Last week, as he eulogized John Lewis, Bill Clinton blasted the black radical icon Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture). Referring to the Black Power–oriented direction the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) took after Carmichael replaced Lewis as chairman, the former president said: “And I say there were two or three years there, where the movement went a little too far towards Stokely, but in the end, John Lewis prevailed.”

That Clinton should use a nationally televised event — the funeral of one of America’s most enduring black figures no less — to disparage Carmichael is a disgrace. But we can also assume it was no mistake: his remarks were likely delivered with the upcoming presidential election and the Black Lives Matter protests in mind.

Clinton’s attempt to play Lewis and Carmichael off of each other, pitting civil rights against Black Power, sits within a long tradition of moderate whites seeking to limit the political imaginations of black Americans, even when the existing system has continually failed them. The former president’s words also betrayed an anxiety that has long plagued America’s white political elites: that racism and white supremacy will act as a catalyst, radicalizing black Americans so much so that they will seek to transform existing political structures or attempt to create new ones.