I was talking to a friend who was very active in the civil rights movement in the 60s (though now in her 70s she is mostly retired) and she had some interesting insights as to Bernie’s issues with people of color that I’d like to share.
The AA community has been fighting for civil rights for 150 years. It has been a battle of inches, of gaining and losing territory. There was a great hope that the election of the first AA president would represent a great leap forward in AA rights and acceptance but that has not been the case. Perhaps even the opposite has taken place. The police killings of the last few years have confirmed to the community that the civil rights struggle that will be long and ongoing. Just today, the cop who killed a Chicago teen sued his family for causing emotional distress.
Obama has sought to assure the community by that the fight will be a long one, that the arc of justice bends slowly, but that they are on the right path. This message has resonated and consoled.
So for Bernie to posit that his political revolution will address the concerns of the AA community strikes the community as a bit unfair to what their experience has been. That he will be able to address their challenges better than an AA president who could not have been more intelligent, sensitive and dignified could is seen as patronizing (I’m avoiding the inflammatory word she used but you can guess). That he can say, well I will pursue my revolution with a force that Obama didn’t – they feel, well Obama wasn’t allowed to by virtue of his race.
Thus Hillary’s message that we have to protect our gains and keep fighting for every inch out there resonates.
She also pointed out that several of Bernie’s policies and proposals that strike the AA community as not in stride with them. To give one example, the push for free college. College expense is not the issue in the AA community that it is in the white middle class. They aren’t even getting the opportunity to get their children to college. Free college is also murky regarding historical black colleges – would they be covered by free college too? What would the tradeoff be in their independence if they were to be funded solely by federal monies? Or would they not be?
There is also is a dissonance in that Bernie has stated repeatedly that the Democratic party needs to reach rural whites whereas the AA community, especially in the south, feels that population has been most antagonistic to its advancement.
I’d like to add that on hanging up and contemplating her perspective it occurred to me that this may also explain why Hillary is more popular with women than Bernie is. Not because she is a woman but because her theory of social change more closely resonates with the female experience in America – it’s not been even a hundred years that women can vote and they still barely make ¾ of what men do. They turn on the TV and see women objectified and held to standards that men are not. That Bernie can shout and be called authentic while Hillary shouts and is called shrill.
Thoughts?