“And I know what it is to look on the news and see your rights up for debate.” “All of us in different ways have been led to question whether we belong,” he told the audience of black worshipers. Or less likely to be believed describing symptoms of pain,” he said.īut as a gay man, he went on, he knows what it’s like to face phobia, prejudice and the threat of violence for simply being oneself. “I have not had the experience of being more likely to be pulled over, or less likely to be called back for a job interview. “We have to bring intention, as much intention and resources as we brought into the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe” after World War II.īuttigieg is careful to acknowledge that he can’t say what it’s like to be black in America. “It is not enough to replace a racist policy with a neutral policy and expect justice to find its way forward on its own,” he said at the Benedict College forum.
More substantively, Buttigieg has proposed what he calls the Douglass Plan, named after the famed abolitionist, to address the systemic racism that has plagued the country from its inception.Īmong its initiatives, the 18-page proposal would direct 25% of federal contracting go to historically disadvantaged businesses establish government-funded “Health Equity Zones” to address racial and demographic inequities in healthcare enact a modern Voting Rights Act to prevent voter suppression tighten the legal standard for police officers to use deadly force abolish the death penalty and eliminate federal incarceration for drug possession. He was introduced at church and at his Rock Hill rally by black supporters questions submitted beforehand were read onstage by the African American president of Winthrop University’s Democratic club.
He has prioritized hiring people of color as his flush campaign rapidly expands. But African Americans may determine who won’t be the nominee if they vote en masse the way they did for Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008, and for Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016.īuttigieg has worked in several ways to improve his standing among black voters. Those numbers aren’t enough to decide who will be the nominee. “Not my cup of tea,” said the 80-year-old theater professor, as the candidate prepared to address a campus forum on racial justice being held a short walk down the hall.īlack voters make up about 20% of the Democratic electorate nationwide and more than half in several Southern states, including South Carolina, which falls fourth on the 2020 political calendar, after Iowa, New Hamphire and Nevada. “If he was the governor of Indiana, that wouldn’t be a problem.”Īnd part of it may be the fact Buttigieg is openly gay, offending the sensibilities of some more socially conservative African Americans, like Charles Brooks III. “It’s not so much his age,” said Vaughn Wilson, 59, pausing on the campus of Columbia’s historically black Benedict College, where he serves as a dorm manager. Some of it owes to Buttigieg’s relative inexperience, especially compared with the nearly half-century Biden has spent in public life - including eight years as Barack Obama’s highly regarded vice president. Earlier this month, Buttigieg returned thousands of dollars contributed by a Chicago lawyer who tried to block the release of a video in the 2014 police killing of a black teenager. Some resistance may stem from controversies back home in South Bend, Ind., over the 2012 firing of the city’s black police chief and last summer’s fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer. “I think that we can create that at an accelerated pace, but that means I’ve got to do the work.” “When you’ve been on the scene for years or for decades you have the benefit of voters feeling like they have a sense of you,” Buttigieg said. (Worshipers were greeted by a stack of Biden fliers on a table outside the sanctuary.) “So much depends on a sense of knowing you,” Buttigieg told reporters after speaking at a Sunday service for black congregants from throughout the region.