General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Why all the hate towards Cornell West? [View all]kwassa
(23,340 posts)knowing next to nothing about Bernie, and hearing him interviewed on NPR at least six months ago, that he saw ALL issues as being subsets of the issue of income inequality. He did his best to avoid discussing racism at all. I was stunned by this analysis, and knew instantly that it would lose him black votes. Bernie didn't come out and alter his public statements about racism as an important issue until a few weeks after that, as he was getting a lot of blowback.
My impression at that time was that he truly believed that if income equality issues were solved, there would be no racism. It was almost a Marxian analysis, and naive in it's over-simplification.
Now, I think Bernie means well towards black people, but outside of his earliest civil rights days he hasn't addressed the issue of racism against black people very directly. The Berniebros keep citing something he did 50 years ago as proof that he is down with the black folks, but after 50 years almost no black people had ever heard of him. They know the Clintons.
There have been unjust attacks on both sides, but there really is an issue with well-meaning white liberals who think they know better than black people what is best for them. Some of the Bernie supporters went so far, right here on DU, to call black voters "low-information voters", a euphemism for ignorant. Another infamous post accused all black people of having the Stockholm Syndrome. They couldn't possibly know their own minds.
This doesn't go over too well with the black folks. Listen to what they have to say. Closely.