Steven W Thrasher Black thinkers like Bernie Sanders. They've studied the Clintons' true cost

[UglyGreed]

Spike Lee is the latest black public intellectual to endorse Bernie Sanders and to question the sanity of black voters and politicians pledging their allegiance to the Clintons, who have done as much harm to black America as any living political couple. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am mystified by robust black support for Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing helped me wake up about race in America when I’d first watched it as a teenager. That’s why I was delighted to read that Spike Lee encouraged South Carolina democrats to “Wake up” in a radio ad on Tuesday and to vote for “Brother Bernie”.

Bill Clinton governed through playing to white fears by harming, locking up or even executing black Americans. He left the campaign trail in 1992 to allow the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a black man so mentally incapacitated, he reportedly did not eat the dessert from his final meal because he was “saving it for later”. When he left office, after having ended welfare for poor children and destroyed countless black families through a crime bill even he now admits made mass incarceration worse, Hillary Clinton would go out and whip up support for this slow-motion destruction of black America, even when it meant referring to children as “superpredators”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/24/black-thinkers-bernie-sanders-studied-clintons-true-cost

[VulgarPoet]

1. And we're supposed to believe she's out to help us. n/t

[UglyGreed]

2. I don't even know if

Bernie could help any of us out but I like to try something different and take a chance. The same old thing is getting old.....

[VulgarPoet]

3. What's that song from the eighties? Something about a "last dance"? n/t

[UglyGreed]

4. Donna Summer???

I believe that was the late 70s....

[VulgarPoet]

5. Stuff I was raised on, just couldn't remember the time period x)

[UglyGreed]

7. It's OK I remember

listening to that song when I was 13 LOL

[UglyGreed]

6. RIP

[Laughing Mirror]

8. She was the reason I went to see that movie

When it came out. To see and hear her perform that song. There was no youtube then, so it was the only way. Today I have no memory of the movie at all, just Donna Summer at the end doing Last Dance.

[UglyGreed]

9. She had some voice

but it's sad she ruined her legacy with her hateful comments......

[Laughing Mirror]

12. She had been turning into somewhat of a fundy

at her church in Boston, according to a friend of mine from then who was from that same church, a few years before those hateful comments. She did try to walk them back later, however, when the gay clubs stop playing her records, and she was getting no more gigs.

There was also a lawsuit against the magazine that published those remarks, claiming she was misquoted, if I recall. But I don't remember the outcome.

[UglyGreed]

15. But when those sort of things

come out it is hard to change people's opinions even if they were taken out of context. BTW funny how many churches and religions are used to promote hate SMH

[Laughing Mirror]

16. Yes it is hard to change people's opinions

But people who liked her, or wanted to like her, forgave her eventually, and what she said was what a lot of people who call themselves religious "believed" anyway.

Beliefs won't change when people want to hold onto those beliefs. They believe what they believe constitutes their religious identity. Take those beliefs away from them, they're afraid of having no identity. And so they perpetuate that glorious cycle of ignorance and fear. Donna Summer seems to have got caught up in it and it doomed her for years.

[brooklynite]

10. So, African Americans who support Hillary Clinton aren't "thinkers"

That'll go over well in SC.

[UglyGreed]

11. It is one man's opinion

and it included many good reasons why Hillary may be a fraud so I posted his article.....

[Arazi]

14. Steven Thrasher is black

[mythology]

23. That isn't a shield against saying other people are stupid for thinking differently

Regardless of if he was saying people of his own race don't think, it's generally a poor debate technique, and isn't effective at getting people to agree with you.

[Jefferson23]

13. Recommend...thank you. n/t

[forjusticethunders]

17. People don't understand

How much the AA community is complicit in our current mass incarceration regime, and Michelle Alexander lays a lot of it out in her book. Pretty much African-Americans felt the best way to survive the right-wing onslaught was to be "respectable" and support, at least tacitly, the "law and order" dogwhistle that the Right was using to destroy us. Understandable, but wrong. This went nicely with the fact that the new policies designed to criminalize Black people were formally colorblind (and indeed criminalized a lot of white people as well). Fighting back against this would mean African-Americans supporting "criminals", which may have incurred an even greater backlash. Stuff like Welfare reform was cast along similar lines, essentially Black people wanting to be respectable and agreeable to the White establishment and separating themselves from "those" blacks.

I'm actually a bit annoyed that a lot of white progressives think that our political and social tactics and strategies are above reproach and never should be questioned, even if they can be understood and rationalized. Yes you can argue that there was no way to stop the civil rights backlash, only mitigate it (which is an argument that the Clinton supporters make, that they implemented bad policy but only to stop the Republicans from implementing *worse* policy) and it's an understandable one, but it doesn't change that the bad policy devastated the black community on multiple levels. At the same time, this didn't start in 1990, 1980 or even 1970. Black people have always had a little bit of innate conservatism regarding big changes in the racial caste system; even in 1950 there were Black people who opposed attempts to defeat Jim Crow because of the very real fear of backlash.

[Arazi]

18. Welcome to DU forjusticethunders!

[forjusticethunders]

19. Thanks

I really wish the field was long enough to let me put "condemnation" at the end of my username though.

[AZ Progressive]

20. The Clintons and Wall Street played a big role in the Great Recession, which hurt blacks more

than whites in net worth



It does matter that Hillary is basically wedded to Wall Street, if you were harmed by the great recession a lot.

[polly7]

21. This is a GREAT article and video. K&R. nt.

[Uncle Joe]

22. That was an excellent analysis, I almost posted it before I saw your OP.

Thanks for the thread, UglyGreed.

[one_voice]

24. Do The Right Thing was my first..

Spike Lee movie. I've seen them all. Summer of Sam, Malcom X, He Got Game, 25th hour as well as Do The Right Thing, I watch over and over. I like Spike Lee, he makes me think.

I don't base my vote on any endorsement. I might consider someone a little more if someone of some significance (to me) endorsed; and actually talked in some depth about why.

I disagree with the author of this article's choice of words- 'black thinkers' -like Bernie Sanders. It seems to say that if you're black and you support someone other than Sanders you're not a thinker.

If you put the some of the greatest minds in a room they're not all going to agree. That doesn't make them not great minds. It makes them individuals.

His opinion is his and that's fine. But I don't think that statement is fair.

I think it's the same as saying if you don't support Hillary you're not a real feminist. At least that's how I see it.


**note: I've not been rude or disrespectful in my reply. (not directed at the OP, they've always been polite to me)

[UglyGreed]

25. Do The Right Thing

was on last night and when Radio Raheem got killed all I could think of was Eric Garner and how some things never change. BTW I also didn't like his choice of words in that respect but I did not want to change his title and even hesitated posting the article due to that.