This morning, Ed Kilgore discusses a theory “that there’s something about Bernie—perhaps his tendency to frame all issues as economic in nature—that doesn’t grab nonwhite voters.” It’s something I’ve been thinking about, but I’m not quite sure how to go about understanding it.
Growing up in the intellectual and liberal hotbed of Princeton, New Jersey, my playground was often in the living rooms and dens of Ivy League professors. Some of these professors could accurately be described as radically left-wing, others not, but in combination with the general left-wing social activism I encountered on a daily basis, I was kind of marinated in the intramural debates the left had in the late Cold War period.
In that environment, socialism wasn’t just a way of describing a distance from the political center. It was more of a description of how a person chose to interpret the world. I could get into degrees and types of Marxism, distinguishing Leninists from Trostkyites and basic Western European social Democrats, but these were all of a type that sought to understand the world in primarily economic terms.
There were totally different types of leftists who were largely uninterested in such theories and were much more concerned about concrete things like civil rights, gender equality, peace activism, apartheid, the Palestinians, or social spending priorities.
If we roll the tape forward to recent times, the first group would be represented by the folks who gravitated to the Occupy Movement and were keen to use the economic crisis of 2008-9 to break up the big banks and strike a blow against capitalism. The latter group would gravitate more to the project of having a new sympathetic president whose success or failure would determine so much for our future.
Even more recently, the latter group would gravitate to Trayvon Martin and Ferguson and the #blacklivesmatter movement.
Obviously, there’s plenty of overlap in these two types of leftists, but they’re easily distinguishable in my mind. And they don’t speak quite the same language.
When it comes to Bernie Sanders, I think he speaks in the language of class consciousness which is an effort to unify all working people in a common political project. If you look at how he initially reacted to the #blacklivesmatter protestors, his instinct was to say “we all matter,” because that’s the core of his message. We’re all in this together and let’s not let them divide us by exploiting our superficial differences.
And that’s fine, but it doesn’t translate to people who are standing there saying, “We’re getting killed and you’re not because we’re different from you.”
The interesting thing is that once the respective messages are translated, there isn’t any disagreement between the two sides. Surely, there will remain some gap in how issues are prioritized (Bernie will still put income inequality ahead of police brutality, for example) but both sides are willing to fight for the same things.
The inadequacy of this explanation for Bernie’s inability to get his message through to people of color, though, is that I’m talking about elites or intellectuals or social activists talking to each other. And that’s only the crust at the top. Just as the white progressive blogosphere is influential but ultimately unrepresentative of the progressive movement as a whole, the black and brown intelligentsia isn’t representative of the overall black and brown communities. It’s certainly not helpful to Bernie that the black blogosphere is largely hostile to his campaign, but it doesn’t sufficiently explain this:
Sanders started off this primary known to a similar percentage of whites, blacks and Hispanics; around half of all three groups had neither a favorable nor unfavorable opinion of him. But while the share of whites without an opinion of Sanders has steadily declined, his campaign simply hasn’t grabbed the attention of minorities.
What I am arriving at is that the black community simply doesn’t speak the language of socialism. On an intellectual level, socialism can seem like a negation of their unique struggles, but it may run deeper than that.
Just as the black community is more religious than the white progressive community and therefore more socially conservative overall, the black community also has weak roots into the economic theories of the far left. Too often, I think people see how reliably blacks vote for the Democratic Party and automatically place the whole community on the far left. We see the Republicans doing this whenever they suggest that 47% of the people are just looking for a handout. The idea is that (mostly) minorities are dependent on the government and will support a totally socialist political program.
But it appears to me that this misses much more than it explains. You can rightly point out that the right divides people by race, pitting poor whites against poor blacks and Latinos. But there’s also a sense that class struggle is a luxury that you can’t get to until you’ve overcome systemic racial bias and discrimination.
Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t get to the sanitation workers until after he’d won the right to vote, for example. And, likewise, the current generation is trying to deal with unaccountable police violence and mass incarceration, and breaking up the big banks is just a lower priority.
So, what I think is going on here is that there is some misunderstanding on both sides, and a sense from the black community that their priorities aren’t going to get the right emphasis from the socialist left.
To put it in the simplest terms, the black community isn’t really socialist.
That doesn’t mean that they’re a bunch of corporatists or DLCers. That’s the wrong kind of left-center distinction to make.
