Sanders and Minorities: Confusing racial support with a racial agenda
Last edited Fri Jun 10, 2016, 08:28 AM - Edit history (1)
Before "primary season" ends at DU, there is something that I think needs to be said. A few players here on GD-P have tried to make political hay by insinuating that Bernie Sanders is the candidates for whites, with unspoken implications that there is an intentional racially tinged divide between Sanders and Clinton and/or between their supporters. It started here early and never was far below the surface. There are genuine points for discussion about why one candidate appeals more to one group or another, but racial support and racial politics are not synonymous.
Sometimes it can be one and the same. Other times not. When David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana he had strong white support and he also had a political agenda that appealed to white racism. In 2008 when both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton ran for President support for each deviated strongly along racial lines, with Hillary running significantly stronger among whines than she did with African Americans. Does anyone claim that she then had a racial agenda deigned to especially appeal to white sentiments or, even more extreme, to white racists? I don't.
In 1968 George Wallace ran for President soliciting racial support from whites with his clear racial agenda. He did fairly well with many working class white voters. But before Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, Bobby had been wining the loyalty of those same voters instead.
There are many reasons why support for candidates can differ along racial lines, many of those reasons are wholesome and legitimate enough without being evidence that one candidate or another is less supportive of racial justice, or less inclusive of diversity in their vision for America. Hillary Clinton did not fundamentally change as a human being between 2008 and 2016, but the racial profile of her political support during the two democratic primary years clearly did. It is not a bad thing to appeal to white working class voters unless that appeal is based on racism.
It was not a bad thing that RFK won support from voters who then turned to George Wallace after Bobby was gone, it was good that Bobby did. Those voters would have helped him defeat Richard Nixon and end the Vietnam war 5 years earlier. Kennedy stood for racial justice AND won working class white voters, because he also spoke to issues of deep concern to those white voters. Some of those voters no doubt were racist, to varying extents. But that often is how racism is overcome: fighting for a common cause can cause those who once fought each other to discover a deeper commonality.
I was supporting Hillary Clinton here on DU in 2008 when many here were accusing her of appealing to a racial divide in an attempt to maximize white votes for her. I defended her then, but clearly whatever concerns anyone may have had then on that score were not reflected in the results this year when Hilary won very strong minority support, especially among African Americans. I do not second guess why that is so. By whatever criteria those voters held most dear she won their support in 2016, and that reflects well on Hillary. But it doesn't reflect poorly on Bernie that they preferred her over him, unless he himself had run a racist campaign. And he didn't. All of our candidates this year spoke strongly to the importance of racial justice, and they all were sincere in doing so. And as long as that is the case, we should no more fear a Bernie Sanders winning white support in Oregon in 2016 than we dd Barack Obama wining black support in South Carolina in 2008
We need to restore a coalition of common interests among an overwhelming majority of Americans that bridge the walls of racism built to divide and conquer us. It is a lesson labor unions learned long ago before workers could bargain from a position of strength. It is how we some day hopefully soon will have the majorities we need in Congress to repair the damage done to our nation by the oligarchy that now control it.
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