Let me start by describing to you just how white I am: I live in a rural village in the Netherlands, have a group of friends that is devoid of any type of racial diversity. I listen to electronic dance music, go out in bars filled with farmers and other kinds of rural folk, and am hard pressed to describe local women as anything other than pale-skinned, blue-eyed, blonde-haired whoo-girls.

Adding all this up, you’d think that I’d be the last person on Earth to understand anything about the Black Lives Matter movement, but I think the opposite is true. My European life has isolated me from the reality of American racial politics, so I can see things without any kind of political bias. I do not need to walk on eggshells in an environment supercharged with sensitivity, because I’m standing on the outside looking in.

People want it said that black lives matter because for a long, long time, they’ve been feeling as though that’s not the case at all. Black people get shot, arrested, and incarcerated for fuck all, and increasingly it seems like the ruling white class is getting away with it. Black people in America are the abused kid in a family of five who, when asking for confirmation as to whether their parents still love them, are met only with the answer that all children are loved equally much.

That’s little consolation, so any politician coming in saying that they both want to change the system, as well as that all lives matter, is essentially the uncle speaking on the parents behalf. The uncle you thought was the last hope of finding someone in your family who knew reason. Hello, we’re getting beat up here! Can’t you see the bruises? Apparently not.

Now, I’ve been not made been to confront this issue until things came to a head last weekend, when things didn’t go so well at the Netroots Nation event for OMalley and Sanders. You might understand that especially Bernie Sanders is a big inspiration for me, because he espouses a brand of politics that’s very European in nature and thus hits close to home. He correctly identifies a lot of issues confronting America, and is offering some tried-and-true solutions to them that for some reason a lot of Americans still have problems accepting.

Then it turned out he didn’t get the idea behind Black Lives Matter so very well.

It’s hard to speak clearly when everyone’s shouting over each other.

Look, I get it. Just going off this picture he doesn’t give off the impression that he’s a person very much in the loop on what’s going on in the black community. African Americans have a history of being screwed over by men looking just like him, so the assurance that he’s different means very little indeed. His supporters shouting that he marched with MLK at every opportunity they get quickly makes that fact lose all meaning, transforming it into the blanket statement that Bernie had a black friend and thus you should give him your vote.

Of course that’s not how it works. People deserve more on the issues that matter to them. Everyone deserves a proper representative, someone who understands the problems you face in your life and the way you would like to see them dealt with. I sincerely hope that none of the more problematic Bernie supporters over the last few days actually believed that the MLK march and segregation protest were a sufficient record on civil rights. There’s going to have to be more.

But here’s the thing: the stakes for America have never been higher. And that’s what makes this election a crossroads for everyone wanting the things that matter most to them to come first, because it’s all-or-nothing on so many problems at once. If a white christian Republican is going to end up president, black people are all but guaranteed that current police mistreatment is going to continue. Likewise, white liberals are all but guaranteed that big money interests are going to continue to meddle with the integrity of American democracy. Both groups of people are now locked in a shouting match, both realising that they need each other for their goals to be accomplished, but neither of them succeeding in understanding the needs of the other side.

Yes, it’s a two-way street. White liberals need to understand why the BLM movement exists, and what it’s setting out to accomplish. But just the same way, the BLM movement is going to have to raise the ongoing disintegration of American democracy on their list of priorities. The issues are intertwined.

The argument of the BLM movement.

It seems to me that Black Lives Matter essentially boils down to this: we are abused and mistreated, and we need a showing of support and love. We need America to tell us that we’re wanted and needed, or we’re done. Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, to even start listing names is to set yourself up for an exercise of hours. There needs to be police reform, there needs to be a serious offensive against institutional racism, and there needs to be a nationwide recognition of the fact that black people did not deserve any of what’s been going on.

To do this away as simply a social issue that can be solved with an economic plan of attack is shortsighted. Having a job doesn’t stop a cop from pulling the trigger. Lowering black male incarceration rates isn’t going to prevent kids from being killed by easily-startled officers. These issues are separate, and require an individual approach.