For a long time, I saw in Sanders someone who was basically a Democrat and who was advocating nothing more radical than what is fairly mainstream in many Western European countries. What I think I was missing is that there are deep veins in the present that run back into the Cold War period. The language of class struggle and the language of social justice are not the same. That’s why one side can see it as a badge of honor to have “walked with Martin Luther King” which proves your longstanding commitment, and the other side can see it as almost a joke, like “I have lots of black friends.” Because, you know, the struggle didn’t end in 1968.
In any case, I don’t think Sanders will break though with a worker solidarity message or with that kind of language. We might wish for more class solidarity, but I think a new language is required to make it happen. And this is as true about getting through to the white working class as it is to the black and brown one.
The rhetoric of the Old (white) Left isn’t going to get it done.
Without taking on the merits of either side: Some of these same conversations have been going on in the writing communities that I am a part of. There, many, but not all of the people who use the language that Bernie does are making claims that all the race and gender equity and GLBTQ issues are merely a subset of the class struggle issues and that if you solve the class issues, the others will essentially vanish.
The people of color, the feminist contingent, and the GLBTQ activists counter-argue that those issues exist independent of the class/economic issues and will not be solved by the economic revolution, and that saying that they will falsely dismisses the issues that are at the core of their activism. This is especially true of younger activists in my community.
So, basically, what a lot of the GLBTQ, feminist, and people of color activist base is hearing from Bernie is a series of arguments that they have come to associate with privileged white guys who ignore and dismiss what matters most to them. I’m not at all surprised he isn’t breaking through. To many people he is speaking in language they have come to associate with assholes.
Nota bene: I tend to agree with the feminists, GLBTQ folks, and the people of color on the underlying arguments on this one, but having been involved in this discussion more times than I would care to count, I have no intention of having it again here. I am merely offering up on observation in the interests of possibly shining some light on the issue. If you are in the it’s all economics camp, that’s fine, I have no interest in arguing it with you.
I wish I could find the link but I remember seeing somewhere that studies have shown that Americans around and below the poverty line actually have more of a “personal responsibility” mindset than middle class and upper class people. That is, they are more likely to see their situation as arising from poor decisions/bad behavior than from structural factors.
There is some truth in this. Clinton’s support of Welfare reform (which she re-affirmed in the ’08 primaries) never hurt her so far as I can tell among rank and file people of color.
It really does explain why the imprisonment rate of AAs, in particular, and Latinos could skyrocket with so little push back from those communities.
When Gary Webb first reported on the possible link between the CIA and the south-central Los Angeles crack epidemic, Maxine Waters was at the forefront of the outrage. It’s not that the epidemic had gone unnoticed in the AA community, but it appeared to be primarily an intra-community issue and not driven by white outsiders.
While the consumption of powdered and crack cocaine has has gone up and down since the late 1990s, we haven’t heard it described as an epidemic since then. Possibly because the retail distribution points are less concentrated in AA communities.
Rather than viewing race, gender equity, and GLBTQ issues as a subset of the class struggle I would view all of them as mechanisms to achieve the same end. They all create an us versus them construct where I can dismiss a large group of people as not part of my group and therefore unworthy. Multiple groups provides fertile ground for expending energy on the preservation of the group identity and not the core problem of inequality however that is defined.
That intersectionality is a lot of what is too often ignored by online socialist activists. I have seen a lot of exchanges that pretty much run like this (paraphrasing):
POC: If you don’t have my back on racism, you are not my ally.
Socialist: Race struggle is part of the oligarchy’s plot to divide us. If we unite in class struggle your problem will be solved.
POC: People in my community are being killed by the police right now, I need to stop the killing before I can worry about the class shit. Will you help with that?
Socialist: I just told you, “Race struggle is part of the oligarchy’s plot to divide us. If we unite in class struggle your problem will be solved.” That’s where we must focus our efforts. If you don’t prioritize class struggle, you will never be free and you are not my ally.
POC: Fuck you, I am not your ally.
That’s the baggage I see Bernie needing to address in his arguments.
Unifying with class struggle is a way to position yourself to attack systemic discrimination. How many times has any kind of social equality movement run afoul on the rocks of economic divide and conquer? Hell we’re seeing it in Europe right now.
That said regardless of how things should be, if Sanders needs to develop a new language to break through then I hope, he does.
I love Bernie, but he hasn’t developed anything new since about 1984.
