Sanders supporters see it as obvious that their candidate's platform would be better for people of color than any other candidate's, and they don't understand what else supporters would want. But many progressives in the Democratic Party are inheritors of a labor-liberal progressive tradition that is primarily worried about economic inequality, and are most excited by economic populists like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Over the past 20 years, both within the Democratic Party and outside of politics, the vision of progressivism that's attracted the most energy and organizing strength has been a progressivism of identity: recognizing the different ways that various groups are marginalized, and working to reduce those disparities both in policy and in everyday interactions.
But white economic progressives and left-leaning activists of color have been struggling over what it means to be a progressive for decades.
Right now, the two sides are Black Lives Matter activists and Bernie Sanders supporters. This is really just the latest mutation of an ongoing conflict. Yet many of his supporters are tremendously pissed off at the activists for targeting Sanders,who they see as a natural ally of the movement, rather than going after Hillary Clinton or Republicans.
Sanders's campaign has clashed with activists over their tactics, but it's been receptive to their demands: Sanders is working to show that he's the candidate of all progressives, not just some of them. They've challenged Sanders to make racism and mass incarceration as important to his campaign as Social Security. To Black Lives Matter activists and sympathizers, who've spent the last year or more calling attention to the deaths of young black men and women (many at the hands of police), Sanders's attitude toward race was all too familiar: Generations of white progressives have kept economic issues at the center of progressivism and issues that affect mostly nonwhites at the margins. Related Bernie Sanders has put out a racial-justice platform.
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