The Root: Andrew Yang’s ‘Freedom Dividend’ Catching On with ‘a Lot of Black Folks’

Entrepreneur and presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s flagship “Freedom Dividend” proposal is reportedly catching on “with a lot of black folks,” according to The Root’s “2020 Presidential Black Power Rankings” released on Monday.

“Yang’s universal basic income plan, which would pay every American $1,000 a month, has really caught on with a lot of black folks who the committee has been hearing from,” Jason Johnson, the site’s political editor, wrote while describing Yang’s appeal in this week’s power rankings. “But it’s not just that; his focus on protecting workers from a dystopian future where robots take all our jobs, from farming to trucking and even paralegals, taps into a very real fear that working-class black folks have about future job security.”

After the last presidential debate in Flint, Michigan, The Root’s Terrell Starr declared Yang the the “clear winner” and a “formidable candidate” for speaking about issues relevant to black Americans:

Andrew Yang won.

The Yang Gang should be very happy today, as Yang won the hearts of Flint, Mich., last night and is proving to be a formidable candidate as the number of people running for president will surely dwindle in the coming months. What won the debate for him was his plans to fix the working economy and discussing, in very practical terms, why employers are challenged with offering healthcare benefits and how the current system plays a role in hampering their efforts in doing so. As a business owner, Yang could break that down in ways other candidates could not. He talked about how his wife asked about healthcare when they discussed his run for president and how her labor as a stay-at-home-mom is not valued in our current economy. That resonates in Detroit.

He actually said the words “Detroit” and “Flint” like, you know, he was in Detroit and just an hour away from Flint. I was very shocked at how disconnected most of the candidates were from the people of Detroit.

(Well, actually, I wasn’t.)

Anyway, Yang was very in tune with Detroit and came out on top. Clear winner.

Yang has been arguing that the “Freedom Dividend” will be the first step to bridging the black-white “wealth gap.”