Doobie Doo
Veteran
To win black support, Bloomberg acknowledges white privilege
"My story might have turned out very differently if I had been black," said the billionaire in a much anticipated speech.
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg speaks in Tulsa, Okla., on Sunday. | Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo
By SALLY GOLDENBERG and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO
01/19/2020 12:38 PM EST
Updated: 01/19/2020 04:52 PM EST
TULSA, Okla. — Mike Bloomberg began his presidential campaign with an apology to African Americans — an acknowledgment of the racial inequities spurred by the controversial “stop and frisk” policing practice he oversaw as New York City mayor.
It was also a recognition of the political realities confronting a campaign for the Democratic nomination that hinges on a strong performance on Super Tuesday, when black voters will cast a majority of the primary vote in a handful of states.
replied, “I've been away from it for so long, I just really can't respond because I just don't remember.”
Maya Wiley, who once chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York City, was circumspect about Bloomberg’s apology for stop and frisk, given his insistence the practice was necessary to drive down crime during his dozen years in office. He’s been forced to answer questions about it in nearly every big national TV interview he’s done of late.
While Bloomberg is responsible for reversing course, under extensive political and legal pressure, he never publicly acknowledged the change, allowing his successor and chief critic, Bill de Blasio, to exaggerate his own role in the reform.
He obviously had to apologize. He has not done it well enough to win over the black vote, certainly not the black vote in New York, who has experienced firsthand what stop and frisk meant, and how harassing, humiliating and abusive it was with very little need or impact on crime,” Wiley, who previously served as de Blasio’s City Hall attorney, said.
“He doesn’t really understand just what black people are concerned about in enough of a personal way to be relatable,” she added about Bloomberg. “And I say that not because I don’t think he is trying, but because I don’t think he understands.”
In his Tulsa speech, Bloomberg again expressed regret for using stop and frisk in his determination to halt gun violence. “As I have said, I was wrong not to act faster and sooner to cut the stops and I’ve apologized to New Yorkers for that — for not better understanding the impact it was having on black and Latino communities.”
Bloomberg also took pains to draw on the experiences of black Americans, using the massacre to illustrate centuries of injustice: More than 6,000 were arrested during and after the brutal episode — all of them black, while no white people went to jail. While it was one of the most painful sagas in American history, Bloomberg admitted he’d never heard of it until traveling to Tulsa recently to help underscore the point that so many mass killings of African Americans between 1917 and 1923 were never taught in high schools and colleges.
He tells the story of his father donating to the NAACP, telling a young Bloomberg that “discrimination against anyone is a threat to everyone.”
“I didn’t know it at the time, but when my parents moved to the house I grew up in, the owners wouldn’t sell to them,” he said. “They didn’t want a Jewish family in the neighborhood. Luckily for us, our Irish lawyer was willing to buy it and transfer it to my parents. But if my mother and father had been black, we would not have been so lucky. And we would not have grown up in that neighborhood.”
Bloomberg’s courtship of black voters comes as Biden holds onto a commanding and seemingly unshakable lead among them. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month found Biden the clear frontrunner, at 48 percent. That’s more than double Bernie Sanders’ 20 percent. Bloomberg stood at just 4 percent. Particularly problematic for Bloomberg was his negative rating among respondents: When asked whom they would not consider for the nomination, he came in second to long-shot contender Tulsi Gabbard.
Loadholt said he remains skeptical Bloomberg could move the needle enough to compete in the primary. “There are some voters — African Americans — who will like Michael Bloomberg,” he said. “But does this get him to 15% in Alabama, where he can get some delegates?”
Bloomberg is grounding his broader appeal in anti-Trump fervor and arguments about his potential electability in November — both areas where Biden has so far excelled with black voters. Still, Bloomberg’s spending, now upward of $250 million alone on advertising, has helped him rise modestly with voters overall in national polls and created a dynamic that’s hard to ignore, said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC.
With such a massive premium on winning, voters could be swayed by a candidate that’s able to use Trump-like tactics to defeat him.
“Part of the reason why there is that support for Biden is he’s the ‘scrapper from Scranton,” Shropshire said. “Bloomberg is a New Yorker, too. Bloomberg knows how to use those New York City machine politics as well. And there is some sense he can defeat Trump because he understands what New York in the street politics is about — and, because he has the money.”
