From Sara B., one of our organizers:

Effective governance doesn’t happen without dissent. No matter what the institution – private business, government, non-profit organizations – without diversity and pushback when leadership is on the wrong course, CEOs, Senators, and organizers alike will create an echo chamber around themselves and groupthink their way into bad decisions.

Bernie Sanders is on the wrong course. A recent Vox article laid out his strategy for the remainder of the primaries, and it entails waiting until the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries are almost over to appeal to communities of color. Bernie has a stellar history and voting record on civil rights, but I have to argue against his strategy. If Bernie doesn’t address racial justice in a focused way right now, he will lose in the primaries.

Bernie’s asked his supporters to build a grassroots, political revolution that can put enough progressive politicians into office to give him the political support to govern effectively as President. But most of Bernie’s base is white and male. Hillary is beating him among voters of color by 67 points, and she has familiarity and name recognition in those communities that he does not. Anyone who follows electoral politics knows you can’t win the Presidency with the white male vote alone anymore.

So why would he wait until next year to start appealing to people of color? I’ll name that strategy for what it is: crass politicking. It’s a textbook example of marginalization. It’s pushing issues that are important to communities of color to the side until their vote becomes absolutely necessary to achieve his goals. If he wants to make even a dent in Hillary’s lead, he needs to campaign on issues of racial justice now.

I have heard and understand progressive objections to identity politics. Typically what I hear is that class and economic inequality are the unifying issues for the Left, and that focusing on race or identity is divisive. I’ve heard Bernie voice those objections, and I’ve heard my fellow progressives say the same. I have to point out that most people I’ve heard objecting to identity politics are white and usually men. This isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with being white, male, or focused on economic inequality, readers. But it does highlight points of homogeneity (an identity, one could say) behind those objections, which must be challenged by diverse perspectives.

I have an identity that’s caused me trouble in my personal life ever since I hit puberty, and that identity is “woman.” I’ve been molested by, and have had my life threatened by, strangers on the street because I’m a woman. Society will never let me forget that fact about myself. Similarly, people of color are reminded that society judges them by their race every day. Black men are reminded that they’re black when a white supremacist walks into their house of worship, calls them rapists, and murders them. Black women are reminded that they’re both black and female when an agent with state authority grabs one of them by the head, yanks her to the ground, and puts his entire weight on top of her prone, bikini-clad, exposed body because she “talked back.”

So what I’m saying to you, Bernie Sanders and his white male base, is that it’s a lot easier to subsume identity politics under the issues of economic inequality when your personal identity is not a threat to your day-to-day existence. Class and economic justice look like unifying progressive issues only when they’re the issues that you observe most directly. But you wouldn’t fix a broken watch by only tinkering with the face plate and the hands; you’d have to take it apart and look at each of the pieces to figure out how the whole thing broke down. The structures of our economy and government operate in similarly complicated, interrelated, but diverse ways.

Let’s take Bernie’s talking point about the African American unemployment rate as an example. Typically, when someone asks him about police brutality or the Black Lives Matter movement, he will address those topics in a perfunctory way and then loop the conversation back around to the unemployment rate, which is 50 percent. That’s a terrible number, and yes, we need to find a way to create more jobs for black people. However, in order to do that you have to not only look at the number, but why it’s so high.

Could it have anything to do with redlining, generational poverty, the school-to-prison pipeline,  the drug war, three-strikes and stop-and-frisk policies, mass incarceration, and the economic disenfranchisement of felons? (The answer is yes.) All of those issues disproportionately affect the employment rates of people of color, and only poverty is related to the economy, rather than banking, education, law enforcement, or the judicial system. An economic remedy will never be adequate to allay African American unemployment because the system is too complex and too entrenched in institutionalized racism.

Bernie undermines his own solutions when he hedges on racial justice. He’s already misstepped in a big way. On a recent NPR interview, when pushed to say “black lives matter,” Bernie came back with:

“Phraseology, of course I’d use that phrase. Black lives matter; white lives matter; Hispanic lives matter. But these are also not only police matters, they’re not only gun control matters, they are significantly economic matters. … Because it’s too easy for quote-unquote liberals to be saying, ‘Well, let’s use this phrase.’ Well, what are we going to do about 51 percent of young African-Americans unemployed?”

Someone on his campaign clearly told him not to say “all lives matter,” but they just as clearly didn’t explain why, so it seems that a discussion about language is necessary. Bernie Sanders speaks his own language, just as much as I do when I talk about completing pre-pro for a short, or when my partner talks about targeting the active list for the C.R.E. weekly. Low-income folks have to code switch when they talk to people in the middle class, as do people of color in white spaces.

The phrase “quote-unquote liberals” is a dismissive, condescending put-down from a white man who speaks a language of politics and power. But the “quote-unquote liberals” who say unequivocally that Black Lives Matter say it with respect for the language of black activism. Our society already knows that white lives matter. That’s why Dylann Roof was apprehended alive after massacring nine people, but Eric Garner was choked to death for selling loose cigarettes. That’s why Roof got Burger King and a private jet ride from the police, but Tamir Rice got gutshot within two seconds of their arrival for playing with a toy. Saying “black lives matter” without hesitation or equivocation isn’t an insistence on proper phraseology, but a necessary affirmation of the fact, and an acknowledgement that our society does not value black lives.

Showing respect for other communities’ language is vital to the coalition-building that Bernie’s asked us to do to support his Presidency. So is showing respect for identity issues. If Bernie won’t do either of those things, how can we possibly build a political revolution behind him? Who does he expect us to build a movement with, if not the people whose issues he’s sidelining? If his supporters won’t acknowledge that racial justice is just as important as economic justice, why should we expect support from oppressed and marginalized communities?

Diversity is the Left’s strength, but also its biggest challenge. We are not the Right, who can be easily mobilized because they share a set of narrow interests. Economic justice alone doesn’t unite us. What unifies us is that we can all recognize the ways that disparities in society and its institutions affect our lives. Focusing on only one disparity among many is a losing strategy.

Instead, let’s tell Bernie that we can handle more than one issue. Let’s show communities of color that we support them. Let’s show the country that the Left is diverse and that we’re strong because of it. Let’s show the world that we’re ready, willing, and able to lead.

Sign our petition to encourage Bernie to add racial justice to his Presidential agenda: