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African American
In reply to the discussion: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bernie Sanders, and Reparations [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)188. You are completely missing TNC's point. You need to read his essay.
You CLEARLY have not read it, based on your comments. Or if you have, you've missed the key take-away. This discussion is not ABOUT Republicans (and besides, it's a little late to expect Sanders to take back his entire candidate's platform).
Here is the link. Read this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/
For those of us interested in how the left prioritizes its various radicalisms, Sanderss answer is illuminating. The spectacle of a socialist candidate opposing reparations as divisive (there are few political labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist) is only rivaled by the implausibility of Sanders posing as a pragmatist. Sanders says the chance of getting reparations through Congress is nil, a correct observation which could just as well apply to much of the Vermont senators own platform. The chances of a President Sanders coaxing a Republican Congress to pass a $1 trillion jobs and infrastructure bill are also nil. Considering Sanderss proposal for single-payer health care, Paul Krugman asks, Is there any realistic prospect that a drastic overhaul could be enacted any time soonsay, in the next eight years? No.
Sanders is a lot of things, many of them good. But he is not the candidate of moderation and unification, so much as the candidate of partisanship and radicalism. There is neither insult nor accolade in this. John Brown was radical and divisive. So was Eric Robert Rudolph. Our current sprawling megapolis of prisons was a bipartisan achievement. Obamacare was not. Sometimes the moral course lies within the politically possible, and sometimes the moral course lies outside of the politically possible. One of the great functions of radical candidates is to war against equivocators and opportunists who conflate these two things. Radicals expand the political imagination and, hopefully, prevent incrementalism from becoming a virtue.
Unfortunately, Sanderss radicalism has failed in the ancient fight against white supremacy. What he proposes in lieu of reparationsjob creation, investment in cities, and free higher educationis well within the Overton window, and his platform on race echoes Democratic orthodoxy. The calls for community policing, body cameras, and a voting-rights bill with pre-clearance restored all are things that Hillary Clinton agrees with. And those positions with which she might not agree address black people not so much as a class specifically injured by white supremacy, but rather, as a group which magically suffers from disproportionate poverty. .... Sanderss anti-racist moderation points to a candidate who is not merely against reparations, but one who doesnt actually understand the argument. To briefly restate it, from 1619 until at least the late 1960s, American institutions, businesses, associations, and governmentsfederal, state, and localrepeatedly plundered black communities. Their methods included everything from land-theft, to red-lining, to disenfranchisement, to convict-lease labor, to lynching, to enslavement, to the vending of children. So large was this plunder that America, as we know it today, is simply unimaginable without it. Its great universities were founded on it. Its early economy was built by it. Its suburbs were financed by it. Its deadliest war was the result of it.....
If you still don't take the point, maybe this will help:
http://www.salon.com/2016/01/21/white_people_just_dont_get_it_bernie_sanders_ta_nehisi_coates_and_the_reality_of_reparations/
Look, Sanders puts himself out there as the "At least TRY" candidate. But he's only willing to "at least TRY" to prosecute white-friendly ideas. He won't take on a "white supremacy" issue like reparations, or any kind of acknowledgement that black people have gotten a raw deal--not just the "slavery" thing, either--we're talking about renting an apartment TODAY, getting a home loan TODAY, getting a car note TODAY, having to deal with that police TODAY. AGAIN--like I said, "free college" and UHC are WAY down that list.
Yet Sanders--the "revolutionary" -- doesn't want to touch that difficult, black people shit. There's no "at least TRY"ing when it comes to black and brown people. It's sit down, shut up, get in line, and my economic high tide will lift your boat...eventually (though you'll be LAST lifted, and first dumped in the brink).
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Because in some quarters, anything unflattering towards a certian candidate ...
1StrongBlackMan
Jan 2016
#120
Because it holds him to his own standards. Just like when a Republican politician says they are
stevenleser
Jan 2016
#197
Thanks for your service in working on grass roots campaigns and finance reform.
jonestonesusa
Jan 2016
#185
What you're saying though sounds a lot like "some revolutionary ideas (like the ones the white
MADem
Jan 2016
#138
What's "impractical and very divisive" (Sanders' words) is Sanders' selective outrage.
MADem
Jan 2016
#141
I don't agree that free college and universal health care are "white-friendly"
jonestonesusa
Jan 2016
#182
If I'm being reductive, it's because I see that you aren't understanding TNC's point.
