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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

#BernieSanders Supporters can dish out the name calling, personal attacks, insults and lies, but they can't take them. #ThereIsMoreThanAWhiffOfHypocrisy

Win McNamee via Getty Images
8 Reasons Why the Mainstream Media's Propagation of the Forgiveness Narrative is Problematic for Black People
#FeelTheBern?  Sanders supporters continue to attack the messenger because they can't attack the message.  Their personal attacks on the Black Lives Matter Movement's female activist are every bit as offensive and sexist as Donald Trumps attack on Megyn Kelly.  Their attempt to discredit the Black Lives Matter Movement,  define the real Black Lives Matter Movement. and discredit the character of the activist is pure paternalism, which is another form of racism.  
Notably, it wasn’t two Black women who kept Bernie from speaking in Seattle. It was a White man, a Bernie supporter, who organized the event who shut it down, said the event was over, and informed the crowd that Sanders would not be speaking because he couldn’t agree with the “methods of direct action” of the Black women in front of him.
Let me give it to you straight, Bernie Sanders supporters don't decide who/what is best for Black people.  We don't need you to "take care of us".  We will decide who are leaders are.   
Respectability politics definitely play a role here. The argument goes: If these loud, destructive, rude protesters would only mellow out, they'd realize that you catch more flies with honey. Don't upset or alienate your white allies. Don't piss on your best friend. Don't put your best friend in a compromising position. He can't help you until he gets on the inside. So be nice, play fair, and wait your turn. You're making black people look bad.
Bernie Sanders, or any other democratic candidate will not win the primary without the vote of black women.  Fact.  Calling young black women who are trying to make a difference idiots and childish, horrible, brats, is not the way to win the black female vote.  These young women are the Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hammers of our time.  They are our daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, friends, and nieces. We stand by them and with them.  Stop with the angry black woman narrative. Yes, we are angry because we are tired of crying over the graves of our loved ones.  You will never know our fear, or our pain. therefore you don't get to decide how we express it.  You got that?
Don't condemn our anger. Don't denounce our pain as savage. What's savage is the cruel inhumanity and brutality of the police. Condemn that.~Amandla Stenberg
Bernie Sanders supporters just don't get it.  Why should black women support him after this?  How are we to believe he is the person who will best address our concerns when his supporters call us ignorant and delusional because we won't go along to get along?  Your progressiveness is not enough, we need more. 
Two Black women called for a moment of silence for Mike Brown a year after he was gunned down, left bleeding in the street for 4.5 hours, and White “progressives” shouted, booed, and chanted the name of a White man throughout that moment.
How much more committed to a “negative peace” can we get than literally shouting down the memory of a Black youth whose murder helped to spark this movement?
And how much more “devoted to ‘order'” can we be than to lecture Black people about what direct actions are and are not “hurting your cause”? (Notably, this language I’ve seen from countless White folks shows that we do not see the cause of racial justice as OUR cause – it’s that cause over there that we will tolerate so long as it doesn’t disrupt our Bernie rally.)
And how much more of a “stumbling block” can our self-proclaimed “allyship” be to racial justice when it’s so feeble as to proclaim, “I am a strong ally of the Black Lives Matter movement, but I’m not sure how to be an ally when they are this disrespectful to the only candidate that has actually done anything for minorities” (actual quote from one of the 15 or so social media threads I’m following as I write this article)?
Black Lives Matter is not a moment, it's a movement. A movement created by three strong, black, bold, intelligent, brave, young women.  They are our hope for the future of our republic.  EYE stand by them and with them all the darn way, all the darn day.  As much as it pains me to quote Dubya, you're either with us, or you're against us.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.~Frederick Douglas
Sanders needs to, as the young people say, get some of his supporters in check, before they drive more supporters like me away.

2 comments:

Brian said...

I don't agree with what the Sanders supporters are saying, but I understand why they are not happy with BLM-Seattle. They were there to see Sanders, not be lectured. And the two ladies are lucky that they were not arrested by security. That is what usually happens to people that rush a stage. And in a way that is a failure of the security there. There was no way for security to know what those ladies were going to do.

Disruptions are not going to win people over to your side. At best it gets you on the news and you might get some people to you side that way. But the crowd is going to be against you.

They set up a confrontation with Bernie Sanders, with the crowd, and they got what they wanted.

Redeye said...

Notably, it wasn’t two Black women who kept Bernie from speaking in Seattle. It was a White man, a Bernie supporter, who organized the event who shut it down, said the event was over, and informed the crowd that Sanders would not be speaking because he couldn’t agree with the “methods of direct action” of the Black women in front of him.