Sanders is beginning to epitomize the traditional white left who, like him, have tended to be highly educated, middle and upper middle class people who have always had the very sanguine belief that by simply fixing economic inequality one fixes all the ills of society. If only the government would begin by taxing the rich, pursuing a massive public investment program for full employment and expanding government participation into key areas deemed part of the "social infrastructure" such as health care, mass transit, education and public utilities greater equality could be achieved and a better living standard for all could be accomplished thus creating a less class divided society. Racial inequality is seen simply as a subset of class inequality. The view of white progressives was best summed up for me by a sociology professor I had as an undergraduate at the UW-Madison, "What we are saying is that the world turns on class struggle!" All the mysteries of the world were thus unlocked in a very neat and tidy manner for me as an upper middle class white leftie. Unfortunately, for America's People of Color, things are not so simple.
When looking at Bernie Sanders and how he relates to non-white voters we can see the problem that white progressives have in communicating their message. This is not to say that white progressives have the same problem the GOP has in this regard but they have problems all the same. The manner in which Bernie became defensive at a speech in Phoenix is but one example. He soon recovered somewhat by taking up the cause of the BLM movement and by decrying police brutality in a very unambiguous manner only to slip once again on the issue of immigration reform.
The immigration reform issue has been front and center for some time, and should be an easy one for progressives like Sanders to handle yet this is far from the case. Former Chicago Alderman and US Congressional representative, Luis Guteirrez has recently said regarding Sanders,
"I don’t know if he likes immigrants, because he doesn't seem to talk about immigrants. But sooner or later he’ll tell us. I hope he likes immigrants. I haven’t heard him say anything. He’s been kind of quiet and silent. So I hope that when he sees this program he sees that there’s a lot of people waiting to hear from him,"
For the record, it is not surprising that Sen. Sanders is a strong supporter of immigration reform and a stalwart proponent of the Dream Act. This was never in doubt. But he muddies the waters and deepens mistrust between white progressives and Latino immigrants with reflexive remarks about "open borders" and "employer exploitation of illegal migrant labor" the second of which has been a common progressive meme in explaining the persistence and growth of illegal immigration; it's a boon to the profits of big business. This view isn't motivated by racism. It's simply the way in which the white left has seen all immigration in modern times from the Civil War era on forward; transcontinental and cross border migration is seen simply as labor migration.
The modern capitalist system's hunger for cheap labor has long been a staple of progressive historiography as is evidenced by this narrative from the History Matters website. Here the author explains the sudden surge in Puerto Rican immigration to the US after 1898;
In 1898 the United States acquired Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, after victory in the Spanish-Cuban-American War...the U.S. responded to local pressure for independence by declaring Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States...Large, corporate-financed sugar plantations transformed Puerto Rico’s agricultural economy and displaced thousands of subsistence farmers from their own land, forcing them into the rural wage labor force. These dramatic changes in the rural economy in the years before World War I pushed unemployment levels in Puerto Rico to crisis proportions. At the same time, American entry into the war created labor shortages in many industries on the mainland. This Labor Department bulletin from May 1918 set out plans for bringing more than 10,000 Puerto Rican laborers to the U.S. to work on war-related projects...Within a month the first arrivals will be engaged in construction work on Government contracts, and the Employment Service already has arranged for the employment of more than 10,000 islanders on war work at Norfolk, Newport News, and Baltimore and vicinity. Approximately 75,000 Porto Rican laborers already are available for work in the mainland. The Porto Rican laborers will receive 35 cents an hour, with time and a half for overtime work. They will be fed by the Government commissary, each man paying 25 cents a meal.
This historic analysis is absolutely correct. The problem is that like most progressive historic/socioeconomic analysis it doesn't necessarily suggest a viable political solution to the myriad complex problems created by issues it accurately describes. Furthermore, white progressives often see the people they discuss as mostly one dimensional economic agents whose connection to society is mostly as laborers producing a surplus for capital. This is an important dimension but not the only one. Failure to grasp the non-economic connections to the society of poor immigrants, the myriad and complex relationships, problems and connections to society that they develop over time in and through their original role as laborers, leads to insensitive and simplistic approaches and solutions. Focusing merely on their plight as "cheap labor" can be as dehumanizing as right wing rants that dismiss immigrants simply as "aliens" who "threaten" the society. For instance, both views fail to take into account the vast contributions economically, culturally and even politically that new immigrants, legal or not, make to the society. Of course, the progressive approach is more compassionate and sympathetic than the right wing one (and is certain shorn of the racist hysteria of the far right) but can also be patronizing and politically insensitive.
