Biden and Buttigieg: clueless on racial issues in the US

The 2020 election began with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump who filed almost immediately for reelection, and the race has been on in what has become a very crowded field of contenders among the Democrats with former Vice President Joe Biden being dusted off as “electable” and quickly followed by a resurgent Bernie Sanders, a hopeful Elizabeth Warren and emerging in second place, California Sen. Kamala Harris who showed strong stuff in the debates.

Of the issues that has showed itself to be enduring is that of race, specifically, the role and issues facing the black community in America, who despite the passage of the Civil Rights and 50 years of progress still remain behind their white counterparts, especially financially, as The Economist has said, “Yet after decades of declining discrimination and the construction of a modern welfare state, that ratio remains the same. The mean of black household wealth is $138,200—for whites, that number is $933,700.”

They also reported that, “A recent study by Dionissi Aliprantis and Daniel Carroll, research economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, argues that the persistent racial gap in wealth can be almost entirely accounted for by the racial gap in income. According to the latest figures, from 2017, the median black household takes in $40,258 a year compared with $68,145 for the typical white one.”

A look back into the rear view mirror of history, has brought more than objects closer than they appear; with Biden’s awkward, and, ultimately, contentious comment of being able to work with segregationist lawmakers, and the resulting firestorm, setting the bar low, before a group of wealthy, and potential donors, according to Vox, “he brought up segregationist senators Eastland and Herman Talmadge (D-GA). Though he disagreed with them, he said, “we got things done.”

Then the bombshell: “. . .a guy like Herman Talmadge, one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys. Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”

While some wags subsequently made reference to “Shoeless Joe”, others were less charitable, and began calling him “Clueless Joe”.

Then there were his defenders telling us what he meant to say, as if that particular road to hell was truly paved with good intentions.

Up next is the genial and boyish Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. facing a hostile “shout down” crowd of his angry black residents after a series of missteps that included his firing of a popular black police chief who was “under FBI investigation for wiretapping white officers who had been suspected of using racist language investigating racist remarks,” and showed a sense of incredulity when facing their anger, and who stumbled, when asked, point blank, if black lives matter,  and who repeated the question before answering in the affirmative.

What we have observed, along with others, is that it seems that Biden is stuck in a time warp, despite his seemingly avuncular geniality, and has not faced the changed Democratic party, that is more left leaning; and, a lesson he should have learned from Hillary Clinton, whose adherence to centrist position, was one, of many reasons, she lost the presidency in 2016.

The young man from Indiana seems clueless to a demographic that is necessary for any win of the nomination for the United States presidency.

Pew Research, that venerable institution, opined, “The black eligible voter population has grown about as fast as the electorate overall, meaning their share has held constant at about 12% since 2000,” a fact that Buttigieg seems to have not known.

When wedded to the record that despite having placing second, in number, to Hispanics, as the nation’s largest voting bloc, blacks have, in fact, voted in greater numbers than the former.

Going back to historical precedent, while many people point to the Civil Rights Legislation of 1964, when blacks started voting largely Democratic, “It's important to note, though, that African Americans were already voting more heavily for Democrats than Republicans. At no point from 1936 on, according to Joint Center data, has the Republican candidate for president gotten more than 40 percent of the black vote.”

White candidates, in particular, must gain a greater sensitivity to their issues such  as employment, housing, education, and most salient of all, how police misconduct can make or break a community, and the voting booth.

Race is not only America’s most intractable problem; it is going to be one of the most important factors in the 2020 presidential race.

Flexing some political muscle on the issue is Kamala Harris, (daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father) who identifies as black, and a graduate of Howard University, excoriated Biden on his prior stance of opposition to bussing, and used her childhood self as an example, a brilliant tour de force that cameras showed a grimacing Biden.

Optics aside, how the Democratic candidates show their understanding of black America, is going to be especially potent, when they face off with President Trump who has shown a dismissive, if often benign, contempt for black Americans, be it for his assertion of the “good people” among white supremacists, or referring, disrespectfully, to a wounded black veteran, as “your man” to his widow, or Buttigieg,who has stumbled too often, and despite his cultivated air of thoughtfulness, seems to be running, (as he has done for too long), on a narrative, instead of substance as a recent Time Magazine interview revealed.

As The Nation noted, in their debate coverage, “a parallel drama occurred when moderator Rachel Maddow pressed South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg about a police shooting in his city. As Maddow accurately noted, civil rights groups are unhappy not just with Buttigieg handling of the shooting but also his inability to discipline the South Bend police force. Before the shooting, the officer had turned off his body camera, making the incident all the more suspicious.”

