Black protesters, who were determined to let the world know that black lives matter and not a single life of any other race matters, turned Netroots Nation into what many are calling a "disaster."
The left-wing writer Matt Bruenig added to the backlash by annotating an interview with Tia Oso, the Phoenix activist who led the disruption. Oso chastised Sanders for discussing poverty "without the context of white supremacy." Bruenig found her critique to be incoherent.
"Does Bernie Sanders really want to talk about job creation?" he asked. "It's all he talks about. The fact that job creation and similar economic topics is mostly what he talks about is the supposed racial critique!"
If you click on that link, you'll see that Tia Oso believes that politics should be about #BlackLivesMatter and nothing else.
The black activists prefer indulging in Ta-Nehisi Coates-style histrionics about their black bodies being perpetually menaced by roving bands of racist Murder Cops.
The best way of understanding what the fuss was about is to watch one of the many videos shot from the thick of the Netroots protest. At 8:47, in a video uploaded by Andrew Davey, you can hear protesters demand that Sanders explain how he'll ameliorate racism in America. You can watch Sanders give what he thinks is complete answer -- and be denounced.
"We're going to transform the economics in America so that we create millions of decent-paying jobs," said Sanders in the clip. "We're going to make tuition at public colleges free."
"Jobs and college don't stop the police from killing me!" said a woman in the crowd, audible in the room but not on official videos of the event. "Jobs and college don't stop the police from killing me!"
Sanders plowed forward. "We're going to reform our trade policy so that corporate America invests in this country, and not low-income countries around the world," he said.
"Trade policy doesn't stop the police from killing me!" said the woman....
In the conversations that spilled into the hall, activist after activist asked why white liberals were so insistent on talking about poverty before discussing white privilege.
More like this, please. As a man once said, every corrupt system contains within it the seeds of its own destruction.
And black racism is just as ugly and just as corrupt as the white version.