Todd Challenges Sanders over ‘Confrontation’ with Black Lives Matter Protesters

Last weekend, while many were rending garments over a certain candidate’s POW remarks, Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had his speech at a Netroots panel interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters, whom he failed to mollify with a response about economic inequality.

On Meet the Press Sunday morning, host Chuck Todd asked Sanders about the “confrontation,” a characterization with which the Vermont senator immediately took issue.

“The issue they raised was in fact a very important issue,” Sanders said. “This an issue of concern that I strongly share…I was not dismissive. I’ve been involved in the Civil Rights movement all of my life. I believe we have to deal with the issue of institutional racism.”

Todd brought up the point many African-American activists have made against Sanders, that he deflects the matter of institutional racism onto economic inequality, a subject he and his largely white progressive base are more comfortable with.

Sanders called institutional racism and economic inequality “parallel problems.”

“Martin Luther King, when he died, was working on a poor people’s march,” Sanders said. “We have to end institutional racism, but we have to deal with the reality that 50% of young black kids are unemployed; that we have massive poverty in America, and we have an unsustainable level of income and wealth inequality.”

Watch below, via NBC News:

[Image via screengrab]

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