Demoralized by police killings, left even further behind by economic inequality, held back for generations by structural racism, black people were primed for a political revolution.
Sanders was ready to lead one. From the time he announced his campaign, in April 2015, his crusade against economic inequality galvanized a sleeping sector of the populace that felt left out of the political process.
But Sanders seldom trained that same impassioned rhetoric on the problems that so many black voters wanted addressed: police brutality, white supremacy, and the ways in which economic inequality is inextricable from race.
It may have been white privilege, or simple cultural ignorance of black people and our plights. The Vermont senator, who built a movement on lofty promises like universal health care and free college, dismissed reparations for black people as “very divisive.” [...]
What makes the accounts of the former Sanders staffers particularly troubling is that the senator, according to his liberal and mostly white supporters, was supposed to be the ideal candidate for black people. [...]
Sanders’ response reminded some people of the language of “All lives matter”: “It’s not just black,” he said in part. “It’s Latino. In some rural areas, it is white.”
Sanders was in a staunchly activist, anti-establishment environment full of people who were very much open to a candidate who wasn’t afraid of speaking truth to power. Yet he didn’t seem able, or willing, to speak about race beyond citing statistics on discrimination against black people.
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