A Resurfaced Video Of Pete Buttigieg Underlines His Struggle To Connect With Black Voters

A video from 2011 of Mayor Pete Buttigieg saying that several minority children and people from low-income neighborhoods haven’t seen people who value education resurfaced on Twitter Sunday (November 24).


“Kids need to be able to see evidence that education is going to work for them,” Buttigieg mentioned eight years prior, throughout a televised roundtable discussion as soon as he was running for mayor of South Bend, Indiana. “You visualize a lot of parts of town where...”


“That's piece of the motivation,” another participant responded.


“Yeah. You’re motivated because you believe that at the end of your education, there really is a reward; there’s a stable life; there’s a job,” Buttigieg mentioned. “And there really are a lot of kids — especially [in] the lower-income, minority neighborhoods, who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t someone who they know personally who testifies to the value of education.”


In response, people on social media were pretty furious. It spurred an op-ed in The Root that pointed out the idea that people simply need to “see it to believe it” effectively ignores plenty of the roadblocks people in “lower-income, minority neighborhoods” face while getting an education, including lower school funding and harsher discipline in classes. It also doesn’t take into account the downsides Black people and other people of color can experience soon after they receive that education, including a higher unemployment rate soon after graduating college and earning much less cash than their white peers.


The clip resurfaced soon after it came to light that Buttigieg’s team had used a stock photo of a Kenyan woman to illustrate the candidate’s plan meant to empower Black American voters, called the Douglass Plan soon after abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The team has since apologized and removed the image from the Pete for America website.


Once MTV News reached out to Buttigieg’s team for comment, they directed us to comments the candidate gave to press on Tuesday (November 26), in which he mentioned that he talked to Michael Harriot, the writer of The Root story. (As of publish time, Harriot hasn't spoken publicly about such a conversation.)


“I reached out to the author and while naturally I think that some of the characterization of me personally is unfair, I do understand the concern,” Buttigieg mentioned. “What I mentioned in that comment before I became mayor does not resemble the totality of my understanding then, and definitely right now, about the obstacles that students of color face in our system today.”


He added: “I wanted to create ensure I communicated that I'm very conscious of the benefits and privileges that I have had, not through any wonderful wealth, however definitely education, by way of the benefits that come with being white and being male, and that's segment of why I know I've got to prepare myself useful as a candidate and as president.”


On Twitter, Buttigieg’s rapid response researcher Rodericka Applewhaite argued that visceral online reaction to a decades-old clip is harsh and may even potentially be misconstruing what Buttigieg was saying. She pointed to Buttigieg’s plan that would “put more teachers of color in more classrooms around the country.”


But the public reaction is also a reminder of how poorly Buttigieg is doing to draw in Black voters especially. Take South Carolina: It’s the opening Southern state to hold a presidential primary, and a Quinnipiac University poll noticed Buttigieg at 0 percent with Black voters in the state. Buttigieg only has six endorsements from current of former Black or Latinx elected officials, compared to former Vice President Joe Biden who has 154, Senator Bernie Sanders who has 91, and Senator Elizabeth Warren who has 43, according to the New York Times. Furthermore, according to the Times, no Democrat in modern history has ever won a presidential election — let alone the party’s nomination — without a majority of Black voters.


And at the fifth Democratic primary debate in Atlanta, Georgia, last Wednesday, Buttigieg pivoted from discussing the ways the Democratic party has undermined and undervalued Black females voters. “While I never have the experience of ever having been discriminated against due to the color of my skin, I do have the experience of some days feeling like a stranger in my own nation, turning on the news and seeing my own rights come up for debate,” he mentioned, referring to his own experience as a gay man. Senator Kamala Harris later called him out for conflating and comparing oppressions; Buttigieg has stood by what he calls “my sources of motivation and ensuring that I stand up for others.”