Vox: Bernie Sanders and many Democrats keep confusing identity politics with tokenism

[JCanete]

25. Thanks Gulfcoast, for doing your best to understand what I'm saying before

posting your rant. What I meant by a fundamental element is that it is not itself intrinsic. It isn't part of a person's DNA, nor is it itself the root. I did oversimplify it because blackness, as somebody said to me recently(and she herself is black and fighting hard for black and LGTBQ rights) is very much an economic construct...a way of making some less than others so that they can be exploited, used, or stolen from or discarded without emotional consequence to those doing the harm.

But while that function is alive and well, it is reinforced by fear. People are afraid that immigrants are coming into the country and taking their jobs, or muslims are coming in and introducing sharia law or terrorism, or that black people are taking their money through welfare, or that women are taking their jobs and are independent enough to leave them...etc. etc. These are not legitimate fears and quite the opposite...well the last one is legitimate but fuck them. But those fears feed their animosities and their distrust of anybody who they see as "other." When people are experiencing instability they are more likely to behave at the limbic level, and less so at the rational level. Since we want to get these people to vote in our best interest, and hell, their own, we should probably find a better way of getting through to them than just slinging shit. Just because they do it doesn't mean its any better for them. They are fucking themselves. We should not be fucking ourselves.

Sure, why not get the racist to tune in. We aren't telling them that racism is peachy keen. We're not condoning or supporting or advocating racism, and quite the fucking opposite. If you can get some of reality into their heads, which would go some distance to actually dismantling racism and its persistence, why is that a bad thing to you? Quit pretending like I'm saying we need to accept the world as it is seen through their eyes, because I know their reality is warped as fuck and it doesn't match up at all with what is. I want to get it just slightly closer to what is.

As to "understanding the fear of the white man...." that isn't so that we can coddle them or pander to them. It is so that we can undermine their shoddy logic. Its so that we can get through to them and the next generation that is weaned on that shitty logic.