Bernie Sanders Does Not Care About Black People

There are so many horror stories of how Bernie Sanders and his core staff treated his Black and Latinx staff during his first presidential go — yet, I chose to not harp so hard on it because I truly believe his progressive policies would benefit the marginalized–especially poor Black and Brown people­ — tremendously. Sanders is just a habitual anti-Black line-stepper, whose transgressions we mustn’t overlook or let him get away with.

It’s also true that Black staffers face difficulties in every campaign, regardless of the candidate or political party, but most other candidates have made high-ranking Black hires today–including Julian Castro, who hired Maya Rupert to be his campaign manager while Bernie touts non-Black Muslim and Latinx hires.

Irrespective of how Sanders and his people feel about us, I believe we need socialism to uplift us, but socialism is not the rising tide that can and will lift all boats. We need more. There needs to be a specific Black agenda concocted by the right Black folks to be put forth. A universal class-based politics can definitely help us — up to a point. But there are valid grievances that need to be heard and addressed. Reparations is one of them. Black Americans, or ADOS (American Descendants of Slaves) — or descendants of enslaved people, as some prefer — have a specific claim and that claim needs to be fulfilled. It’s what is owed. I’m sure Sanders has read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case for Reparations and Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations? Why is he still against it? If he doesn’t know what reparations is, why is he even against it? None of his reasons make sense and they contradict each other.

Let me say that I will gain nothing materially from this as I am a Caribbean descendant of enslaved people. My claim is with another colonizer even though I am a Black American citizen because imperialism has pushed me to flee here for a so-called better life. I’m not jockeying for any positions with any political campaign nor neoliberal entity or mainstream media platform. Not after this, anyway. I’ve equally criticized everyone running and those considering it: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden, Howard Schultz… I’m not here on behalf of anybody but the Black and Black Latinx and Brown community. There are no strings on me.

That said, let me tell you a little bit of who I am. I am an ex Bernie Bro. I was one until a couple of days ago. What made me change my mind? A couple of things: Bernie Sanders and his people haven’t changed much, as PhD candidate and overall surgical voice, Wendi Muse, puts it. I saw it with his new campaign launch, too. They learned nothing from the last election. In fact, they doubled down on being problematic.

I believe his rise to power has been, for the most part, because of today’s climate: a more educated, yet poorer populace with internet access. That, and because he’s an endearing curmudgeon. The man is just likable. Even his favorability with Black voters beats every other candidate, according to a Morning Consult poll. We must be careful and not rely too much on polls, though.

Bernie and his people chased out all the incredibly talented and genuine Black people from his last team because he surrounds himself with racists, sexists, and misogynoirs. Some of those Black folks had to take therapy because of the trauma they were inflicted. Others want absolutely nothing to do with him after being left to their own devices, with little funding, plenty of dismissals, macro and micro-aggressions during his initial campaign, as Splinter News reports.

Hostile environments is something Black people know deeply while navigating any white-led space–even spaces occupied by so-called people of color and corporate entities knee-deep in respectability politics. Unless we embrace the culture, the mannerisms, the beliefs of the majority, we will have an extremely difficult time working and living next to them. Even independent indie platforms (The Intercept, The Young Turks, Current Affairs, to name a few) are unwelcoming of radical Black and Brown writers, unless they hold the same views as them–like putting class before race or believing reverse racism is a thing–or if we’re lighter than most among us. The problem is systemic. The problem is omnipresent. Racists, sexists, misogynoirs always have the upper hand in most spaces. Especially if you are light-skin and think and carry yourself like liberal or Leftist white men.

Take Shaun King, for instance. Recently he went beyond cyberbullying a queer Black woman for simply asking him what was he doing with the funds he was raising for Cyntoia Brown and others for the resurrection of Frederick Douglass’ The North Star. A couple of Black advocates asked him the same thing and what did he do? He threatened them with legal action, phone calls were made to get them in trouble, and he exposed them to his millions of social media followers. He left them open for harassment and doxxing. Clarissa Brooks, the Black queer woman he monstrously attacked, was so shaken by the whole violent spectacle, that she now believes her life is ruined while he gets put on platforms and is honored by entities such as BET. Shaun King is corrosive to Black women. Shaun King is corrosive to the Black community. I will admit that he has exposed some malfeasance within the justice system and for some time I truly believed he was getting unnecessary scorn, but the man, in his hot pursuit of relevance and access to power, is also cozy with law enforcement and the system. One minute his social media is a graveyard of Black victims of state violence and the next he’s either thanking intelligence agencies or working with police departments to supposedly have a better relationship with the communities they target. Please make it make sense.

