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I agree with this Jacobin article by Dr Cornel West on how Donald Trump gaining a larger share of black and latino voters and related questions in particular I agree with his replies below to said three questions:

DANIEL DENVIR

What do you make of Trump winning a larger share of black and Latino votes? Trump and the Republican coalition are obviously extraordinarily racist, but does this election force us to rethink how racism functions as a dynamic, evolving force in American politics?

CORNEL WEST

Yeah, that’s a wonderful question, Brother, wonderful question. Keep in mind that when I was in Charlottesville, getting spat at and cussed out by neofascist gangsters, I saw a black brother marching with them. David Duke is Catholic, and yet the Klan began as anti-black, anti-Jewish, and anti-Catholic. In this kind of upward mobility American style within the American right, they often get more adherents who were themselves a target. Black folk, Jews, Catholics, they’re human beings, they decide to be neofascist, they decide to be right-wing. Because human beings make choices far beyond skin pigmentation.

Like Clarence Thomas. I mean, he was a beautiful black man, aesthetically. He chooses to side with the powerful, he chooses to side with the wealthy. He chooses to justify and rationalize policies that crush the weak and the vulnerable. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s always been a slice of conservatives and reactionaries in the black community, in the brown community, women, and so forth and so on. You know?

Part of the sickness when it comes to white supremacy in the election is that one would have thought that the number of white brothers and sisters voting for Trump would have gone down after four years of seeing his gangsterism manifest on so many different levels. We know our white sisters aren’t going to vote for Trump. But this time their vote is higher. And with the white brothers, it’s a majority. It’s a little lower than last time around, but it’s a majority. And you say, oh my God.

Now, not every person who voted for Trump is a racist. We have to understand that. He’s got a significant following among the racists. But everyone who voted for him isn’t motivated solely by racism. They’re people looking for an alternative to a rotten neoliberal status quo. That’s why Bernie Sanders was crushed by the neoliberals. Bernie presented an alternative to a rotten neoliberal status quo, and these voters are looking for somewhere else to place their vote.

So when Bernie’s pushed out, then they swing back to Trump. And it’s rooted in this very deep contempt that so many fellow citizens have for neoliberal elite. Not just contempt for politicians — contempt for the neoliberal elites in corporate media, the neoliberal elites in universities, the neoliberal elites in churches and synagogues and mosques. There’s a tremendous contempt for neoliberal elites, because they have been so hypocritical, and self-righteous, and arrogant.

And unfortunately, we on the Left, we’ve tried with every fiber of our being to provide some alternative to the rot in the neoliberal rule. But we could not pull it off within the context of electoral politics. On the streets, meanwhile, we had the largest manifestation of protests in the history of the empire! What impact does that have on the neoliberal rulers in the establishment Democratic Party? Just small little symbolic decorative changes — “put on a little Kente cloth and bring in some more black people and brown people in the name of diversity, and inclusion, and equity.”

No serious impact. And, of course, now we’re being charged as being the culprit.

Rahm Emanuel is saying, “This is the year of the Biden Republican.” Oh please, that’s like looking for the number of black people in the National Hockey League. They spent one billion dollars for one seat. And we were saying, no, you’re going to have to try to bring in some of the more progressive folk behind Bernie. Who, for the most part, were held at arm’s length. And they were still dubbed as socialist, even when they didn’t do that, even when they marginalized Bernie’s people. So it was just very clear that the corporate wing and the establishment of the Democratic Party, they have very, very little interest in speaking to the needs of poor people and working people, very little interest.

DANIEL DENVIR I want to ask you about the role of the Black Lives Matter mobilization in this election. Because Trump 2020 was really about law and order and against Black Lives Matter, in the same way that Trump 2016 was about building the wall and was against Mexicans, Central Americans, Muslim immigrants. Different themes, same logic. It appears to have worked for Trump and Republicans more than most people thought it would, based on the polling prior to the election. But on the other hand, I saw today that Democratic voter registration had been way down throughout the early pandemic. And then after George Floyd’s murder and the mass protest that followed, the Democratic registration exploded. So what does this all reveal?

CORNEL WEST

I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating. I mean, one thing to keep in mind is that the American style of fascism — the rule of big money and the rule of big military, waving the flag, to ensure the imperial underclass hierarchy’s in place — will always have a white supremacist public face as well as a male supremacist public face. Now it’s going to be homophobic and transphobic, too. But given the history of the nation, and given the role of white supremacy in shaping the nation, that white supremacy is going to be the major public face.

