No, my keyboard hasn’t taken my fingers hostage and begun typing out crazy words. And no, I will not mention the name of this faction’s putative leader for fear of sidetracking the brief message I intend to make. It has taken me sometime to put the pieces of this jigsaw together in my own mind. By “white left” ( WL) I’m not suggesting that an occasional minority cannot be found in its ranks. And I’m certainly not suggesting that the Democratic Party’s base is all people of color.
But what I am saying is this. Maybe it’s time to recognize and discuss the difference between racist, KKK-type whites and those who simply wish to enjoy their white-skin privileges in “relative” peace. By “relative” I mean that many Caucasians may feel slightly discomforted by this Trump regime, while people of color have had their lives destroyed by ICE raids. And unarmed blacks are stuck with the realization that the Justice Department will no longer offer them any protections from random extrajudicial executions. But the WL hasn’t missed a beat since this fascist Trump regime has illegally come to power. And thus they’ve felt no remorse, no sense that their negativity contributed to this horror and thus no pressure to reflect on their political missteps. The WL quite casually continues to advocate for free college and economic populism that builds bridges with working class Trump supporters (despite the fact that these folk aren’t actually swayed by economic issues but racist ones). Charlottesville didn’t mean a damned thing to the WL. The fact that the GOP-controlled Senate is a whisper away from ridding itself of Obamacare while Dems were momentarily dancing around the WL’s , single payer healthcare darling means nothing.
White-skin privilege means that the WL will be essentially untouched by the chaos and brutality that befalls non-whites in our society. And thus their political priorities can continue to be defined by the purity of their ideological abstractions.