Is it me, or does it look like the democratic primary is starting to look more and more like the one on the republican side?
Bernie and Hillary of course realize that without the black vote they will not win the democratic primary to compete with the Mr. Bad Hair to become president of these divided states of America.
I saw a picture of Bernie down South, and he had a lot of black folks around him. Bernie is from Vermont, so I am guessing that he hasn't had that many black folks so close to him since he marched in the sixties with Dr. King and company. (Props to you Bernie if that's you in this pic.)
Hillary is married to the "first black president", so she was already given a black card. The problem is, of course, that when she ran against the real first black president, she and her husband raised some eyebrows with their characterization of the then young Obama. If it's one thing I know about black folks, y'all don't forget shit.
Anyway, one writer who I have a lot of respect for has questioned Bernie's stance on the very serious issue of reparations for black folks. Apparently Bernie is not too enamored with the idea.
"Last week Bernie Sanders was asked whether he was in favor of “reparations for slavery.” It is worth considering Sanders’s response in full:
No, I don’t think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African American community, we have a lot of work to do.
So I think what we should be talking about is making massive investments in rebuilding our cities, in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African American and Latino.For those of us interested in how the left prioritizes its various radicalisms, Sanders’s answer is illuminating. The spectacle of a socialist candidate opposing reparations as “divisive” (there are few political labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist) is only rivaled by the implausibility of Sanders posing as a pragmatist. Sanders says the chance of getting reparations through Congress is “nil,” a correct observation which could just as well apply to much of the Vermont senator’s own platform. The chances of a President Sanders coaxing a Republican Congress to pass a $1 trillion jobs and infrastructure bill are also nil. Considering Sanders’s proposal for single-payer health care, Paul Krugman asks, “Is there any realistic prospect that a drastic overhaul could be enacted any time soon—say, in the next eight years? No.”
Sanders is a lot of things, many of them good. But he is not the candidate of moderation and unification, so much as the candidate of partisanship and radicalism. There is neither insult nor accolade in this. John Brown was radical and divisive. So was Eric Robert Rudolph. Our current sprawling megapolis of prisons was a bipartisan achievement. Obamacare was not. Sometimes the moral course lies within the politically possible, and sometimes the moral course lies outside of the politically possible. One of the great functions of radical candidates is to war against equivocators and opportunists who conflate these two things. Radicals expand the political imagination and, hopefully, prevent incrementalism from becoming a virtue.
Unfortunately, Sanders’s radicalism has failed in the ancient fight against white supremacy. What he proposes in lieu of reparations—job creation, investment in cities, and free higher education—is well within the Overton window, and his platform on race echoes Democratic orthodoxy. The calls for community policing, body cameras, and a voting-rights bill with pre-clearance restored— all are things that Hillary Clinton agrees with. And those positions with which she might not agree address black people not so much as a class specifically injured by white supremacy, but rather, as a group which magically suffers from disproportionate poverty." [Source]
Ouch!
I too must admit that I view a lot of what Bernie is doing with some skepticism. I find a lot of his supporters to be people who are focused on things that have no significance to my life as a black man in America. Yes, I like the fact that if he wins Bill O'Reilly would "flee" to Ireland, and I like the fact that he is closer to being a Socialist than Hillary, but not all Socialists are created equal.
Jelani Cobb summed up the disconnect perfectly in this tweet:
Candidate emerges, says let's radically reimagine American democracy. Black person raises hand & then it's "Hold on... Let's be realistic."
Anyway, as was to be expected, one of Bernie's most popular African American supporters, Killer Mike, came out and publicly defended him.
Killer Mike basically said that the current president, who is black, has not been asked about reparations, and he is black. OK, that's true.
Still, even though a lot of folks seem to be "feeling the Bern" and he is, like trump on the right, becoming a rock star in political circles, black folks (with al due respect to Killer Mike) just aren't feeling him like that.
