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Bernie Sanders and the Black Vote, 2016 PrimariesBernie Sander's 2016 campaign could have learned a lot from the Cuban experience: the comrades thought in 1959 that the top down, economic approach of outlawing segregation while providing jobs and education would stamp out racism. It did not. In the 70's and 80's, their efforts did bear fruits to the point where there were several generations of black doctors, engineers, scientists, lawyers and other professionals, But even before the economy went bad when the Special Period started in 1989, the hard dollar sector of tourism was taken over by Cubans of ibero spanish origins while the remittances from iberian Miami drove the creation of many new businesses that exclude black Cubans. Relying on an economic approach alone did not affect the real practice of racism, which is also dependent on culture bubbles and the psychology of white supremacy, a complex phenomenon.
Over the
course of the US primaries, from Feb 1 to June 14, 2016, the Sanders campaign
started doing better among black youth, but still wound up with less than
1/4 of the black vote overall, to Clinton's 3/4, with some exit polling
showing an even more serious discrepancy. The Bern's campaign had sought
the help of able intermediaries such as Danny Glover, but gave them no
support, no funds even at a time when they had a lot in their coffers. The campaign
relied on the economic reductionism so common on the left in their initial
approach to racism, promising that getting everyone a job and equal
opportunities would fix the scourge. These articles chronicle this story,
some from a Hillary Clinton point of view and so somewhat suspect, but the
facts appear pretty well laid out, including the story of the do nothing
campaign who did not believe they could get the black vote.
All this at a time when polls were showing that the Bern would do far
better against Trump than Hillary. |
What’s a Class Revolution Without Black People? 8/3/2016 Politico: "Sanders
had some high-profile minority surrogates, but in exit polling data from 27
states, black voters ultimately rejected him by a margin of 7 to 1, and Clinton
won the Latino vote by double digits. Jill Stein is now making an overt play for
Sanders’ voters, but her supporters are overwhelmingly white, too: She has the
support of only 3 percent of non-white people, according to a late July CNN
poll, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 61 percent."
Why this black Bernie Sanders delegate says he doesn't have the luxury of going
"Bernie or Bust" 8/1/2016 Vox: "If Donald Trump wins, he's more likely to
appoint judges who oppose Black Lives Matter and criminal justice reform, and
who think that police officers — who can kill black people without being charged
— already don't have enough power. That means if my kids get shot, the officers
who did it would become less likely to be charged," he says. "This isn’t theory
for us. It’s reality."
Sanders Didn’t Lose the Black Vote: He Never Had It, and Never Asked Why 7/13/2016 Black
Agenda Report: "The utterly unaccountable nature of traditional black leadership
is why the Congressional Black Caucus mostly endorsed the militarization of
cops, why it backs the arming and financing of apartheid in Israel, and doesn’t
stand against gentrification or school privatization or the militarization of
Africa, why it did not muster a peep of objection to the displacement of a
quarter million black people from New Orleans and the Gulf after Katrina, or
vote against the bailout of criminal banksters who sold predatory mortgages to
black homeowners, stripping black America of 90% of family wealth in the 2007-08
housing meltdown. Without mapping out, acknowledging and questioning the lineup
of forces arrayed against it, organizers of the Sanders campaign never even
knocked on the door of black support. They were knocking on the black wall,
unable to find the door. Behind that wall however, the black political class was
able to produce an overwhelming black vote for Hillary, in keeping with its
alliance to the most right wing and corporate dominated sectors of that party."
Bernie Sanders didn't really try to win black vote, campaign staffers tell
website 7/11/2016 NOLA: "Bernie Sanders did horribly with black voters. And
that, even more than his not actually being a Democrat, might explain why he
won't be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Given his
talk about wanting to lead the way toward a political revolution – and not just
your typical liberalism – what accounts for his inability to get black votes? It
may be as simple as his decision not to fight for them."
How Bernie Sanders lost black voters 7/10/2016 Fusion: "As a black
progressive, Glover was drawn to Sanders’ message of free public college,
dismantling Wall Street, and rectifying economic inequality. Surely, Glover
believed, he could get black students to feel the same enthusiasm for Sanders as
the young white folks who screamed the senator’s name in packed arenas around
the country. But it didn’t take long for him to feel that the campaign had no
real interest in converting young black progressives into a powerful voting bloc
that could have made Sanders truly competitive against Clinton."
Bernie Sanders Flips Off Black Voters On His Way Out the Door 6/17/2016 Mediaite: "That’s
it. Black people got tacked onto a few lists of other things, and some lines
about failing schools and criminal justice reform. Or to put it another way,
what black voters could expect from a Rand Paul speech. Not a syllable about
ending police brutality or racial profiling, nothing about the Voting Rights Act
or any other Republican schemes to disenfranchise black voters, and those are
just the easy ones. Fifty-six seconds out of 23 minutes, and none of the bullet
points he rushed up onto his website when #BlackLivesMatter protesters hassled
him almost a year ago. Yeah, black voters had Bernie all wrong, didn’t they?"