He’s never run for president before. Neccesity can be a good motivator.
Invent something new? Like not food and shelter for poor people, but something else? Like not justice or education or jobs? Maybe new advertising slogans? Put an exclamation point after his name?
Since most people of color haven’t heard about Sanders except for the ass clowns like the Seattle Two, I’m guessing that the problem that people of color have with him (haven’t heard about him) isn’t the same as your problem with him.
My girlfriend and I watch coverage coming up to the debate and laugh. It’s amazing how they can have a report about it without mentioning Sanders at all.
I guess that Hillary will win or lose it on her own, with no mention of Sanders in the post-debate coverage.
Sanders’ problem with people of color is the same as the rest of the people of the US. They haven’t heard anything about him.
And, quite honestly, I haven’t seen anything new with Hillary lately except her flipflops, and they’re not so new either.
That’s ok. The dialectic doesn’t change.
Um, isn’t the dialectic the mechanism of change?
Most of the left has been trying to keep the New Deal from collapsing since 1968. Wherefrom comes this sudden demand for novelty?
Sanders’s contribution to the Affordable Care Act was funding rural and urban community clinics. That was a pretty major achievement, given the general tendency in enacting that legislation.
Agree on Sanders’ contribution to the ACA/
wrt: Most of the left has been trying to keep the New Deal from collapsing since 1968. Wherefrom comes this sudden demand for novelty?
From those that bought into the whole “third way” or there must be a “third and better way” shtick. Betraying their ignorance as to what made the New Deal so robust and that the project wasn’t complete by 1968 and had been implemented more slowly in the prior three decades because of Republicans and rightwing religious folks.
Not to mention the dead weight of the Dixiecrats.
But once that dead weigjt was gone olit damn near imploded.
It certainly is odd. With Bernie Sanders more people can theoretically get the whole deal: more economic and social justice. I can’t imagine why anyone would think they could get more of anything from, say, HRC. Could it be that she might be seen as conforming more to the image lower class people might have those socially and economically above them. See, now I’ve committed the supreme blasphemy of talking in the dirty language of class and means. We’re supposed to obsess instead about gender, sexuality, skin color, religion, anything other than old-fashioned, boring basics of life like a whole bunch of hysterical Commies. So un-American of me.
First of all — discrimination interacts with class/income/wealth. Steps can be made to reduce the formal, legal and institutional, forms of discrimination, and that will reduce income/wealth inequality but not by much. Except for equal rights for the LGBT community, all the formal steps to reduce discrimination were completed in the 1948-1971 period. A few years earlier for AAs. MLK, Jr. got that and yet it was a struggle to him to redirect attention to economic issues within his own community. It resonated better among educated, particularly younger, white folks.
Before his death, King’s approval rating in the AA community was low and lower than it had once been, which was never high, in the white communities. It’s easy to see that from refusing to move from the back of the bus, that buses became integrated. From an AA demanding to be served at an all white lunch counter, that laws were enacted that supported the right to be served a hamburger. That marches, huge rallies, etc. led to a national right to vote. However, when discrimination is informal, pervasive, and within the hearts and minds of white folks who do have a vested interest in preserving whatever little privilege they think they have and are entitled to, fighting discrimination one horrible instance at a time will not and cannot get the job done.
It’s not an accident that income/wealth inequality began increasing in the early 1970s and has continued since then. Ordinary Joes and Jills paid no attention to it. At the ballot box, a disproportionate number of white folks fed their racism and AAs affirmed the Civil Rights era King. Some crumbs are perceived to have fallen to both groups. With all groups resenting whatever crumbs another group has gotten. When conservatives hear liberals denouncing all the serious money that the elites have gotten, they hear that as minority resentment and they’re against that. That resonates emotionally for them.
When AAs see a young black man shot and killed by a white man or a LEO that resonates emotionally for them as if the victim were another Emmet Till. When Sanders points out that the AA youth unemployment rate is two to three larger than that of white people and he supports efforts to bring this in line, this doesn’t emotionally resonate. It doesn’t help that most AA leaders also focus more attention on the former at the expense of the latter. Even Cornel West.
At the economic public policy level we’re deadlocked with both sides digging in as the “have mores” continue to get more at the expense of everyone.
