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Thanksgiving Honors Refugees Who Made a New Home in America. Trump's Policies Do the Opposite. |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=52350"><span class="small">Rep. Jimmy Gomez, NBC News</span></a>
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Thursday, 28 November 2019 08:00 |
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Gomez writes: "In 1620, a group of refugees, persecuted because of their religious faith, set forth from Plymouth, England, for the 'New World' - which was, of course, not so new to the Indigenous people living there."
The first Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. (photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
Thanksgiving Honors Refugees Who Made a New Home in America. Trump's Policies Do the Opposite.
By Rep. Jimmy Gomez, NBC News
28 November 19
Instead of welcoming asylum seekers with open arms, the president has posited that our country is full. He couldn't be more wrong.
 n 1620, a group of refugees, persecuted because of their religious faith, set forth from Plymouth, England, for the "New World" — which was, of course, not so new to the Indigenous people living there. Despite having no documented invitations from the inhabitants of the nations in which they intended to settle (and despite historical evidence that suggests the local people had already suffered greatly at the hands of previous newcomers), we are this week still celebrating the fact that the Wampanoag people welcomed those we now call Pilgrims to this land, and helped them adjust to living here.
But outside of their Thanksgiving tables, this administration is hardly paying homage to this most fundamental part of America's origin story: We are not just a nation of immigrants, but we also were founded by a group of refugees. Instead, President Donald Trump has declared that this country is full, particularly to more refugees.
He said it during a trip to the southern border in April, during a speech before the Republican Jewish Coalition this spring, in tweets to his 59.6 million followers, and in a rally in May. Doing so served two purposes: It was a rallying cry to solidify his base; and a declaration to refugees and asylum-seekers to stay away. And while it’s true our immigration system is strained — due in part to the president’s efforts to sabotage it — it’s a lie to say we can’t accommodate anyone else.
Nonetheless, the administration is going to extraordinary lengths to use policy to prop up this propaganda. Trump recently moved to drastically restrict the number of refugees our nation accepts, down to 18,000 in fiscal year 2020. It's the lowest number of refugees accepted since the program was established in 1980, 78 percent lower than the 85,000 cap set by President Barack Obama.
But our country isn’t “full”; our president is just full of it.
A declining birthrate combined with an aging population have helped slow U.S. population growth to levels not seen since the Great Depression. In fact, the U.S. doesn’t even break into the top 100 most densely populated countries worldwide, ranked only at 146 between Venezuela and Kyrgyzstan. But Trump’s comments about the U.S. being “full” clearly weren’t rooted in facts or data, but rather his own perception of American attitudes toward immigration.
Even then, the president is wrong.
While the president’s base supports his anti-immigrant agenda, a majority of Americans strongly disagree with both his radical perspective and the draconian tactics used by his administration. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found 75 percent of respondents believed immigration was good for the country. And a new Gallup poll on attitudes about Central American refugees revealed that 57 percent of Americans — with increased approval from Republicans and independents — support taking them in and making this country their home.
As a congressman, I’m all too familiar with the president’s penchant for dog whistle rhetoric and false assertions. And I try — in an effort to stay sane — not to take any of what he says to heart. But as a Latino representing the heart of Los Angeles, his comments about refugees and immigrants in general continue to strike a personal chord.
My parents, who once lived in a one-room adobe house in Mexico, came to the United States in search of opportunity. They both worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. My mother was a domestic worker by day and a nursing home laundry attendant at night and on weekends. My father was a bracero — a farmworker — and cooked at various restaurants across Southern California. They raised six children and helped put most of us through college.
I believe in America’s promise that if you come here, believe in our values, and contribute to our society, you can call this country your home. That promise was upheld for my sister, who was granted citizenship last year. It was upheld for my other siblings, who became educators and artists. And that promise was upheld for my parents, who gave their youngest the opportunity to go to school and eventually become a member of Congress.
I intend to help keep that promise for future generations.
The spirit of Trump’s assertion that our country is full — and that of remarks he’s previously made — have been echoed throughout the world by dictators of the past and far-right extremists of today. The phrase evokes images of hundreds of Jewish refugees murdered in concentration camps after their German ocean liner, the SS St. Louis, was turned away by the U.S. in 1939. It takes us back to 2014 when Nick Griffin, former leader of the British National Party — whose platform is “a complete halt to immigration” — declared “our country’s full, we’ll shut the door,” to those escaping unimaginable violence. And the president’s portrayal of immigration as an “invasion” reminds us of the hate-filled manifesto of the Australian man who executed 49 worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, after referring to Muslims as “invaders” who "seek to occupy my peoples lands.”
