General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: No other candidate in this race has been as strong of an advocate for racial justice as Bernie has [View all]DanTex
(20,709 posts)that the fact that Bernie hasn't addressed race directly in his campaign, and doesn't seem to be making it a priority, is no big deal. No, you can't tell what race people are on the internet, but you can read what the AA group has to say, and it's pretty different from what gets said in GD. I mean, even in this thread we have someone complaining about getting banned from AA for defending Bernie there in ways that apparently some people didn't appreciate.
Yes, he has been a long-time civil rights advocate, but an extremely valid question is: will he, if elected, make issues of importance to the black community a priority? Hopefully he will have a better answer than what his DU supporters have been saying for the last few days, which is "economic inequality is inseparable from racial issues, and besides, he led sit-ins in the 60s" (this is a long and somewhat condescending way of saying "no" .
This isn't Bernie's fault, but there's definitely a potential difficulty for him here, also given how popular and trusted Clinton is in the black community. You can't have missed the meme that social issues are just some kind of distraction that the oligarchs use to divide the working class. If that idea becomes associated with his campaign, IMO it will basically end any chance he had of getting the nomination.