Bernie Sanders has run quite a leftist campaign. This point would not likely elicit protest from the presidential candidate. However, there are certain issues on which Sanders is less liberal than one may expect. The candidate previously supported amnesty for gun shop owners who sold weapons to criminals, and has voted against background checks for gun owners. Yet, in almost every other policy issue, Sanders has remained consistently to the left. Thus, some wonder why Sanders, a vocal supporter of the Black Rights Matter movement and the redistribution of wealth, would oppose reparations. National correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, among others, are now questioning avowed socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sander's unwillingness to support federal reparations for slavery.
When asked if Sanders supported reparations for slavery at an Iowa Forum, the candidate replied, "No, I don't think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African American community, we have a lot of work to do.
So I think what we should be talking about is making massive investments in rebuilding our cities," he continued, "in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African American and Latino."
This seems like a moderate and reasonable response to many who agree with Sander's pragmatism and see the issue of reparations as divisive. But it is worth questioning-- when has Senator Bernie Sanders ever seemed "pragmatic." His plan for "free education for all," the elimination of student loans, and a complete dismantling and restructuring of Obamacare into a single-payer system, are all extremely unlikely, if not impossible, to make their way through Congress, let alone become functional laws. Some argue that along with his other quixotic notions, reparations should become part of the national conversation that has shifted through Sanders's liberalism. The legacy of racism in many of America's most important institutions still disproportionately affects African Americans, and thus, some feel that Sanders's proposals do not fix the problem.
