Black folk who oppose Bernie/support Biden will tell u a major reason why is that they dont trust white folk to vote 4 someone who promises free shit bc the right will make clear that means POC get it too. Their skepticism is based on history. What’s your OPTIMISM based on?
And by the way, I support the provision of that same “free shit” referenced above. But I also know white folks pretty well and see the legitimacy of black folks concerns re: candidates who promise it
This isnt necessarily a reason to oppose Bernie. But it seems his base hasn’t thought about this issue much. They ignore how white resentment over-predicts voting behavior, espec when a candidate relies on very progressive policy positions easily used to prompt that resentment..
They appear to think that universal program promises that would also help those whites will tamp down race resentment but literally ALL social science research says that’s wrong. Most whites don’t want the rising tide to lift all boats the same. We want our boat to rise higher..
And that’s the problem class centric leftists have ignored forever... class appeals cannot beat race appeals unless the race appeals are directly confronted and called out... simple ranting about the rich is not the same as doing that
Class populism fails the left every time (from the Populist movement to Huey Long to every socialist upsurge in our history) Bc of white supremacy and the naïveté of class centric leftists in confronting it
Until the left is clear that white working class folks have learned to prioritize CASTE over class and that dislodging that requires an explicitly anti racist approach, we will lose
