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That Battle with Billionaires Has to Conquer Whiteness First
The white alliance makes the billionaire class, and progressives ought to talk about both
Bernie Sanders wants to solve economic problems without talking about their factors. He says billionaires should not exist, but he won’t say how billionaires exist. Sanders can’t solve economic problems if he’s silent about whiteness.
In whiteness, the billionaire class has a coconspirator. Looking at history, the scholar Joel Olson wrote, “the American racial order is a cross-class alliance between the dominant class and one section of the working class. This alliance confers privileges to its members, in exchange for which they guarantee the social stability necessary for the accumulation of capital.”
As Olson shows, the white alliance is a “peculiar collusion.” W.E.B. Du Bois said it pays “a public and psychological wage” to whites. It’s a payoff that allows white elites the freedom to be too big to fail.
That white alliance labors daily for its wage, and it’ll wage war for its wage. Everyone knows the white alliance was effective in Trump’s election. Recall that Ta-Nehisi Coates said, “Trump assembled a broad white coalition that ran the gamut from Joe the Dishwasher to Joe the Plumber to Joe the Banker.”
“And yet, Sanders won’t speak about the white alliance.”
That white alliance means America gets a Rockefeller because of whiteness. It means the stock in whiteness backs billionaires, and it means whiteness is that — “hold still,” which allows the billionaire class to stay on top and screw society. Like the inextricable link between capitalism and racism, you can’t end the billionaire class unless you end the white alliance.
And yet, Sanders won’t speak about the white alliance. He considers himself a 21st-century Franklin Delano Roosevelt — with “racial justice” as a side piece. His F.D.R. mantle is no comfort because the “New Deal” was another bad deal for Black people. The New Deal was a new way to exclude Black people with colorblind policies.
In his defense, Sanders’s supporters may say he doesn’t have to specify whiteness. But you can’t sneak up on whiteness; it requires confrontations. They said in F.D.R.’s time, “loose lips sink ships” — which speaks to the safe harbor that power has in sealed lips.
Sanders needs dividing words for whiteness. If he won’t talk about whiteness, if he won’t count and subtract whiteness, then he won’t solve economic problems. Perhaps Sanders’s math teacher didn’t demand that he show his work, but voters should.
cc: Elizabeth Warren
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