I have a double feature for you [View all]

[Chitown Kev]

First up is bravenak.

Black People Don't Have To Explain Why They Vote Hillary

I was not going to bother saying anything.

But here goes:

This expectation that we black people have to explain ourselves to the satisfaction of white liberals is tiresome and demeaning. Do we ever go around and ask white people to give us an explanation that satisfies our desparate curiosity as to why they are not informed enough to vote for the people who we think are in their best interests? Do we constantly rail against the voting habits of the white population as if we are terribly concerned that their habit of voting republican is destructive to us personally? And if we did, would anybody have the slightest concern about our need to be satisfied with their answer?

This sudden concern for our incarceration, our poverty, our hurt feelings over some remark Hillary made twenty five years ago is remarkable and terribly transparent. The shallow nature of the concern from many is so noticeable that I find it hard to even read most diaries or articles written to appeal to blacks for Bernie.

The constant name dropping of halfway relevant black figures is almost heartbreaking. No matter how often we say it is offensive, we hear cries of ‘you don’t speak for all black people!!!’, from people who have no idea what is feels like to be black.

I would answer your queries, but honestly it has been answered a million times, by hundreds of thousands of black people, and if it is not understood by now, it never will be.

The paternalism of those we call allies, who rant and rage and lash out on us with a mighty fury, ‘for our own good!’, to help us desperate, uneducated, ignorant, uninformed, needing of their guidance souls, become as enlightened as they and finally, finally by GOD vote in what they know, from their pedastal of progressive purity, is in ‘OUR BEST INTERESTS!’ is demeaning and horror inducing. See, they know much better than our dense, weakminded selves what is best for blacks. They remind us day after day how much they know about what we should think, do and want, and how we should vote. How could they not?

That is the answer.

And on the backend is yours truly.

I hate to say that I told you so...

In a 12/1/15 Black Kos commentary, I concluded:

While policies, platforms and legislative votes are historically important (prerequisites, in fact) to black voters, the popular support of Roosevelts (or at least Eleanor) and the Clintons (for all of their faults and policy shade) in black communities illuminate a indispensable maxim for attaining the black vote: It is much less important for us (black people) to get to know you (the candidate) than for you to get to know us.

That statement was nothing more and nothing less than what many black Kossacks (even those that support Bernie Sanders) had been saying for months.

It appears that the last time that Bernie Sanders had much (if any) contact with black communities would be in the 1960’s.

That has nothing to do with endorsing Jesse Jackson in Vermont 1984 and 1988.

That does not have much to do with whatever votes he may have made as a Congressman supporting my community.

It is ludicrous for Bernie Sanders to expect that he would be able to get the levels of support that will apparently need after being physically ​absent from out communities for 50 years only to come back for a vote.

I don’t understand why this is so hard for Bernie Sanders supporters to understand

Black folks are going to smell that from a mile away.

Let me add a note for some of the Clinton supporters here: I would not go around spiking the football as some of you have been doing the past couple of days. You don’t want to do that to yourself because this black man, this black voter (early voting in Illinois begins on Monday) really ain’t feeling Hillary Clinton at all.

Much shade is being thrown, I assure you.

It's good to be back.