Contrary to the Trump administration’s efforts to brand them as such, refugees do not represent a threat to national security, nor are they drains on our country’s social safety net programs. Not only are they the most intensively vetted population to enter the U.S., subjected to years of security screenings including thorough interviews, background checks and biometric data collection, but they also help grow our local and national economies and fill critical gaps in our labor market. You’d think someone who touts himself as a businessman would appreciate the fact that nearly half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by refugees, immigrants or their children — but that would obviously undermine the false narratives he used to propel him into the White House.
Clearly, policy matters, particularly when you’re the president, but the words used to promote such policy can often be just as important. The rhetoric of our leaders should remind us of our shared values — justice, tolerance and empathy — that make the U.S. a beacon of hope around the world.
Whether Trump likes it or not, refugees were here at the start of the American experiment and have inextricably woven themselves into the tapestry of this country. And, for that, I am truly thankful.
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What We Did Friday Night, if You Want to Know |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=47905"><span class="small">Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website</span></a>
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Wednesday, 27 November 2019 14:23 |
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Keillor writes: "Friday was a dark day though we didn't talk about it because we had dinner with two young newlyweds and a friend who recently lost her husband, so we kept it light, nonetheless I could see the motorcade coming around the corner, the motorcycle cops, the woman in the pink suit, but there was no need to go there."
Garrison Keillor. (photo: MPR)
What We Did Friday Night, if You Want to Know
By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
27 November 19
 riday was a dark day though we didn’t talk about it because we had dinner with two young newlyweds and a friend who recently lost her husband, so we kept it light, nonetheless I could see the motorcade coming around the corner, the motorcycle cops, the woman in the pink suit, but there was no need to go there.
It was a happy dinner party. The young wife is French and we got talking about American colloquialisms and she was fascinated by “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” and “easy as pie” for which she offered “mettre les doigts dans le nez,” (sticking fingers up the nose), meaning: no big deal, nothing to brag about. Or “pisser dans un violon” (urinating in a violin), which means something similar. She was quite struck by “up fecal creek without a paddle” and “defecate or get off the pot.” And she was rather taken aback by “brown nose.”
Our friend Ellie is fluent in French and her husband, Ira, who died, was a retired judge who had married the young couple in our apartment so the French woman could get her green card. It was his last official act so they are sort of a memorial to him. I had had dinner with him and Ellie two days before he died. He was in poor health but good spirits and he managed to grill the steaks under the broiler and enjoy a glass of wine and keep up his end of the conversation. He was a joyful man and was very much with us Friday night and we didn’t need to talk about him. We just tossed idioms back and forth.
The young French woman understood “icing on the cake” (though the French would put a cherry on it) and “you can’t tell a book by its cover — the French would say “L’habit ne fait pas le moine” (the cassock does not make a monk) — but she was puzzled by “the birds and the bees” and “wash your mouth out with soap” and then her American husband said that his grandma had actually done it. “No!” we cried. “Yes!” he said. “I was smarting off and she told me to stick out my tongue and she scrubbed it with soap.”
It was a lively cultural exchange and so much fun, we served two desserts, some light French pastries and then apple pie, which nothing is more American than.
I didn’t mention 1963 though the day is clear in my mind. I was 21, walking across the University of Minnesota campus, and a man ran by saying something weird about the president, and I went in the back door of Eddy Hall where KUOM had an AP teletype and there it was, clattering away, typing bulletins in incomplete sentences. He was dead in Dallas.
It was a visceral tragedy, a graceful young leader and war hero picked off by a sniper in public view, and it hit everyone hard, a kick in the solar plexus. In the years since, despite a truckload of books about him and November 22, the day makes no sense. It’s a boulder that fell out of the sky. Like 9/11. Two days after that boulder fell, Ellie and Ira and I went down to Greenwich Village for supper. The air was full of dust from the towers and trucks roared past carrying debris, and we never spoke of the catastrophe or death, we talked about travel and children, everything other than the catastrophe downtown. All around us we saw New Yorkers doing the same thing. An act of resistance, to go about your business as if the obscene violence had not occurred.