What is unique about Sanders approach, and it may not succeed, is that he’s talking to working class white people. Pointing out that the crumbs that fall their way are in fact crumbs. To borrow from Willie Sutton, go where the money is. Forget that an equitable distribution of that money means that working class white folks won’t get it all. Take two dollars instead of holding out for three because it’s either two for all or nothing and it’s really up to a majority of white people to push this agenda forward because a majority of POC have more pressing issues on their plate at the moment.
And they’re listening to Donald Trump.
Not all. And Sanders is a second choice for many. Not easy to persuade those that have lived their whole life viewing POC as the reason why they aren’t millionaires. They hear those dog whistles and are so well conditioned that they can’t do much other than salivate. However, that conditioning even for a dog does begin to extinguish itself after enough times when the whistle isn’t followed by a bowl of food.
I hate to say it, but a lot of this thread demonstrates how similar arguments I’ve seen in the writing community go. Too many discussions on issues of discrimination and class and economic issues drive young feminist, GLBTQ, and (especially) POC, activists away from socialist and class arguments and (IMO) away from Bernie’s message.
When someone says it’s all class and that the other issues are simply a way for the oligarchy to divide the masses, they’re treading the ground of a lot of previous arguments that too often have ended up denying the lived experience of many POC, GLBTQ, and feminist activists.
I don’t think that’s the intent of anyone here, but many of these comments are rehashing parts of arguments that have been a huge part of the online interactions between a largely white, largely male socialist comentariat and POC, GLBTQ, and feminist communities. If Bernie can’t find a way to make his arguments without tapping into that baggage I don’t think he has a real chance with POC. It doesn’t matter how right an argument is if it is framed in a way that drives off the intended audience.
That’s the core of my message here.
That’s pretty much how I read what you were writing. I thought that I could perhaps provide some points of emphasis by bringing across things from some of my other communities, especially after reading some of the early comments.
Interesting theory, but socialism polls much more positively among whites, especially non-white youths, than whites. Hell, with blacks it’s an absolute majority. Even with Hispanics, the positive/negative gap between capitalism is 23% against (as opposed to 10% against for blacks and 20% for for whites) so a simple comparison of polls shoots a pretty big hole in the OP’s theory. http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publics-response-to-capitalism-socialism/
Caveat: as any frustrated liberal knows, there’s a difference between supporting a brand and supporting the components of the brand. So a plausible alternate explanation is that racial minorities are simultaneously not prejudiced against the word while still not supporting its tenets. However, individual socialist economic policy polls even more strongly positive with non-whites.
This is why the division I’m trying to highlight here isn’t immediately obvious.
If you look at a poll on socialism or even components of a socialist platform, you are likely to see more support among non-whites than whites.
When you look at the intellectual currents, however, socialism becomes more about disposition, priorities, and ways of doing analysis. And here there is a big, obvious gap.
Yet, I wasn’t satisfied with that answer because most of what both black and white intellectuals do is wank, and they never wank harder than when arguing over economic/social theory.
I don’t think intellectual schisms at the top explain too much for the bulk of the population.
That’s why I arrived at a language problem. People are literally not hearing each other, which is why Sanders’ loud companies about billionaires and banks isn’t even getting a reaction (either way) from the bulk of the POC community.
“complaints” about billionaires…
There’s one thing I really want to know, though: is that division you mentioned even throughout the age groups?
I personally suspect that a lot of this acrimony is just the remnants of the New Deal Coalition and New Left fighting over their intellectual scraps, seemingly unaware of how the world changed since the 70s as they fight their forever war. The biggest tell is A.) how this discussion is mainly cast in terms of ‘white class warriors v. black social justice figures’, both sides apparently ignorant of how the growth of Hispanic and Asian minorities makes this dichotomy obsolete and B.) the fight mainly exists on websites that skew older anyway such as DailyKos and Balloon-Juice.
Or maybe it’s just my poorly-disguised contempt for American leftists continuing to use 1964-72 as the touchstone for political analysis, complete with transplanting fights and bromides, showing through.
I admit it annoys the fuck out of me to constantly discuss black and white while ignoring the position of brown and yellow (which imo is beginning to resemble the Jewish trajectory on the later). Especially since there are more brown than black.
However as long as brown has piss poor voting mumbers and black votes at admirably high rates, its a justified importance.
Sander’s message isn’t getting a reaction from POC because they haven’t heard of it.
A classic case of the data contradicting a thesis.
Rather than construct an elaborate theory, it may just be a Senator from Vermont has trouble connecting with African Americans.