The polls look good for Bernie in these early states, but let's be honest, you can fit all the black folks in Iowa and New Hampshire in Bernie's campaign bus. What is he going to do when he heads South to places like South Carolina and Mississippi? If he really wants to beat Hillary he will have to figure that one out. Maybe he can recruit a few more Killer Mike type cats to be his surrogates. Or he can just sit back and hope that Hillary's recent e-mail issues will cause the long arm of the law to snatch her from the campaign trail.
*Pic from yahoo.com
28 comments:
Black people vote for they are told to vote, and George Soros told them to vote for Hillary.
"Hillary is married to the "first black president", so she was already given a black card. The problem is, of course, that when she ran against the real first black president, she and her husband raised some eyebrows with their characterization of the then young Obama. If it's one thing I know about black folks, y'all don't forget shit."
We don't forget? Well let me tell you folks one thing: Michael Dyson, the so-called righteous brother who went through the outrageous task of killing off Cornel West, has forgotten. Or maybe he hasn't forgotten, but wants Hillary as President. Yeah, that's right. That uncle tommin Negro is supporting Hillary like he has been defending Obama's record with black folks. To tell the truth, I am sick of Dyson and hope Field will one day put Dyson's ass in his side bar as the greatest HOUSE NEGRO OF ALL TIME!
I’m firmly in the camp that says Hillary Clinton will skate on the espionage and corruption issues hanging over her head. Allowing unauthorized people access to this server, which has been established, means she violated the Espionage Act.
The real question is why was she removing classified data and storing it off-site? Why was she working with a civilian, Sydney Blumenthal, on national security matters? The most obvious answers is he was a street agent, arranging contributions to the Clinton slush fund in exchange for useful information culled from the American security services. Bubba would show up and give a speech so it looked like the money was for the speech. That's my hunch anyway, and it fits the pattern of how you make money in politics.
Even if she avoids prosecution, the steady drip of bad news seems to be dragging her campaign down to the point where even a clown like Bernie Sanders can beat her. I feel pretty confident that the Democratic Party will not let Sanders win the nomination by default. They will find someone respectable to try to salvage some dignity. But I can’t think of a plausible alternative. Joe Biden is the only guy who comes close to being respectable. Fake Indian is not giving up her safe Senate seat to run. There’s no one in the Senate that is famous enough to make it work, unless someone is willing to run just to help the party avoid embarrassment.
That leaves governors and there are a few who could be thrown to the wolves as they are nearing the end of their careers. Mark Dayton from Minnesota comes to mind. He hates Americans and has nothing else going on. Jerry Brown would be entertaining, but he’s basically Bernie Sanders with an interesting life. There are no good options so they may be stuck with some old fool like Brown.
All the attention has been on the Republicans due to Trump, but also for their buffoonery and corruption. Most of the chattering classes are snickering at how they have staggered around trying to find an alternative to Trump. The result is no one is paying much attention to the collapse of the other party. Look at their elected members and it is all geezers and wackos who are marginally less crazy than Bernie Sanders. Their one “fresh” face is Lizzy Warren and she’s a year away from a pension.
The way it is shaping up, the Democrats may not have a choice but to run with Hillary, even if she has to run her campaign from the penitentiary.
Too bad Bernie isn't 20 years younger. He wouldn't have 'marched with king', but a younger Bernie with the same message would make things very interesting. I hear people around his age turned off by his age, which is interesting as well.
Killer Mike basically said that the current president, who is black, has not been asked about reparations, and he is black.
And per Mr. Field, "OK, that's true."
================
However, not only has President Obama been asked, a perfect opportunity to once again support a national formal apology for slavery presented itself at 150th Commemoration of the 13th Amendment, ending slavery in the US, as noted per the article: "Why Won't Obama Apologize For US Slavery? How Reparations Debate For Black Americans Has Kept Congress From Apologizing For Slave History."
http://www.ibtimes.com/why-wont-obama-apologize-us-slavery-how-reparations-debate-black-americans-has-kept-2218351
I get Bernie's argument. How much capital would he have to push for reparations? Even liberal whites would be a push. Hell, I would just appreciate compensation for families that can show their property and/or wealth was stolen I.e. Rosewood/Tulsa. Let's start there.
