For decades, one narrative has dominated American politics: That while white liberal Democrats may not be perfect, they are far more trustworthy and far less scary when it comes to race than conservative Republicans.
The backers of Bernie Sanders’s never-ending Kamikaze campaign remind us of an older truth: that there are good people and terrible people in both parties and that Republicans do not have a monopoly on intolerance.
Donald Trump has without question run one of the most racially and ethnically divisive presidential campaigns in recent memory. So much so that as former Senator Bob Bennett lay dying, he asked his loved ones if there were any Muslims in the hospital. His reason? So that he could go up and apologize to each one of them for Donald Trump.
Did I mention Bob Bennett was a conservative Republican? He’s far from the only high-profile conservative to come out swinging against Trump. Jeb Bush denounced Trump’s infamous Cinco de Mayo tweet in which he professed his love for Hispanics while eating a taco bowl, comparing it to eating a watermelon and saying ‘I love African Americans.’” Going a step further, Bush said he will not vote for Trump in November. His brother and father, the two most recent former Republican presidents, have declined to endorse the party’s presumed 2016 nominee. Even more telling, they, along with the two most recent GOP nominees for president, Sen. John McCain and former governor Mitt Romney will not be attending this year’s Republican National Convention.
While a number of conservative Trump critics have attempted to diplomatically convey their problems with his rhetoric, and ultimately his candidacy, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has been refreshingly blunt: “He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”
While high-profile Republicans step forward to denounce one of their own and to argue that minorities should be treated with courtesy and respect, plenty of white progressives seem intent on putting us in our place, so to speak, and keeping us there. Though much of the media coverage of so-called “Bernie Bros” —overzealous, predominantly white, young and male Sanders supporters—has focused on their treatment of female journalists online, their lack of respect for racial and ethnic minorities who deign to challenge Sanders has been perhaps more chilling.
The Washington Post noted that at one point #MississippiBerning became a hashtag used by Sanders supporters on social media—a witty and clever turn of phrase unless of course you are a black American who hears the words “Mississippi burning” and immediately thinks of church bombings and lynchings.
Black writers and activists who have had the temerity to challenge Sanders’s record have been targeted by his supporters in ways that go against not just civility but even decency. I should know. I’m one of them. For having the gall to share my perspective, buoyed by polling data, that self-described socialists are pretty much unelectable to the American presidency, his supporters attempted to harass me offline. (Emphasis on “attempted.”)