In short, it’s hard to worry about the wealth divide when your kids are being shot in the streets. Of course, that’s the main reason why those kids are being shot. The super-rich encourage the police to kill black kids. They encourage the GOP to attack Planned Parenthood and the social safety net. They encourage Fox News to convince people that they need dozens of guns. They encourage the media as a whole to make us afraid of ISIS, ebola, refugees, or the Yellowstone supervolcano. Anything to keep us turned against each others and too afraid to see straight. Anything that distracts us from them stealing our money and power right out from underneath us.
I’m one of the lucky ones. I can focus on the wealth gap because I don’t have to worry about my son being killed while playing in the park. I can afford to get my daughter an abortion, if necessary. What I can’t do, if I hope to improve our country, is judge the people who are too busy worrying about daily survival to focus on more distant goals. Those of us who can worry about economic inequality should do so, and if we can get others to be aware of our concerns, that’s great. But we can’t expect black parents to consider it more important than police brutality. We can’t expect young women to take their focus off of choice rights. We can’t expect Latinos to not worry about immigration laws.
If Bernie wants to win, he has to make it clear that he will help people with the issues that affect them immediately and viscerally. He may be right about our long term needs, but that just isn’t enough to people who may not survive the day.
yep.
Agree, but his dilemma is that he’s better on and speaks more about all those issues you’ve listed than Clinton is and has done. So, exactly what do you suggest he do to break through that fortress that’s been built around Clinton with all those interests groups inside the walls?
Let’s recall that at this time in 2007, AAs weren’t exactly leaving Camp Clinton in any appreciable numbers. That was with the high-profile and public support of Oprah and Obama identifies as an AA man. Obama may have been battering that wall, but it was Clinton that blew holes in it for him.
You can’t force someone to listen. Most people take their cues from family, friends, colleagues, ministers, network evening news broadcasts. Why the huge age gap in Sanders and Clinton’s support? One reason is that in general, young people watch “The Daily Show” and older people don’t.
As a dirty trick (which it probably wasn’t), the BLM actions in Tucson and Seattle were brilliant. Not because many people saw it, but word-of-mouth reports (which are always highly distorted) from young AAs to their circles of family and friends communicated “Bernie Sanders don’t care about black people.” Thus, no need to listen to Sanders.
Of course, that’s the Hobson’s choice baked into American society from the very beginning, the one that allows the power that be to survive because of their differential effects by class and race.
And after 300+ years, those who see an alternative still haven’t figured out how to square that circle. But the elite lives in perpetual fear that they will. So 330 million guns in private hands, used on each other.
The “problem” is that people are analyzing this entirely wrong. Bernie’s “weakness” with Blacks isn’t a proper understanding of socialism or any conceptual concern. Painting with really broad strokes here, Blacks are personal and pragmatic, and most Blacks simply don’t know Bernie. I believe you will see significant change after tonight’s debate – depending on how Bernie performs, you will see a large swing to Bernie or a cratering of what Black support he currently has.
Highly dependent on the spin doctors. Sanders has some in his corner, but Clinton has an army deployed to many corners.
I am at a loss to think what this means other than than the black community is supposed to be monolithic, which in my experience it isn’t except on a precise range of issues. And if you notice Ben Carson, that focus does not mean unanimity.
There are black supporters of Bernie Sanders who are very much socialists in all different kinds of understanding of that term. And there is a fair range of the black community who understand the history of race in this country well enough to know that in some periods only socialists were their political friends and in other periods even those socialists were MIA.
Princeton is a very poor place to gain a perspective on the working class and how it rolls politically in the US.
What we will see tonight is whether Bernie Sanders himself understands the actual working people of America of whether he operates out of theoretical socialist tropes.
I’m not going to pre-judge him on that one. It is up to him to show that he can make the political argument in a convincing way. Marketing aura and soundbiting will not carry him; he must make something that we haven’t heard in a generation – a cogent, solid political argument. Without being able to cut through with that, he cannot persuade people of a hope for real change in political process and policy. Without that fundamental change in the approach to discourse, marketing wins.
