This Isn't Actually a Clarification

[Content Note: Racism.]

Earlier, I mentioned that, during the Democratic debate last night, Senator Bernie Sanders said: "When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto."

Asked today to clarify his comment, he responded: "What I meant to say is when you talk about ghettos traditionally, what you talk about is African-American communities."

Well, yeah. We knew that's what he meant. That's the problem.

That, and the fact that he was asked about his own "racial blind spots," and, instead of meaningfully reflecting on his own limitations, he said that "white people" don't know what it's like to live in a ghetto. Or "to be poor" or "to be hassled when you walk down the street."

Which, at best, means that he was taking his own experiences as a middle-class straight white cis man and universalizing that experience as all white people's experiences; that he assumed he was talking about himself while talking about "white people."

That's a problem, too.

[H/T to @eclecticbrotha.]