I don't really see it as either/or. They are in large part interrelated.

Sure. But if everything is a priority, nothing is. Policy isn't just about what positions you take, but which issues you determine are more important.

There is a belief, very strong among certain portions of the economic left, that societal ills like racism are downstream from class inequality and the structural unfairness of capitalism generality. A useful but oversimplified way to describe that approach is that if you fix the problems of the economic system, one of the effects of that will be to significantly (if not completely) fix the problems of racism. And climate change. And the patriarchy. Those latter problems are the symptoms of economic dysfunction, not problems with significant causes independent of economic dysfunction.

Voters that are the victims of those oppressive systems, though, generally rejected that belief. And with good reason. They don't want to sit around and wait for something as massive as FIXING CAPITALISM before getting relief from white supremacy and the patriarchy.

And history backs them up. Look, we still have tons of racial problems today. But there's no argument that America is a lot less racist than it was back in the 1950's and 1960's. America isn't any less capitalist than it was back in the fifties and sixties, and it certainly isn't any less unequal than it was back then. But it is vastly better for racial minorities today than it was back then. It would have been an error of catastrophic proportions had folks back then concluded that the best way to fight racism was to try to restructure capitalism, rather than just fighting racism directly. Because fighting racism directly ended up removing enormous amounts of human misery from the world that otherwise would have existed while we waited - in vain - for capitalism to be reworked instead. It turns out that yes, we can fundamentally reduce the life-destroying harms of overt racism (both personal and structural) in ways that are indescribably consequential....without having to address inequality.

That's why Sanders' approach to racial problems fell flat, and almost certainly was a major reason he lost the candidacy. On the whole, minority voters didn't seem receptive to approach of fixing capitalism and inequality as the proper way to address the specific problems they face under racism or white supremacy or systemic injustice. They know, I think, that it's a very long road until those things are fixed enough to materially reduce racism (if that happens at all), and it's hardly surprising if they'd rather directly act towards making society less racist than rely on that being an indirect benefit of fixing inequality. Because that has been proven to work.

I understand the position PhoolishPhillip is espousing. If you believe that racism exists only because the exploitive nature of capitalistic economies, which is definitely a position that is held to some degree or another in some economic schools of thought, then it might seem like the best strategy is to attack the exploitive problems of capitalism as the best route to eliminating racism.