MSNBC Panel: Socialism Hasn’t Taken off in U.S. Due to Racism

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SANDERS: "People should look at countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway and learn what they have accomplished for their working people."

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HARRIS-PERRY: “So we see this comparison a lot that the U.S. is alone, and nearly alone, among Western democracies in not having universal health care or guaranteed paid parental leave or many other perks of a socialist government. But the question is why. What makes the U.S. different? And the way I tend to frame this to my students is why is there no socialism in the U.S.? The great Eric Foner question. And there`s a one-word answer, guy. I`m looking at you –“

WRIGHT: “Let me see. Could it be race?”

HARRIS-PERRY: “Could it be? I mean that becomes the kind of standard story, right, is that in this country, race and racial privilege has trumped class identity as a way of organizing our politics.”

WRIGHT: “Well, I mean so we could go way back, right, I mean the whole – if we`re talking about capitalism in the first instance. The whole system globally was built on slavery. The modern economy was built - the cotton was built on cotton which was built on financing, financing slaves. And so from that moment forward, we`ve been in a discussion about capitalism in the United States that has, in fact, sorted people by race. And you can`t -- and so when we get back to sort of the public investments that we make in people and that part of democratic socialism that has been challenged and difficult particularly in modern times because, coming out of the great society, coming out of the mid-20th century, we have had a politics that makes those public investments giveaways to black people.”

WONG: “Exactly. My answer to you would have been also history. Because the colonization, right. We are talking about the people that were here first. Even if you go back to that kind of scrappy, hard scrabble, we`re going to come here and we are going to build something and then we`re going to bring people and treat them as non-people, just piling on to that history. We have such a history of -- we can`t all be equals because we`re not. If you look at Denmark, everyone`s the same. It`s a homogenous society. You look at us, it`s just not. We have that history and it really weighs in on us so much. It costs us an incredible amount. And it`s not tied to capitalism as much as people-think. This is true human bias at this point.”

WELCH: “Also, if you look at Denmark, if you look at the number two party there, the Danish People`s Party is basically a post-Nazi party. They`re not accepting Syrian refugees. It is not a beautiful story about race and then, you know, between peoples. And also it`s a place that`s one of the top 10 or 15 free economies as measured by Heritage Foundation, right-wing organizations like that. So, it`s not as simple - it`s not Bernie Sanders land as much as Bernie Sanders might think that it is.”

HARRIS-PERRY: “Right.”

WELCH: “And Western Europe for the most part is not necessarily Bernie Sanders`. The places that are or that tried it, France, three years ago, elected Bernie Sanders for president, let`s just call Francois Hollande. Let`s do a millionaires tax. 75 percent. Let`s do all this kind of stuff.”

HARRIS-PERRY: “He was serious. You want to meet a socialist, here you go, my friend.”

WELCH: “And what happened? They`ve had to run from those policies screaming because people leave, people left. They did. It just backfired. It didn`t deliver on all those promises. But I want to say something the history, and race is a huge part of the history of this country and sustained on everything. But capitalism didn`t just proceed from a bunch of people sitting around and saying how can I be the most racist?”

HARRIS-PERRY: “No!”

WONG: “No!” [crosstalk]

WELCH: “I know I`m being funny.”

HARRIS-PERRY: “That`s not me, brother. I will hit back.” (Laughter)

WELCH: “Just don`t get in my shot again.”

WONG: “We`re on either side of you.”

WELCH: “But it also proceeded from a notion of individual rights and individual liberty. And some of the people who helped topple those racist structures that came or were put upon it were animated just as much by that notion of individual –“[crosstalk]

HARRIS-PERRY: “But isn`t this –“

WONG: “They weren`t individuals. There weren`t individuals, right, so we`re not saying that it`s just about race, we`re saying is that those rules, those feelings, didn`t apply to everybody. And adding there also the idea of immigrants. So you mentioned not accepting Syrians. We are a nation of immigrants, right? So that is actually a lifeblood of this country. That is actually a huge part of how capitalism can work for people and can work for this country, if you`re allowed. But the bottom line is we`re human beings. This is not an economics issue so much as that is bias and fear of resources.”

HARRIS-PERRY: “But bias - but we are saying, but to me the issue is the way that the bias gets baked into the economic –“

WONG: “Yes, exactly.”

HARRIS-PERRY:  “So, the capitalism operates on our preferences, which are exogynist, which are fixed outside the system, and if racial bias is part of those preferences because of history, right, because we have this long history, then doesn`t it mean that the system must consistently have a corrective, right? So if, in fact, we just have a bias against certain kinds of bodies, don`t we then have to come in and correct that bias, even in order to make a free market system operate?”

MIRON: “Well, we might, but we have to think about how attempts to correct the bias will operate and whether they will be more productive or - to be productive or counterproductive? So, there are people who are certainly concerned that measures that try to address bias like affirmative action lead to polarization, lead to people feeling angry and upset that they think that something that they deserve is being taken away. And lead to devaluing accomplishments of people who are minorities or women that would have had those accomplishments anyway, and yet then people look at them and say, oh, they just got that because of affirmative –“

HARRIS-PERRY: “I know. But professor, you have to let me weigh in, that nobody needed affirmative action to teach bias against black and brown people. Like, that bias is pre-existing and then affirmative action comes and then affirmative action gets used as discourse. But it`s not as though - it`s kind of like saying that, you know, like all of a sudden white folks decide to use the ‘n’ word because of hip-hop. No, no, no, it was – they had already known how to use that word before –“

WONG: “They just put an ‘a’ at the end.”