Pete Buttigieg to Black Voters: ‘I Do Not Have That Lived Experience’

NORTH CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg reached out Monday to black voters ahead of Saturday’s crucial primary, the “First in the South.”

Buttigieg spoke about the need to win the “trust” of African American voters in a state where they constitute a majority of the Democratic Party primary electorate.

He said:

Another thing that has been humbling is the knowledge of the lived experience that I don’t have. I do not have the experience of going in for treatment in an emergency, as so many black women do, and having my description of being in pain les likely tone taken seriously just because of my race. That experience is being played out in hospitals and doctors’ offices across the country, and as a consequence, black women are three times as likely to lose their lives during complications related to childbirth. I do not have the experience of having to sit down with a teenage son and having to have “the talk” about what to do if you get pulled over. Or the experience of my hands tightening on the wheel when I see red and blue lights, fearing for my life, rather than just wondering how much the ticket is going to be. I do not have the everyday experience of walking down the street, or thorough a shopping mall, and having eyes on me, judging me to be dangerous, for no other reason than the color of my skin. I do not have that lived experience and I recognize that I don’t. And so the next best thing that I can offer, the thing that I am determined to do, is to listen to those who have. To show up, to seek to understand, and to assure that those voices are elevated in our campaign, and will be elevated in our administration.

Buttigieg promised that the issue “racial justice” would be a top tier issue in his presidency.

The candidates will debate on Tuesday evening, and the vote happens Saturday. Buttigieg is fighting to finish in the top three in a state where he has not yet done well in polls among black voters.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.