Inside Pete Buttigieg's years-long, and often clumsy, quest to understand the black experience

[TexasTowelie]

By Robert Samuels The Washington Post


Renee Ferguson, a prominent black television journalist in Chicago, arrived outside the swanky office building with a videographer and her intern - a Harvard University sophomore named Peter Buttigieg.

In the summer of 2002, Ferguson had been reporting on an investigation about a sex offender working at a day care in the building's basement. The three wanted to capture undercover footage of the man on the job.

But when Ferguson tried to get into the building, a security guard turned her away. The videographer, who was also black, tried next. The security guard turned her away, too.

Then, Buttigieg gave it a shot. When he approached the door, the security guard let him in. Buttigieg secured footage that would help Ferguson win one of her seven Emmys, but what stayed with her most was the prejudice that she figured led the young, white intern to acquire access that two black reporters could not.

Read more: https://www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/inside-pete-buttigieg-s-years-long-and-often-clumsy-quest/article_771f9878-201a-11ea-afa7-5bb09d1d7eac.html

[Grave Dancers Union]

1. What am I missing?

Buttigieg did not have any authority over the guards. He helped boost her career --- he's not the one who turned her away.

He was just a fresh-faced 20-year-old intern at the time.

[BuffaloJackalope]

3. He didn't seem to learn anything from the incident.

[gopiscrap]

9. welcome to DU

[Blue_true]

16. He didn't see the systemic prejudice that even the most talented Blacks face daily,

he didn't see it therefore he didn't take it to heart as a change force.

BTW, your claim that he boosted her career is bollocks. She was already highly rated and there is no way that an intern would put together a better piece than an experienced reporter and her experienced videographer.

[PatrickforO]

2. Indiana's pretty red, for sure.

That headline seems kind of misleading, though. Buttigieg was just a kid at the time. Obviously the guard let him in because he's white, and that says something, but I'm not sure it says what the headline of the article says.

[caraher]

4. Read the article before commenting

The excerpt is not the story, it's a lead-in. The next few lines are more telling (albeit about a young Buttigieg):

"I think I understand what white privilege looks like," Ferguson recalled telling Buttigieg.

"I don't know if that's what's going on," he said.

"Yes, you do know," she said. "I couldn't get in, but you could. Think about how many times in your life that you've just been able to walk through doors and the rest of us got turned away."

The story shows both that he has come a long way from this youthful blindness yet still struggles to understand the racial dynamics of his own city (and elsewhere) - struggles that are perfectly ordinary... yet from a presidential candidate, the standard should be high.

[loyalsister]

7. It's the benefit of the doubt vs. the deficit of the doubt

It's very apparent in the primary. People are far more willing to give Pete, Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders, and Steyer the benefit of the doubt and respect their intentions while quickly abandoning Harris, Castro, and Booker at first mention of criticism of the white candidates or on the flip side, making any middle ground moves.

[frazzled]

5. I don't get it either

And yes, I did read the whole article.

So we’re talking about a college kid, a minor, who opts to take an internship with a black reporter from Chicago (as a star Harvard kid he probably could easily have gotten an internship at the New York Times or the Washington Post, but no, he chooses a local television investigative reporter in Chicago and then, such a privileged kid, lives with her family on the South Side, in Kenwood). How many white kids at age 19 or 20 fully understand their white privilege? Not many, I suspect, 17 years ago. Here was a kid learning, and the article uses it as a bomb to throw suggesting an inherent racism, or at least cluelessness.

And fast forward, he fires the black police chief after becoming mayor. Hmmm, our new African American mayor in Chicago just did the same thing, and brought in a white guy from L.A. Are we going to impute racist intentions to Lori Lightfoot?

These cherry-picked incidents seem intended to malign. But why aren’t the same kinds of articles aimed at candidates such as Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders? Why, for example, did a young Bernie Sanders opt to leave his adopted college city of Chicago and his native Brooklyn, both very diverse, to move to the tiny state of Vermont, one of the whitest states in the nation? Why was the young, and not so young (she was 47 before she saw the light and Changed her registration from solid Republican to Democrat), Warren so involved in corporate and conservative legal issues, as documented in her writings and corporate clients? And where is the evidence that she understood her white privilege?

I simply don’t understand the selective outrage at this young man. Until the press can equalize these kinds of stories across the various candidates, I’ll take them for what they are, mere hit pieces.

[TexasTowelie]

6. I think that nearly all of the candidates have had articles written about them that speak to their

character. Some articles will be described as vetting while others will be considered as hit pieces. It depends on the author of the article and the reader's interpretation of the material as to which bucket it is considered.

[cwydro]

8. Yeah, I think the title doesn't reflect the article.

I read it all, and I don’t think it’s a hit piece. It shows a young guy really grappling with the complexities of race in this country.

It seems those people of color who know him think he’s been doing his best to get a grip on the race issue. As far as “clumsy,” I think most of us white people can identify with that, but it really shouldn’t be in the headline of the article.

I like Buttigieg a lot; he and Warren are running neck and neck in my own personal opinion poll. I think the article shows what a thoughtful and intelligent man he is.

[caraher]

12. I agree that it's not a "hit piece"

The article, fairly I think, examines the public and less public record of his work in the context of race. It definitely shows learning and growth as well as room for improvement. This would be pretty typical for a white candidate (or "good" white people generally).

[cwydro]

13. That's what I saw too.

I’d give the post a rec except for the title of the article, which I’m quite sure will mislead people.

[appalachiablue]

15. If there's a general custom or particular regulation re staying

in the place where you went to college or grew up, a whole lot of people are in trouble including me.

--(wiki) A -back-to-the-land movement- is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life.
There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts. Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatists..
During World War II, when Great Britain faced a blockade by Nazi U-boats, a "Dig for Victory" campaign urged civilians to fight food shortages by growing vegetables on any available patch of land.

In the USA between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s there was a revived back-to-the-land movement, with substantial numbers migrating from cities to rural areas.. A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life. There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts.

Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatists...In the USA between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s there was a revived back-to-the-land movement, with substantial numbers migrating from cities to rural areas...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-the-land_movement

[msongs]

10. so she won an emmy thanks to pete's help. did she acknowledge him or share the emmy?

"Buttigieg secured footage that would help Ferguson win one of her seven Emmys..."

[redqueen]

11. Omg

[cwydro]

14. I think she said she's supporting his campaign.

But I read the article this morning, so I may have mis-remembered that.