Politifact: "Sanders: African-Americans lost half their wealth because of Wall Street collapse"

[think]

Sanders: African-Americans lost half their wealth because of Wall Street collapse

By Linda Qiu on Thursday, February 11th, 2016 at 10:54 p.m.

"The African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse."
— Bernie Sanders on Thursday, February 11th, 2016 in comments during the PBS Democratic debate

Sen. Bernie Sanders says by addressing economic inequality, he would also correct racial injustices.

Sanders railed against Wall Street in his response to a question about race relations in the Feb. 11 Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Wis.

"Turns out that the African-American community and Latino community were hit especially hard," Sanders said. "As I understand it, the African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse."

That claim stood out to us. Is it true that black wealth was slashed so dramatically as a result of the financial crisis?

Sanders understood correctly. His campaign referred us to a 2013 report from the National Association of Real Estate Brokers.

"According to the report, African-Americans have lost over half of their wealth since the beginning of the recession through falling homeownership rates and loss of jobs," it reads....

Read more:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/11/bernie-s/sanders-african-american-lost-half-their-wealth-be/

[LexVegas]

1. Then he wrote off their votes in March. Hmmm.... nt

[think]

5. What is your opinion on corrupt Wall Street banks helping cause the economic crisis?

[thesquanderer]

13. He tried hard in South Carolina.

And he learned that the Hillary support/goodwill was so strong that, even though the AA community generally saw him favorably as he campaigned there, it wasn't enough to sway that vote. So he had to allocate campaign resources accordingly thereafter. Sometimes you learn that you can't get what you want, no matter how much time and money you throw at it, so you're better off putting most of your time and money somewhere else. It doesn't mean you don't care, it means you need to focus on the strategy that you think will give you the best chance of success.

ETA: Related to that, there was a good piece somewhere about how, in the end, there was basically no way for Sanders to get most of the AA vote without essentially being able to go back in time. It would be impossible for him to build the support in a year that Hillary had built in twenty, no matter what he did.

[democrattotheend]

20. Bullshit

He did not "write off the black vote." He wrote off a few southern states where blacks happened to be a majority of Democratic voters, but where voters in general tend to be a lot more conservative and less likely to vote for someone as liberal as Bernie.

In other states, he fought hard for the black vote, sadly without much success. In New York, for example, I read that he was the first candidate in decades to visit the South Bronx. In many states, he has campaigned in heavily black, disadvantaged areas that rarely get much attention from politicians.

[HumanityExperiment]

2. policies that lead to this...

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act signed by Clinton (repeal of Glass-Stegall)

and

Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 signed by Clinton

lead to the housing bubble and eventual collapse, Bush and his cronies just accelerated the platform created by bad policies

[think]

3. Hillary's chief economic adviser, Gary Gensler, helped author the CFMA which deregulated derivatives

and Hillary had the gall to try and pin the blame for passage of the CFMA on Bernie:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34497-the-most-disingenuous-attack-on-bernie-yet

[HumanityExperiment]

8. indeed

[Octafish]

4. Bill Clinton and Phil Gramm now make millions at UBS together in Wealth Management

It's like they think we won't notice or care.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1200048

Well, not all of us, anyway.

[HumanityExperiment]

9. good point

[think]

11. And in addition to that UBS Is Accused of Money Laundering in Belgian Tax Case

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-26/ubs-is-charged-with-money-laundering-in-belgian-tax-case

And before that in France:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/french-magistrates-open-formal-probe-into-ubs-for-money-laundering-1406144781

[tonyt53]

6. So did the same number of whites that.

[think]

7. Then Wall Street corruption is an important issue for ALL Americans right?

[gollygee]

10. That's how racism works

1. Everything bad that happens affects people of color more.

2. Everything good that happens affects people of color less.

The question isn't whether a problem affected them more, the question is whether we can create a system where the cure adequately reaches them. It is reasonable for people of color to be skeptical of a cure that doesn't specifically address racism.

Also, a large part of racism isn't related to economics at all. Proof: wealthy people of color are affected by racism too.

If Bernie had included more people of color in the leadership of his campaign, and then listened to them as he ran his campaign, he could have won. His economic ideas are IMO wonderful, but he didn't address point #2 enough when he talked about his economic plans.

[forjusticethunders]

12. Yeah that's another thing too

I would have also specifically addressed how the New Deal and other major progressive reforms did not benefit black people the way it did white people.

Again, Bernie did address these disparate impacts at times but not enough and not forcefully or comprehensively enough and didn't do enough boots on the ground organizing and outreach. This is just from an economic perspective.

[think]

15. What did Hillary do that was significantly different in her approach?

[JCanete]

17. He's addressed these disparate impacts over and over in the course of his career. Its weird that

people who know his stance on these issues actively did their part to paint Bernie as a candidate for white males, and now want to say that he didn't do enough to get his message across. The media and the DNC did an incredibly effective hit-job on his campaign, right when he was gaining visibility in these states, so take some credit, or if you weren't actively promoting those threads yourself, give some of your Hillary supporting peers the credit they deserve for Bernie's message not penetrating in the deep south.

[AzDar]

14. Where ARE those transcripts?

[oasis]

16. The 2nd edition of the Clinton Economy will bring back prosperity for all.

[Doctor_J]

18. a shame that hillary was able to establish the lie that bernies a racist

especially after she ran a blatantly racist primary campaign in 2008. nice to have media on your side.

[Uncle Joe]

19. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, think.

[TCJ70]

21. Hillary very effectively used race as a weapon against Sanders...

...it's sad that someone so on top of these issues, Sanders, was painted so horribly by her campaign and it's surrogates.