No, Pointing Out that Working-Class Immigrants Aren't Hip to Socialism Isn't Racist
Some thoughts on the reaction to my last video for The New York Post
Last month, the New York Post sent me out to talk to the people about Zohran Mamdani, the wildly popular, and also widely disliked, democratic socialist who won the Democratic New York City mayoral primary. The video I made for them—which garnered around 150,000 views on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube—compared the skepticism of (poorer, largely Caribbean-born) East Flatbush voters towards socialism with the enthusiasm of (more upwardly mobile) Prospect Heights voters towards the idea of “getting rid of capitalism.” It did what it was supposed to do: illustrate an actual phenomenon (the DSA candidate did better, overall, in wealthier districts) with funny real-life characters.
The video also sparked a passionate response, including charges that I was “dunking on poor people,” being “vaguely racist,” and making fun of uneducated voters. One of my bits was to read aloud to the Caribbean Americans from the DSA constitution, a ludicrously academic publication by an organization supposedly representing the working class. Did the people on the street wish to replace capitalism with “a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships”? As it turned out, this language failed to inspire much revolutionary fervor in East Flatbush.
People were more ready to “burn it down” in Prospect Heights, where in some areas Mamdani walked away with nearly 70% of the vote. “It” here was “capitalism,” which, if you believe in the meanings of words, refers to an economic system within which people are free to do things like own stuff, buy stuff, sell stuff, hire people, and accept wages—as in, are free to participate in the kind of basic commerce that has made America a place to which people from poor countries are desperate to escape.
Were the Prospect Heights voters I spoke to more educated than the immigrants I spoke to in East Flatbush? Sure, if “educated” means having gone into debt for a degree in sociology. I’m not sure how educated a person can be if when you ask their feelings on socialism they say, “I feel pretty good about it.” I ought to have asked a follow-up question: which socialist country would you have most liked to live in? East Germany, perhaps?
Of course, what I suspect many of these people think of when they think “socialism” are countries like Sweden—a very definitely capitalist country that nonetheless manages to provide its citizens with health insurance. What I think people mean when they say we should “get rid of capitalism” is that corporations should have less power over Americans’ commercial choices, and that there is something wrong with a system that rewards shareholder value over everything else.
“People over profits” is not a bad ethos, especially when it comes to industries like healthcare. Certainly the closest I ever come to identifying as a socialist is when I am on hold with my COBRA administrator. It might take me a few deep breaths to realize that tempering the dehumanizing effects of the profit motive does not in fact require replacing capitalism with an economic system grounded in “popular control of resources” and “feminism.”
Ridiculing poor people and immigrants is not my brand. But was I poking fun at uneducated voters? You bet I was.
The immigrants you interviewed have much more awareness of aspects of socialism compared to Prospect Heights voters. Many of these folks have lived in socialist countries and know that the promises sound great but the implementation often is horrible. I would argue that you were dunking on the Prospect Heights folks!!!!
It's the rich (primarily white) kids, mostly, the hipsters and cool upper-middle class kids who "believe" in socialism. Average working-class Black folks have ALWAYS been on the opposite side of the rich woke kids. Look at trans/biological sex. Look at centrism vs far left. Look at religion. By almost every metric, Black folks are much more moderate, rational, realistic and normal. The white rich kids pretend they struggle, pretend capitalism is evil while they greatly benefit from it, and put words into Black people's mouths because it has become De Jour to be a Racist progressive. It's some backwards-ass shit. If these white idiots actually paused a moment and looked at their ideology they'd realize how absurd they sound. Then again: These are the same people who love Hamas.