African American
In reply to the discussion: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bernie Sanders, and Reparations [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)in the brief time since it passed.
And you seriously think that you're going to shift this argument in a heartbeat?
You seem to forget that Bill Clinton tried too--put his wife in charge of a panel to try to sort out the differences. She was damn near run outta town on a rail.
And...one more time, since you seem DETERMINED to not get TNC's point--this is about HYPOCRISY. Reparations is the tool to make the point that Sanders can get all "revolutionary" about white people issues, but he hides behind the bush in the garden when it comes to things that concern black people (reparations) or gay people (VT marriage equality).
He's on RECORD for playing it like this--it's why his latest commercial is aimed smack dab at white people. He is not the candidate for all America. His world view is all about white people first, with black and brown following along, because there's "no difference" if the economic playing field is leveled (in his non-revolutionary worldview). Like that's gonna change "last hired/first fired" and magically give black people parity in obtaining credit that isn't usurious, housing that doesn't suck, and public schools that aren't falling apart.
Here--READ--THIS is the POINT: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/21/bernie-sanders-reparations-problem/
Sanders recently came out against reparations for slavery, which he described as impractical and very divisive. Coates responded that, in light of the candidates other fanciful policy proposals, it was peculiar he would require realistic thinking on this issue.
Sanders should be directly confronted and asked why his political imagination is so active against plutocracy, but so limited against white supremacy, Coates wrote.
He added: If not even an avowed socialist can be bothered to grapple with reparations then expect white supremacy in America to endure well beyond our lifetimes and lifetimes of our children.
The goalposts have moved considerably in the century between Du Boiss activism and Coatess. Du Bois was fighting overt racism within the American socialist movement; Coates is criticizing what he perceives as racial indifference in a candidate who identifies as a democratic socialist.