Yesterday, February 29, 2020, we heard black people for the first time this primary season as they voted in the South Carolina primary. Thanks to them, every county voted to send Joe Biden up against Trump in November.
And pissed-off Berners immediately took to social media to show their entire racist asses.
“In order to fix this on Super Tuesday, it may be necessary (to) mobilize and discourage certain Black voters from turning out.” WHAT? They’re talking about voter suppression. That’s goddamn horrifying.
In general, I can’t imagine assuming that black voters, especially older ones, in South Carolina are low information voters. Such a view is not only appallingly racist, it’s—well, it’s very low-information.
I know Berners are mostly young people, but they have a responsibility to educate themselves. HOW FUCKING DARE THEY? Those older black people they call “low information voters” spent their youth fighting for the right just to have that vote. They know the importance of it. They know how to maximize it. They know more than most of us could dream of knowing.
Black people who created the civil rights movement were suppressed. They were denied jobs, denied housing. They were beaten, tear-gassed, and lynched, all before Berners like these were even zygotes waiting to disappoint their parents and grandparents.
I’m talking about people like Hugh Stewart, who in 1965 wore out his shoes marching from Selma to Montgomery. Rutha Harris, a freedom singer who still teaches civil rights movement songs today. Charles Mauldin, who ran toward the river on Bloody Sunday to escape the tear gas. And of course, Rep. John Lewis, who led that historic march and whom Bernie supporters love to boo.
These black voters know that Bernie’s unicorns are pipe dreams. They know that Bernie marched for civil rights in college, then white-flighted to Vermont, where he not only abandoned any pretense of fighting for racial equality, he didn’t even bother to vote until he voted for himself at age 40. And when he did manage to get into Congress, he enacted an embarrassing seven bills in 30 years.
More than anything else, black voters know that populist movements in the US will never include them. Instead, Bernie and his supporters view these elder statesmen as an embarrassing impediment to progress. Some “progress.”
