https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/01/21/how-killer-mike-answered-ta-nehisi-coates-on-bernie-sanders-reparations/

Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
[email protected]
(202) 448-2898 x1

On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 11:01 AM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote:

> I think the always insightful Ta-Nehisi Coates nails it. And btw I think
> Coates' critique of Sanders applies to many well-intentioned PEN-Lers
> (Charlie Andrews?) who also like Sanders swear by the "class first"
> approach.
>
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/
> ---------------------snip
> For those of us interested in how the left prioritizes its various
> radicalisms, Sanders’s answer is illuminating. The spectacle of a socialist
> candidate opposing reparations as “divisive” (there are few political
> labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist) is only
> rivaled by the implausibility of Sanders posing as a pragmatist.
>
> [...]
>
> This is the “class first” approach, originating in the myth that racism
> and socialism are necessarily incompatible. But raising the minimum wage
> doesn’t really address the fact that black men without criminal records
> have about the same shot at low-wage work as white men with them; nor can
> making college free address the wage gap between black and white graduates.
> Housing discrimination, historical and present, may well be the fulcrum of
> white supremacy. Affirmative action is one of the most disputed issues of
> the day. Neither are addressed in the “racial justice” section of Sanders
> platform.
>
> Sanders’s anti-racist moderation points to a candidate who is not merely
> against reparations, but one who doesn’t actually understand the argument.
>
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