Clinton’s remarks on black deaths probably not sincere: US author

American author Ian Williams says it is really difficult to judge the sincerity of Hillary Clinton’s comments over the killings of black men by US police as she is such a shrewd political operator.

Williams, a senior analyst at Foreign Policy in Focus, a policy think tank based in Washington, DC, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday.

Speaking at Columbia University on Wednesday, Democrat presidential candidate Clinton said her heart “breaks” for the African-American young men who have been killed by white police officers in the US.

She also called for comprehensive changes to the US criminal justice system as well as recognition of "hard truths" about race and brutal tactics applied by the US law enforcement agencies across the country.

Williams said that “what it means is that she is a presidential candidate and she wants to win the Democrat primary, preferably with no opposition. “

“And the only opposition is going to come from the liberal wing of the party, which has been saying this for twenty years,” he added. “It was saying it when she and her husband presided over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, an immensely disabled man in Alabama, while he [Bill Clinton] was the governor.”

Clinton also said authorities should address not just specifics of criminal justice policy, but primary causes afflicting the US, like economic inequality and the opportunity gap between African-Americans and whites.

“All of us welcome her belated conversion to the obvious truth, but it is very difficult to gauge the sincerity of somebody who’s such a shrewd political operator,” Williams said. “Nonetheless, what she is saying is entirely true."

“The social media have allowed people to see just what a travesty American justice has been for a huge minority of its citizens who can be gunned down on the streets with impunity,” he observed.

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