The beauty of Friday night was the presence of the young that closes the door to the vast ghostly galleries of the past, particularly the parts that make no sense. They are water under the bridge. Brooding accomplishes nothing: you may as well stick your finger up your nose. So we talked about Thanksgiving. The young French wife is looking forward to her husband making turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. They’re happy as two peas in a pod. Long ago, we got kicked in the stomach. Why bring it up now and rain on their parade and be a wet blanket? That’s putting the cart before the horse. So I didn’t. But you are remembered, President Kennedy. Still waters run deep.
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Incarcerated People Can Do More Than Beat Harvard in a Debate |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=48731"><span class="small">Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Wednesday, 27 November 2019 14:23 |
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Smith writes: "When you watch College Behind Bars, which began last night on PBS and concludes tonight, or any other documentary like it, please don't say that it 'humanizes' the people who are photographed. Because they're people."
Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) students conjugate Spanish verbs at Eastern New York Correctional Facility. (photo: Skiff Mountain Films)
Incarcerated People Can Do More Than Beat Harvard in a Debate
By Jamil Smith, Rolling Stone
27 November 19
“College Behind Bars,” a new PBS documentary executive-produced by Ken Burns, shines a light on a program that every major university in America should be sponsoring
 hen you watch College Behind Bars, which began last night on PBS and concludes tonight, or any other documentary like it, please don’t say that it “humanizes” the people who are photographed. Because they’re people. Our society teaches us to consider folks like Dyjuan Tatro and Giovannie Hernandez, two of the film’s subjects, to be numbers or vermin or somehow less than us when they’re locked up, and they are considered to be little more than the property of a state or federal prison. But we have to remember that is a judgment that someone, or a system, has put upon them.
Also, we should remember that they’ll likely get out one day. What then?
“Ninety-five percent of people who are incarcerated will eventually get out,” Ken Burns, the executive producer of the documentary, told Rolling Stone. “And the question is, do we want them as contributing members of society, or do we want them having used prison as a different kind of school to hone criminal skills? If you’re spending $100 billion a year to maintain our prison system and it has a 75 percent recidivism rate, something is broken.”
This is the question that the four-part film examines with a critical eye. Directed by Lynn Novick and produced by Sarah Botstein, College Behind Bars profiles the Bard Prison Initiative, a Bard College program that extends its curriculum and has awarded nearly 550 full degrees thus far to matriculated students in six New York State prisons.
“It was an enormous privilege to work on a film that was living, breathing American social history,” said Botstein. “The politics changed so drastically in the five years that we were filming and editing. When we started, people kind of would shrug and kind of lean in a little bit when we said we wanted to make a film about higher education in prison. And by the time we locked picture, everybody was really excited that we had.”
The hyper-awareness of issues revolving around incarceration, education, and race did not merely manifest on the outside. “You know, a lot of times, when we don’t have access to things we decide that they are not for us,” Tatro told me in a phone interview. He added that he had spent his entire life thinking he’d never go to college. “The opportunity was there for me to even dream of this possibility. Seeing black men, Latino men, men like me who came from the types of neighborhoods and went through the same types of bad schools that I did speaking Mandarin, doing higher-level mathematics, sitting down and having these complex political discussions — that, even before the coursework, had a really profound effect on my sense of identity.”
Tatro entered prison at the end of his teenage years and felt that he applied to BPI, one year into his 12-year sentence, because he had “nothing else better to do.” He would go on to become a member of the Bard debate team that defeated Harvard in a well-publicized 2015 matchup and is now working for BPI as a government-affairs and advancement officer.
“Even before [I took part in] the classes, the existence of Bard College in that space allowed me to reimagine what I was capable of and to think of myself as a college student,” Tatro said.
My mother has a saying that she has repeated to me in trying times: If the train doesn’t stop at your station, it isn’t your train. It is meant to convey that not every job, or person, is meant for you. But what if you never know that your train exists? Our carceral state, one that prioritizes punishment over the actual correction that the facilities promise, is the America we continue to build. That’s why it is so urgent that Bard Prison Initiatives become the rule, not the exception.
“When Thomas Jefferson said, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ he wasn’t after material things in a marketplace of objects. He was after lifelong learning,” Burns said to me when we spoke. “I think what College Behind Bars suggests is the power of education.”
Neither Burns nor I have a stake, as this society of ours does, in the dehumanization of people end up incarcerated. The millions sunk into a failing prison system are more like an investment, maintaining a status quo that rots the very notion of a fair and just America but at least makes the elite feel like the heroes of their own story. Those who profit from every loophole that benefits the wealthy, white, and privileged may not want to see someone like Giovannie Hernandez coming out of prison after nearly 12 years with a degree and ready to make America more equitable.
