By Prem Calvin Prashad
The next Presidential election is 15 months away and none but the most ardent political enthusiasts are paying attention to the sideshow that is campaigning before the primaries and caucuses. Yet I’ll be the first to admit that as a casual observer, I felt pangs of annoyance as I watched “Black Lives Matter” protestors upstage Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders—first at Netroots Nation, and then this past weekend at his own event celebrating Social Security and Medicare.
This move left many, including myself, to wonder, why target Sanders—an unabashed liberal who was certain to be “on their side”? Why not, perhaps, another presidential candidate from New York, known for his ostentatious displays of privilege and flamboyant denunciations of immigrants and women?
After some thought, I recognize that the protesters make a salient point.
Both parties believe, in their own ways, that the solution to racism is through economic opportunity—in that your purchasing power and home ownership will raise you to the vaunted “middle class” and overcome discrimination. Immigrants are a useful tool in this regard, as their successes in America are touted as a success of this country’s economic parity. Yet, candidates spend so much time speaking about the middle class that it’s no surprise that according to a recent Pew poll, nine out of 10 Americans believe themselves to be some level of middle class.
Sen. Sanders, whose platform strikes populist chords railing against the “billionaire class,” has the backing of organized labor and the grassroots of progressive organizing. This is a message that resonates for a large sector of the population—over 72 percent, according to Pew, believing that polices since the recession have benefited “banks, corporations and the wealthy.” It’s for this reason that his supporters insist that he would be the candidate best suited to tackling institutional racism.
Yet, history has shown that even the most revolutionary changes to the economy—replacing plantations with sharecropping, the New Deal’s massive public works projects or sending returning veterans to college through the G.I. Bill—have all failed to end racism as we know it. In the 1992 election, candidate Clinton won the presidency on a vow to reform welfare, encouraging Americans to view recipients through the heavily racialized “welfare queens” meme, despite the broad spectrum of American households—elderly, veterans, single parents and so on—that rely on public assistance. These attitudes about food stamps, public housing and other benefits persist today.
Yet, can any economic policy, no matter how necessary or revolutionary, end racism?
The dilemma in burying racial divisions in high-minded rhetoric about inequality is that it makes the basic assumption that wealth is the only form of inequity in this country—discounting how race and discrimination affect neighborhood policing, the administration of criminal justice and urban planning. By now, we’ve heard the statistics—that one in three black males born today will go to prison in their lifetimes, that one in nine black men have spent time in prison—and this is not just because there is poverty in America. Nine innocent people were not gunned down in Charleston because the shooter had grievances about tax policy.
Yes, it is true that policies such as expanding insurance coverage or raising the minimum wage help minority households and improve their quality of life. Yet, the argument made by Black Lives Matter is not an economic one—no amount of education or gainful employment protects African Americans from being treated differently than whites by law enforcement. No amount of benevolence from a candidate with their economic interests at heart changes the stunning disparity in incarceration rates. By now, the incidents of shockingly excessive force by law enforcement against African Americans are too numerous to recount and it does a great disservice to both activists and law enforcement to subsume this conversation into a broader argument about economics.
Not everyone will agree with the activists’ methods, their target, or the inelegance of their actions, but at this early stage, the conversation has entered the 2016 presidential race and for that reason, it is welcome.
