There's a lot of shouting and general ill-will going on between BLM supporters and Sanders supporters lately. The sentiment among the (predominantly white middle-class) Sanders supporters is that BLM protests at Sanders events are counterproductive and serve only to alienate otherwise sympathetic (white) people. There's an ugly and probably entirely unconscious subtext that goes along with that sentiment, and if white people are largely unaware of the message they're sending, that's really unfortunate, because black people have been getting that message loud and clear for decades. And that message is this:
Play along and be nice, and we'll remember you after the election. This time. No really, this time we mean it. We won't make any specific policy plans for you, much less promise to make them a hill to die on, but don't worry, we won't forget you the second after the polls close. This time. Honest.
Of course,
this time, after the horrors of the Bush era and seeing the not-particularly-ambitious-to-begin-with Obama administration hobbled by a Republican Congress, and with the Democratic presidential field currently dominated by an entitled, platformless, wholly bank-owned dynast who was one of the original architects of the blue dog third way corporatist wing of the party we've been working for a couple of decades to get rid of, there's an added note of desperation from the Sanders supporters.
(Full disclosure: I'm a white, male, middle-class Sanders supporter.)
"Why are you attacking Bernie?", they whine.
Good gravy, do you have any idea how petulant and self-absorbed that sounds? In the almost thirteen years since 9/11, American police have killed almost five times as many people -- disproportionately people of color, of course -- as died in the Twin Towers attacks, and there are now more black people in prison than there were in chains in 1860. And on the average day, the cops murder someone every six hours.
It's not black people who are suffering from a distorted sense of proportion.
Remember Kristallnacht, the famous orgy of anti-Semitic violence in Nazi Germany in 1938? Do you know how many people were killed then? Some huge number, right?
Ninety-six people died on Kristallnacht.
Doesn't really sound like that big of a deal now. Three average school massacres, or the number of people American cops snuff every four weeks.
That's what's wrong with white America's sense of proportion. That's why the BLM folks are screaming bloody murder to anyone who will listen.
More power to them.