Jones: White liberals can't abandon issues that impact blacks
THE LEVEL of animosity that has developed around this presidential election is troubling, but it is not unexpected. We should have known there would be backlash after the election in 2008 of the first black president. We should have foreseen Republican efforts to benefit from racist resentment of Barack Obama. But I don't think we could have predicted the anger on the left; a resentment born of the idealistic belief that America's conservatism could be reversed in less than a decade.
THE LEVEL of animosity that has developed around this presidential election is troubling, but it is not unexpected.
We should have known there would be backlash after the election in 2008 of the first black president. We should have foreseen Republican efforts to benefit from racist resentment of Barack Obama. But I don't think we could have predicted the anger on the left; a resentment born of the idealistic belief that America's conservatism could be reversed in less than a decade.
When the votes are counted after Tuesday's presidential primaries in five states, including Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton - who has positioned herself as Obama's heir apparent - will move closer to the Democratic nomination. Bernie Sanders - the far-left candidate who has promised to break up big banks while providing higher salaries, free health care and free college - will likely fall further behind. A quarter of Sanders' supporters, largely white, liberal and young, have said they will not vote in the general election if Sanders loses.
White liberals can afford to say that. Black voters, no matter their political ideology, cannot.
Monday night, I had the opportunity to talk with Bernie Sanders in an exclusive interview. I asked him what he would tell his followers to do if he were to lose the Democratic presidential nomination.
"I can't tell anybody anything unless — every person makes their own decision," he said. "What I will tell you is I am going to personally do everything that I can, if I do not win the nomination, and we're in this fight, and we're doing everything we can to win it. But if I do not win it I will do everything that I can to make sure that Donald Trump or any other Republican does not become president of the United States."
Should Sanders win, that question will be moot, but if he falls short, I hope his supporters will follow his example.
The majority of his voters are white, though, and whites will not be targeted by government-sanctioned police abuses or voter disenfranchisement if conservatives win the White House. Blacks, however, will be painted with a political and racial bull's eye.
If conservatives win the White House, states and municipalities will be free to continue the police brutality that allows unarmed African-Americans to be killed by law enforcement. Local governments will be encouraged to disenfranchise voters of color. Red states will be pushed to cut funding to urban public schools. The environmental racism that made it possible to poison the water supply of Flint, supply could spread.
For white liberals, those things are regrettable, but they're not personal, because white liberals won't be the ones who suffer.
When police officers look at a white liberal, they doesn't see political affiliation, they see a white person, so they rarely shoot. When urban school districts get defunded, white liberals can largely rest easy, because, as of 2014, the majority of America's public schoolchildren are non-white. When cities like Flint have lead in their water supply, white liberals don't have to worry, because they don't live in places like Flint.
So while I appreciate white liberal support for justice and equality, I also recognize that their struggle is much different from mine.
Therefore, if white liberals want to move America closer to the equality we all long for, I need them to ratchet down the rhetoric, and join me in the world where voting is a catalyst for change.
I've heard liberal voters try to rationalize their intention to opt out of voting in the November election by saying they are taking a stand on principle. I've even heard them say that a win by conservatives will bring about the revolution more quickly.
But I need to say this: In any revolution, there are casualties, and in this one, the casualties most likely won't look like the ideologues calling for political chaos. In all likelihood, the casualties in this revolution will look like me.
So while it might be politically fashionable for Sanders' supporters to say they won't vote in the general election if their candidate loses, black folks can't afford to think that way.
Blacks have watched what has happened over the last 7 1/2 years as conservatives have tried to claw back every right, privilege and dignity we believed we earned with the election of the first black president. We've seen the kind of vitriol that has been aimed at us as we've stood up to say "Black Lives Matter." We've watched the ugliness that has ensued as we have awakened to the fact that we remain in a life-or-death struggle for full citizenship in this country.
If, indeed, our white, liberal allies are with us in this struggle, then they, too, must recognize that no matter what happens with the Democratic primaries this election season, they must join us in voting in the general election.
But as Sanders rightly said to me in our interview, Clinton has a responsibility as well.
"If Secretary Clinton wins the nomination, she is going to have to make the case," Sanders told me. "That will be her responsibility, to make the case to people all over this country as to why she is the best candidate. And I hope she learned something from our campaign, in expressing to the people of this country as to the need to take on the billionaire class and the big-money interests, and I think if she does that, she'll probably gain a whole lot of votes."
That is, if those voters don't stay home.
Solomon Jones is the author of 10 books. Listen to him mornings from 7 to 10 on WURD (900-AM).
@solomonjones1