2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg called the black reporter who referred to him as a “lying motherf—er” for a comment he made about education disparity among races.
While running for South Bend, Indiana’s mayor in 2011, Buttigieg claimed that children from poor families “needed to see evidence” that getting a good education would benefit them, claiming many low-income children do not have someone in their family who values education.
Following the resurfacing of said comments, The Root’s Michael Harriot published a piece calling the mayor a “lying motherf—er” and claimed his statements prove he doesn’t actually want to help black Americans. A day later, Buttigieg, 37, called him to discuss both the article and his comments from years ago, according to a new piece published on The Root Tuesday.
“Pete Buttigieg didn’t want to tell me his side of the story. He didn’t excuse himself by explaining that the comments referenced by the article were made years ago. He didn’t even try to explain his plan for black America,” Harriot wrote of the conversation. “But mostly, he just wanted to listen. For 18 minutes and 45 seconds, we talked about educational inequality, poverty, and institutional racism in America and how to fix it.”
Harriot also used multiple anecdotes of personal interactions to make the point that “a mediocre white kid with mediocre intelligence and mediocre parents can easily make it in America,” while “a smart black kid with smart parents and a supportive community still has to fight every day to hope to reach the levels of what a mediocre white man accomplishes. And, odds are, they still might not make it.”
“Buttigieg agreed that the insipid ‘family values’ argument has no place in political discussions because, as I noted, it infers that black parents don’t know the importance of a healthy family structure. However, the issues that cause those problems are rooted in poverty, inequality, and America’s history of racism,” he wrote.
“But Pete Buttigieg listened, which is all you can ask a white man to do,” he added.
While he’s currently polling in fourth place among 2020 Democrats at 10.5%, Buttigieg’s support among black Americans is nearly nonexistent.
[Opinion: Pete Buttigieg and the black vote: two things Democrats aren’t allowed to say]
