Bernie has NEVER said that economic justice would automatically end bigotry. [View all]

[Ken Burch]

Nor that we shouldn't bother trying to fight bigotry.

Nor have any of his supporters here ever said that, AFAIK.

What we have said is that you pretty much can't end institutional bigotry AND keep "market values" economics in place. The end of the 1960's and then the trends of the 1970's and 1980's have taught all of us that capitalism is always going to try to keep a certain level of bigotry in place just to protect itself against revolts from below.

We've never had a time in this country when there truly was anything like economic justice, when the wealthy and business were simply treated as one part of life, not as more important than everyone and everything else.

We've never had a time when nobody was facing want or the fear of ending up falling into want in this country.

We've never had a time when we all had a real say in the economic decisions that affect us, and that always condition almost all the other decisions that affect our lives.

So we have no measures, here, for how a country that had economic justice would deal with race, sexual orientation, and the other forms of group identity that have historically been subject to hatred and that still face hatred, repression today.

But it has generally been the case that we've been a far less hateful society, a far more accepting society, when everyone felt they had something close to a fair shake economically.

So we can assume it's likely that it will be a lot easier to defeat bigotry when we have a society that is economically fair for all.

And it will be far easier to get broad national support to deal with the issues facing particular groups(issues that can't be addressed solely through the achievement of economic justice, as we all understand) when people in general feel their lives are being made easier, their insecurities are being addressed, and their voices heard.

By the same token, it will pretty much be impossible to get that broad support, and to make any lasting structural gains in the fight against bigotry, including institutional bigotry, while the current claw-each-other-to-death economic system we live under remains unchanged.

Saying that is completely different than saying "economic justice will end bigotry"-which is a claim nobody has made and which is a belief that does not live in the hearts or the minds of anyone who backs Bernie, or Bernie himself, or anyone at all in the post-1956
left.