Why Black People Don't "Feel the Bern"
Bernie Sanders and his misguided quest for "equality" in America.
Socialism was once very favorable. Through the 1970s and 1980s, most mainstream politicians would flee from the very notion that they could be associated with socialism (viewed as the gateway drug to communism), while many black activists like Martin Luther King Jr would proudly call themselves “democratic socialists” and called for immediate radical changes in America.
Socialism, quite different from communism, refers to nations that have a large welfare state in the midst of a mostly capitalist society (think Scandinavia or Iceland). Today, a recent poll from Pew Research Center shows that almost 65% of black people still have a positive impressions of the term “socialism”, compared to 35% of whites.
If you go back to the black power movement and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, it’s not dissimilar to what was is being said today by Bernie Senders, the independent senator from Vermont who ran for President as a socialist Democrat in 2016 and 2020. But this doesn’t seem to translate into the voting booth.
No one expected Bernie to generate the same level of racial pride that catapulted Barack Obama into the White House in 2008 and again in 2012, but Bernie’s lackluster performance in both elections is worth investigating in the context of why black people just don’t really like Bernie Sanders.
In 2016, Bernie built a passionate bloc of grassroots supporters who crowded his rallies and helped him raise nearly $228 million, before losing to Hillary Clinton.
In 2020, Bernie played a similar playbook, raising nearly $211 million, before being trounced by former Vice President Joe Biden. By Super Tuesday, it was clear that Bernie would have to suspend his campaign to avoid further landslide losses.
Bernie’s political agenda—dismantling broken systems of oppression and replacing them with ones that benefit the working class—seems to resonate with a lot of young voters, but why not black people? Let’s explore some of the reasons.
Is Bernie Too White?
The “equal regardless of race” clause in a lot of his campaign messages and slogans are where I think Bernie loses a lot of support in black voters. Bernie has admitted himself on a Cleveland radio that his 2016 campaign was “too white” and “too male”. Older black voters, who are more likely to vote, knew of Hillary Clinton, and Bernie was a little too distracted to put the needs of Black people at the forefront.
"We must follow the example of our brothers and sisters in Iceland and demand equal pay for equal work now, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality. We must write the Paycheck Fairness Act into law.” —Bernie Sanders
There are persistent wage gaps for workers based on gender, race, sexual orientation, and immigrant status that seem to be at the center of Bernie’s message. Let’s review some of the facts of these discrepancies that he points to on his website.
Race Gap: People of color have a harder time finding jobs and get paid less than their white counterparts. Black women, for example, are typically paid just 62 cents for every dollar paid to white counterparts.
Gender Gap: Women make 82 cents for every dollar men make. Women are less likely than men to hold senior high-paying jobs. Of the Fortune 500 companies, only 21 of the CEOs are females.
Immigrant Gap: Immigrant workers account for a large part of all workers in the U.S., but they earn much less than U.S. born workers for the same jobs. Even in liberal states like California, an immigrant will earn $15,000 less than white counterparts.
Sexual Orientation Gap: A study by Georgia State University stated that queer men earn 8–10% less in government compared to heteronormative men, even when taking into account education, race, years of experience, and industry. Some reports have shown as high as 27%.
Medical Gap: The lack of health insurance is apparent along racial lines. In Texas, for example, 13% of white people are uninsured but nearly 18% of black people and 29% percent of Hispanics do not have health insurance.
Bernie’s glaring message to “call it even” now ignores these enormous disparities that are already baked into the fabric of our society. We have a long way to go. But the most important factor in the 2016 and 2020 election for most black people isn’t about the pay gap or the medical coverage gap. It’s about defeating Donald Trump.
Trump isn’t exactly the moderate that John F. Kennedy was while MLK and black panthers were preaching for radical change in America. MAGA is radical.
Bernie’s message has been obscured by a constant focus by pragmatic black voters in the Democratic party who just want to win a damn election. The thought of four more years of Trump’s policies could send race relations in America right back into the 1960s or worse (which is written right on the hats). A call for socialism during this election is just impractical and a recipe to lose. While this resonates with a lot of white idealists, it doesn’t resonate with black voters.
Equity in Tech World
In the tech and VC worlds, it’s generally accepted that giving the same ownership to everyone in a company would be pretty foolish. Companies rarely have two CEOs, and except for this guy up in Seattle, most executives earn more than their employees. This reflects unequal outputs, regardless if they work the same schedule.
Two founders in a company should never receive the same equity because the probability that both founders will contribute equal value to the company over the lifetime of the company is nearly 0%. Instead, they distribute equity as the most efficient capital allocation strategy based on contributions.
To a company’s bottom line, what really matters is what value you deliver, not what energy you used to come up with the solution. This is why companies give unequal equity to every employee in a company. They also give unequal support to their employees based on their personal lives, like covering health insurance or giving maternity and paternity leave. Not everyone takes the same number of sick days, and this doesn’t impact their pay. It’s not equal, it’s equitable.