"... as noted per the article: "Why Won't Obama Apologize For US Slavery? How Reparations Debate For Black Americans Has Kept Congress From Apologizing For Slave History."
Obama has been intimidated and made afraid of the dominant majority. Obama has been niggarized like so many of us folks have been for centuries.
"Niggarization, means that you're unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence and hated for who you are. You become so scared that you defer to the powers that be and you are willing to consent to your own domination."---Cornel West
While Coates focuses on the first part of Sanders statement to portray Sanders as a phony, he ignores the second point that it would be very divisive. And rightly or wrongly, it would be. It would not end white supremacy. And no doubt Native Americans are no less entitled to such reparations. Killer Mike is correct when he points out that Obama has never advocated reparations. Neither did Obama advocate gay marriage at first, and there is a very good reason for that. It is all well and good for Congressman Conyers to advocate for reparations. But for Sanders to advocate it, cathartic as it may be, would in all likelihood guarantee a right wing victory in November, even if he does not become the Democratic nominee. And if that happens, we all would deserve everything we get, as you have pointed out in this space Field.
folk don't have a problem with reparations...
the sons of Gomer, Ashkenazim, who hail from the isles of the Gentiles...according to Torah.
these are STILL collecting reparations. BO just set aside tens of millions more.
wondering why america would need to keep paying out millions/billions...
might make too much sense.
The FieldNegro said...
I saw a picture of Bernie down South, and he had a lot of black folks around him.
Unlike his new campaign ad where he surrounds himself with white people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nwRiuh1Cug
I agree with Mr Coats (long lime reader; his historical work is unparalleled in America) that for someone who's entire pipe-dream of a program relies on a deus ex machina like "democratic revolution" completely remaking American politics, to oppose repetitions on the grounds of divisiveness & impracticaliy is incongruous. I think he'd have been smarter to say that the 15 generations who suffered through slavery and apartheid are beyond repair, but that massive investments in education, job training, rebuilding the cities, and home ownership are the best possible way to help lift their descendants still suffering their after effects fully into a just & decent life.
Reparations: Because saying "we were slaves" falls on a lot of deaf ears in the 2000s when logical people say, "Umm, no you weren't, moron. You're a fucking millennial, not a Highlander." But having undeserved money thrown at you because of shit that happened when no one on planet Earth was alive justifies the fairy tale more than whining does.
The thing about reparations is that they'll exist in perpetuity insofar as black parents teach black children that those children were slaves, and those children, who weren't slaves, teach their children that they were slaves. Every generation will deny having received anything from the government in way of recompense, and white people who had nothing whatever to do with slavery, or even Jim Crow, or any sort of police shootings, or anything else, will be vilified as greedmongers withholding from black "slaves" their just rewards for suffering through slavery.
I was playing GTA V last year and one of Field's hometown homies came on the Blue Ark with Lee Scratch Perry singing, "Are we not the sons of slaves?" to which I responded while doing drive-bys: "No, you're not. Learn what words mean."
Some may argue that free SAT points would be the perfect reparation if only more black youth would finish school en route to higher education. But can't get into all that. There's only two ways to look at things in America: A) World Ends, Black People Most Affected. B) Racism.
Lance Cockstrong said...
"It would not end white supremacy. And no doubt Native Americans are no less entitled to such reparations."
No less than zero. No one is due "reparations" based on what happened to people many generations ago.
If you believe in collective guilt for all white people because a few white people owned slaves, then let's hold all blacks accountable for the horrific level of crime committed by a small number of blacks today. We'll give y'all a trillion dollars, but we go back to legal segregation. And you can't vote in our elections. Deal?
And native Americans aren't victims, they are losers. They were a violent, primitive culture that lived in constant warfare among themselves until the white man came, who they tried to kill too but lost. Today, they are the best example of what happens to people who live as wards of the state and refuse to integrate with the wider culture. Take a good look.
Well, after reading White's comments and Josh's comments, Blacks are losers and morons and deserve nothing. As a matter of fact, they don't even deserve to exist.