Sanders demonstrated the problem of uncritically sticking to old political memes with the following remarks on immigration reform; "There is a reason that Wall Street likes immigration reform...What I think they’re interested in is seeing a process by which we can bring low-wage labor into this county." The seeming opposition to immigration as "low wage labor" as contrasted with "menacing aliens" may seem more progressive but for a Mexican immigrant seeking the opportunities and safety of America both are equally insensitive and obstructive. Both fail to understand the basic human needs, goals and aspirations of the people in question.
In a VOX interview with Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein, Sanders gave his views on immigration reform from the vantage point of his "democratic socialist ideology" which guides his current policy positions. When Klein asked if his "internationalist" political orientation could lead him to conceptualize "open borders" as a way to "make a lot of global poor richer" Sanders replied sharply with a stern rejection of such views as a kind of capitalist ploy. He then explained;
It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs. You know what youth unemployment is in the United States of America today? If you're a white high school graduate, it's 33 percent, Hispanic 36 percent, African American 51 percent. You think we should open the borders and bring in a lot of low-wage workers, or do you think maybe we should try to get jobs for those kids? I think from a moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.
There are several problems with Sanders' reaction. First, the US is not and has never been a "nation-state" which is defined as sovereign state or country chiefly representing/or culturally defined by a particular ethnolinguistic group. The United States is, by contrast, the epitome of a "creole" state, or one which was created by the foreign colonization of myriad ethnolinguistic groups. True, America has certain "core" or dominant groups whose language and culture are seen as more "definitive" of US society but it is highly diverse society nonetheless.
Secondly, Sanders wrongly blames immigration as a serious contributing factor to unemployment which has been seen as a long debunked zombie myth. In fact, Sanders voted against an immigration bill in the US Senate in 2007 fearing its effect would be a wave of "low wage workers" that would bring down average wages and contribute to high rates of unemployment. On this issue there have been countless studies, some more reliable than others, but most tend to show that in the long run, even illegal immigration expands the economy through increased productivity and effective demand creating more net jobs than it "takes" allegedly from the native population. A new study produced this year for the National Bureau of Economic Research using US Census Bureau data from 1980 to 2000, new immigrants create 1.2 jobs for every job they take (thus increasing overall employment by 20%) most of which go to native born workers and with about two thirds of these jobs in the non-tradable service sector. It is also the case that on average new immigrants have different education and skill sets than many native born workers creating often discussed "two tier" or segmented labor market whereby native born and immigrant workers rarely compete for the same jobs.
On the issue of overall wage impact of immigration, many studies find that immigration, legal or not, has a long term positive upward impact on the wages of native born workers. The American Immigration Council cites an EPI study explaining that immigrant workers increase overall productivity, demand and growth giving a boost to native born employment and average wage levels. According to the EPI report, "...immigration increased the wages of native-born workers by 0.4 percent." Of course, the impact varies across different demographics depending on education, experience and skill levels. Immigrants help economic growth in various ways. According to one EPI study from 2011, immigrants, though 13% of the total US population were 16% of the workforce and accounted for nearly 15% of total wage, salary and business proprietor income-nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars. The concentration of immigrants in the prime working age population is significantly above the national average. Many immigrants start businesses and hire labor as well. A Brookings Institute study showed that in 2008, immigrants were thirty percent more likely to start a new business than were native born entrepreneurs. Such entrepreneurship expands output capacity, employment and productivity and increases employment, economic growth and keeps inflation down all of which has a positive, rather than a suppressive, effect on average wage growth.
Relating to non-white voters has been a vexing challenge not just Bernie Sanders but for progressives for a long time. In the 1930s, progressives basically threw minorities under the bus in pursuit of their own interests rejecting the idea that People of Color were valuable political allies. Though much has changed since the 1960s, more needs to be done in this regard. People of Color often live in a different world than whites and have very different experiences. True, there is a large and growing Black and Latino middle class but there also is a growing number of working poor and unemployed as well. Gaps exist between them and the white population and in protracted tough economic times these gaps are greatly exacerbated. Also, People of Color experience various kinds of discrimination, police and other forms of daily harassment not generally experienced by whites (often regardless of social class), can't take their personal safety for granted in the same way whites do, and face challenges from the legal system not faced by whites. Disproportionate incarceration rates for similar types of offenses are sufficient evidence of this fact.
Specifically, with regard Latinos and the immigration issue, the progressive left has to stop seeing them as simply an exploited, cheap labor pool-the large serf class from North America's non-feudal history-and begin to see them as a relatable group of people with ongoing problems, aspirations, hopes and contributions that we all need to better acknowledge and understand. If the white left can do this, they can forge a political alliance with non-whites as equal partners that is so vital to successfully pursuing the progressive agenda we need.