“The police force in South Bend is now 6 percent black in a city that is 26 percent black,” Maddow noted. “Why has that not improved over your two terms as mayor?”

Buttigieg responded with contrition. “Because I couldn’t get it done,” Buttigieg confessed. “And I could walk you through all of the things that we have done as a community, all of the steps that we took, from bias training to de-escalation, but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan. And when I look into his mother’s eyes, I have to face the fact that nothing that I say will bring him back.”

“This acknowledgement of inadequacy was humanizing—but also unsatisfying. Not surprisingly, Buttigieg rivals grabbed the opportunity to undermine him further. Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper wasn’t impressed by Buttigieg claims to be trying to solve the problem. Hickenlooper remarked that “the question they’re asking in South Bend and I think across the country is why has it taken so long?” After all, other jurisdictions have been moving forward with police accountability.”

They noted that, “Both Biden and Buttigieg discovered that their record on racism has seriously wounded their presidential bids. According to a poll conducted by Morning Consult for FiveThirtyEight, Biden lost nearly a quarter of his support after the debates, dropping from 41.5 percent to 31.5 percent. Buttigieg, starting from a lower floor, lost nearly a third of his support, going from 6.7 to 4.8 percent. (By comparison, Kamala Harris more than doubled her support, going from 7.9 to 16.6 percent; Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also experienced significant, if smaller, gains).”

Looking southward to South Bend, it is a microcosm on one of the key issues, in the US: overzealous cops shooting black kids, and avoiding best practices policing that have worked in other areas to reduce the “occupation mentality”; in fact, “South Bend has in fact been going backwards under Buttigieg watch. The number of black officers on the city’s force has dropped from 29 in 2012 to 15 in 2019. Interviewed by Huff Post, Oliver Davis, one of the longest-serving black politicians in South Bend, said, “These kind of issues have not been his priorities.” Davis added, “He responds when he has to, but you go back to April, and they were saying the whole makeup of his campaign staff lacked diversity, OK?”

Once again, the candidate relies on a narrative when he says, ““I’m not allowed to take sides until the investigation comes back,” Buttigieg said. “The officer said he was attacked with a knife but he didn’t have his body camera on. It’s a mess and we’re hurting. I could walk you through all the things we have done as a community, all the steps that we took, from bias training to de-escalation, but it didn’t save the life of Eric Logan.”

We reached out to the Buttigieg campaign, before the debate, with emailed suggestions in specific areas to help blacks, not only in South Bend, but also in the country, on education, healthcare and employment, and pointed out the inadequacy of his housing program, as reported in Time magazine, to either tear down, dilapidated homes, or “fix up 1,000 in 1,000 days,” in predominantly black areas, but with no financial assistance, and at publication date received no response.

As is becoming very clear with him, there seems to be a lack of interest, when confronted on race, and the mayor’s reply, which did not endear him the Fraternal Order of Police, in South Bend was this: ‘All police work and all of American life takes place in the shadow of racism’ is divisive.’”

All? Either he is not thinking, or has not done his homework on the issue.

The reaction to residents, according to The New York Times, was also weak, although Buttigieg does have some supporters in the black community of South Bend, albeit those who have a vested interest in working with him, such as the local leader of the NAACP.

Others seem to speak for many: ““It’s not in his best interest to go into all of it because he knows he didn’t do anything,” said Jordan Geiger, who works for a nonprofit group.

“But he needs to speak to those,” Ms. Batiste-Waddell said. “That’s how I believe our department got to the point of killing a black man. Because none of the other racial things that have happened have been addressed.”

Making things worse was the following exchange when he interrupted the campaign to come home to address a shooting, from the Daily Beast:

“The tension reached a flashpoint as Buttigieg arrived in South Bend, which has a significant African-American population, on Friday, when a woman confronted him about his desire to win over black voters in the city. “You’re running for president and you want black people to vote for you?” the woman said. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Ma’am, I’m not asking for your vote,” Buttigieg responded.

After meeting with members of The Congressional Black Caucus, in South Carolina, the mayor sidestepped interviewers’ questions about what he learned, by saying, ““Those meetings are extremely informative for understanding some of the issues that are at the top of their agenda,” Buttigieg said. “As long as black Americans are cut out of equal access to criminal justice, to homeownership, to education, to health outcomes that other Americans enjoy, we’ve got a problem.”

Huh?