Fresh on the heels of his foreign policy speech and along with an interview promoting the idea of scrapping the electoral college, Pete Buttigieg has also continued to publicize his agenda in the media by releasing a series of proposals aimed at improving racial equality in American Society.

For a while, the issues page of his website has outlined some general goals in regards to racial justice:

Create a commission to propose reparations policies for Black Americans and close the racial wealth gap

Invest in entrepreneurship and home ownership

Eliminate health disparities, including in maternal and infant health

Defend affirmative action and combat the opportunity gap

Protect and expand voting rights

Support self-determination of Indigenous populations

Redress inequality in our criminal justice system

Dismantle the prison-industrial complex to end the crisis of mass incarceration

But on Wednesday, in an op-ed in the Charleston Chronicle (complete with links to peer-reviewed research articles), he added some specifics to some of these general policy directions by focusing particularly on economics, incarceration rates, and voting access.

Citing disproportionately high Black unemployment, disproportionately low funding of non-White school districts, and research showing the negative impact implicit racism has on hiring practices, Buttigieg says he wants to:

increase the number of successful small businesses in Black communities by 50%, by reforming credit scoring, increasing access to credit and supporting long-term growth. Under my administration, the federal government will also almost triple its contracting business with minority-owned firms, from just over 9% to 25%. This single proposal could inject more than $100 billion in communities of color.

Citing disparities in the justice system, both in terms of the disproportionately high level of Black Americans in the prison system and in terms of total amount of incarceration in America overall compared to the rest of the world, Buttigieg says “we would be a safer and more just country if we did not harshly penalize the poor, or young people who’ve made missteps.”

Buttigieg proposes reducing sentencing disparities, working to better reintegrate people into society upon their release, and ending unnecessary and discriminatory incarceration, with the goal of reducing the prison population of this country by one half.

Lastly, he addresses the need for voting reform by citing the cynicism that many Americans feel about the political state of the federal government:

This cynicism is nowhere more warranted than in the Black community, where systematic efforts are taking away the right to vote. To counteract this troubling trend, we commit to advancing a 21st Century Voting Rights Act, to ensure that every vote is counted everywhere, particularly in communities with a history of discrimination. This means banning practices like voter ID laws and ensuring that potentially discriminatory changes to voting laws first be reviewed by the Department of Justice. We are not a true democracy if certain Americans are restricted from voting because one party has decided they would be better off if fewer people vote.

A common critique about the Buttigieg campaign is to point out his low support among African American voters. When he talks about cynicism in general by the Black community towards politics and politicians, he could well be referencing cynicism towards his own campaign. Only time and polls will tell how well this set of proposals (and he promises more in the coming weeks) ends up being received by different elements in the Black community and to the broader electorate, but Buttigieg seems be listening to and responding in good faith to the critiques from Black voters.