Hence, white superiority and police abuse and discrimination and racism is a thing of the past.
These two white assholes insult and offend humanity. They are the descendants of slave owners. They are racists who carry that disease in their hard hearts harder than the devil. Yet, it is clear they are not conscious of themselves and the evil they carry. Unconscious racists are the most dangerous animals on the earth....nasty disgusting people.
They shame the white race.
Quote Little Joshy
"I was playing GTA V last year and one of Field's hometown homies came on the Blue Ark with Lee Scratch Perry singing,...
(He means Junior Delgado, though in truth Junior was more a London boy, and Field was not born in Kingston.)
"Are we not the sons of slaves?" to which I responded while doing drive-bys: "No, you're not. Learn what words mean."
Here's a word for you to learn, numbnuts - metaphor Afro-Caribbean people are the descendants of slaves so he was using the word 'son' to describe his nation and it's place in the world.
Coats is making a strange and illogical argument here. It's strange to the point that I don't know whether he is really this delusional, or he's being intentionally disingenuous. His argument is that Bernie is a radical, so why wouldn't Bernie embrace a radical solution to all black people's problems?
Now, I'll agree that slavery reparations are indeed radical. Deciding to retroactively pay compensation for acts that were not deemed either immoral or criminal at the time they happened (slavery was a social norm for most of humanity until the 19th century) AND award that compensation, not to the affected parties, who are long dead, but to their descendants many generations later -- why, yes, that's pretty damn radical.
And there is zero political support for anything like this outside of a subset of black people. I remember seeing polling on this issue and white people's views were 96% against. You can't get white people to agree so absolutely on just about any other issue. Latin and Asian citizens' views aren't likely to be much more favorable. It's a total non-starter, something that can never win at the ballot box and will only serve to fuel racial rancor and undermine trust and consensus on other, more achievable goals.
Reparations might also be as extreme as instituting a socialist economic system. I'll grant Coats that, too. Workers seizing the means of production and abolishing private ownership of business would be quite radical.
But here's the thing -- and I can't emphasize this point too much -- Bernie Sanders is not a socialist! He is, by global standards, a reasonable center-left politician. It is only by virtue of our country's having slid so far to the right that Sanders appears to be anything like an extremist. Sanders uses florid language in falsely calling himself a socialist, and in talking about "revolution" when he really just means young and poor people ought to re-engage with politics, give a shit, and go vote. He's clearly not talking about Bolshevik-style government overthrow. He's not advocating burning barricades in the streets and lining up the "bourgeois pigs" in front of firing squads. Coats has to know this, right? He writes on politics for a living, so he has to be aware that a Bernie Sanders win wouldn't mean replacing capitalism with Chavismo and the hammer and sickle flying over the White House.
And Coats' comparison between single-payer healthcare and slavery reparations ... is he joking? Single-payer isn't radical at all, despite what many Republican leaders would have us believe. Much of the Western world, and even many less wealthy non-Western nations, have single-payer healthcare. You can drive right across our northern border to a country that has single-payer healthcare! It's not some far-out left-wing concept nobody has ever tried before. The United States is a weird outlier in NOT having it.
Some of these "blackademic" types need to take a moment and lift their heads out of their race theory books for a minute, because this thinking is seriously divorced from political reality.
Sanders is certainly a Socialist, just not a very left wing one. There is a wide spectrum of Socialist viewpoints, of which Social Democracy (where Sanders sits) is an honourable one.
Socialism is retarded.
"so he was using the word 'son' to describe his nation and it's place in the world."
Yeah. I call bullshit, son.
And way to miss the fucking point, son.
But that's intentional. You only came here to troll what I say anyway. lol Obsessive motherfucker. I'm straight, BTW. So whatever romantic shit you have playing in your head between us, it ain't happening, cap'n.
Agreed MOT. Empowering the youth, free college education and universal healthcare sounds like a good deal to me. I think I'll let Barack and his BLM and NBPP army confiscate white peoples' property and enslave them.