There can be no mistake about the need that black people feel to have these problems addressed. I can only imagine how horrible it must be to walk the street and fear for your life. That is not a reality here where I live, and it’s not a reality for a majority of white Americans. But if you’re a black guy living in an urban neighbourhood, and you feel shivers running down your spine every time you get passed by a police patrol, I can’t imagine that being a very comfortable feeling.

So let’s talk about that, and let’s address it.

But let’s also talk about the death of democracy

Despite America being a nation of political controversies, it’s probably not controversial to say that the end of America’s democracy would overall be a very bad thing. And yet this is precisely what’s at stake. Sure, campaigns may focus on the need to create jobs and raise wages, but we’re all in on this because we know that these issues are under attack from the same people looking to undermine America’s political institutions.

Maybe you don’t feel like America being bought by the elite is a very big problem, especially if you’ve never felt particularly represented anyway. Let’s be honest: if you’re a black guy experiencing a great deal of institutional racism in your life, and your vote for Obama turned out to be a vote for not much at all, then things could hardly get any worse. Maybe you even feel like the Koch Brothers buying the whole lot wouldn’t matter a damn to you so long as they promised to get the police off your back.

Right, except they won’t. Things are gonna stay just as bad for you, and they’re going to get equally bad for everyone else. If current trends continue then Congress is going to be the mouthpiece of corporate America and no one else is going to get a say in anything. All the money you’re not getting, they are, and they’re going to use it to make your life miserable.

What Bernie Sanders’s white liberal grassroots supporters feel is a genuine concern for the future of the American nation. Yes, this is a concern directed at seemingly soulless things like political bodies, laws, and court rulings. The issues that matter to whites are also jobs, healthcare, and college debt, but what really defines the conversation in Sanders’s camp is the overall danger posed by big money and the political influence they exert. It’s not a topic that speaks to what people feel on the streets. It’s a far away concern, something that seems unlikely to ever materialise.

So what I ask of BLM supporters is to try to see it from the point of view of white liberals: they know they need the African American vote if Bernie is to win, and they know that for some absolutely nonsensical reason, that demographic seems to majorly favour Hillary. Is Hillary going to end big money’s influence? Of course not! She’s funded by big money. Is she going to do something about issues in the black community? No! She even said that all lives matter, completely missing the point.

Why oh why are black people still backing her, and not Bernie?

That’s the question white liberals are scratching their head over.

In their desperation, they resort to the marched with MLK/arrested for protesting segregation line. It is, at this point, their only resort. They do this because they’re desperate for your support, and what they think is that Bernie marching with MLK means that you will take for granted his desire to do something abour your issues. Of course, that’s not how it works. Nobody who cares about anything would vote for someone just on the assurance that they’d get to what your concerns are at some point.

So the BLM movement fights back, and shouts that white liberals don’t get it at all. They feel more and more isolated. Bernie’s supporters fight back because they feel that the BLM movement is trying to push an issue to the forefront that’s less important than the imminent demise of American democracy. Nobody stops to think that, again, it’s all or nothing. The fact that Bernie hasn’t said anything about these issues yet doesn’t mean he won’t, but the only way either of them are going to get addressed is if whites and blacks stop letting social issues divide them. Slice and dice and roll up the pieces one at a time. That’s the Republican strategy. Don’t let it succeed.

We all want each other’s support on the issues that matter to us the most. As a European, that seems to be the lesson to take away from the affair of last weekend. Black voters don’t have to back Bernie tomorrow, so long as they back him at their state’s primary. White voters shouldn’t be so stressed out over Bernie’s civil rights record, and should trust the man himself to come up with something real and genuine in time. We all know he’s legit. We all know he’d never say something for the sake of pandering, and the harder we shout and scream the more difficult we make it for him to do something that’s perceived as sincere.

Meanwhile, both sides should acknowledge that the BLM movement represents a concern that’s no less legitimate than the fear people have for the end of American democracy.

With time and reason, we will find allies in each other. Nobody’s going to be won over on tokenism, and nobody’s going to settle for anything less than full support for the things that matter to them.

Both camps will find allies in each other, if just they take a breath and count to ten. Slow and steady wins the race.