Hillary Clinton decries America's failure to end racial discrimination and bigotry

Democratic frontrunner says Republicans Trump and Cruz are stirring bigotry and division

Hilary Clinton at press conference last week

Hillary Clinton has offered a mostly bleak assessment of America’s progress on racial inequality, urging the country to "face up to the reality of systemic racism”.

Addressing the annual meeting of the National Action Network, founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist and cable news anchor, Ms Clinton said that while the country had taken some significant steps forward, including the election eight years of President Barack Obama, in other ways its racial blemishes continue to fester.

“As you know so well, the last few years also have laid bare to deep fault lines in America,” Ms Clinton told delegates packed into a hotel ballroom in Manhattan. “They’ve revealed how frayed our bonds of trust and respect have become. Despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America’s long struggle with racism is far from finished. And we are seeing that in this election.”

“White Americans needs to do a much better job of listening to black Americans talk about the seen and unseen challenges they face every day,” she went on.

Among those seated before her were relatives of black victims of gun and police violence whose deaths helped fuel the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, including the mothers of Trayvon Martin, who was gunned down in Florida four years ago, and of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, a town that exploded in rioting after he was shot by a white police officer on the street.”

She offered a long list of priorities for her $125 billion “Breaking Every Barrier Agenda” first unveiled by her campaign several weeks ago, ranging from overhauling the criminal justice system to tackling environmental discrimination where disadvantaged communities face toxic hazards more prosperous Americans never have to worry about.

“If we’re gonna ask African Americans to vote for us we cannot take you or your vote for granted,” Ms. Clinton asserted, addressing the conference as polls show her on course to defeat her rival for the nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders, when New York votes next Tuesday. She also won the endorsement on Wednesday of The Daily News, one of the city’s two competing tabloid newspapers.

“We can’t just show up at election time and say the right things and think that that’s enough,” thing a swipe at Mr Sanders. “We can’t start building relationships a few weeks before a vote.”

Citing the lead-in-water crisis faced by Flint, Michigan, Ms Clinton vowed to eliminate lead as a major environmental threat within five years. If we put our minds to it, we can get it done… we know how to do the work. All we need is the will,” she said.

A crowd that at first seemed disinclined to do more than listen politely to the former first lady - in recent days she has faced criticism for her association with a harsh sentencing law signed in 1994 by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, that sharply increased black incarceration levels - slowly began to warm to her as she herself became more passionate.

The Rev Sharpton reminded delegates he had not endorsed either Ms Clinton or Mr Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist, who will address the conference on Thursday. He drew cheers, however, when he called her ‘The Reverend Hillary Clinton” thanking her for her speech.

The former Secretary of State said that the racism that persists has also shown itself in the current presidential campaign. “Ugly currents that lurk just below the surface of our politics have burst into the open, and everyone sees this bigotry for what it is,” Ms Clinton said. “Therefore it is up to all of us to repudiate it.”

She directly assailed Donald Trump and his rival for the Republican nod, Senator Ted Cruz. The former, she said, had “led the insidious birther movement to delegitimize President Obama” and “wants to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, and the list goes on.” Ted Cruz, meanwhile, “would treat Muslim Americans like criminals”.