Until the Democratic Socialists of America come up with a racial justice program that’s focused on the black economy, not prisons, and the way black descendants of slaves have been locked out of America’s wealth, any candidate they put up is going to be taken out by a sixty year-old black woman with a big hat and crappy politics, who was picked by the Democratic establishment to do just that.

With a racial justice platform, a non-black Left candidate can say, “Look, I’m not black, but I’m here to build a black middle class, and I’m going to build that middle class by taking money from white people who have been hoarding it and investing it in their cousins, and we are going to invest in our black communities, instead. It’s what you are owed, and it’s past due. We are going to make sure black businesses get contracts. We are going to make sure black workers get paid a living wage. We are going to get homeownership rates up, and we are going to make sure that your kids end up a lot better than you are. I’m going to make a lot of white people mad, but I care more about building a black middle class and getting money into black people’s pockets than I do about maintaining white egos. Black people, you have a special claim, and I’m going to make it my job to make sure you get your due. We are going to do it as a matter of justice, not charity, because that’s what you are owed. It’s only a shame it’s taken (insert municipality) this long to admit it.”

Black people aren’t going to voluntarily join a white Left organization, in numbers, unless the leadership doesn’t hesitate to talk about generational black poverty, and how it’s tied to generational white wealth.

According to Edward Wolff at NYU, the median black family’s net worth is $1,700 and the median white family’s net worth is $117,000. Yet the white Left thinks there isn’t a difference between white poverty and black poverty.

Democratic Socialists have to be able to say, “America owes black people a special claim. They have to be first in line for any of the programs we pass. Whatever we do, we need to make sure they get paid. When we negotiate, they can’t be the ones who take a hit.” Without that ethic, spoken loudly and often, black people will just assume, with cause, that when it comes to negotiating, the needs of the black poor will get left out.

White progressives have a long history and deep present of being unreliable allies, and no black person is going to assume they share a fate with Samantha Bee.

However, what’s ironic is that Michael Harrington, the founder of Democratic Socialists of America, knew all of this when he wrote “The Other America”:

“Negro poverty is unique in every way. It grows out of a long American history, and it expresses itself in a subculture that is built up on an interlocking base of economic and racial injustice. It is a fact imposed from without, from white America….Perhaps the most shocking statistic in all this is the one that describes what happens when a Negro does acquire skill and training. North, East, South, and West the pattern is the same: the more education a Negro has, the more economic discrimination he faces.”

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DSA is touting #alllivesmatter in terms of economic justice, and black people know that black poverty is a unique, state driven phenomenon.

The answer is clear, DSA has to admit the special claim black people have on American juridical redress. The thing is, for all of their bluster, I suspect they aren’t much different about this issue as the Clinton supporters were about her electability relative to Sanders’. All the evidence points one way, but they really want to believe it’s not true.

DSA really thinks they can get a sufficient number of black people without having a black economic agenda, that is, an economic agenda that names and targets resources to black people, gets black homeownership up, and builds a black middle class. They think their #alllivesmatter approach is going to work to rev up the votes they need to win.

It won’t.

Hopefully they’ll wake up before it’s too late.