The Democratic Socialists of America use people of color as fashion accessories. Sure, they put black or brown faces on ballots, and they talk a big game about racism. But black and brown voters are not choosing their candidates. The DSA national membership chooses, and it is 85% white.

Look at the crowds. In October 2019, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders staged a rally at the Queensbridge housing project, across from Manhattan. Its residents are 47% black, 34% Latino and 10% Asian. News photos showed a nearly unbroken sea of white enthusiasts.

The head of the Queensbridge Resident Association called the organizers "disrespectful." They didn't even bother to place flyers in the buildings.

During the 2020 presidential race, Bernie Sanders rode high in the early Democratic primaries, where voters are mainly comfy whites. But when the primaries moved south, where Democratic voters are overwhelmingly black, he got creamed. In South Carolina, he lost to Joe Biden by 29 percentage points.

Asked to respond to that massive comeuppance, Sanders waved off the importance of those black voters. They were "conservative," he said. "But you know what? We're out of the Deep South now. And we're moving up."

That rankled several prominent black officials. "I was very concerned with that comment," said New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. "Black voters in the South are not very conservative" and "essentially dismissing the South was a slight at African American voters."

A recent poll in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary has 67% of blacks supporting the white candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens. Only 21% back the DSA's Abdul El-Sayed. A prominent El-Sayed supporter, William Lawrence, is on record denouncing black political leaders as a "pillar" of the "capitalist, imperialist" American establishment. Their support of the Democratic leadership, Lawrence said, "defangs the white left."

He really said that.

Sanders has a spotty history on race. He had joined the white flight out of New York City in the 1960s, when a new generation of black activists didn't care to take orders from white liberals. Sanders repaired to Burlington, Vermont, then less than 1% black. There he built a white-dominated socialist movement, using people of color as window dressing from the very start.

In his 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders' chief black intellectual, Cornel West, called Barack Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface." (Also, a "war criminal.")

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has followed the playbook. He has an odd character named Gustavo Gordillo defending his city-run grocery stores. Co-chair of DSA's New York chapter, Gordillo is an immigrant from Peru who studied "radical Latin American cinema" in college. He tried to move up in the art world, but after apparently not succeeding, decided to try his hand as a DSA celebrity.

Gordillo is now on TV "explaining" Mamdani's plan for government groceries, one costing taxpayers an amazing $30 million. Asked whether it's OK for publicly owned stores to put nearby bodegas out of business, Gordillo chirped that if bringing down prices in the neighborhood "is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn't have been in that business in the first place."

The bodega owners are largely Dominican, Yemeni or from other recent immigrant groups. Their little stores are entrepreneurial ventures that put families on the path of economic advancement. The owners work their tails off long into the night, often confronting criminals bent on everything from shameless shoplifting to armed robbery.

And now that little squirt Gordillo is on TV arguing that bodega owners who can't compete with stores built with taxpayer dollars — and that don't have to pay rent or property taxes — are somehow deficient businesspeople.

None of the above is made up, I swear.

Follow Froma Harrop on X @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at [email protected]. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Diane Picchiottino at Unsplash