2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: The one thing that will stop Bernie Sanders.....his supporters [View all]BainsBane
(52,999 posts)They face racism every single day. You and I have voted for Presidents based on race and gender our entire lives, for white men. But you insist her admiration for the first African American president is "divisive" because why exactly? After four hundred years of subjugation in this country, African Americans had the first black president., and so-called "progressives" despise him and insist everything he has done is useless because it hasn't done the only thing that counts: elevating the white upper-middle class and white middle class back to what they see as their rightful position atop the capitalist world order.
Also a good deal of what people dismiss is what Obama has done for civil rights, voting rights and women. People here have called that crumbs. It is insignificant because it isn't about them. Their entire outlook is shaped by race and class. They just refuse to acknowledge it. Their entire conception of the decline of America and the Democratic party is not about inequality, which has existed since the inception of the nation. They insist the problem is recent, and it coincides with the decline of their own race and class. Only they assume that experience is universal, when that is far from the case.
Then Sanders supporters decided to attack a movement for Black Lives as a Koch brothers conspiracy, insisting BLM had no right to question Sanders, who had done more for those ingrates than anyone else. Who were they to question a great man like Sanders?
Now you think YOU have the right to tell Bravenak how to vote. I can't even begin to imagine why you think such a thing is remotely acceptable. You have no right to tell black people or ANYONE else how to vote. You get one vote and one vote only.
The divide in American society already exists, is a function of racism, racism through violence and racism through dismissal. It is the racism that gives you and I privilege, that means we will earn more in our life times for no reason other than an accident of birth. It is a racism that endangers and KILLS AAs every single day in this country.
As for black people causing division by daring to question white supremacy--which is really what they are doing--, I could not disagree more. In fact, I have learned that I have NOTHING in common with those white "progressvies." I do not agree that any challenge to white male rule is divisive. Rather it seeks to lessen divides, to combat the most violent forms of racism as well as the subtler manifestations that enable them. I do not agree that people of color need to keep their mouths shut because you want to pretend racism isn't a big deal, when thousands of African Americans are being killed by police, but you insist Bravenak's audacity in respecting a DEMOCRATIC African American president is divisive.
Who exactly do you think you are united with? It sure as hell isn't me.
Bravenak can speak for herself on that regard, if she so chooses.