As I originally wrote this chapter, in the summer of 2019, my Facebook feed had blown up over a Washington Post op-ed by then presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in which he argued, “the straightest path to racial equality is through the one percent.”[1] Many of my friends are partial to Sanders, so the shares were mostly approving, with some fierce opposition from many of my female friends, still raw from Clinton’s 2016 loss and who were happy to see Kamala Harris emerging as a frontrunner. I know who my friends are on Facebook tells you a lot about me, and I want to start this chapter with this level of honesty. I am a white woman of Generation X, who was raised working class, carries a lot of student debt, and still struggles with the privileges of being a tenured professor. I cannot unsee class. It is everywhere before me, which is probably why I, and others like me, found Sanders so appealing.

One of the responses on my feed came from an anarchist friend who linked to, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African American Studies at Princeton and frequent contributor to the Leftist journal Jacobin. Dr. Taylor appeared tickled that Sanders quoted her in his op-ed, “There is no race without class in this country.” This proposition may seem relatively uncontroversial, but it is not. For decades conversations about class were used to silence conversations about race. It is similar to how the response of “blue lives matter” was an attempt (by many, if not all of its users) to shut down “Black lives matter” protests. For those aware of this history, Sanders’ commitment to talking about class to talk about race may appear to be just another attempt at diverting attention away from serious social issues, like reparations, that other candidates (e.g., Kamala Harris) foreground in their campaign speeches. I would argue, however, that both Dr. Taylor and Senator Sanders have it right, although it is very important to also keep this history of diversion in mind.



[1]              Sanders, B. (2019). “The straightest path to racial equality is through the one percent.” Washington Post July 10, 2019.