At Thursday’s Democratic Party debate, Bernie Sanders provided the latest defense of his blowout defeats in the Deep South. “Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South,” Sanders said. “No question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country. That’s the fact. But you know what? We’re out of the Deep South now. And we’re moving up.”

Hillary Clinton supporters and loyal Democratic Party liberals seized on Sanders’s comment as an indication of his apathy toward Southern black voters, the core of Clinton’s support in the region.

I was also dismayed, if for slightly different reasons. For me — a Bernie Sanders supporter who is also an African American and a Southerner — it was disheartening to hear Sanders, a man with a reputation for standing up for all workers, brush aside the concerns of millions.