nation to have the courage to bring forth a political revolution, moderator Akilah Hughes had to fan herself a bit before asking the next question. “Senator, sorry, you’re like raising my blood pressure,” she told him.
The forum, which dates to 1984, is billed as the nation's oldest minority-focused presidential forum. Traditionally, it has been a debate. But because national party officials limited the number of debates this election cycle, the three candidates took the stage one at a time for the “forum.”
Both moderators and selected members of the audience at Drake University's Sheslow Auditorium asked blunt, race-related questions seldom heard on the campaign trail.
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Moderator Jorge Ramos grilled Martin O’Malley on why there are no nonwhite presidential candidates in the Democratic field when there are three in the GOP field, and why more than 80 percent of his campaign staff is white. O’Malley answered that he had diversity in his staff when he was mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland.
And Sanders was asked if the level of distrust between police and the black community is justified.
“Do I think the black community has a right to be nervous and apprehensive about police? Absolutely,” he said.
Clinton was asked if “white terrorism” is as much a threat as Islamic terrorists in the Middle East.
“I think that we have all kinds of threats in our country and I wouldn’t discount any of them,” she answered.
Clinton also was asked: What does white privilege mean to you, and do you have an example from your life when you benefited from it?
“Where do I start?” Clinton answered, smiling. She said she had a supportive family, went to wonderful schools and lived comfortably, but as a child, “I never really knew what was or wasn’t part of the privilege; I just knew I was a lucky person.”
O’Malley was asked if the country has schools “in a state of apartheid” with a majority black student body. He answered that “integration” is happening at different paces in every state, but the main hurdle is inadequate funding for education.
Sex was a topic, too, when a Simpson College student from the audience asked Sanders about abstinence-only sexual education. “Sexuality is an intrinsic part of human life. We should not run away from it,” he said, and later said: “We really do need a serious national discussion about sexuality.”
The forum came during a caucus cycle that has seen inflamed rhetoric on the campaign trail about illegal immigration and discussion of a string of high-profile deaths of black Americans while in police custody.
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Moderators gave the event a nontraditional flair with a round of speed questions.
Sanders was asked: Your father was born in Poland, can you say anything in Polish?
“Unless no is a Polish word, I can’t,” Sanders answered.
Question: How much do you have to earn to be considered rich?
“I would say the people who make $250,000 a year are doing pretty well,” Sanders said.
Question: Can a Democratic socialist actually be elected president?
"Yes," he answered. “And will be,” he said
Question: Is it off-brand for a Democratic socialist to live in a mansion like the White House?
"I would consider it more like public housing," he said, to big laughs.
Sanders tripped as he walked off the stage, but quickly steadied himself.
For Clinton's quickie questions, she was asked: What did you get Donald Trump for his (latest) wedding?
Clinton: “Uh, nothing.”
Question: Tell us the truth, do you hate selfies?
“I don’t hate them. ... I really would like to talk to people, and all I do is take a selfie, and I feel like I’m missing something.”
Sanders and Clinton also engaged in some cattiness.
A moderator told Clinton that Sanders has criticized her for not explaining where she’d get the money to fund paid family leave. Clinton scoffed a bit, saying she has laid out specific tax plans “and my friend Sen. Sanders hasn’t. I and others will be anxious to see them.”
The Democratic race in Iowa is tightening, polling shows. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers put Clinton at 48 percent, with Sanders just 3 points back with 45 percent.
A moderator asked Sanders if Clinton seems to be getting “more aggressive” with him.
“Yeeeesssss,” he answered. “It could be that the inevitable candidate for the Democratic nomination may not be so inevitable today.”
O’Malley was asked: Under what scenario should a man be able to tell a woman what to do with her body?
He answered: “No scenario.”
And he was asked his reaction to Vice President Joe Biden’s comment that there are “two good candidates” in the Democratic race.
“I heard the vice president say that,” O’Malley said, “and I wondered if he meant the other one was Hillary or Bernie.”
After the two-hour forum, Tania Malagon, 25, said she was impressed by O’Malley for standing up for children who’ve fled violence in their Central American home countries. Malagon came as a child to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant but has since been authorized to stay in the country.
“Kids are the change in the world,” she said. “Especially the immigrant kids, we see things that kids here take for granted. Things like education, free food at school. I didn’t get that in Mexico.”
The black and Latino populations in Iowa are small but growing.
African-Americans make up 3 percent of Iowa's 3.1 million people. By 2040, blacks are expected to become 5.5 percent of the population.
The Hispanic population, now at 6 percent, is projected to hit 13 percent, or 450,000 people, by 2050.