General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Bernie [View all]GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)From an older, white, liberal Southerners perspective. I imagine an African American from the south might share some of my sentiments, and could add a lot.
Liberals in the South are very suspicious of progressive populist. Especially economic progressives. Because they have a history of economic populism being at the expense of African Americans. Google Huey Long and Theodore Bilbo. Or even Woodrow Wilson. That will explain it all.
But even more to the heart of the matter, racism in American is all about economics. It was and is a system based on making everyone rich on the backs of African Americans. And I am not going back 200 years with this. Social Security was initially denied to farm and domestic workers because even though FDR wanted to extend it to them, he would have lost all the southern votes and congress and SS would have never happened. Why? Because over 75 percent of African Americans in the South were farm or Domestic workers. And southern whites, progressives included, needed to keep blacks working for peanuts(pun intended) to keep their money rolling in. So African Americans lost lost out on SS for 30 years setting them even further behind the economic 8 ball. And don't even get me talking about redlining. If you do not know that term, look it up. And if you do not know the term you really should not be involved in this discussion.
If you try to take economics out of racism, you are missing the entire point of racism.
So fast forward to current times. A progressive populist appears on the scene talking about a bunch of stuff we all agree with. But what else is he, and to a much great extent his supporters saying. 'We focus to much on identity politics'. 'Good progressives policies will solve the race problem'(OK, a little hyperbole!) But we have heard this shit before. Not even giving a shout out to the fact that Racism is in fact based in Economics.
And now Bernie pretty much tells us we need to reach out to racist. And that is what he said, because if you do not vote for someone based on their color, you are, by definition, a racist.
So do some reading about this shit. Then you may understand why this southern liberal will never support or even talk well about a progressive who gives a pass to racism of any kind. My family has too much history in this shit. Now magnify my feeling by 10x if I were an African American. And I do not know where you live. But where I live, African Americans are the base of our party.
So there. I have only typed this once before. Hope it helps you.