King’s Trump-like, superficial, and fatalistic prose has made him famous, but the man is bad news for Black people–especially Black women, whom he has outright plagiarized. Even if his wife wrote a baffling letter in his defense. He’s been accused of plagiarism and being a grifter by conservatives, but he took little legal action against them. When Black folks confront him about his suspicious endeavors, he goes ballistic and threatens them with the very state that crushes us. Bernie chose Shaun to help him with his Brooklyn campaign launch and gave him a platform to invoke the Civil Rights and Black women, no less, just so he can bizarrely make Bernie out to be some sort of a Civil Rights revolutionary while congratulating himself because he showed Jane Sanders and Levi Sanders a side of Bernie they didn’t know. It was weird and mind-boggling.

Multiple Black women came to Clarrisa’s defense. Multiple people have stood up to Shaun King. Multiple stood up to him to the point of forcing him to write a self-serving non-apology–which still accused Clarissa and others of defaming him. Shaun is a public figure. When you’re in the public eye, people will say all sorts of things about you­–real or not. I’ve been accused of all kinds of things for sticking out my neck for our communities but never did it occur to me to threaten other marginalized people with legal action or make phone calls to jeopardize their careers. That’s downright sociopathic. I wouldn’t sic the law on the very same people I profess to love and protect, the people who have elevated me to such heights, and whose oppression has brought me fame and financial security. It’s treasonous. It would’ve been best if you said nothing, Shaun.

Kenyette Tisha Barnes, a long-time activist and the national co-founder of #MuteRkelly, put it better:

I watched a young sister get her life destroyed, doxx’d, publicly humiliated, threatened to be sued, all because she bruised the ego of someone who was self-inflated to begin with. And then folks give Shaun King an award? Unbelievable.

Without any self-interest, Clarissa and other sisters from Spelman stood shoulder to shoulder with me in the cold as we demanded accountability for Cyntoia Brown. And for simply expressing a concern, she was publicly bullied and threatened with a lawsuit. And SK gets awards.

The only thing I’m learning is that the way to excel in this social justice space is to drag black femme activists, so that the Blk patriarchy (and those who capitulated the blk patriarchy) rise to the top. And that shit is just fucked up. There, I said it. Now sue ME!

Why would Bernie Sanders align himself with such a character after that entire ordeal? It’s simple: Bernie Sanders does not care about Black women. Take it from them.

Bernie Sanders surrounds himself with racist, sexist men. Shaun King is not the only one who’s beyond problematic. Jeff Weaver was also so troublesome that in 2016, when Sanders’ Our Revolution was formed and Weaver was appointed to lead, multiple staff members fled in protest. I once jokingly said that Jeff Weaver derailed the revolution. Sometime after he sent me a request on Facebook. I found it amusing and accepted to have some access to the Bernie Sanders political apparatus­–maybe they changed, I thought–and to see what was he going to do about my comment.

When I learned Bernie was giving it another go, I was initially apprehensive, but eventually embraced it. I’ve been an unrepentant Bernie Bro­­–a malignant phrase I’ve reclaimed–since 2015. I’ve been shielding, throwing digital hands in defense of Bernie’s character and that of his followers for some time–to the chagrin of a lot of establishment Black and Brown folks. I know the mischaracterizations come in bad faith: that Bernie Sanders has mostly a white base. It’s been proven that that isn’t the case. Most people I know, who are supporters of Sanders, happen to be Black and Brown. It’s the people I’m most exposed to. Perhaps those who say Sanders’ fan base is only white don’t have many Black and Brown friends. Perhaps they’re getting paid to say so. Whatever the case may be, followers of all candidates are hostile to those who mischaracterize them, even when the critiques are valid.

I truly believe that all of the policies Sanders is running on are the most progressive and can and will help the majority of Americans–especially the marginalized. Which Black people happen to be one, if not, the most in this country, along with Native Americans.

