Aug 22, 2024 10:40 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 23, 2024 05:26 PM by C C.)
RELATED (Part One): Is the "Black wave" real? Does Kamala need to worry? Not at all.)
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From the horse's mouth a few years ago (CNN):
(2020) Socialism appeals to many black voters. But that’s not helping Bernie. Here’s why
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/us/black-...index.html
INTRO: A big story of the Democratic primaries is the rise of the so-called pragmatic black voters who revived former Vice President Joe Biden’s flagging presidential campaign.
But there’s a flip side to this story that no one is paying attention to: What happened to all those radical black voters who should be rallying to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ side?
Not many seem to know it, but there is a long and vibrant tradition of socialism and radical political leadership in the black community. Many of black America’s most beloved and respected leaders were socialists.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a socialist, according to many historians. W.E.B. DuBois was a socialist, and so were civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. The most prominent black philosopher today, Cornel West, is a socialist and Sanders’ supporter. Hip-hop artists, such as rapper “Killer Mike” and Chuck D of Public Enemy, are also big Sanders supporters.
There is arguably no group in America that should be more suspicious of unfettered capitalism than blacks. Slavery, for example, was driven as much by greed as racism. And blacks lost half of their wealth due to the 2008 economic collapse.
“You can’t have capitalism without racism,” Malcolm X once said.
So as he seeks to blunt Biden’s momentum in Tuesday’s primaries, why hasn’t Sanders been able to tap more into this black radical tradition? And why don’t more people know about it?
African Americans used to hear socialist jargon all the time.
But “people aren’t used to hearing it anymore,” says Solomon Russell, a spokesman for a national group called the Black Socialists in America, when asked why Sanders’ emphasis on class and race hasn’t drawn more black support.
“If you go back to what was being talked about in the black power movement and the civil rights movement in the ’60s, it’s not dissimilar at all to what was being said.”
Among black people, socialism was once fashionable... (MORE - missing details)
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RELATED: Neither social democrat nor Trump can elude the Establishment's might
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From the horse's mouth a few years ago (CNN):
(2020) Socialism appeals to many black voters. But that’s not helping Bernie. Here’s why
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/us/black-...index.html
INTRO: A big story of the Democratic primaries is the rise of the so-called pragmatic black voters who revived former Vice President Joe Biden’s flagging presidential campaign.
But there’s a flip side to this story that no one is paying attention to: What happened to all those radical black voters who should be rallying to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ side?
Not many seem to know it, but there is a long and vibrant tradition of socialism and radical political leadership in the black community. Many of black America’s most beloved and respected leaders were socialists.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a socialist, according to many historians. W.E.B. DuBois was a socialist, and so were civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. The most prominent black philosopher today, Cornel West, is a socialist and Sanders’ supporter. Hip-hop artists, such as rapper “Killer Mike” and Chuck D of Public Enemy, are also big Sanders supporters.
There is arguably no group in America that should be more suspicious of unfettered capitalism than blacks. Slavery, for example, was driven as much by greed as racism. And blacks lost half of their wealth due to the 2008 economic collapse.
“You can’t have capitalism without racism,” Malcolm X once said.
So as he seeks to blunt Biden’s momentum in Tuesday’s primaries, why hasn’t Sanders been able to tap more into this black radical tradition? And why don’t more people know about it?
African Americans used to hear socialist jargon all the time.
But “people aren’t used to hearing it anymore,” says Solomon Russell, a spokesman for a national group called the Black Socialists in America, when asked why Sanders’ emphasis on class and race hasn’t drawn more black support.
“If you go back to what was being talked about in the black power movement and the civil rights movement in the ’60s, it’s not dissimilar at all to what was being said.”
Among black people, socialism was once fashionable... (MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - - -
RELATED: Neither social democrat nor Trump can elude the Establishment's might