The work BPI does is also a strike against recidivism. These people are less likely to go back to jail or prison. We know that there are elites who either enjoy looking down on folks or who actually benefit financially from people going to prison. Studies and experience have been proven that increasing opportunities for prison education reduces crime, helps communities thrive, and boosts the economy. Those of us without private prison stock should all want fewer people incarcerated and more education for those who are. Instead, we’ve seen states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia either seek (unsuccessfully, after protest) to block book donations from the public or charge those who are locked up egregious amounts to use e-readers.
But doesn’t it lift us all to see these folks come out of prison not just with more skills and more education, but with more hope? It is hardly a spoiler to tell you that a documentary like this ends with a graduation, and the overriding emotion that both the graduates and the audience are left with: hope. What you see at the end is a testament to the power of education, and why it remains such a dangerous and underrated weapon against a racially and economically unjust status quo in this nation.
When I spoke to Hernandez, he told me that he didn’t really have hope in prison before the Bard program entered his life. “I felt that I had to carry myself in a manner like I couldn’t care too much,” he said to me. “It was a defense mechanism. But Bard made me care about something. It gave me a way to figure it out.”
Now a Bard graduate and a case manager for the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, Hernandez wrote an op-ed in USA TODAY in which he described his education as “emerging from Plato’s cave.” He told me that Novick, the director, found his story particularly moving.
“At the very beginning of the film, Giovannie talked about the person who encouraged him to apply to BPI,” Novick said. “The single kindest, most loving thing anyone had ever done for him was to force him to apply to the program. I think there’s just this sense of untapped potential that has been languishing, for lack of a better word, and neglected in our society — particularly in communities of color and other underserved communities where there’s generations of people who have ended up incarcerated and been exposed to subpar education.”
That is why the experience of watching College Behind Bars is, as Novick describes the process of making it, so inspiring and heartbreaking. She, an alumna of Yale, and I, who went to Penn, lamented that universities like those were sitting on multibillion-dollar endowments and didn’t have programs like Bard’s.
“These places,” Novick says of places like our Ivy League alma maters, “are just hoarding privilege and just sustaining and perpetuating inequality.” Novick noted that Yale did have a prison program this year that used a grant from BPI — ”because they didn’t want to put their own resources into it, if you can imagine” — that was very successful, proving that elite universities should be looking to prisons not merely to be charitable and to contribute to society, but to remain competitive. “If you, Fancy College, pride yourself on being the place where the most brilliant students develop their potential, you are missing out on an extraordinary talent pool.”
And if these institutions can’t just do it for their own benefit, perhaps they’ll understand — as Bard College clearly has — that it is part of their mission to help everyone realize their own humanity. If anyone is watching, I hope that some of my fellow classmates and the administrators at universities like Penn are watching College Behind Bars. The people who hold the purse strings, the professors who love to signify their positivity online and in their published work, and those students and alumni looking to make a difference: This is your chance. If your college or university won’t use its endowment or solicit donations to establish such a program and share its prestige, find one that will. Every state, every locality, every prison should be educating those who are incarcerated. You see the blueprint. Follow it.
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FOCUS: Pete Buttigieg Called Me. Here's What Happened |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44501"><span class="small">Michael Harriot, The Root</span></a>
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Wednesday, 27 November 2019 13:09 |
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Harriot writes: "The first thing you should know about me is that I absolutely hate talking on the phone."
Pete Buttigieg. (photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Pete Buttigieg Called Me. Here's What Happened
By Michael Harriot, The Root
27 November 19
 he first thing you should know about me is that I absolutely hate talking on the phone.
My friends, family and co-workers all know this about me. It’s not the talking that bothers me, it’s the anticipation angst from waiting for a phone call. Therapy and self-reflection have informed me that my subconscious anxiety is fueled by the fact that I’ve received news of personal and family tragedies via telephone.
Also, talking bothers me.
The second thing you should know about me is that I will fight.
I don’t enjoy fighting. I don’t even fight very well. In fact, if I combined my amateur fist-fighting record, my jiu-jitsu sparring, all of my slap-boxing exhibitions, and the time Zevalon Jackson slapped me for talking smack while running a Boston on her in spades, my winning percentage is well below .500. But I believe fisticuffs are a legitimate way to settle disputes while arguments are usually pointless exercises to get one party to proclaim why the other party is wrong. I’d rather you beat me up.
