Thanks to Bill Clinton, the issue of race in America is again moving to the front pages. 
Bill Clinton is putting it all out front  for Hillary.  Blacks are going to vote for a black, according to Bill. 
The truth is, black Americans shouldn't be voting for either of these candidates. 
Why? Because the Democratic party has thoroughly abandoned African-Americans in the middle and lower economic classes.  In 1865 slavery ended.  One hundred years later, blacks finally were able to get off the back of the bus.  Voting rights followed along with affirmative action, which allowed many economically impoverished blacks to move in to the middle class, and even the upper middle class and wealthy class. 
Two short generations later, Democrats are throwing blacks under the bus.  It seems the Democrats (and Republicans to be fair) noticed that Mexicans (You can call them Hispanics if you are politically correct) are a larger voting block, and so the pandering began in earnest. 
Now the Democrats are content to throw the economically poor blacks under the bus, all in the name of political expedience.
Most illegal immigrants in to this country are Hispanic.  Democrats and a few Republicans would like to give these folks amnesty.   The Democrats would very much like to win the Hispanic vote for years to come, and they see amnesty as a sure way to bring these people in to the fold. 
At what price?
Vicente Fox (Mexico's former president) commented famously that Mexicans were taking jobs that "even blacks" wouldn't take.  Democrats and Republicans alike I think used this as the silent cover they were both looking for.  I've heard Republican pundits for years refer to these illegal immigrants as simply migrant agriculture workers.  The Mexicans are just  lettuce pickers, they're not taking real jobs.  The Democrats appear to have fallen in to the same trap.  But this is simply not true.  If you've ever been to a construction site in the suburbs of any major city, you know it's not true.  Mexican are doing framing, drywall, painting, plumbing and electrical work. 
The supervisors (and higher paid positions) tend to go to bi-lingual Hispanics (which just makes sense). 
The problem thus extends well beyond the low wages of the workers. 
But even with the lower end jobs which we are told "blacks won't take" there is more to the story.  Of course blacks won't take them, who would?  The wages are depressed. 
But illegal immigrants are being paid just as much as Americans!
This is misleading.  The cost is actually much lower to the employer, and everyone knows this. If you pay an illegal twelve dollars per hour, your cost is, twelve dollars per hour.  If you pay an American citizen twelve dollars per hour, the employers cost is actually much higher. He must pay social security tax, unemployment taxes, and he is open to a law suit if the worker is hurt on the job due to the employer's negligence. 
Thus wages are of course artificially depressed.  This hurts the working poor. 
I kid you not, I have actually heard Republicans say, "This is good, it keeps inflation down."  This is one of those times in life when you wish you had an old leather glove to slap someone in the face with.  Of course it keeps inflation down, lots of illegal activity does this.  To be fair, most Republicans don't feel this way, but there are a few.
Here is the real problem
Illegal workers not only are lowering the wages, they are taking jobs from the working poor.  And not just the low end jobs.  How many lower income blacks and whites have not been able to get a job, because someone who shouldn't be in the country took it?  Could the low end job lead to a supervisors position (which pays better)?  Or to an middle income black American creating his own drywall business?  And yes, I realize the unemployment rate is low. This does not change the economic dynamic of lowering wages, at the low end. It also does not change the fact that even if it were a net positive (which it is not) it subverts the rule of law.  The rule of law is not just important in that it is a set of rules to make society more stable. It is the consistency expressed in the rule of law that allows business, and society, to function over the long haul.  When the rule of law is not enforced strictly, but by what we believe to important on any given day, there really is no rule of law.
The problem then summarized is this.
If we allow illegal immigrants to take low end jobs,  we further depress wages already at the low end.
 Then those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder have no first step towards the middle class.
If we then start to roll back affirmative action,
  Then we have hit the African-American people on the head twice.
Can there be any doubt that blacks were a repressed minority for the hundred years after slavery?  I think not.  During the civil rights movement some real progress was made.  But is two generations enough to end affirmative action and call it a success?  In my opinion, probably not just yet.  Some scaling back in the next twenty or thirty years may be a good idea, but abandoning the program after two short generations is not enough of a rising tide to lift all of the boats, so to speak.
If we further aggravate the problem by allowing Democrats to sell out the blacks in favor of illegal immigrants, we are really just setting the entire nation back forty years. 
We clearly can't have affirmative action policies forever. This would just feed in to the myth that blacks are somehow intellectually inferior and will need the help of government forever.  We have too much evidence that blacks can succeed and compete when the playing field is level.
On the other hand, we are in no position forty short years after civil rights gains, to throw blacks under the bus for the votes of Hispanics.  It is not only bad policy, it's downright sinister.  What we see emerging is the necessity for policy built from the left and the right.  But here, compromise isn't the solution. We don't want to shrink some affirmative action, shrink some illegal immigration. This just muddies the water and results in bad legislation, thus furthering the problem.
The real solution is to follow the law.  Stop illegal immigration immediately.  The Democrats are clearly of no mind to do this.  Black Americans in 2008 have a much better chance of extending affirmative action with Republicans, than they do stopping illegal immigration with Democrats.  If a recession begins to take hold, this will become very clear to blacks, and they may be inclined for the first time in decades to abandon the Democrats, and vote for the candidate that best meets the needs of the larger black community.