Russell Simmons endorses Clinton, slams Sanders

[Ken Burch]

116. That isn't true. Bernie does NOT say that economic justice BEGETS social justice

What he does say is that it's not really possible to get social justice WITHOUT also getting economic justice. That you need both, and that there is an intersection and a relationship.

The Nineties and the Obama era prove that you can't effectively fight racism without also fighting corporate control of life.

These days, grassroots racism among working-class whites is largely driven by the belief that life is "zero-sum"-that is, that any gains for POC are going to mean losses for working-class whites.

This means that, if we WANT to end grassroots racism(as we all do), we need to restructure the economy so that everybody knows that things like open housing and affirmative action aren't going to mean that the working-class whites of today know they won't lose anything through the triumph of social justice. It's wrong for anyone to be racist, but you can't beat grassroots racism just by saying "racism is wrong". That simply doesn't work. Working-class whites don't hold racist views out of simple meanness-they hold them largely out of fear, misguided fear, that a non-racist society means they will end up in poverty. And this fear is deliberately instilled by corporate power because it knows that, if working-class whites can move past racism, corporate dominance of life will not survive.

This is simply the natural insight anyone who was involved in civil rights work in the Sixties and who saw what actually drove the white backlash(a backlash that was not unavoidable, but was deliberately created by the corporate leadership of the day) would have.

All he is really saying here is that we need economic justice(in addition to the fact that we should have it because we'd be a better society with it)in order to make sure that racial backlash dies out.

That does not equal believing that "a rising tide lifts all boats" at all. Nor does it equal the belief that racism no longer matters.