This post is exactly about “The rhetoric of the Old (white) Left.” The real Socialists (Marxist self identified as Socialist) don’t think much for Bernie. First he is running as a Democrat instead of third party, oh sin of sins. Second he’s not out to “strike a blow against capitalism.” Capitalism as practiced here is like a snake eating its own tail. Once the Billionaires have it all, the snake dies. Bernie wants to save the snake, make it work for all the people. Cold war stereotypes of the Old (white) Left and Right equating Socialism with Marxism has been used to get us to hate an imaginary enemy plus any Socialist Democratic ideas so the corporatist could continue to rape the economy. The argument is not Left versus Right but Up versus Down but we seem to miss all that.
You say when Bernie initially reacted to the #blacklivesmatter protestors; his instinct was to say “we all matter.” He said nothing of the kind instead just leaving when the Net Roots people lost control of the stage. It was Martin O’Malley who said to his peril “all lives matter.” Hillary was nowhere near that stage but later crafted her spin statement. Bernie’s response was to add a significant portion to his stump speech addressing these issues that included both out of control police and institutional racism. He then talks about unacceptable levels of youth unemployment hitting black youth the hardest while advocating a Federal jobs program along with increased investment in education and less for mass incarnation especially private prisons. So the big deal is the priority? If you want to deal with or at least appear to deal with these social issues while letting the corporatist and DLC types to continue to rape the economy hitting the black community the hardest, then Hillary is your Goldwater Girl. Do you really think people of color are too stupid to understand and respond to this message?
You and Kilgore say that while the share of whites without an opinion of Sanders has steadily declined, Bernie’s campaign simply hasn’t grabbed the attention of minorities. It’s not that the minority community has a growing negative opinion, they just have no opinion. Why is that? The former co-chair of Hillary’s 2008 campaign knows that answer; Limit the debates and limit the exposure of Hillary to Bernie’s ideas in any national public debate forum that might reach the minority community. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DLC want to keep it that way so no one notices until it’s too late. And we let them with our silence.
This is ultimately a question of keeping a coalition together. And, in a coalition, all significant partners have to gain something or they leave. In the past half century, the rights of racial minorities, women, and gays have all made tremendous strides, while the economic situation of the majority considered independently of identity categories has become considerably weaker. Throughout this period, economic leftists have been strident advocates of integration, abortion, gay marriage etc. If this coalition is going to stay together, the economic leftists are going to have to see that their concerns also will get consideration. If the response is “you’re just privileged white boys, and we’ll worry about your concerns only after our maximal goals are achieved”, then the “privileged white boys” have no political benefit to being in the coalition, and while there may be a moral argument, the economic leftists, too, have a moral argument, it is being ignored, and it and environmentalism are the only factions on the left that are addressed to the interest of a large majority.
If Bernie fails to get the nom, and the reason is seen as identity politics, this coalition is in serious trouble. And the other groups should consider that they all need the broader coalition. Blacks are 12% of the population and, for the most part, have few resources. Much as it is nice to say that blacks stood up on the bus and won the end of segregation, had whites been adamant and unified in opposition, blacks would have been crushed. Violence? Blacks have neither the numbers nor the weapons. Against liberals in government in the 60s, they could make some gains, but without those allies, they’d get slaughtered. Same for gays. Though it might seem different for woman, a slight numeric majority, most women do not identify as feminists, so feminists, too, are a minority.
If economic leftists are expected to remain in the coalition, they have to get a turn too, and that turn can’t be last, because history has no end, so “last” means “never”.
Leftist-not-liberals are how much, do you figure? And their departure will cripple the coalition?
I’m a member of both a local IWW chapter and the group does well to fill a booth at a local pizza joint — more’s the pity. There isn’t even a local DSA chapter.
In this context, Sanders-supporters, who are indeed significant in number. When an avowed socialist is mounting a serious bid for the Presidential nomination, on broadly Soc Dem policies, the days when the economic left could be considered insignificant in the US are over. This doesn’t necessarily mean people will be lining up for same-ole same-ole leftism like the Wobblies.
What’s wrong with the Wobblies?
Among the old leftist groups, I’m more sympathetic to the Wobblies than most, but I don’t think that’s where the necessary new thinking will emerge. Also, the comment I was responding to specifically opposed leftism to liberalism. There is such a leftist tradition. It is principally Marxist, and I’m not sure the Wobblies are entirely outside it. This is what I am primarily opposed to.