I endorsed Bernie Sanders multiple times. Here (its translation) and here. I sent hate-tweets and wrote open letters to Black and Brown politicians who came in bad faith to derail his campaign because I didn’t want the opportunity to financially uplift our people be buried. I unendorsed Hillary Clinton after I saw what the DNC and her people did to him. Right up to 2016, I erroneously agreed with him that income inequality is the great moral issue of our time. It’s not just income inequality, though. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism… are all great moral issues of our time. Not one is greater than the other. We’re not all treated the same and, unfortunately, at the intersection of all this hate are Black women, queer Black women, Black trans women, disabled Black women, who are facing the most oppression today — as they’ve always been. This is why hearing Shaun King give that speech (and flexed on social media that he helped Sanders write his speech, too) sent many of us into a seething rage. Neither Bernie Sanders nor Shaun King care about Black women. And please, please, do not use Nina Turner as a shield. Stop tokenizing her. I have nothing against Nina Turner. She’s a personal hero to many of us and she deserves better than her name be used as a shield for malicious arguments. Stop weaponizing her identity to protect a problematic white man. That goes for those who also believe Bernie’s recent defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar absolves him from his problem with Black folks. [It has been brought up to me that some may find it offensive (while others don’t) I’m making these comments because they can be interpreted as robbing Nina Turner of agency. This, of course, is not my intention since I’ve seen people use Black and Brown surrogates as shields, but impact matters more. That said: Nina, I apologize for them and to others who see them as problematic. They will remain up for the sake of transparency.]

The men Bernie Sanders surrounds himself with are cancerous to progressive movements. Even his Latino advisor, Chuck Rocha, someone who calls himself the Mexican Redneck (a baffling identity that brings Black and Brown people unsavory feelings because of its connection to racism), someone Sanders gave close to five million dollars for his initial run, is back in the mix. He is also partially responsible for bringing onboard the Latino men who demeaned and sexually harassed Sanders’ women staff. Please note that harassment is something that plagues most, if not all, campaigns.

I wrote to Rocha recently, against my better judgment, just like I wrote to Jeff Weaver, so I can help them strategize better this time around, but they left me on read and the calls they promised they’d give me never came. It’s too late now. I tried to be political, I tried to be cordial, I tried to be friendly, I tried to extend an olive branch even when I knew they’re both highly problematic, but after watching this whole clusterfuck at Brooklyn College and seeing the people they’re hiring and rehiring, I want no association with either. I’m part of the call-out culture, but not of the cancel one because I like to believe, to a fault, I’m in the business of building people up–not destroying them. However, I don’t speak for other people, as they have the right to not accept into their lives incorrigible men and other toxic individuals. I don’t profess to be perfect, either, and because of the nature of patriarchy and male privilege, I’m well aware of how every single man is someone’s #metoo. Regardless of how conscious we are of our behaviors and position in the world, we contribute to women’s oppression for merely existing in proximity to them, just like white people contribute to ours.

Chuck Rocha, besides being convicted of embezzling money from a labor union, has an issue with Afro-Latinx and indigenous people, too. Some say Sanders’ political director hire, Analilia Mejia, is Afrolatina, but she doesn’t read as Black. Chuck brought her onboard. Colorism is likely at play with her hire. Not to dismiss what she did with New Jersey Working Family–I thought she was a great hire­–but we must also come to terms with the fact that many of us–including an Afrocaribbean such as myself–enjoy light-skin privileges and I truly believe this is the case here, too. Why do I believe so? He hired the whitest Dreamer he could find in all of the United States, Belén Sisa, an Arizona undocumented activist, to be Sanders’ deputy national press secretary. We know that the majority of indigenous people crossing the border are of indigenous descent and visibly so. Belén isn’t. White Latinas and those who are white-passing are always put ahead of those with darker hues, in every industry, including Latinx outreach, corporate America, the media, Hollywood, and as you can see, politics. I’ve written numerous times about this and so have many Afrolatinas all over social media, to the disdain of many Latinx folks. Racism and colorism exist within Latinidad, and in this case, strikes again through the hands of a light-skin man.

What’s more, Bernie Sanders campaign has not been grassroots through and through. He’s now turned his campaign into a full-blown DC insider political machine. I’m blown away by those who think that that’s a good thing. That’s not radical. To the contrary. It’s very establishment. How are you going to change the system when you bring in the same operatives deeply involved with it?

There are just so many damning things that are unpardonable. Sanders’ stance on reparations is one of them. A few of the Democratic candidates have addressed it. Some say they’re for it. We all know they’re not genuine. Bernie Sanders is supposedly the most progressive, so why is he against it? He pleads obliviousness about the concept because supposedly it hasn’t been defined concretely despite there being a mountain of writings, suggestions, recommendations by Black scholars, writers, and activists. He also says it’s divisive and that other marginalized groups will feel left out. Let those other marginalized groups make their claims–and it’s not like they don’t. It shouldn’t be, however, when Black folks are making theirs. Black folks aren’t anybody’s mule and our struggles shouldn’t be used to dismiss the struggles of others, either.

