#BloombergIsARacist Trends the Same Week the Billionaire Spends 3.5 Million With Black Media
By Edrea Davis – Just when I was beginning to consider Mike Bloomberg seriously as an option if Vice President Joe Biden flunks, #BloombergIsRacist began trending on social media linking to very questionable audio of Bloomberg defending his stop and frisk policies. Later in the day I received an article about the presidential candidate doing something no other candidates have done in the past no matter how much they talked about reaching out the most loyal base of the Democratic Party, Black voters. According to the article written by Hazel Trice Edney and Hamil Harris, Bloomberg has spent a historic $3.5 million with Black newspapers this week.
According to Dr. Benjamin Chavis, president and CEO of National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)
“Of all the presidential candidates in the 2020 election, Mike Bloomberg just made the largest single political ad buy in the history of the NNPA. The money has already been distributed and it’s running in our newspapers right now.”
Chavis continues,
“It’s a national ad buy and over 129 of our newspapers will benefit from that. What it shows is that the Bloomberg campaign is taking the Black vote seriously and it’s taking the Black Press seriously.”
It’s very important for candidates to put their money where their mouth is. However, one thing every person with the least bit of integrity has learned from Donald Trump’s presidency is that just because someone does a few things that are in your interest, doesn’t mean you give them a pass on being racist, sexist, xenophobic or a bully.
I listened to the audio and video of Bloomberg and it really made him sound bad. Much of what he said was true. The majority of crimes happen in minority communities (we know the reason). The part I had a problem with was his admission that a consequence of his policy enacted to get guns off the streets of NYC was locking up Blacks and Latinos for marijuana. He nonchalantly made the point that they were getting locked up for those minor crimes because all the police were in their neighborhoods.
I would like to have heard him say the policy should have allowed the police to frisk for guns only. Then the logic of being in the areas where gun violence was the biggest problems makes sense. They could have treated stop and frisk like a search warrant looking for a flat screen TV – you can’t look in the knife drawer or refrigerator because a TV can’t fit inside. With stop and frisk they could have allowed the police to pat people down but not go in their pockets.
But, in my opinion, if they’re stopping and frisking for more than guns the logic of being in the Black and Latino neighborhoods doesn’t make since because White people use and sell just as much or more drugs.
I am not disqualifying Bloomberg yet. I would like to see how he responds to this very negative reporting. Here’s some of the reasons I’m considering him:
I still think Joe Biden would be the best man to heal the country and make the rest of the world feel secure. If Bloomberg is able to make sense of his previous comments he would likely be my plan B.
Click here to read “With No Clear Front-runner, Bloomberg Spends $3.5 Million With the Black Press” by Hazel Trice Edney and Hamil Harris at TriceEdneyWire.com.