July 31, 2019 CNN's first of two presidential debates went off without a hitch (or much drama) last night. In many ways it was business as usual: a convening of all white candidates with no women of color as moderators.
A recent TIMES UP report notes that 86% of the presidential debates since 1996 have had no women of color asking questions. Since black women are a vital and deeply engaged part of the Democratic party, and the democratic system, the absence seems particularly notable.
Race was part of the conversation, however.
Big applause went to author Marianne Williamson for calling the country's legacy of race and enslavement, "an injustice that continues to form a toxicity underneath the surface, an emotional turbulence that only reparations will heal."
And, she sort of had a plan for that.
"If you did the math of the 40 acres and a mule, given that there were four to five million slaves at the end of the Civil War, it would be trillions of dollars," she said, referring to the radical post-war plan to provide physical reparations to the formerly enslaved, with a little property appreciation magic thrown in. "I believe that anything less than $100 billion is an insult," she said.
It was a clear differentiator, I'll give her that.
Race-fluency is going to be an essential skill in this presidential campaign. The incumbent candidate is centering white grievance in increasingly dangerous ways, and the political media, along with establishment politicians, seem wholly unprepared to lead or course-correct the conversation.
It's like a long, national test about race that everybody now has to cram for: Understanding how to engage without becoming complicit; how to surface issues and solutions without pandering; how to listen and learn in real time; and how to confront hatred, bigotry, and xenophobia without triggering an explosive reaction.
We're all going to need a bigger boat.
While Williamson deserves credit for using her platform to represent, she's not quite the mathematician she thinks she is. And she's accused of being dangerously "anti-science" in the past, including referring to vaccine mandates as "draconian." She's since apologized, saying she misspoke.
I will also give her credit for calling out the infrastructure problems in Flint, Michigan; she was right when she said that they would never have happened in her former stomping grounds of Grosse Pointe. (See below.)
But on the issue of reparations, she's got company. Other candidates, including Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren, along with former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, have also signaled support for the idea—in Warren's case, they must include Native Americans. Along with Senator Sanders, they all agree that a serious process to study them is required.
It's a complex issue, and simple slogans or formulas won't work.
But complexity doesn't play well in tweets, 30-second debate bites, or for long-shot candidates. While it's important that issues of racial equity are coming up in the primaries, it's everyone's job to keep the conversation going both in the general election, and in our lives in general.
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