SPOILER: Though I am an old white woman, there will be no “whitesplainin’” involved here. I don’t know if black voters will choose to embrace Bernie’s candidacy in greater numbers even though I hope so. Only the truly blind don’t see that he currently has some problems with PoC. I am quite certain folks of color can figure out what best suits their interests. I have no high horses to ride and it pisses me off that some diarists here do.
One thing for which Bernie is constantly criticized is that pretty much every hour long stump speech is the same. He gives the same detailed platform the same airing in South Carolina as in California or Iowa. That is something I am about to applaud.
An aspect of Bernie’s agenda includes a move toward Racial Justice which he introduces with consistent mentions of “institutional racism” and “structural racism” as well as naming the names of many of those who no longer dwell among their fellows: Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice,… I’m sure African Americans know the names. He points to the cold reality that if these folks had been white, they’d likely be with us, their deadly crime was their color. He mentions that black folks represent 13% of the population but are 31% of those killed by police and that since such killings are self-reported the likely numbers are probably even more uneven. His audiences are informed that African American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. If that trend continues, one of every three black males born today may go to prison in his lifetime. He speaks of the abysmal failure of the War on Drugs and how it disproportionately affects PoC.
Like Martin Luther King Jr., Bernie tells us that economic justice is a critical component for the alleviation of racial disparity.
a median black male earns 75.1 cents for every dollar a median white male earns
Is it any wonder that finding decent paying jobs is high on the list of AA concerns? (After police brutality, of course.) Not coincidentally, Bernie is pushing for massive investment in our crumbling infrastructure and the millions of well paying jobs such a program would create.
The list of things on the weighted scales goes on and on at Bernie’s rallies.
I suspect blacks and People of Color are well aware of these statistics and the many others like them that Bernie pounds out for every audience. He doesn’t gin it up only for the states in which the demographic “calls” for it, like South Carolina. He doesn’t tone it down for the fragile sensibilities of the privileged white folk that are in the crowd in New Hampshire. It is an intrinsic part of his sincere push for a genuine democracy that affords something on the order of a fair game for all. It’s not the disenfranchised non-white crowd that needs to hear this, they already know it. They live it. Whites, on the other hand, need to listen and open their eyes. (Most of us are not even vaguely in the camp of the 20% of Trump supporters who seem to think slavery is cool [maybe those folks should try a bout as a slave themselves to see if they ought reconsider such bankrupt crap]). We just didn’t want to be troubled with having to think deeply about the continued hold of such tyranny reigning over our brothers and sisters. Yes, that’s another one of Bernie’s mentions; we’ve got to have this conversation.
I, for one, had grown somewhat complacent about racial justice issues after my vigorous youthful days of protest. I had been pleased to see that my own children had many more friendships with cohorts of color than I, for example, and thought there was nothing unusual about that. (In my day, it was controversial to hang with “others” and often gave rise to open hostility — pretty stunning to even recollect how that was.) By the time my youngest was in school, I noticed she never identified school buddies by color or ethnicity; it was so-and-so with the cool Power Rangers lunch box, or so-and-so with the braces. It was a wonderful change for me to realize. With these developments, I needn’t be troubled too much. I didn’t notice much trouble. Well, some. There was Trayvon Martin. And Michael Brown. Still, trouble happened somewhere else. I thought of it as more of a bug than a feature.
Now I’m getting that somewhere else is everywhere. I live there. I understand very well that if I don’t stand up with the oppressed members of my human family,I really am a part of my country’s problem. Bernie’s early engagement with Black Lives Matter helped me to wake up. It’s all helped me to recall that change is unlikely to occur without some disturbance. I won’t continue with business as usual. I am standing up with Bernie and all of the hundreds of thousands feeling the Bern. I’m walkin’ the walk and racial justice is on my road. I am, after all, a little old lady from Pasadena; a regular terror on some boulevards. This is one street where I’m glad to see more and more traffic cruise. And instead of saying it can’t happen, I allow for the possibility of an infrastructure to support a smoother ride for all of us.