So when I received a text message from South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign about an article I wrote, I genuinely hoped that he was going to send four or five of his thugs over to rough me up and that would be it. (And if you don’t believe there are Pete Buttigieg supporters out there willing to throw hands, then you probably aren’t on Twitter. I think they should call themselves the “Pete Patrol.” Or the “Buttigang.”)
I figured one of his surrogates would argue with me for a few minutes and I could continue my day trying to be a thorn in the side of white supremacy (The third thing you should know is that I actually keep a small photo of the mouse from Pinky and the Brain beside my bed that says: “What are you going to do today, Michael?” The answer is always the same: “Fuck with white people.”)
Luckily, as soon as I agreed to take a phone call, the phone rang. The voice sounded vaguely familiar and I knew it wasn’t a surrogate or a campaign volunteer when the person said:
“I don’t think I’ve ever been called a ‘lying motherfucker’ before.”
It was Pete Buttigieg.
Well, I thought. Maybe he does want to fight.
Dee is not my friend.
He is my first cousin’s best friend. He is my best friend’s first cousin. He is quieter than me, tougher than me and spent time in prison. He is now a regular, middle-class father with children in college. I’ve known him all my life because we are the same age and walked to school together every day during our elementary years. Dee was not in my classes because I was sequestered away from the black students and took classes with the “smart kids.” The white kids. Honestly, all I really remember about Dee as a kid is that he said he was going to be a lawyer once when we were walking home from school.
A few weeks ago, while visiting South Carolina, Dee and I had the most meaningful conversation that we’ve ever had in the 35-plus years we’ve known each other. I couldn’t help but think to myself how intelligent, informed, how sensitive a person he was. We talked about politics, raising children and generational trauma. He spoke about being raised by parents who had to work multiple jobs to stay in what we call the lower-middle class, which often left him to fend for himself.
As we walked down memory lane, meandering through our adjacent childhoods, Dee recounted a story that has apparently stuck with him to this day. According to Dee, he came by my house one afternoon to play with my cousin while we were finishing dinner. As he watched through the screen door, my mother offered him some dinner, which he declined. She insisted, and he relented.
“Mikey, that food was so good,” he said. “And I was hungry as fuck.”
Then he reached the memorable part of the story. I have no recollection of these events but it sounded accurate. I know he was sharing an indelible memory because he told the anecdote with such amazement and wonder.
Dee says he distinctly remembers that everyone in the house—my sisters, my cousins, my aunt and my mom—sitting around the dinner table when I asked permission to go outside. My mother asked me if I had done my homework and, when I confirmed that I had, just before I exited the screen door, I said: “Thanks ma, that was really good!”
That’s it.
That’s the story.
Pete Buttigieg didn’t want to tell me his side of the story. He didn’t excuse himself by explaining that the comments referenced by the article were made years ago. He didn’t even try to explain his plan for black America.
“I think the context was important, especially the fact that it was before I took office,” Buttigieg said.
But mostly, he just wanted to listen.
For 18 minutes and 45 seconds, we talked about educational inequality, poverty and institutional racism in America and how to fix it.
OK...I’m lying.
I don’t know how to fix shit. As I explained to the presidential candidate (for some reason, I had to refrain from reflexively calling him “Mr. President”), my problem with his comments was not that they were wrong, it’s that he knows they were wrong.
“We have to disabuse ourselves from the notion that the problem with educational inequality is because of an esoteric lack of support,” I explained. “That’s a lie. And a man as educated as yourself knows it’s a lie. And to regurgitate that narrative publicly is not just dangerous, it is malpractice.”
I conceded that the problems with institutional racism are so complex and go back so far that I’m not sure that anyone—a mayor, a governor or even a president—could fix them. Buttigieg, however, insisted that there are some things that people in power could do to make things more equal, a point I actually agreed with.
“I do think there are some ways to attack these issues with policies that might solve these issues, but would certainly help.” he said.
“But do you disagree with the point I was making?” Mayor Buttigieg asked, listing a few programs designed to alleviate this specific problem. “Sometimes children don’t get to see the possibilities. Do you think the lack of positive examples of educational success can lead to mistrust and a lack of confidence in the system?”
“No...well, yes,” I answered. “But the lack of confidence doesn’t have anything to do with role models or support from parents, it’s because the shit is true!”
Look, I know I shouldn’t be using obscenities around the maybe-president (Please don’t tell my mother), but he said “motherfucker” first! Plus, he went to Catholic school and served in the Navy, two of the three cussing-est organizations in the world (Donald Trump’s cabinet remains No. 1). I’m pretty sure you have to say “motherfucker” to pass the Naval officers’ exam.
