Tag: cornel west
Bernie’s Problem With Blacks — And Others

Bernie’s Problem With Blacks — And Others

So Barack Obama is “a Rockefeller Republican in blackface.” He’s “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs” and “a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” Those are the words of Cornel West, an African-American academic whom Bernie Sanders invites to campaign beside him.

And Sanders’ fans wonder why Bernie isn’t catching on with black and Latino voters. They argue people of color just need to know their hero’s “positions.” They’d learn that if Sanders were to win the Democratic nod and be elected president, he would do more for them than any other candidate out there.

Wait one second.

Everyone is entitled to criticize Obama’s policies, but beating him up in racial terms is crude and unfair. Being black himself does not excuse West from the racial extortion he practices. (By the way, why can’t an African-American be a Rockefeller Republican if he so chooses?)

Not only hasn’t Sanders condemned these remarks but also his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, defends them. Weaver says of West: “He’s a forceful voice for understanding the intersection of racial justice and economic justice. He understands very well Bernie’s message.”

Boy, are these guys tone-deaf.

That’s the problem with movement politics, no matter what end of the political spectrum they occupy. Movement politics tend to be narcissistic and dictatorial. They allow dissent only within a narrow philosophical band. That constrains the ability to hear through others’ ears.

Mother Jones magazine related the story of how Sanders swatted down a fellow Vermont activist for posing an innocent but off-script question. It was during Sanders’ 1972 run for Vermont governor that Greg Guma asked Bernie why he should vote for him. Guma recalled Sanders responding: “If you didn’t come to work for the movement, you came for the wrong reasons. I don’t care who you are; I don’t need you.”

Sanders has much mellowed since then, but he still inhabits a self-righteous cocoon that has made him an ineffective and marginal figure in the Senate.

Even Democrats express frustration at working with Sanders, an independent who caucuses with them. Moderates bristle at his moralizing and refusal to make compromises required to pass needed legislation. The undeniably liberal Barney Frank, former Rep. from Massachusetts, complained of Sanders’ “holier-than-thou attitude.”

Bernie’s positions on civil rights have been close to impeccable, but his history with non-whites is more complicated.

Back in 1960s New York, black radicals weren’t keen to sit at the knees of white intellectuals and be told what’s what. The ensuing tensions prompted many white radicals to flee to the more accommodating hills of Vermont. Sanders was one. There’s no gentler way to put this, but they were part of the era’s white flight.

I’m not crazy about the term “white privilege,” but there is something to the notion that middle-class whites get a pass on the sort of “bad choices” that ruin black lives.

Jeb Bush consumed prodigious amounts of pot in his dorm room at the elite Phillips Academy with no legal consequences. Had a poor black teen been caught doing the same thing on his front steps, he might very well have gone to prison. He couldn’t have served in the Army, much less as commander in chief.

Sanders has a son born out of wedlock. In 2015, that is not a disqualifier — certainly not if you’re a white male. If you’re black (or female), I couldn’t imagine such a detail going so little noticed.

I know that Bernie people are going to howl at me for this unflattering portrait. I ask them how they’d react to Donald Trump’s defending race-studded attacks against our admirable president.

They may insist that to know Bernie is to love him. Well, love can be blind — and deaf.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Bernie Sanders pauses to talk to the media before the start of the Milford Labor Day Parade in Milford, New Hampshire on September 7, 2015. REUTERS/Mary Schwalm.

Late Night Roundup: Ted Cruz, Small Children, And Metaphors

Late Night Roundup: Ted Cruz, Small Children, And Metaphors

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared with Seth Meyers, and the two commented on the recent viral video of him possibly scaring a little girl during a speech in New Hampshire — and it turns out that three year-old don’t particularly understand metaphors. (And on the subject of “the whole world is on fire,” Cruz also got in a bit of active denial of global warming.)

The Daily Show highlighted the efforts by conservative states to push back against advances in gay rights — even with celebrations of anti-gay discrimination. Among the highlights: A Texas legislator who is out to stop a lesbian couple, one of whom has cancer, from marrying — while he is on his own fifth marriage — and another bill to prevent transgender people from using public restrooms.

Larry Wilmore talked about the exploitation of college athletes, with massive revenues for the NCAA, the colleges, and media outlets — but not for the players themselves.

David Letterman hosted the prominent public intellectual Professor Cornel West, to talk about the continued problems of racism and inequality even in the age of a black president.