Patty McCord, in charge of hiring and firing at Netflix as their Chief Talent Officer for 14 years, went on NPR in 2017 to give one of my favorite interviews. McCord helped create the unique and high performing culture at Netflix, and attributes a lot of it to her freedom to experiment with their work culture.
She abolished performance reviews and set more custom guidelines for what Netflix expected out of each employee. Her Netflix Culture Deck was shared millions of times on social media for its refreshing take on how to motivate people. They start by talking about how the best locksmith can unlock your car door in 30 seconds, and the worst locksmith may take 30 minutes or more to do the exact same task. Should they both get paid the same and receive the same number of shares? Probably not.
She explains how Netflix is more akin to a professional sports team than a family, and it’s all about outputs, not inputs. Netflix doesn’t care where you work, when you work, or how you work, they care about the result and the end quality of your work.
The same goes for social benefits.
Equality suggests providing every person with the same resources. Equity means working to overcome the historical legacy of discrimination, marginalization, harassment, prison inequality, underinvestment, vote suppression, slavery, lynchings, prison inequality, police brutality, biases in traffic stops, biases in hiring and firing decisions, cronyism, corruption, and many other forms of oppression towards black people we have faced for over 400 years.
Equal means treat everyone the same, while equity provides support tailored to the specific needs of the person based on advantages or disadvantages they have in doing the task—physical, mental, social or economical. This is the only viable path to social justice. We have to acknowledge that it hasn’t been the same for a long time. It’s not enough to just call it even now. It has to be very un-even now.
Visual Metaphors
Let’s consider four individuals who want to ride a bike. It wouldn’t make sense to give everyone the same bike. We have to adapt each bike to their social, physical and mental development levels. Some bikes are meant for women in dresses, while other bikes have training wheels and are meant to help kids learn to ride for the first time. Some bikes are meant for people with physical disabilities, and others are meant for high endurance triathletes. The right bike for every person is equity.
Many people have seen the famous photo (below) of three individuals standing on crates in order for them to see the game. Having three boxes that are equal would not guarantee the best possible outcome for everyone. Joe Rogan interviews Tim Pool on his podcast and they discuss the importance of this image.
We can make the same observations in education. Teachers and professors are often asked to grade all their children based on the same rubric. How can we possibly give all the students in the class the same exam, when they all come from such different backgrounds, education levels, and skillsets? This makes no more sense than judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree (below).
In the classroom, it’s generally accepted that the teacher or professor works individuals with the students who need the most help. This isn’t equal assistance for every student, this is equitable assistance for every student to try and guarantee the best possible outcome for all students. It’s all about equity, not equality. If we fight for equality in the classrooms, the pay gaps will continue to worsen.
Last example, two kids are picking apples under tree. The apple tree, due to a century of growing towards the sun in one direction, leans to one side in the yard of one child, and all the fruit grows on thats side of the tree. Would it be fair to just give both kids the same size ladder (“equality”) and tell them whoever picks the most apples gets to go to the college of their choice? This is how our current system works, and there are black kids with shorter ladders (or no ladders at all) that still outperform their white peers by gathering more apples.
Suggesting this is a fair system is funny looking at the image, but in real life it doesn’t appear as funny to me. Everyone is given virtually the same inputs in schools, colleges and workplace settings, and we’re all measured by the same outputs with no regard for what tools we have at our disposal. This is not equity.
What’s Next for Bernie?
It’s unlikely we see a third run for Bernie. It may have been white privilege, it may have been lack of empathy, or it may have been cultural ignorance of what life is like for the average black American. We are demoralized by police killings, left even further behind by economic inequality, held back for generations by structural racism, and it doesn’t feel like Bernie alone will save us with chants of “equality”.
No Democrat has won the party’s presidential nomination in the last 30 years without support from a majority of black voters. Bernie’s most important and effective surrogate, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), will turn 35 years old by 2024 and he will likely be priming her to make a run.
Sanders pushed America to the left on policy and ideology — but now the party and voters have pushed him back to the Senate. Many black activists, in particular from Black Lives Matter, criticized Bernie for his lack of attention to criminal justice and racial issues, and his message was not unifying enough to resonate with right-wing voters that are necessary to win elections.
Overall, former Vice President Joe Biden won more than 71% of black voters in the Super Tuesday primary back in March 2020, compared to Bernie winning less than 5% of black voters. Biden rumored he would pick a black running-mate, which he did eventually in Kamala Harris, and it seemed unlikely Bernie would follow.
Biden has some built-in advantages having been the vice president for eight years to the first black president, and his moderate politics are generally seen as making him more “electable”. For most black voters, they just want Trump out, then we can talk about a revolution of the middle class.
With love,
Kyle