Not long ago people thought his ideas were ludicrous and Americans wouldn’t accept a socialist as a president. We’ve managed to change many minds. It’s a sign of the times. The “Overton window” on “radical” progressive policies is at play. Why can’t the same be done about reparations? I call bullshit on those who say a political campaign can’t be successful for including it. He co-sponsored the Holocaust Rail Justice Act, a bill that was to help Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families get reparations, but I guess reparations for African Americans is too divisive and impossible to accomplish for him. The amount is a tiny fraction in comparison to what is owed to Black Americans, but it is at least something. Even grand dragon of neoliberalism, Nancy Pelosi, is in favor of a Reparations Study Bill. Presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, believes $100 billion can help. It’s also a drop in the bucket, but it is at least something. Bernie, our progressive hero, isn’t down with it? Bernie Sanders does not care about Black people.

This is what writer and political analyst, Anoa Changa, has to say about Sanders’ response to his reparations comments during his interview at The Breakfast Club:

He continues to miseducate with this “what do we mean” instead of engaging in good faith with decades of work on this topic. It doesn’t matter how many well scripted speeches are given when it is these moments that continue in willful disregard on actual dialogue in this topic.

I find the reluctance to embrace and expand the conversation and sticking to “well, a lot of people think a lot of things” is cowardly and not how one can lead in conversation about “divisive” issues.

Many of us “on this side” have spent a week giving better responses as well as critique of why this “well, what does it mean?” which isn’t even the same as what form should it take, which is the bare minimum push for a study. This still isn’t fatal but it’s frustrating.

And most of the things being championed right now were not mainstream conversations 10–15 years ago. We have folks who get behind what is convenient and easy for them to support because of their personal sensibilities about what people deserve.

You can’t have a weekend talking about Civil Rights warrior legacy and then expect us to be Ok with this answer?

So what if he chained himself to a Black woman decades ago? Kudos for that, but he is the government now. He is the Man now. Now he has the power to truly make a material difference for the betterment of Black people. Now is when he should be called out. Now is when we should protest him. Now is the time to make him better, but his continuous dismissal of a Black agenda tells us that Bernie Sanders does not care about Black people. He sure cares about our vote, though. If he wants it, then let’s make him work for it. He needs to hire the right people, and as you can see, Sanders and his team can’t even do that right. Where are our Black folks, fam? They should’ve been the first ones to get media hits when you launched your campaign, and not just famous Black celebrities and famous activists. I suggested Anoa Changa and other Black women to his team, but again, they left me on read.

If Sanders seriously wants to win this time around, he should pay heed to what the founder and president of the Griot Group, Michele L. Watley, says:

Black voters have proven time and again–in 16, 17 and 18–that their vote is pivotal for democratic candidates to cross the finish line. Republicans are also keenly aware of the value of the Black vote and they have no qualms about expending resources not to gain the Black vote or court Black voters, but to suppress it.

Democrats who claim that getting Trump out of office is the primary goal but don’t engage Black voters, or hire in Black operatives/consultants who have the expertise to advise campaign strategy for reaching Black voters, is dooming the party and the nation to another 4 years of Trump.

If you’re not here for Black people, then I simply cannot be here for you. Bernie Sanders is wrong and if you don’t like this revelation, feel free to reach out to me with your best counterargument. It better not be deflective, though. It better be solid and not something you read from some Bernie enamored talking head. Find me on Twitter: @CesarVargas365.

Frankly, and obviously, we need a better class of politicos. Some of you have asked me, “If not Bernie Sanders, then who?” Encourage someone better to run or make Bernie Sanders better by pointing out where he is royally messing up.

I’m well aware that this puts a target on my back and people will look for any little thing to discredit us. They’ll come up with every excuse in the book for doing so, too. I’m expecting major pushback, but that’s alright. I always try to do what is right. Besides, this is not my first rodeo nor my last. Come at me, bros. I want all the smoke.

P.S. This wasn’t easy for me to write, but during these trying times, we must come through for our people who have always come through for us. We are all we’ve got.

P.P.S. Please share with your networks and send this to everyone you know — including Bernie Sanders and his people.

P.P.S. I made some edits at the suggestion of Black women who have read this piece. One in regards to Clarissa Brooks, Nina Turner, and included other links such as this one from Concerned Community.

P.P.P.S. I owe a great deal of gratitude to all the Black women quoted here and those who privately gave me suggestions. I couldn’t have written this without you. Thank you.

Addendum: This essay was sent to numerous mainstream magazines (The Hill, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post) for publication, including a couple who have quoted and published my work before, but as always, they hardly publish nuanced voices from our communities and are quick to give a platform to superficial rhetoric, centrists, and white supremacists. Black and Brown folks are keenly aware that mainstream and white Leftist media is not here for us so we have to resort to publishing our work on social media, inclusive platforms, or starting our own.