MADem
Jan 2016
#189
ZING. You are the opposite of wildeyed! You focused like a laser beam on the nub, the essence, of
MADem
Jan 2016
#137
I do believe that this is your first post here and you come in here solely to launch personal
Number23
Jan 2016
#3
You may find it suspicious but it's pretty clear that most people who have actually listened to
Number23
Jan 2016
#73
And you guys continue to track into this forum calling this a hit piece and an "attack"
Number23
Jan 2016
#146
tishaLA, that is a great thread you started. Your responses to the derp posts are terrific.
emulatorloo
Jan 2016
#50
what i noticed about that thread is for days now we have had thread after thread from certain ones
JI7
Jan 2016
#12
How many times have even the mildest suggestions that Sanders may not be able to accomplish all that
Empowerer
Jan 2016
#167
A very easy answer - because they think nonetheless he will do the most for them.
highprincipleswork
Jan 2016
#28
Okay ... That would be one answer ...an answer without foundation; but, an answer none the less ...
1StrongBlackMan
Jan 2016
#34
Hillary supporters usually don't try to make her out to be something so Great that only she will do
JI7
Jan 2016
#104
I don't wish to offend, but what Civil Rights action did President Obama get done in the first 90?
highprincipleswork
Jan 2016
#61
You are right. Well familiar with it, but forgot it was signed so fast.
highprincipleswork
Jan 2016
#90
i believe Sanders cares about POC also and i support Sanders, but i also don't make him out to be
JI7
Jan 2016
#103
You are asking a politician to admit that the economic success of the US is based on
guillaumeb
Jan 2016
#53
I think we, in this group, know the answer to that very poignant observation. This is what puzzles..
Tarheel_Dem
Jan 2016
#79
"Outsider"; "Insider". It all equals "White". They're the ones who feel that anything given to.....
Tarheel_Dem
Jan 2016
#93
It wouldn't make sense for him to go after Hillary. She's being a realist on policy.
stevenleser
Jan 2016
#198
You're laughing because you don't understand it. If you got it, you wouldn't be laughing. nt
stevenleser
Jan 2016
#206
Crickets from those in this thread, including the OP, to your questions.
Liberal_Stalwart71
Jan 2016
#145
That's,probably, because we are at the point of the learning curve, where ...
1StrongBlackMan
Jan 2016
#151
Well, some at least have arrived there ... others ... well, not so much. eom
1StrongBlackMan
Jan 2016
#155
I expected for most of us in this forum to fully understand what Coates was saying
Number23
Jan 2016
#20
I have never even looked at it that way. I have traditionally not been in favor of reparations
Number23
Jan 2016
#71
If we're going to go after billionaires, why not get that money for the people who made them rich?
Starry Messenger
Jan 2016
#99
And other countries have paid reparations for people who have been victimized by the State too
Number23
Jan 2016
#100
One may be harder than the other, but both are unattainable with today's Congress.
SunSeeker
Jan 2016
#59
Funny that you would say Bernie would never sign off on bad Republican legislation.
SunSeeker
Jan 2016
#91
This piece is not "about" Sanders; he's just an example. It's "about" reparations
Recursion
Jan 2016
#19
OK, but Coates is "the guy who wrote a famous recent piece advocating reparations"
Recursion
Jan 2016
#30
Side point: Coates's use of tense, and control of time in his narrative, is in my mind unmatched
Recursion
Jan 2016
#110
If that's what you took out of Coates' piece then it explains everything about this OP
Number23
Jan 2016
#75
I'm not repeating anything. The response came up completely on its own after reading your post
Number23
Jan 2016
#149
I think Coates is in many ways a throwback to impressionism, which is why we need him
Recursion
Jan 2016
#114
See, now ... you two are going to force my to expand my knowledge base ...
1StrongBlackMan
Jan 2016
#122
FDR couldn't bring himself to desegregate the Armed Forces during a war that was all about
MADem
Jan 2016
#170
I believe that refers to the program used to make lend/no lend decisions ...
1StrongBlackMan
Jan 2016
#44
Ok, so the idea is that buying up the algorithm would prevent the practice going forward?
aikoaiko
Jan 2016
#45
Well, i was mostly being snarky about how it's suddenly hard to decide who's "black"
Recursion
Jan 2016
#55
it's not about slavery , it's about discrimination of blacks from housing assistance and many
JI7
Jan 2016
#102
Go on and count up how many times the Congress has introduced a bill to repeal the ACA
MADem
Jan 2016
#142