To win black support, Bloomberg acknowledges white privilege
"My story might have turned out very differently if I had been black," said the billionaire in a much anticipated speech.
Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg speaks in Tulsa, Okla., on Sunday. | Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo
By SALLY GOLDENBERG and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO
01/19/2020 12:38 PM EST
Updated: 01/19/2020 04:52 PM EST
TULSA, Okla. — Mike Bloomberg began his presidential campaign with an apology to African Americans — an acknowledgment of the racial inequities spurred by the controversial “stop and frisk” policing practice he oversaw as New York City mayor.
It was also a recognition of the political realities confronting a campaign for the Democratic nomination that hinges on a strong performance on Super Tuesday, when black voters will cast a majority of the primary vote in a handful of states.
replied, “I've been away from it for so long, I just really can't respond because I just don't remember.”
Maya Wiley, who once chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board in New York City, was circumspect about Bloomberg’s apology for stop and frisk, given his insistence the practice was necessary to drive down crime during his dozen years in office. He’s been forced to answer questions about it in nearly every big national TV interview he’s done of late.
While Bloomberg is responsible for reversing course, under extensive political and legal pressure, he never publicly acknowledged the change, allowing his successor and chief critic, Bill de Blasio, to exaggerate his own role in the reform.
He obviously had to apologize. He has not done it well enough to win over the black vote, certainly not the black vote in New York, who has experienced firsthand what stop and frisk meant, and how harassing, humiliating and abusive it was with very little need or impact on crime,” Wiley, who previously served as de Blasio’s City Hall attorney, said.
“He doesn’t really understand just what black people are concerned about in enough of a personal way to be relatable,” she added about Bloomberg. “And I say that not because I don’t think he is trying, but because I don’t think he understands.”
In his Tulsa speech, Bloomberg again expressed regret for using stop and frisk in his determination to halt gun violence. “As I have said, I was wrong not to act faster and sooner to cut the stops and I’ve apologized to New Yorkers for that — for not better understanding the impact it was having on black and Latino communities.”
Bloomberg also took pains to draw on the experiences of black Americans, using the massacre to illustrate centuries of injustice: More than 6,000 were arrested during and after the brutal episode — all of them black, while no white people went to jail. While it was one of the most painful sagas in American history, Bloomberg admitted he’d never heard of it until traveling to Tulsa recently to help underscore the point that so many mass killings of African Americans between 1917 and 1923 were never taught in high schools and colleges.
He tells the story of his father donating to the NAACP, telling a young Bloomberg that “discrimination against anyone is a threat to everyone.”
“I didn’t know it at the time, but when my parents moved to the house I grew up in, the owners wouldn’t sell to them,” he said. “They didn’t want a Jewish family in the neighborhood. Luckily for us, our Irish lawyer was willing to buy it and transfer it to my parents. But if my mother and father had been black, we would not have been so lucky. And we would not have grown up in that neighborhood.”
Bloomberg’s courtship of black voters comes as Biden holds onto a commanding and seemingly unshakable lead among them. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month found Biden the clear frontrunner, at 48 percent. That’s more than double Bernie Sanders’ 20 percent. Bloomberg stood at just 4 percent. Particularly problematic for Bloomberg was his negative rating among respondents: When asked whom they would not consider for the nomination, he came in second to long-shot contender Tulsi Gabbard.
Loadholt said he remains skeptical Bloomberg could move the needle enough to compete in the primary. “There are some voters — African Americans — who will like Michael Bloomberg,” he said. “But does this get him to 15% in Alabama, where he can get some delegates?”
Bloomberg is grounding his broader appeal in anti-Trump fervor and arguments about his potential electability in November — both areas where Biden has so far excelled with black voters. Still, Bloomberg’s spending, now upward of $250 million alone on advertising, has helped him rise modestly with voters overall in national polls and created a dynamic that’s hard to ignore, said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC.
With such a massive premium on winning, voters could be swayed by a candidate that’s able to use Trump-like tactics to defeat him.
“Part of the reason why there is that support for Biden is he’s the ‘scrapper from Scranton,” Shropshire said. “Bloomberg is a New Yorker, too. Bloomberg knows how to use those New York City machine politics as well. And there is some sense he can defeat Trump because he understands what New York in the street politics is about — and, because he has the money.”
To win black support, Bloomberg acknowledges white privilege
