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Maybe Blacks Just Aren't Socialists
A more correct title would be "Maybe Blacks Just Aren't Democratic Socialists" (which I suspect isn't even a true statement), but either way it's an article exploring the question of why Sanders polls very low among black voters.
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 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:
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....
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/10/13/10185/697
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 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....
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/10/13/10185/697
17 replies
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