Fact Check

Hillary Clinton Told 'Seventeen' Magazine She Didn't Want Her Daughter Marrying a Black Man?

There's no evidence (beyond a meme) that Hillary Clinton said she would be disappointed if her daughter married a black man during an interview with "Seventeen" magazine.

Published Sept. 10, 2016

Claim:
Hillary Clinton said that she would be 'disappointed' if her daughter Chelsea married a black man.

In September 2016, as election-related misinformation reached a fever pitch, a graphic appeared featuring a photograph of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton alongside a quote — purportedly from a 1995 interview with Seventeen magazine — that she would be disappointed if her daughter Chelsea married a black man:

clinton quote seventeen magazine

Would I be extremely disappointed if she (Chelsea) chose to marry a black man? Yes. Would I stop loving her? No, absolutely not.

However, we found no evidence of Clinton making this remark, or even giving an interview to Seventeen at all in 1995. Clinton was First Lady at the time, and if she had made such a remark it would have been covered by various media outlets. It would also have been out of character at the time for Seventeen, a publication largely devoted to celebrities, fashion, and dating, to publish an interview with the First Lady.

A spokesperson for Seventeen confirmed to us in an email that no such interview occurred:

I couldn't find anything on Hilary Clinton from the 1995 Seventeen editions. I looked through each individual magazine and saw nothing!

Hoax quotes are commonplace on the Internet, and many are circulated with phony citations and photographs in an attempt to make them appear credible — particularly during an election year.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.