Bernie's Reparations Problem

White people love Bernie. Other people love Bernie too, but white people (namely, liberalbros) LOVE him. I should know, because I am a white dude that loves Bernie. I think he's cool. He likes the same people I do. He appeals to my proclivities. He was a candidate made in my vision of heaven. Great! What a catch!

Sometimes, white people take their love of something, and impose it on everyone else. They've done this, oh, for about as long as they've loved things. We get really excited! We want to share our love of shit with all of you other people. And when the shit we love is seemingly beneficial to marginalized groups and individuals, we REALLY love it because then we can sleep soundly at night knowing that we contributed something good to the world. Bernie Sanders is the collective attempt by white people to wash our hands clean of all the horrible shit we've done. Because saying sorry to each and every one of you is, like, really hard. Why not build an effigy made incarnate by an elderly Jewish politician with the intention of apologizing on a federal level? He wants to end banking....or something, right?

The bush has been beaten around. Bernie Sanders is flawed. If you gasped, scowled or in any way just pooped yourself a little bit, you need to revert back to early teachings and understand that human beings are flawed. No one is perfect. I really hope this doesn't need further explanation.

Being flawed does not preclude being great. Hell, if anything, it is further proof that this person is not, in fact, a Terminator robot, but a human with human feelings and a hunger for human food. We like humans! We like Bernie! But that doesn't mean we have to regard everything he says, does or sneezes as divine creed and unquestionable. If anything, Bernie is the one we should be directing our toughest questions at.

Ta-Nehisi Coates likes Bernie. Probably doesn't love him, though this is up for debate. Coates thinks Bernie could use some work. Coates is a very smart guy. Smarter than me and probably smarter than you. He wrote an article for The Atlantic about Bernie and his problematic views on reparations. It's a short one, so go ahead and give it a look-see before continuing on. Seriously, go read that.

You're back! Yay! Look at you, reading of your own volition. Looks like 2016 is gonna be a great year for you.

Coates makes the point that Bernie's "radicalism has failed in the ancient fight against white supremacy." He also mentions Bernie's various shows of support for activities that would, presumably, reduce the level of racism black people face on a daily (dare I say, hourly?) basis. So what's Coates' beef? Why is he poopin' on the party? Why can't he just LEAVE BERNIE ALONE?

I don't know, necessarily. Sorry to disappoint. I don't know Coates, unfortunately, so I can't really give you his concrete reasoning. I can presume, though. I can presume that Coates likes Bernie and sees him as a step in the right direction. A STEP. Not the whole fucking staircase. Coates probably thinks Bernie is the best person to lodge a complaint against, because many people are under the false pretense that Bernie is "perfect."

The problem with many internet-dwelling BernieBros is that they have trumped (ha) their preferred candidate up to a point of flawless and pristine divinity. Their logic follows: Bernie says mostly good things so he must be allowed to say bad things without critique. Which is, in essence, bullshit. And privileged bullshit, at that.

No, there is no other current (popular) presidential candidate that even comes CLOSE to reaching Bernie's level of pro-marginalized people rhetoric. Yes, Bernie seems to honestly believe in the fight for leveling the playing field and ending systemic racism. But making strides towards a goal is not the same thing as, you know, realizing it. Bernie is, like many of us, still learning the depths of racism in our country. And I can't fault him for not knowing everything that's gone wrong in the past several hundred years. Our government, media and general populace has done a bang-up job of whitewashing history, downplaying the long-term effects of slavery and pretty much ignoring any evidence that today's black communities are directly affected by their ancestors.

Bernie does not support reparations. Coates argues that this is a problem. The question of how/what/where/when reparations will come about is, decidedly, irrelevant in the current discussion. The problem lies in the outright refusal by Sanders to accept reparations as a viable solution. Moreso, the problem lies with Bernie supporters who, in defense of their white knight of progressivism, silence black voices by trumpeting the age-old argument of "this is the best guy for you; why are you complaining?"

Jason Parham, another smart writerly fellow, wrote in response to white criticism of the Black Lives Matter protest that shut down Bernie's speech last August. Here are some very smart words he wrote:

"Call it the politics of civility. It is the practice—and the person-to-person negotiation of this practice in relation to others—of being told how to properly act or express yourself by someone who does not inhabit the same cultural space as you.

Let’s talk about what it means to be black in a society that, for generations, has insisted on your civility. And not just any society, but one, in fact, that has profited from the suppression of your collective power through the dismantling of voting rights laws, redlining, the denial of access to wealth, and the creation of the prison industrial complex, among other horrors.

'Civility,' begins Hua Hsu, 'is invoked as a method of discipline, as a way of sanding down the edges of a conversation.' Thus: Civility is discipline. Discipline is control. Control, in the context of being black—or, more generally, any non-white individual at the edges of society who lacks not just tools, but the access to tools, to fashion a better life for his or herself—in a country that continually insists on your civility even as it offers none in return, is white supremacy."

You can love Bernie and still take issue with his words. You can actively support him as a candidate for president and still take some time to examine his policies and statements. There is nothing wrong with liking Bernie. There is something very wrong with adhering to him blindly and brushing off criticism because you think that it will detract from more "important" things. The problem is, the Bernie Train is very white. And due to this, issues of importance to black people are often brushed aside for issues that are of importance to white people. White folks think we're doing a grand old job of helping black people out. We are under the impression that Bernie's racial platform is enough and that anything else is just beating a dead horse. This is because we're ignorant, though not mean-spiritedly so. We don't have to live under the thumb of white supremacy day in and day out. We forget that, oh yeah, many black people have to live through hell every day.

If there's any point I am trying to cough up, it's that all things should be examined wholly, even Bernie Sanders. And that if you truly believe in the man, you should feel comfortable questioning his policies and making an attempt to guide him in the direction of true equality for all. We should not just stand idly by when something Bernie says does not quite line up with the feelings of those who, let's face it, need change more than we do. We should, instead, criticize and do so openly. Don't kill your darlings, but certainly interrogate them. Do not let your cultural view of the world exclude the cultural realities of others. Because if we fail to hold Bernie to our highest standards, then this whole fight was for nothing.