Jimmy Kimmel is hosting his show this week from Austin, Texas, for the South By Southwest festival. And among his guests last night was country singer Brad Paisley, who reminisced about riding on Air Force One with President Obama — and Brad may or may not have stolen some beer glasses with the Air Force One logo for his bar at home.

Ferguson Activists Change Tactics, Targets

Ferguson Activists Change Tactics, Targets

By Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times

FERGUSON, Mo. — Fulfilling a promise he made to hundreds of activists the night before, Cornel West on Monday did exactly what he came to Ferguson to do: got arrested.
The activist and academic was among a crowd of dozens of clergy and other demonstrators who descended on the Ferguson police station Monday to protest the Aug. 9 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, as well as the deaths of other black men across the U.S.
West, locking arms with several clergy from various denominations, marched toward a line of police in riot gear protecting the police station. They requested a meeting with Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson, and then stepped forward into a line of officers who refused to budge.
After West and the other clergy were arrested, another line of clergy peacefully stepped forward and provoked their own arrests. By Monday afternoon, St. Louis County police said 48 demonstrators had been arrested at the police station and six had been arrested for sitting in a nearby intersection.
The Monday demonstration was among an array of scheduled protests in Ferguson and St. Louis called “Ferguson October,” which drew hundreds of activists from St. Louis and around the country. Other protests were held at a mall and at St. Louis City Hall, where at least one young man with a banner was arrested. Protesters converged on a Wal-Mart to acknowledge the August police shooting of John Crawford III at an Ohio store. And they showed up at a political fundraiser.
Earlier, crowds marched through the streets of St. Louis after midnight and occupied the campus of St. Louis University.
Joining the early-morning protest were the parents of 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers, who was shot and killed by an off-duty St. Louis police officer last week in the nearby neighborhood of Shaw. Myers’ family has said he was unarmed; police said they recovered a gun at the scene and three bullets Myers had fired at the officer, prompting 17 rounds of return fire.
No arrests were reported for the SLU protest, which drew some students from out of their dorms.
“The protesters were peaceful and did not cause any injuries or damage,” said university President Fred P. Pestello. “In consultation with St. Louis Police and our Department of Public Safety, it was our decision to not escalate the situation with any confrontation, especially since the protest was nonviolent.”
The protest movement that has emerged since Brown’s death in Ferguson has become more organized and diversified in its tactics and targets. Demonstrators have protested outside St. Louis Cardinals games, sometimes prompting ugly responses from fans; they have also unfurled a banner in a concert hall during a St. Louis Symphony Orchestra performance. Some protesters have angrily cursed officers to their faces, others have prayed before lines of club-bearing police.
“The movement has matured. We are different protesters than in August,” said DeRay McKesson, 29, an activist from Minneapolis who travels to Ferguson for demonstrations.
In August, he said, the protests had emerged organically, fed by anger and a sense of injustice. “Now, it’s all of those, plus strategy,” McKesson said.
A generational fissure between young demonstrators and the older protest establishment broke open Sunday night, when a crowd of hundreds interrupted a rally of older speakers and heckled the president of the NAACP. Young speakers then came to the stage and spoke of a need for people in the streets, rather than platitudes.
From that viewpoint, Monday morning’s clergy protest could be viewed as a nexus between calls for street action and America’s tradition of civil disobedience.
Some pastors’ suits and frocks were drenched with rain as they sang “Wade in the Water,” an old spiritual. Where younger demonstrators had previously been stopped by a wall of riot police, the clergy marched deep into the Ferguson Police Department’s parking lot, sparking a few moments of confusion as some officers failed to stop them.
“We’re standing against the criminalization of young black men … and we believe as people of faith that our faith is supposed to look like something in public,” said Rev. Ben McBride, 37, of Oakland, Calif., after lining up with other clergy to force their own arrests.
Asked about the criticism from the youth the night before, McBride said, “The reality is, our young people are expressing some justified frustration with the faith community, with the world, with the status quo, so we’re here in solidarity. … It is a new movement, it is a new day, and we are not going to hold our young people back.”
Elle Dowd, 26, a youth missionary for the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, was among those arrested outside the police station, tweeting a “selfie” of her handcuffs.
Over Twitter, she told the Los Angeles Times that she was “here out of a deep love for both Black youth and police officers. We all deserve a better system aschildrenofgod (sic). Black lives matter. We stand (with you) & won’t stop til it’s better. We love you.”
When given the goodbye commonly shared during demonstrations in Ferguson — “stay safe” — Dowd responded, while still under arrest, “God doesn’t always call us to safety. God calls us to faithfulness.”

Photo via Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/MCT

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