Ta-Nehisi Coates has faced criticism this week for singling out Bernie for his opposition to reparations for African Americans, while leaving other reparations opponents, including Clinton and Obama, unscathed. To defend his selective outrage, Coates has since responded with the claim that Bernie is a self-described “radical”, and it is therefore justified to hold him to a higher standard:
When a candidate points to high unemployment among black youth, as well as high incarceration rates, and then dubs himself a radical, it seems prudent to ask what radical anti-racist policies that candidate actually embraces.
Wait, Bernie calls himself a radical? Since when? Coates even says that the word “radical” is Sander’s “chosen name”. Now, I’ve listened to lots of Bernie speeches over the past year, and I could not recall a single time where he described himself in those terms. Alas, Coates manages to find this gem in an NPR transcript:
Youth unemployment for African American kids is 51 percent. We have more people in jail than any other country. So yes, count me as a radical. I want to invest in jobs and education for our young people rather than jails and incarceration.
Oh, give me a break, man. Clearly Bernie’s use of the term “radical” in this context is rhetorical and facetious. To dig up one ironic use and claim that this is Bernie’s “chosen name” is plainly disingenuous. For fun, let’s trying applying this same logic to a passage from a prior column by Coates himself:
Call me crazy, or overly optimistic, but I don't think Wright can save these fools.
“Call me crazy” … Hmm, I guess by Coate’s own reasoning, this is no rhetorical device. He truly sees himself as crazy, and we should view all his writings as emanating from someone who is literally mentally deranged. Let’s be serious now.
Moreover, the supposed “radical” policy Sanders is touting in that quote (“jobs and education for our young people rather than jails and incarceration”) is something Clinton claims to support as well. If Coates honestly thinks this position is radical, I see little choice for him but to deem Clinton “radical”, too, and hold her to the same standard on reparations. I’m not holding my breath.
I’m wondering how long Coates had to Google before digging up quote in question. In my own search for “Bernie Sanders radical”, I gave up looking for the NPR transcript after 20 pages. (There is a soundcloud link for me on page 5 that purports to host the interview audio, but the link is broken.) Interestingly, one transcript I did stumble upon was this one from Charlie Rose (apologies for newsbusters source), in which Sanders says the opposite about his criminal justice reform and other policies. To quote Bernie, “They’re not radical ideas.”
To be fair, while Sanders hasn’t truly described himself as “radical”, he has called for a “revolution”. But please understand what kind of revolution Sanders is seeking. A Sanders revolution is one in which big money forces are cast aside to make way for policies that the public already supports. Consider the existing popular support for just a few of his agenda items: 65% want to expand Social Security, 63 percent want the minimum wage raised to $15 / hour; 58% want to break up the big banks; a majority support universal, single-payer health care. In other words, these are things we would already have if it weren’t for the fact that we are living in a quasi-oligarchy. As Bernie said to Charlie Rose, “they’re not radical ideas”.
How does support for reparations compare? Unlike Bernie’s proposed measures, a full 68% of Americans are opposed to reparations, with a stark divide between how whites and blacks feel about them. Do not interpret this as an argument against reparations in theory --- merely a statement of empirical fact. Many good things have been deeply unpopular in the past, too. Just realize that reparations, in contrast to Sanders goals, is an issue where undoing oligarchy won’t be sufficient to ensure its enactment. Lost of hearts and minds would need to change, too.
I have a lot of respect for Ta-Nehisi Coates, and I continue to recommend his book to family and friends. In his Sanders criticism, however, he is off-base. Bernie is just not the kind of radical Coates and others imagine him to be, and so his selective condemnation of Sanders in unwarranted. Is Sanders calling for a populist revolution to usher in popular reforms? Yes. Is he calling for a radical revolution to enact currently unpopular ones? Some in the media and the political establishment would have us believe that, but it is simply not true.