Why
Bernie Sanders Lost, Part I: He Was Unrealistic About Race 6/9/2016 Madame
Noire: "While Ferguson burned and marches against police violence and systematic
racism raged on in the streets, Sanders was still talking about poverty and
championing the cause of getting everyone jobs as a solution to everyone’s
problems."
New Poll Shows Divide Amongst Blacks in Democratic Race 6/3/2016 Black
Youth Project: "In the Democratic primary race, there seems to be a large divide
between the older and younger African-Americans. Many black voters under 30
favor Senator Bernie Sanders, while older African-Americans are overwhelmingly
and unsurprisingly backing Hillary Clinton."
#BernieLostMe: Black Voters Use Hashtag Explaining Why They Won’t Vote For
Bernie Sanders 5/20/2016 Hip Hop Wired: "Black voters took to Twitter
earlier this week to share why they aren’t voting for Bernie Sanders. The
explanations are…interesting."
Clinton, Sanders, and the Myth of a Monolithic “Black Vote” 4/15/2016 New
Yorker: "So far, Sanders has not won a majority of black voters in any contest
with a large African-American population. But he has done much better with black
voters in Midwestern states and with younger black voters across the country.
These variances are one reason to start to unravel the myth of a monolithic
black vote."
The Paradox of Bernie Sanders and the Black Voter 4/12/2016 In These
Times: "When Ta-Nehisi Coates gently chided Sanders for excluding reparations
from his list of policy demands, the senator’s supporters went ballistic. Cedric
Johnson in Jacobin and Paul Street in Counterpunch launched attacks that
recalled those ideological screeds from the ‘70’s denouncing black nationalists
as “bougie” class traitors. The significance of these ideological nuances made a
brief appearance during a debate in Flint, Michigan, when Sanders’ response to a
question about his “racial blind spots” implied that only black people live in
“ghettos” and that most black people were poor."
A Shock: Bernie is Actually Bagging Black Votes 4/8/2016 Huff Post: "He’s
learned something else about race politics. It’s fine to talk about smashing
wealth and income inequality, but that doesn’t do much when even black
millionaires, business persons and professionals can be spread-eagled by police
after a phony stop, or shadowed by store security in retail stores, or watch as
cabs ignore their frantic signals to stop and breeze by them, or are excluded
from contract bidding by the good ol’ boy system. Having all the wealth in the
world means nothing in the face of naked and raw racial degradation."
Why Black Voters Don’t Feel the Bern 3/7/2016 Politico: "But Hillary
Clinton’s support among African-Americans only surprises whites who caricature
black politics as blindly radical, and radicals blinded with rage who unfairly
blame Bill Clinton for the mass incarceration problem. The Clintons’
relationship with the African-American community has been deep and mutually
beneficial, and it’s showing in the election tallies. Distorting the historical
record ignores both Clintons’ warm ties to African-Americans and their
impressive contributions to racial reconciliation, especially in the 1990s."
How Bernie Sanders Lost The Black Vote Long Before Super Tuesday 3/2/2016 Fast
Company: "After Super Tuesday, Bernie Sanders isn’t dead, but the challenges
seem almost insurmountable. And despite millennial America’s love affair with
Sanders, if he does end up losing the nomination to Hillary, it will be because
African Americans supported Hillary more than young people supported Bernie. Had
Sanders handled the Black Lives Matter takeover in Seattle more gracefully,
would things have turned out differently? Maybe, maybe not. But first
impressions are hugely important, and sometimes all it takes is four and a half
minutes to change everything."
Why Clinton Is Connecting With Black Voters—and Sanders Isn't 2/24/2016 The
Atlantic: “Hillary took it upon herself to listen to me when none of the leaders
decided to lay in the street with us, march in the street with us, pour our
hearts out and ask for help. Hillary heard my cry,” said Maria Hamilton, whose
son Dontre was shot and killed by a Milwaukee police officer in 2014. “When
Hillary called me in March, and her staffer told me I didn’t have to rally
people in the street to shut her rally down, that she would talk to me, it
changed my life.”
www.facebook.com/AfricanAmericansForBernie/
How Hillary Clinton overcame the challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, WSJ
6/8/2016
Mr. Sanders fought Mrs. Clinton to a draw among white voters, exit polls showed.
But he was trounced among nonwhites, who cast four in 10 votes. The decisive
edge for Mrs. Clinton: She won African-Americans by more than 50 percentage
points. Clinton: 75.9% Sanders: 23.1%
More on Bernie Sanders and the way forward in 2017
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