He's playing it smart. What he's doing is carefully wording positions that will predominantly affect people of color, in words that the me-first guilt-adverse hypersensitive white fauxgressives will feel comfortable with. He needs them if he's going to win. I used to do programming before I got sick and couldn't keep up. One thing people really don't like hearing is that they did something wrong. They don't want you to come in and say "Well, see your problem is that your thing is buggy" because they decided on that thing and they are attached to it. Often they stick with the flawed system and have you build shitty bandaids that don't really work in the long run. Sometimes you can get proper fixes in by touting them as or coupling them with a new feature. In the same way, white people really hate hearing "Well, see your problem is that your white-dominated judicial system is systematically racist" because hey, they elected the people that appointed those police/judges/DAs, and that means they elected the wrong people. So what he's doing is promoting procedural changes in a way that those white folks think it will benefit them. The same way as, to use j4d3's example, police are being convinced to use cameras to protect themselves against frivolous lawsuits from criminals.
Is he playing it smart? As 538 pointed out a few weeks ago, Bernie is still struggling to appeal to non-white voters He at least some support with minority voters if he is going to get the nomination. Part of the appeal of Bernie is that he is supposed to be fairly no-nonsense and tell it like it is. But by avoiding talking about race, doesn't he drive away the minority vote because it means he either thinks that a) race isn't actually an important issue (which I think many minority voters would chalk up to out of touch white privilege) or b) he's tiptoeing around the issue for politics reasons just like any other politician, so much for no-nonsense.