One possible issue is that of electability. Any GOP administration is bad for black people so of course they’re going to try and play it safe.
Plus, things are probably the best economically for black people than ever before. Why would they be stoked for an economic revolution when things are finally getting less crappy?
I was talking about this with a friend who is totally “feeling the Bern,” while I’m voting for him but that’s about it. I need to remember that I’m a black person from California. I have a vastly different life experience re: race than a black person in the deep South.
In a very real way, I guess I can understand the black community and their views on Sanders if that article is accurate. To have a guy from a state that is 97% white come in and ask for your vote with no real track record working with the black community, I can understand their trepidation and fear he will just abandon them after the election.
Blacks like Hillary because she’s associated with Bill, whom they liked because he came across as “cool.” They don’t like Bernie because they view him as a nerdy old white guy.
As you point out, that was 50 years ago. They probably want to know what Sanders has done for their community since he became ineligible for the draft.
This is an insanely simplistic and patronizing view of black voters. Of course black voters don’t consider things in the way white voters do, don’t weigh issues and character and ability to get things done. No, them black voters just want someone cool, someone not a nerd, in the White House.
There are nonracist analyses of what’s going on with Sanders and black voters. This ain’t one of them.
When asked in an interview if Bill Clinton were indeed “the first Black President”, primary candidate Obama replied, “We’ll have to see how well Bill dances.”
So basically the question is why would anyone have expected they would vote for him.
Unknown entity whose only track record on issues that matter to you is having been in a few student protests over 50 years ago but whose campaign seems to think that alone counts as cred. Who is making promises that seem unrealistic and unachievable. Who has not really delivered much in actual accomplishments during a long Congressional career. Who is lecturing at you with the same basic stump speech he gives to everyone instead of listening to you with respect and addressing some specific concerns you have. Who did not go through the social networks that you respect and trust. Who demonstrates no understanding of the impacts of race independent of class and economics. Who seems unlikely to win a general election. Who you do not connect with or identify with in any way including culturally (an irreligious Jewish socialist ≠ instant bond). Whose basic premise is that Obama (high approval ratings there) has failed, that his policies are wrong-headed and inadequate, that Obama did not have the ability to deliver the people power to make real change happen, whereas he would be much able to get enough people to rise up to force change.
No shock the results. Some of us, Black and White and Brown alike, make judgements on more than rhetoric alone.
Clinton also did a LOT to bring the party together after her loss to Obama; she served in his administration; she was a surrogate and her husband introduced the nation to the concept of “arithmetic” in politics during the 2012 DNC. She is effectively his political successor and the association with Obama will get you at least a few votes in the black community.
That plus she has a lot of institutional history with the black community.
AFAICT, they see 90+% black voters voting for Democrats so they think Blacks must be very very Democratic. Then they look at Bernie and Hillary and Hillary is barely Democrat at all. So why don’t they vote for the MORE Democratic candidate?
The confusion I think, lies in the fact that Blacks are very Democratic along partisan lines based on a few issues (mostly related to race) and Bernie is very Democratic along ideological lines mostly based on economic justice issues.
Charles Blow of the New York Times had a good piece a while back talking about the differences between Southern and Northern African-Americans, or as he put it “The children of the Great Migration and those who stayed behind”.
It did remind me about how weird it is that most Americans, without thinking about it automatically put all blacks in the same box politically when anyone who did that with Northern and Southern whites would be viewed as nuts.
Have you ever actually met any actual black people?
What you’re saying is both grossly insulting and patronizing to black people. Yes, lots of black people liked and still very much like Bill Clinton, but not because he was “cool” whereas Bernie is somehow “nerdy”.
They, and particularly Southern African-Americans, liked him because he did a good job of conveying empathy and understanding.
Look at how during the Michigan debate, when both candidates were asked for their racial blind spots Hillary Clinton talked about how when talking to parents of Trayvon Martin and Sandra Bland, she realized how they had to give their kids the kind of “talk” that she’d never had to give her kids and what a difference that made, and how Bernie afterwards gave that tone deaf “When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be poor and to live in the ghetto”
Bernie may not have meant to, but his comment wound up insulting two different groups who, in theory should love him, but who are turning away from him. The first are of course white people who do know what it’s like to be poor and/or live in the ghetto and the other are black people who don’t live in poverty or the ghetto.
Indeed. That sort of blacks like Clinton because he was cool narrative also ignores just how much work the Clintons have put into making one-on-one relationships with African-American leaders a priority. Minority voters (which ever minority, I’d argue) are more inclined to trust you if you seek out relationships with their leaders and seem as if you are listening to them and taking their suggestions to heart.
As I understand, he’s saying black Southerners expect that when Sanders redistributes the wealth to the poor, it’s mostly going to go to the white poor – because that’s been their experience in the past.
This doesn’t exactly support the idea that the Clintons have a long and personal relationship with black folks. She never heard of The Talk before that?
It’s largely irrelevant how she is or how she comes across to most of us on the dope. What’s relevant is how she and Sanders come across to African-Americans. They’ve made it abundantly clear they prefer her and he and his campaign, and his white supporters on social media come across like young men suffering from nice guy syndrome mansplaining about how girls reject him because he’s too nice.
BTW, that’s not an attack on you and I’m not a Hillary fan.