"Unity Requires Recognizing That Warren Is Telling the Truth" (The Nation - Elie Mystal)

[bloom]

"At the same time, tolerance must allow that Sanders isn’t lying."

As a campaign issue, the literal “he said/she said” fight between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren shouldn’t matter much. Warren says that Bernie said a woman couldn’t win the election, Sanders says he didn’t say that. In the context of the most important presidential election of my lifetime, I couldn’t give a flying expletive who said what to whom. It has no bearing on whom I’m going to vote for in the primary, or why.

However, as a personal issue, I have no doubt that Elizabeth Warren is telling the truth. I know in my soul that she heard what she says she heard. I know it, not because I am in any position to vouch for Warren’s character (though, full disclosure, I know her from my days in law school). I know it, not because I have access to the Federalist Society’s Ouija board that allows them to divine the original intent of any conversation. I know it because I’m a black person, an “other,” and I’ve been living in a white man’s world for 41 years and counting.

People say hurtful things all the time. Often, they don’t mean it. Language is an imperfect tool for communicating thoughts. But when you are an “other,” when you are a minority or part of a disadvantaged group that has historically been shut out from power, and when the person saying it is a member of an advantaged group, you notice the hurts. You notice them because you always have to assess where the hurtful comment lands on the spectrum between merely inelegant to actively dangerous. Did the person misspeak? Or did the person just accidentally reveal deep antipathy for your kind of people? Or was it something in between?

https://www.thenation.com/article/sanders-warren-truth/


It looks to me like too many are ready to throw Warren under the bus over this.

[calimary]

1. Yep!

[Pacifist Patriot]

2. Wish I could rec that a thousand times.