“Every study and data point shows that racism is baked into the education system,” I explained. “If your goal was to fix the problems in America’s schools, why would you even mention ‘confidence?’ A president can’t fix confidence. And you can’t say: ‘Black kids don’t have confidence in the system’ without pointing out all of the reasons they shouldn’t have confidence in the system.”
I told Buttigieg I actually watched the entire 58-minute interview before writing the article and pointed out that it was infuriating to watch four white men talk about what was broken in the black community without acknowledging who broke it and who refuses to fix it. I specifically noted the gentleman who spoke about a program that teaches 40 basic “building blocks” (honesty, integrity, parental support, role models, etc.) to make healthy adults and keep kids off the street.
Buttigieg agreed that the insipid “family values” argument has no place in political discussions because, as I noted, it infers that black parents don’t know the importance of a healthy family structure. However, the issues that cause those problems are rooted in poverty, inequality and America’s history of racism.
“It’s not like black parents wake up in the morning and say: I’mma just withhold my support and teach my kids about dishonesty and see what happens,” I explained. “No one knows the value of a two-parent home more than a single mother.”
So why is this important to black voters?
“Here’s why black voters support black candidates,” I said. “When you go into a room and sit around a table of white men, we are worried that this is what will happen; that a roomful of white people will talk about role models and confidence and crime and no one in the room will say: ‘Hold up, we can’t talk about any of this without talking about racism. We can’t talk about education without talking about discrimination.’ That is our fear.”
I have a friend named Greg. Greg is a white man.
I’ve known him since I was a teenager and he is probably reading this right now. He is probably the last white person I’ve had a long conversation on the phone with before Mayor Pete called me (Trust me, 18 minutes is an eternity for me). Greg and I became friends because he was in all of the “smart” classes with me. I’ve always found it remarkable how unremarkable he is. He’s sufficiently smart and adequately talented, but not more than Dee or any one of more than a dozen of my black friends I went to school with whose dream was to become a lawyer. Unlike any of my black friends, Greg eventually became a lawyer. Like his father. Like his grandfather.
Sometimes, Greg would come pick me up from my black-ass home in my black-ass neighborhood. He never seemed nervous about coming to my home but he has never eaten a meal with my family and probably couldn’t tell you the names of my sisters or maybe even my mother. To be fair, I don’t know his mother’s name either.
Yesterday, after reading the article about Pete Buttigieg, Greg texted that he never thought of me as “poor.”
“Well, I was,” I replied, before asking: “Never?”
He did not answer right away. You would have to understand the relationship between Greg and I to know this is not an unusual conversation. I literally have a signed piece of paper in my wallet that I present to racists acknowledging that I do indeed have a white friend.
“Trust me. I thought you were the richest person in the whole world,” I typed, before asking once more: “Never?”
“Well,” he replied. “There was that raggedy screen door.”
That’s it.
That’s the story.
Pete Buttigieg is a white man.
I didn’t say it like that. I told him he was obviously intelligent. I told him he was lucky to have all the privileges he was afforded. I told him that it was clear that he was hard-working.
“But,” I said. “You are a white man.”
“A mediocre white kid with mediocre intelligence and mediocre parents can easily make it in America,” I explained, blackly. “A smart black kid with smart parents and a supportive community still has to fight every day to hope to reach the levels of what a mediocre white man accomplishes. And, odds are, they still might not make it.”
He is not the perfect candidate nor will there be one. But this does not mean the Democratic Party is divided. The entire point of the primary process is for voters to dictate their concerns to the candidates and for candidates to learn from voters. Black America wants their party to emerge victorious but not if we have to offer our votes as a living sacrifice for the sake of “party unity.” What good is a white savior if he doesn’t save us?
And, as I told the mayor, the article wasn’t meant to inspire outrage. Its purpose was to make a necessary point about black voters and real issues. There is no way that I can know if he is genuinely interested in engaging black voters, attacking discrimination or crossing the racial divide. There are an infinite number of candidates who have waded into black barbershops or sashayed into black pulpits to assure us that they were on our side when they were only interested in our vote. I am not smart or prescient enough to tell the difference.
The only thing I actually know about Pete Buttigieg is that he is a white man.
But Pete Buttigieg listened, which is all you can ask a white man to do.
Unless, of course, he wants to fight.
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