Kamala Harris attacked critics of “identity politics”. Elizabeth Warren insisted that Democrats could be both the “party of the white working class and the party of Black Lives Matter” while calling the American criminal justice system “racist”. And Cory Booker said it was time “to get folk woke”.



At the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans on Friday, leading Democratic presidential hopefuls embraced the concept of intersectionality, viewing any conflict between economic populism and racial and social justice as a false choice.

“I have a problem with that phrase, ‘identity politics,’” said Kamala Harris, the junior Democratic senator from California, during a keynote address at the gathering of more 3,000 liberal activists. “Let’s be clear – when people say that, it’s a pejorative. That phrase is used to divide and used to distract. Its purpose is to minimize and marginalize issues that impact all of us. It’s used to try and shut us up.”

Her remarks rebuked the argument – advanced by many on the left – that economic issues should be emphasized over those of race or gender.

Harris, the daughter of an Indian-American mother and Jamaican-American father, faulted liberals for failing to elevate people of color, especially black women, who she said have “helped build the Democratic party and have been the backbone of the Democratic party”.

The California senator pointed to the 2017 special election in Alabama when 98% of African American women supported Democrat Doug Jones for the US Senate over Roy Moore, the Republican who faced allegations of sexual assault.

“It’s time to respect that leadership. It’s time we addressed the issues that they uniquely face,” she said.

But she struck a note of optimism, remarking on her own rise to the US Senate.

“I know we’re better than this because this city was once home to the nation’s largest slave market,” she said. “And today, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris are speaking to this conference as United States senators.”

Elizabeth Warren, the liberal senator from Massachusetts, railed against the “politics of division” that pit white working class people against black working class people. She argued that progressives can and must put forward a strong economic platform without shying away from issues of race and gender.

“The pundits will say it’s impossible for us to build a coalition that cuts across issues and communities – that Democrats have to choose between being the party of the white working class and the party of Black Lives Matter,” Warren said in her keynote speech, which was met with emphatic applause. “They will say it. Nevertheless: We will persist.”

Warren departed the convention to attend a town hall with congressman Cedric Richmond, whose district covers a large swath of New Orleans. There, Warren amplified her critique of race in America.

“Let’s just start with the hard truth about our criminal justice system: it’s racist,” she said to loud applause in front of a racially mixed crowd at Dillard University, a local historical black college. Warren emphasized that the system was fundamentally flawed “all the way, front to back.” She added “our prison system is something that America should be ashamed of. What we do to other human beings is fundamentally wrong.”

In his speech to the progressive conference that has seen protests by minority activists in the past, Booker called for a “more powerful activism” and challenged Democrats to “reject the normalcy of injustice”.

“I think a lot about the Democratic party nationally and how it seems that that connection to people – where they are, what their experiences are, their struggles, their hurts and their pain – how we seem to have lost our way,” said the New Jersey senator.

“What we need to be doing is reconnecting ourselves to folk where they are. I will tell you this: the Democratic party is good for nothing if it is not standing up for the values and the issues.”