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Did the Bernie buzz about reparations for African-Americans affect the Iowa caucus virtual Democratic tie with Hillary Clinton? For Bernie Sanders reparations is a “divisive,” issue. I’m sure that the tall president with the stovetop hat had that to say about slavery in 1864. Did his inability to connect with Black voters to redress slavery matter? Bernie flirts with socialism and Black Lives Matter (who doesn’t) and tries to steal Occupy’s thunder, criticizing the elusive 1 percent (who doesn’t), but he pivoted when it came to the issue of reparations.
I doubt that most Black people feed into the Iowa caucus media blitz, tea leaves for political junkies and catnip for corporate media tycoons? Iowa could not be more lily white with 3.3 percent African-Americans, except if it were New Hampshire, next caucus site, with 1.5 percent Black population. National statistics on the American “melting pot” are 77 percent white, 13.2 percent African American and 17.1 percent Hispanic.
We are told as goes Iowa, so goes the country. Out of eight contested Democratic races, they only got two wrong, so they were right 75 percent of the time, a grade that would be an underwhelming C in English class. However, in the final analysis when it comes to the general election, they are no bellwether. They got it right only twice with wins by Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.
And yet media is ablaze with Iowa and New Hampshire caucus fever.
What does that look like for Black people? First of all, so much for the importance of the Black vote. According to HuffPost writer Larry Womack, “Bernie Sanders needs to increase his support among Black voters by about 88 points, just to stay in the game. Right now, Black Lives Matter has his undivided attention.”
Apparently not so much as Paul Street of Black Agenda Report notes, “I didn’t see any of the Sanders fan-base in the streets of Iowa City last fall when local Black Lives Matter protests emerged in connection with the police killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and hundreds of other Black Americans (a topic Sanders failed to address in both of his Iowa City talks).”
Iowa does not work for Black people. Unemployment for African-Americans is three times higher than for whites: 14.1 percent to 4.4 percent to in 2014. In urban areas the gap is wider, almost four times higher than white residents.
In a Des Moines Register November article entitled “Iowa's Wealth Inequality: It's Black and White,” a Black Iowa family tells what statistics cannot. When asked about racism in Iowa, the grandmother Rose said that after 35 years work experience as a domestic worker, her pay is the starting pay for some white workers.
It’s a familiar saying among Black people that when white people have a cold, Black people have pneumonia. During the recession in Iowa white family wealth suffered 26.2 percent, while the percentage for Black people, 47.6 percent, was worse than pneumonia and more like a heart attack.
With these dismal statistics, I can’t imagine that Black Iowans who went to the polls Monday had reparations on their minds when it came to Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton’s insulting comments on the issue. Clinton, who found the Jewish people worthy of financial compensation, offered not a penny for African-Americans saying that we need some … psychological handholding? In a 2000 interview running for the New York Senate, she said, “We have mental, emotional and psychological reparations to pay first.” No 40 acres and a mule there. But she promised to work toward helping us get a better life and by the way, a mea culpa.
More on the debate on race, class and the case for reparations #sanders #coates https://t.co/tT8imLiC50
— Alberto Benvenuti (@albertobenve) January 22, 2016
And yet Sanders comes away limping from the reparations dustup while Clinton walks away with the Black Vote. “Among Blacks she leads Bernie 86 percent to 11 percent, according to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted in November.” And the 90 percent Democratic voting record for African-Americans in the general election is a gift that keeps giving in spite of the energy of activists to put reparations on the table to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In the 1800s there were two kinds of white abolitionists: those who fought slavery because it was immoral, but thought Black people were inferior, and those whose fight was for the equal humanity of the race. There was even segregated seating in some abolition meetings. Then there was William Lloyd Garrison from a working class Massachusetts family who founded the American Anti-Slavery Society and published The Liberator. He not only fought for the equality of the Black race and for universal emancipation, but also championed the Women’s Movement. In 1835 a Boston mob tried to lynch him.
Are we still spending the precious Black franchise on Democrats, who at least are not like Republicans with their racist dog-whistles and Trump charmingly candid “oh, but I’m just glad somebody had the nerve to say it” insults without realizing that we’re still seated in the segregated section without an invitation to the Party? Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, who claims to be a revolutionary, is no William Lloyd Garrison. Neither Sanders nor Clinton are willing to risk their necks on the path of least resistance toward the Promise Land of the Black Franchise. How important is the Black Vote? The Washington Post said, “… indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that if Sanders can’t find a way to win over large numbers of African-American voters, he will have virtually no chance of winning the Democratic nomination for president.”
Sanders can trumpet implausable schemes for an impenetrable Republican Congress going after corporations to pay for carbon emissions, bringing down big banks, giving state colleges an 18 billion dollar boost to bring down the cost of tuition, tinkering with the Fed, two years free tuition at state colleges, all the while spouting alarming BLM Ferguson stump speech statistics, but when it comes to reparations, Jelani Cobb, author and educator, tweeted this: “Candidate emerges, says let's radically reimagine American democracy. Black person raises hand & then it's "Hold on... Let's be realistic."
Enough weighty tomes to neuter a forest have been written on the subject of reparations for slavery by whites and Blacks. But were reparations for slavery really on the minds of Black people when they voted for Sanders? In an Iowa electoral whiteout, I doubt that Black lives mattered much at all. However, as the nation shines a light on two states, Iowa and Nebraska, I think the process itself is a systemic muting of the importance of the Black Vote. Think Progress had this to say:
“Giving Iowa and New Hampshire most-favored-state status, in other words, encourages candidates to pay less attention to issues that are especially relevant to voters of color. It also means that the disproportionate role these two states play in shaping the rest of the nominating contests will occur without much input from people who are not white.”
Author and scholar Ralph Ellison wrote about the plight of ex-slaves in his book, "The Invisible Man." The Iowa and Nebraska caucuses symbolize the invisibility of the whole Black race.
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