In an attempt to make an appeal to black voters, Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is preparing to acknowledge his white privilege and tout an economic proposal that seeks to deal with the lasting legacy of racial discrimination, Axios reported on Sunday.
In prepared remarks in Tulsa over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, Bloomberg is expected to acknowledge that “my [success] story might have turned out very differently if I had been black, and that more black Americans of my generation would have ended up with far more wealth, had they been white."
A Washington Post/Ipsos poll released earlier this month shows Bloomberg with only 4% support among African American voters in the Democratic primary.
This is particularly troubling, since no Democratic presidential candidate has captured the party's nomination without winning a majority of the black vote since 1992.
Bloomberg’s economic plan, called "the Greenwood Initiative," seeks to invest $70 billion over 10 years in 100 of the mostly non-white communities affected the worst by both economic and racial discrimination.
The plan would also create one million new African American homeowners, double the number of black-owned businesses and invest an initial $10 billion to create a Housing Fairness Commission.
However, Bloomberg faces significant difficulties in winning over black support due largely to his past backing as New York City mayor of stop-and-frisk policies, which the African American community derided as mainly targeting non-white men.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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