NPR reports:
South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg got a really big boost to his campaign recently, announcing a staggering $24.8 million fundraising haul over the past three months. But that hasn’t changed one of the toughest realities his candidacy faces: support among black voters that barely registers in the polls.
Countering skeptics who doubt he can win crucial African American voters in the 2020 Democratic primary, Buttigieg rolled out the details of his plan to combat systemic racial inequality, named for legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass, on NPR’s Morning Edition.
“If you’re a white candidate, it is twice as important for you to be talking about racial inequity and not just describing the problem — which is fashionable in politics — but actually talking about what we’re going to do about it and describing the outcomes we’re trying to solve for,” Buttigieg told NPR.
The Douglass Plan proposes an increase in federal resources for students at Title I schools that would support supplemental services for low-income students and raise teacher pay and calls for the implementing of a health care policy grounded in anti-racism by creating a “National Health Equity Strategy” to focus on black Americans in health systems.
Buttigieg also proposes eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and abolishing private prisons at the federal level.
Hopefully this will help Buttigieg ‘s polling numbers with black Americans and prove that problems he has within that community has to do with racial recognition and not homophobia.