Bernie Sanders gets PilotX's respect for sticking up for poor and working class Americans. Yet Progressives, including our very own PilotX, mercilessly deride the poor and working class Americans who support Trump.
Go figure.
I think Josh and his friends are becoming more unhinged with each passing day.
It's sad, really. Josh is someone's son, brother, uncle, and he might actually not be such a bad guy.
With Cockstrong I just get the feeling that it's too late for him. Somehow he has always been a miserable prick who hates others because of his miserable reality.
Z Man, u made some good points,but in the big scheme of politicians breaking the law, what Hillary allegedly did is not earth shattering.
I have been arguing for years that Blacks are the ones most severely affected by the mass immigration into the U.S. since 1965 and that Black leaders have been ill serving their constituents by not taking a stance against immigration. Thus far, Trump has been focusing his attention on “illegal immigration” (the southern wall, birthright citizenship, etc.). Perhaps there is room in the middle for a grand bargain that would utterly transform American politics and return Blacks back to voting for Republicans or at least reducing their percentage from 90% Democratic to more like 50% Democratic. I think there is a large block of Black voters out there who still cling to traditional values, which means they want jobs for their kids, a reduction in crime, and aren't happy about gay marriage, not to mention not keen on all these needless wars against countries which haven’t attacked us.
I am sorry, did I say Cockstrong? I actually meant James Bold.
I’m still surprised no pundit has called out the obvious: both parties are having a Globalist v. Nationalist primary. The pendulum has swung such that the general election looks like it might go from a Globalist v. Globalist to a Nationalist v. Nationalist.
In fact, look for Hillary to withdrawal and Biden to be picked in a brokered convention to run as the Globalist’ wolf in Nationalist’s sheep clothing.
The Purple Cow said...
Sanders is certainly a Socialist, just not a very left wing one. There is a wide spectrum of Socialist viewpoints, of which Social Democracy (where Sanders sits) is an honourable one.
------------
The democratic socialist welfare state that Sanders promotes is incompatible with mass immigration, so I think people assume that Sanders will be against mass immigration in order to promote the democratic socialist welfare state. But democratic socialists both in the US and Europe seem to have trouble honestly reconciling with this fact and many in Europe promote mass immigration regardless. The guy famous for pointing out this fact in the US was Milton Friedman, not Sanders or another socialist.
"It's sad, really"
Yeah, it's all me. 100% me, 100% of the time. I know how these things work. I'm the one at fault for calling out pure, unadulterated, level 9000 lunacy. Your whackadoodle ass can intentionally push the divisive narrative that people who don't agree white police shootings of black people are a related, premeditated event of Team Whitey are all racists. You can literally say that someone who views evidence of independent cases as independent evidence is a motherfucking racist, and be happy to push such shit because you're going after your sworn enemy, but I'm the one with the issue.
lol
As I've said before, I have tons of egg on my face here. A few years ago when I first found this blog through Malcolm's Diversity Ink, I thought you were a level-headed guy who was just a little out there on the left wing. But you're a black-as-an-ideology radical whose racist mission to transform every white person into an enemy of black people is going to put you into an early grave. And I do realize that, by and large, it's deflection for you on a personal level; creating an enemy that keeps the eye occupied from the destructive goings-on that black folks bring upon themselves much of the time. A smokescreen. And that's cool, and understandable. Reality isn't friendly. But you go completely over the nest with it.
A restaurant policy that's racist if it holds black people to the same standards as white people. Racist if one doesn't reach the same outlandish, conspiracy theory conclusion you reach. Racism solely if one is a Republican. And on it goes.
You're a full-on lunatic, and the hands sit in here and kneel like you're Moses bringing the etched stone down the mountainside. Truly astonishing shit.
But of course I'm the one with the issues.
Bernie, I like ya as far as liking goes, but these 70's are no damn joke. This America "place" it beyond troublesome sometimes. You're gonna need a nap, and won't be able to take one. You're gonna wrinkle up like a dried prune if ya make it. I'll vote for ya, and hope for the best. All of you are windbaggish, you less than the rest, I guess.
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