Prominent black “intellectual” Ta-Nehesi Coates said on Wednesday that he will vote for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton.
“I have tried to avoid this question, but yes I will be voting for Senator Sanders,” Coates, a writer at The Atlantic, said during an interview on Democracy Now.
“I’m stunned, but I’m pleasantly stunned,” he said of Sanders’ resounding 22 point victory over Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.
Coates’ support comes as something of a surprise given that he recently criticized Sanders for not supporting reparations for slavery, a topic near and dear to the writer’s heart. The author of the book “Between the World and Me” won a MacArthur “genius” grant for an Atlantic essay on the issue.
Sanders, like Hillary Clinton and President Obama, has said that he does not support reparations. Instead, he supports economic redistribution which he says will help blacks.
“One can say Senator Sanders should have more explicit anti-racist policy within his racial-justice platform, not just more general stuff and still cast a vote for Senator Sanders and still feel that Senator Sanders in the best option that we have in the race,” Coates said Wednesday.
“But just because that’s who you’re going to vote for doesn’t mean you then have to agree with everything they say,” he added.
Coates was heavily critical of Clinton on two issues — her exorbitant Goldman Sachs speech fees and her support of then-President Bill Clinton’s criminal justice policies in the 1990s. (RELATED: This Might Be Why Hillary Won’t Release Her Goldman Sachs Speech Transcripts)
“Like a lot of people I’m very, very concerned about Senator Clinton’s record,” Coates said. “I’m very, very concerned about where where her positions were in the 1990s when we had some of the most disgusting legislation in terms of our criminal justice, really in this country’s history.”
“I get really, really concerned when I see somebody taking $600,000 in speaking fees for Goldman Sachs but not release what they’re actually saying,” he added. Clinton has been dogged by questions about her speeches for Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks. And when asked if she will release transcripts from those events she has evaded the question.
It remains to be seen how Coates’ support for Sanders will play out with black voters. Clinton is seen as having a strong advantage over Sanders with blacks and Hispanics — a factor which will work in her favor in South Carolina and other southern states.
But besides Coates’ support, Sanders has picked up several other key endorsements of late. Former NAACP chief Ben Todd Jealous endorsed Sanders earlier this month. And last month, Justin Bamberg, a black South Carolina state representative and the attorney for the family of Walter Scott, the 50-year-old black man fatally shot in the back last year by a North Charleston police officer, switched from supporting Clinton to backing Sanders. Rapper Killer Mike and radical socialist professor Cornel West have also endorsed Sanders.
Sanders also met on Wednesday morning in Harlem with civil rights icon Al Sharpton, leading to speculation about whether the former presidential candidate will back Sanders.
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