It’ll be against black folk especially, the enslaved, the Jim Crowed and Jane Crowed on the past. And you can see how Trump’s dominant tendencies feed directly into this analysis. Now, on the other hand, when there is a countervailing force like Black Lives Matter, it could be the best of the trade union movement, it could be the best of the feminist movement, it could be the best of the anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic movement. And that’s who were out in the streets.

Black Lives Matter was a united front, it was an act of magnificent solidarity of people from all walks of life, concerned about the public lynching of Brother George Perry Floyd Jr. You saw a hunger and thirst for alternatives to the status quo. And when the Left cannot present a credible vision or a believable program, some will swing to the other alternative — the neoliberal status quo. Or to a neofascism that poses as populism and is contemptuous of neoliberalism. You see, Trump’s program was based very much on xenophobia — and the support of the military, the embrace of Wall Street — but also on contempt of the neoliberals. Media especially, but not only the media — the university and so forth and so on.

When Trump was critical of the neoliberals, he was demonstrating that he understands people’s concerns about neoliberal arrogance, and neoliberal condescension, and neoliberal haughtiness that hides and conceals its own structures of domination, its own operations of power. And that’s where the Left hasn’t intervened in the name of truth and justice.

DANIEL DENVIR

You made that comment about the role of empire and neoliberal globalizers in shaping American politics. And I’m thinking, a sort of an on-the-fly hypothesis, that Trumpist nationalism and civilizationalism is so complex because it’s what’s most fundamentally racist about Trumpist politics. But it’s also, in its civilizational and nationalist guide, maybe what makes Trumpism more multiracial or open to involving more people than we had previously imagined.

CORNEL WEST

Yeah, but I think it differs from group to group. I mean you’ve got this massive toxic masculinity that just cuts across different communities, different skin pigmentation, different colors and classes. And that kind of patriarchal posing and posturing has very deep roots in American culture. You know, John Wayne didn’t just have white fans. You know what I mean? That’s one way of putting it right there.

Or take some of these big wrestlers — you got folks posing and posturing as this big toxic masculine so-and-so. And the young boys of all different colors and neighborhoods and communities get socialized into that. You see? So that patriarchal dimension cannot be downplayed. And I would argue, when it comes to the plight of precious trans folk and gay brothers and lesbian sisters, that the homophobia cannot be downplayed. It cuts very deep, even though there’s been some wonderful breakthroughs. It still cuts very deep. And there’s deep homophobia and transphobia in each one of our communities. It’s in our churches, it’s in our mosques, it’s in our synagogues, it’s in these public spaces. But in the end, if we’re not talking about predatory capitalism, brother, we are very much missing out on what sits at the center of it.

I was having a wonderful dialogue with my dear brother Tom, last night, of ADOS (American Descendants of Slavery) and Sister Evette, who are concerned about reparations. And I very much support reparations, I have for forty years. But even if black people were able to get the kind of reparations that the movement is calling for, predatory capitalism’s still in place. So it’s still an unjust system. It’s still deeply unfair, and the asymmetric relations of power at the workplace would still be in place.

You have to have workers lifting their voices and shaping their voices, the kind of thing Rick Wolf has been talking about. That is also indispensable, if we’re talking about unleashing possibilities for everyday people. And that’s what it’s all about.

Now I tell you, the grim questions, the skeletons that sit in our closet, are, do we as a species even have the capacity to avoid self-destruction? Given the levels of greed, especially at the top. And the contempt for working people and people of color. Does America, as an empire, even have the wherewithal, culturally, politically, to undergo fundamental transformation before it self-destructs? And then, of course, given the history of white supremacy, do we really have a majority of fellow white citizens who have the capacity, the cultivated capacity, to really affirm the dignity and decency of black people? Those are all three questions that sit in the closet. And if we don’t have an affirmative answer to those, that’s it, man.

I agree with this Jacobin article by Dr Cornel West on how Bernie Sanders's campaign fell victim to neoliberalism

Though, Dr West is a little bit too much on the "white supremacy" and "fascism" tip for my tastes.

I cannot see why

As someone with a church background, I adore Dr West for that very reason. I think it's important that the right-wing reactionary monopoly on God is challenged. I understand why someone who distrusts organized religion would dislike his rhetoric though. It's not particularly inclusive.

It is important to see how much antiblackness is evident in our society by reading up on all the statistics on disproportionate wealth, education, criminal justice outcome, hiring, etc. Maybe its just me but I rarely see people bringing up the actual stats up. Youtubers have done better jobs compiling studies and facts on this than major news outlets, which is pathetic and probably part of the reason why its so hard to argue about antiblackness structures when few people have actual info on it.

