Many Sanders supporters do act quite entitled. I don't know that I'd call it a racial thing though.
I think a bigger issue is that most people read news that reinforces their viewpoints instead of reality. Oh, it doesn't help that every Millennial got a trophy growing up.
I would agree. Sanders supporters believe in entitlement. But not White entitlement, universal entitlement. Literally. That's why Sanders talked about free college for everyone, free healthcare for everyone.
Clinton was the candidate who believed in selective entitlement. Free healthcare but only for the destitute, free college but only for the destitute. If you make $2000 bucks a month though, you are on your own. Hillary figures you can somehow afford to pay hundreds of dollars in co-pays and deductibles, 10s of thousands of dollars in tuition off the median national income. And if you can't, that's cool, you're probably White, "let them eat privilege", you can just sit back and think about how you're slightly less likely to be asked to show your receipt when leaving WalMart, that thought will provide you with warmth and shelter somehow.
Sander's supporters ARE white entitlement in action.
I just explained how they weren't in detail and this is your counter argument.
Sorry but the rest of your post didn't make much sense to me. I have no comment on it.
Answer this question then: How is advocating for entitlements for everyone an example of White entitlement? They are by definition, two mutually exclusive things. If someone in the Sanders campaign was calling for healthcare for White people only, this article would have a point. No one was so this article doesn't.
Because people of colour face additional obstacles that can't be accounted for using a one-size-fits-all solution. The "one size" ends up defaulting to the "norm" or majority, which, I hate to break it to you, is white. And once the solution is applied, the problem will be considered solved when nothing in the process ever actually made an effort to account for race. So discrimination will still fester within this utopian socialist system, except there will be no room to address it because "we already made good on our universal entitlements!"
The major thing to consider here is that law in theory and law in application are two different things. And when you do not deliberately consider how to account for discrimination and assume that the system will be fair because we found all the right magic words when drafting the policy... well, that's when discrimination is given its biggest pass to infuse systems and institutions.
I am not saying it is inherently bad to structure your politics around universal entitlement, but it's not a catch-all that solves everything. And Bernie so far has not really addressed racism in the comprehensive way that I think is necessary. Not everything defaults back to a common denominator of class and economics.
Free healthcare and free tuition IS a one size fits all solution that would solve the problems of racism, at least in regards to healthcare and tuition.
What would be a solution that would take into account racism? Free college for Blacks but making Whites pay?
Also, you're basically saying, since universal healthcare won't end racism, it's a racist policy. What policy would end racism? Why not get rid of Social Security? It doesn't end racism after all.
I have not said anything about Bernie's policies being racist. I have said I do not like the way that race comes second to all these economic projects. "If we only do all these things then the racism will disappear" is a meme that has seemed to spread like wildfire as a rebuttal to Hillary's rhetoric around intersectionality.
Re: college tuition as just one example, you're actually wrong, which is sort of the problem I'm getting at. It doesn't "solve the problems of racism, at least in regards to [...] tuition." The issue is not as simple as a price tag. Let's say everyone gets free tuition. Where's the conversation around who will actually be able to access that help? What of the black kid who grew up in a sh-tty neighbourhood, went to a sh-tty school, and got sh-t grades because he came from a fatherless home and worked during most of his spare time to supplement the income his mom made working two jobs? What of the kid who just doesn't get in to college for something as simple as the fact that her name is Laqueisha Jackson and not Claire Pennington? What of the kid who grows up playing in McDonald's ball pits instead of using trendy new learning apps on a sleep iPad?
I know not all of this can be addressed by one policy on tuition, and I don't dispute that free tuition would be a valuable lifeline for people of all stripes. But how the candidates talk about these issues matters a lot because it speaks to what their approach to these concerns would be when in office. Maybe it's a gut feeling thing, so feel free to scoff, but I don't sense the same emphasis on intersectionality from Bernie that I see from Hillary. She's the one who made sure young black offenders in South Carolina weren't jailed as adults. She's the one sitting down with the parents of young black kids who've been victims of gun violence. She's the one who's been linked in with black communities for decades while Bernie was refusing to engage with black activists in Vermont (leaders who did get attention from Vermont's other progressive senator). So I just think things are a little more complex than the relatively simple but bold solutions Bernie champions on the stump.
And I can see why some of Bernie's emphasis would seem a little tone deaf to black voters who claim to have felt a little more love from Hillary.
You say you don't like how Sanders talks about economics and then in your rebuttal of him...you talk about economics. A kid growing up in a neighborhood with no jobs, underfunded schools, having to work to survive, his mom having to take two jobs...that's economics.
Also, your comment about Black kids not getting into college because they have Black names is pure fantasy. Full stop. I know you will just dismiss this as being an out of touch White man but seriously. No one turns down a qualified student for college admission because of their Black name. That is cartoonish Klan style racism that even most intersectionalists acknowledge isn't really widespread anymore. Maybe in the criminal justice system but certainly not in liberal bastions like the admissions office of a university. IT. DOES. NOT. HAPPEN. Full stop.
Re: Black kids and college admission, you can say it as emphatically as you want, lol. And yes, progress
has been made in race-conscious jurisdictions that seek to right the wrongs of historic and continuing discrimination. But it has not been solved wholesale. In places with affirmative action bans in college admissions processes, African American enrollment has
declined substantially since these bans came into effect. Obviously this trend is a result of numerous factors, but when you consider the 2003 study Raphael provided above, it is not outlandish to suggest that there would be some racism in the process. That is why affirmative action is important; whites often benefit from an unconscious kind of affirmative action that favours them.
As for my rebuttal being about economics, that is true. But it is not the kind of one-size-fits-all program I was criticizing. For the most part, these are programs meant specifically to address inequalities for minority groups living in struggling areas. This kind of thinking requires segmenting issues, looking at various stages of different processes, accounting for a variety of factors, and implementing a far-reaching plan that approaches an issue from multiple angles. This is not the kind of thinking Bernie embraces, and to be frank that's why he's so popular: Simple solutions play well. Again, this may be more of a style thing than a substance thing, but I think style does matter in the person America chooses to sit in the bully pulpit and steer the agenda of the federal government.
