So, first things first, if you haven’t read the Ta-Nehisi Coates article from a couple of years ago, do it now. The rest of us will wait for you. Good.
When white people think about reparations — and yes, I’m being very general here — they think about the government sending out checks to black people for being black on account of some shit that went down a century before they were born. And thus, “reparations” becomes a politically toxic word.
The thing about reparations, though, as the article demonstrates, is you don’t have to write out checks to the descendants of people who have suffered grievous injury at the hands of society on account of their race, because there are plenty of people like that alive today, who have suffered very real and very measurable damages. And reparations for those people is a much easier case to make. If Sanders can sell socialism, he can sell that.
Ours is a campaign based on a simple premise: stand up for the right things, and people will rally to your cause. Reparations — or, “restitution”, if you want to relabel the concept — is the right thing to do. And it would have the bonus of being a political game changer.
If Sanders starts talking seriously about reparations right now, he would be a leader on the issue. There is no way that wouldn’t tear into HRC’s stranglehold on the African-American vote. Her firewall would come crashing down.
And she needs that firewall. There aren’t enough old, rich Democrats to win a primary. If her support among POC in general and African-Americans in particular goes down, she goes down. It’s that simple.
And it won’t be toxic, either. Sanders (and Trump, for that matter) has already shown that the rules as commonly understood don’t really apply anymore. Bernie’s supporters aren’t going to go anywhere if he starts talking about financial recompensation for victims of housing discrimination. But he could dramatically expand that base of support.
I mean, that’s what this campaign is about, right? Bringing people together?
I urge everybody who wants Bernie Sanders to be President to get in in touch with the campaign and try to convince them the importance of the candidate becoming a leader on this issue. Tweet them, facebook them, write them an e-mail. Hell, write them a goddamn letter. They’ll listen to us. They have to. That’s the beauty of being a Sanders supporter — we’re running the show, because we own the show. And we need to use that influence to steer this campaign to victory. This election is too important to lose on account of political timidity.