To me it also seems people use systemic racism as a catch all term for every instance of racial oppression or animosity that is not overt "I hate x people" racism. 

Like sh*t where people get accused of contributing to systemic racism as individuals through what should actually be called implicit or unconscious racism. Like everything under liberalism 2.0 it turns the problem into something that is the result of discrete actions by a number of individuals. Assigning individual responsibility for perpetuating systemic racism is just making the "systemic" park meaningless. 

It says that the actual system at work is less important than the ideas and actions of the individuals who operate within it. As a result we get every issue with some racial element to it that isn't someone just saying outright "I hate these certain people and wish them harm" absorbed into the amorphous blob of systemic racism to the point of the whole concept being useless.

2020 was The Empire Strikes back for the establishment in general. They finished conclusively crushing Bernie from 2016, they beat Donald Trump by flooding the system with vastly more money, and they put their finger on the scale with information control via the social media networks.

That it was still so close... well, that gives some hope I guess. But not a lot. There's a blueprint for success there, that a candidate as non good as Joe Biden can win with almost zero campaigning if you've got enough "juice" behind them. I have my doubts that Trump would win in 2024 as that trend continues and the tech giants consolidate their hold, next time they'll be even more prepared. And as much as people talk about a new, politer, younger version of Trump... such a thing doesn't exist, on the right, liberal 2.0 side or the left. If anything, I'd say that kind of talk misses the point. A "polite" Trump is not Trump at all, and probably gets knifed in the back before they get anywhere, like Bernie.

I also agree with Dr Cornel West from the above article (which I write below) on his take on why Bernie Sanders hasn't attracted a lot of poc voters to vote for him:

DANIEL DENVIR

In both 2016 and 2020, in the Democratic primaries, we saw much of the black establishment — and many, many black voters, too — line up behind Hillary Clinton and then Biden. I think this is a discussion that’s often either avoided or oversimplified. I don’t hear many very interesting engagements with the question. Which is, why haven’t Bernie’s left social democratic challenges broken through with so many black voters? Obviously, many young black voters supported Bernie, but not enough, and he had very little support from older black voters. Is it something about the reality of the state of black politics? Or failures of the Left? Or both?

CORNEL WEST

Well, I think we all have to look to ourselves; take some responsibility. Sister Nina Turner and Brother Danny Glover and I — we did hundreds and hundreds of events for Brother Bernie. A lot of them in black communities. And we were still unable to get the breakthrough. So you get this paradox, you get the most progressive candidate running for president of a major party in the history of the empire, and the most progressive voting bloc refuses to vote for him. And if they had, he could very well be president. See, now that’s a serious, serious issue.

Here we turn to brothers and sisters and the Black Agenda Report, and Glen Ford and Margaret Kimberley, and Nellie Bailey, and Brother Danny, and so many others. Or the Black Alliance for Peace, and Brother Ajamu Baraka and company. They’ve been telling us for a long time that there is a neoliberal hegemony of black leadership that keeps black people, to a certain degree, pacified. And it keeps them sleepwalking when it comes to Wall Street issues, when it comes to issues of Pentagon militarism, when it comes to issues of AFRICOM, when it comes to issues of 800 military units around the world.

And that black neoliberal hegemony in the black community cuts very deep, it really does. Because black people are convinced that, like most Americans, there’s no alternative to neoliberal leadership other than the Republican Party. And so they remain captured and locked in over, and over, and over again. And those who are cast as somehow willing to break out of the neoliberal mold are the right-wingers. And they get a whole lot of visibility — Kanye West, and Sister Candace [Owens]. And all these folks say, “Look, we’re tired of the neoliberal Democratic Party plantation, we want to go to the neofascist plantation that could lead toward internment camps.” You see? So you say, dang, what a choice between a rock and a hard place.

Henry Highland Garnet, right there in our dearly beloved city of Philadelphia, gave a speech in 1841. He said, “Black people, never confuse your situation for that of the Israelites of the Old Testament, for us, Pharaoh is on both sides of the bloody red seas.” And for so long, black people have had the pharaoh of the Republicans, the pharaoh of the Democrats. The Democrat pharaoh is better, small p. The pharaoh of the Republicans, a little bigger p. Then here comes Trump, the fascist p. Ronald Reagan was reactionary, but he wasn’t a fascist the way Trump is.

Now the good news is that the younger generation is deeply concerned about breaking the back of the duopoly. And we’ll see what kind of openness they have to the People’s Party. We’ll see what kind of openness they have for any alternative pre-party formations as well.