Stereotyping black and Latino males on video wasn’t all Bloomberg was doing | Opinion
As his star rises, old videos of Michael Bloomberg are being unearthed to vet — and also to discredit and destroy — his candidacy for the presidency.
There’s Bloomberg’s support for stop-and-frisk policies he inherited from Rudy Giuliani that led to racial profiling of young blacks and Latinos.
There’s his simplistic, insulting definition of farming during a speech at Oxford University.
And now, there’s a video in which he seems to stereotype black and Latino males in the workplace. It’s circulating as Bloomberg prepares to participate in his first debate, in Nevada on Wednesday, after coming in second in a new national poll after Bernie Sanders.
But, is Bloomberg offending minorities or clumsily giving his interviewer background for a costly jobs program?
“There’s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males aged, let’s say, 16 to 25 that don’t have jobs, don’t have any prospects, don’t know how to find jobs, don’t know that the — what their skill sets are, don’t know how to behave in the workplace, where they have to work collaboratively and collectively,” Bloomberg says.
On face value, Bloomberg’s words sound damning.
He seems to be generalizing about blacks and Latino males in the worst kind of way, with loaded language like “cohort,” even if it is true that young African-American and Latino males have the highest unemployment rates in the country.
But the soundbite was taken out of context — and that makes a big difference.
The billionaire and former New York City mayor was actually promoting his Young Men’s Initiative, a $127 million multifaceted program (of which he contributed $30 million from his pocket) to help minorities gain employment — and it’s clear he was trying to describe the need in this interview with “PBS NewsHour.”
Context matters. Intention matters. Facts matter.
At the national level, black unemployment is twice as high as white unemployment, followed by that of Hispanics.
Certainly, what Bloomberg said is nowhere near as worthy of condemnation as President Donald Trump’s crass and racist statements, to give one example, that black and brown immigrants come from s---hole countries and that he’d rather have Norwegians, predominantly white, at his doorstep.
Or, that Mexicans are rapists and criminals. Or, Trump pointing to a black man in a sea of white supporters and mockingly saying, “look at my African American over here.”
No, Bloomberg is not laughing at us or blasting our heritage. He was drawing from statistics.
Compared to Trump, who has denigrated the office of the president and Constitution in shocking ways, Bloomberg’s controversial comments are more clumsiness than anything else.
In a contest between him and Trump, they don’t matter one bit.
Yet, it’s interesting to see how both Republican party operatives who are dying for Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee so they can crush him in places like Florida — and Democratic supporters of the early front-runner — are crucifying Bloomberg with equal vehemence.
Should Democrats be spitting in their own soup like that when Bloomberg has begun to poll in second place behind Sanders in a credible NPR poll?
The National Republican Congressional Committee is rooting for Sanders, whose “socialist” vibe can really hurt down ballot Democrats in their districts.
Behold the email regional chatty spokeswoman Camille Gallo sent out, tweeted and posted on the organization’s website, taking a swipe at Congresswoman Donna Shalala of Miami, up for re-election in 2020, for not supporting Sanders:
“Hi there-
“Donna Shalala is really panicked at the thought of having to own Bernie Sanders’ socialist agenda. Now that Bernie is the front-runner, she’s declared, ‘He’s not going to be the nominee.’ But unfortunately for Shalala, her party doesn’t get to rig the nomination and her far-left base doesn’t want DC politicians telling them how to vote.”
She signs the note: #FeeltheBern
Memo to Gallo: Shalala, a centrist who served in the Clinton administration, doesn’t have a “far left base.” She does, however, have Republicans who respect her and will probably vote for her again. Particularly, because she fought to get Venezuelans the protection from deportation that Republicans blocked in the Senate.
Is Bloomberg our guy in Florida?
Most likely is what I hear.
And a real self-made billionaire is the last thing Republicans want to see on the November ballot.
