The startling omission was the issue of race and policing that has roiled the political debate in recent months. Ferguson, Baltimore, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray — none were in Sanders’ speech. Allegations of police brutality and black victimization were all absent. Sanders made one brief mention of African-American unemployment and at the end of his speech offered a catch-all sentence in which he envisioned an America “where every person, no matter their race, their religion, their disability or their sexual orientation realizes the full promise of equality that is our birthright as Americans.” But the racial issues that have dominated the news at various times in the past year were nowhere to be found…

Sanders’ error was even more striking because of the setting. Vermont is a tiny, extremely white place, a kind of statewide version of what the writer Rich Benjamin dubbed “Whitopias.” According to 2010 census figures, whites make up 95.3 percent of Vermont’s population, while blacks are 1.0 percent. The percentage of black-owned businesses in Vermont is too small for the Census Bureau to calculate.

That’s just the opposite of the place blacks occupy in the Democratic coalition. Not only are African-Americans numerically a large part of the coalition, they are the party’s most loyal voters on election day. It is striking for a presidential candidate running as a Democrat to essentially ignore issues that have been of such deep concern to black voters; doing so confirms the stereotype of the white, well-educated, and comfortable progressive.