And I’m not distinguishing between leftists and liberals here. In fact, I used both terms. I’m aware the Marxist tradition maintains there is a fundamental distinction, but I think that tradition is discredited for good reason (though I don’t want to get into that debate here), and, though there is some renewed interest in it, it is not going anywhere. Suffice it to say, there is a significant and growing constituency among what are called “liberals” or “progressives” in America who are interested in addressing economic justice issues as such. The Sanders campaign is evidence, and the Labor Party election in Britain shows it’s not just local. They don’t see this as opposed to identity politics, but if the identity politics advocates tell them it is, they will listen.
This may be way outside your point, but this most women do not identify as feminists, so feminists, too, are a minority forced me to acknowledge how messy and problematical identity politics can be.
For me the matrix of equality includes income/wealth and all the other group identifications and the specific or unique equality challenges any groups seeks to overcome. For example, on my own, it would have been difficult for me to recognize the inequality of marriage laws for gays and lesbians much less advocate for changing this. However, once the LGBT community raised this as an issue, I didn’t have to “think it through” or “evolve on the question. It was “now that you mention it, of course it’s unfair and must be changed.”
While “Griswold” and “Roe” were SCOTUS decisions, feminists had been working on and getting changes in state laws. These feminists crossed political boundaries and on the issue of birth control, had support from non-Catholics and other religious folks not tied to patriarchal, Puritan type Christian sects. An odd coalition considering the direction those identifiable religious groups moved towards subsequently.
The equal rights amendment passed in 1972 and was also bipartisan. All the women who advocated for it did view themselves as feminists. However, that coalition set aside everything but identity to advance the broadest goal of legal equality for women which had also been working its way through state legislatures at the time. My point is that one could be a feminist, racist, homophobe, anti-New Dealer, and Republican all at the same time. (Not too different from Log Cabin Republicans that reject everything from the left except for their own personal equal right issue.)
Personally, I wouldn’t have accepted support from such “feminists” to get the job done quickly. Privileged white women and I have far too little in common to make for a long-term coalition and would be too quick to stab those like me in the back if it served their own interests.
I think it comes down to loyalty. Sanders isn’t a Democrat, despite running for President as one. Hell, only O’Malley and Clinton are real, lifelong Democrats. Webb, Chaffee, Lessig…and, yeah, Sanders.
The Democratic “brand” is rock solid in most minority communities, because in the binary world of American politics it has been Democrats who have stood up for blacks and Hispanics.
The Clintons may be suspect in the White Progressive blogosphere, but they remain very popular as archetypal Democrats from the “good old days” of the ’90s. And Hillary Clinton buried the hatchet with Obama and became his SoS.
If you’re trying to parse this through the lens of Marxist theory or policy, you’re missing the point. Minorities feel an affinity for Democrats and Clintons.
Regardless of how many times they’re thrown under the bus when politically expedient.
Black folks are not socialist. There’s a reason why the GOP can’t get more than 10% of the Black vote. This crosses socio-economic levels of the Black community. I must return to Mr. Bougie- Lawrence Otis Graham, and his rules for his Black sons. I will ask again for someone to point the way to a White couple with 4 Harvard Degrees that has ever expressed the concern for their children and the police that Graham did.
Coucou J’ai surfé sur le net pour trouver un forum pour mettre et partager des articles de bonne qualité j’ai trouvé enfin ce site internet pour me présenter et aussi pour partager mon expérience. j’ai 26 ans, je travail dans une société de séjour punta cana.
visiter votre site web:
http://www.oovatu.com/agence-de-voyage/caraibes/republique-dominicaine/sejour-voyage/punta-cana
I prefer the simple answer; black folks don’t believe he can get it done. Remember what Obama had to go through to pass the ACA? That was with an overwhelming Dem majority(is Bernie putting in any kind of work to get a Dem majority?). This guy’s talking about tuition free college, national healthcare, Wall St speculation taxes, etc. at a time when we can’t even fix roads and bridges. We recently had a sequester to pass the debt ceiling. Now it looks like we’ll have to avoid govt shutdowns at least once a year. Campaign promises of Sanders’ magnitude ain’t gonna happen right now.
Then, there’s this thing about beating the GOP. Black folks don’t trust the majority of voters enough to support Bernie at this point. For whatever reason they believe that someone seeming reasonable from the GOP would take him out. All Magic Mike(Scott Brown) had to do in Massachusetts was drive a truck to win his seat in 2010. There are hundreds of examples like this in recent history.
Personally, I don’t think Bernie has the guile to win the Presidency.