The best speech given by a non-celibate in the past few days was delivered by Senator Professor Warren at the Edward Kennedy Institute for United States Senate. It was not about our rigged economic system, except in a very tangential sense, which we'll get to in a minute. It was about racial injustice, and it was something to see.

I speak today with the full knowledge that I have not personally experienced and can never truly understand the fear, the oppression, and the pain that confronts African Americans every day. But none of us can ignore what is happening in this country. Not when our black friends, family, neighbors literally fear dying in the streets. Listen to the brave, powerful voices of today's new generation of civil rights leaders. Incredible voices. Listen to them say: "If I die in police custody, know that I did not commit suicide." Watch them march through the streets, "hands up don't shoot" - not to incite a riot, but to fight for their lives. To fight for their lives. This is the reality all of us must confront, as uncomfortable and ugly as that reality may be. It comes to us to once again affirm that black lives matter, that black citizens matter, that black families matter.

There's so much going on in that passage that it's hard to unpack it all. First of all, there's the acceptance of how white privilege works in this country in the first sentence. And there is the flat assertion that the activists of BLM are of the tradition of all American civil rights leaders, which many politicians trying to defang BLM go to great lengths to minimize or deny. And, finally, there is the plain truth of the fact that our fellow citizens are too often killed on our dime. Rhetorically, that's the money shot of the speech. But the real iron in it came earlier, when SPW, the champion of the embattled middle class, made it quite plain that the creation of that middle class was very much a Caucasian-only proposition.

I have often spoken about how America built a great middle class. Coming out of the Great Depression, from the 1930s to the late 1970s, as GDP went up, wages went up for most Americans. But there's a dark underbelly to that story. While median family income in America was growing - for both white and African-American families - African-American incomes were only a fraction of white incomes. In the mid-1950s, the median income for African-American families was just a little more than half the income of white families. And the problem went beyond just income. Look at housing: For most middle class families in America, buying a home is the number one way to build wealth. It's a retirement plan-pay off the house and live on Social Security. An investment option-mortgage the house to start a business. It's a way to help the kids get through college, a safety net if someone gets really sick, and, if all goes well and Grandma and Grandpa can hang on to the house until they die, it's a way to give the next generation a boost-extra money to move the family up the ladder. For much of the 20th Century, that's how it worked for generation after generation of white Americans - but not black Americans. Entire legal structures were created to prevent African Americans from building economic security through home ownership. Legally-enforced segregation. Restrictive deeds. Redlining. Land contracts. Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it. State-sanctioned discrimination wasn't limited to homeownership. The government enforced discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination in schools, discrimination in credit-it was a long and spiteful list. Economic justice is not - and has never been - sufficient to ensure racial justice.

When Bernie Sanders got crossways with the BLM people, it was because he couldn't link his social-justice bona fides with the immediacy of that movement. In this speech, SPW does it so well that she has completely confused me about her plans. She meets with Joe Biden, her bete noire during Warren's fight over the atrocious bankruptcy bill that Biden shepherded through the Senate. In this speech, she sets out an authentically radical position on economic justice which requires the country to take stock in how it built a white middle class in a way that further segregated the country by race. I still believe that she has no intention of running, and I still fervently hope I'm right, but this speech is an indication that she is moving toward being a national leader in every sphere of progressive politics. She's found a whole new reservoir of hell to raise.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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