CNN host W. Kamau Bell was among those who torched South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg over a resurfaced video from 2011 in which Buttigieg holds forth on the perceived value of education among “kids” from “lower income and minority neighborhoods.”

This weekend, a clip surfaced of Buttigieg speaking about education during the 2011 South Bend, Indiana mayoral race at a forum with other candidates.

After one of the other candidates mentioned mentoring, Buttigieg said “Of course because you know the kids need see evidence education gonna work for them, right? So you see a lot of parts of town where…”

“That’s part of the motivation,” the host interrupts.

“Yeah! Because you’re motivated because you believe that at the end of your educational process there’s a reward. There’s a stable life. There’s a job,” Buttigieg continued, then added that “there are a lot of kids, especially the lower income, minority neighborhoods, who literally haven’t seen it work, there isn’t someone they know personally, who testified to the value of education.”

“Kids” from “lower income, minority neighborhoods” don’t have “someone they know personally who testifies to the value of education.” – Pete Buttigieg, 2011 South Bend Mayoral Candidate #MayorPete #PeteForAmerica #Pete2020 #Buttigieg2020 #Buttigieg pic.twitter.com/sd1bZDLoG8 — Resist Programming 🛰 (@RzstProgramming) November 24, 2019

The clip racked up over a million views on Twitter, and sparked some sharp reactions. Several of them, including Bell’s, had to do with Mayor Pete’s already well-known problem attracting black voters.

“We’re about to find out how someone can get less than 0% of the Black vote,” Bell wrote.

We’re about to find out how someone can get less than 0% of the Black vote. https://t.co/UcPX4BPaE9 — W. Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) November 25, 2019

Pete is really angling to get his black support into the negatives https://t.co/wQD5gjoTP6 — 🕷Dante Atkins🕷 (@DanteAtkins) November 24, 2019

Many disagreed with the substance of Buttigieg’s remarks in fairly stark terms.

Complete bullshit. Lower income and minority families value education highly but access is a Thing. This applies to any country https://t.co/yFJecpIzYL — STEMLORD with Delusions of Grandeur (@upulie) November 25, 2019

How long will it take to realize that no matter how many languages this guy speaks (and badly, at that), he is clueless when it comes to the lives of real people in his OWN FUCKING CITY AND STATE, never mind the country writ large. Not only clueless, but blind to discrimination. https://t.co/VujyU29d8K — Jodi Jacobson (@jljacobson) November 24, 2019

This is how you know when a person has never actually stood shoulder to shoulder in this work alongside the people IN those lower income, minority neighborhoods Also, we NEVER hear this kind of moralizing about the “lower income, WHITE neighborhoods.” What is THEIR failure? https://t.co/czZc6G3SCI — Erika Nicole Kendall (@bgg2wl) November 24, 2019

Running for president is tough and many of us hv things we’ve once said that perhaps we wished we hadn’t. But this here? This soft bigotry, insidious, mainstream Dem Party mouthbreather stuff? This is a bad look, bro. https://t.co/gbRpkQAPXU — Khalid Salaam (@MrKhalidS) November 24, 2019

But perhaps the most blistering response came from The Root’s Michael Harriot, who penned a commentary — entitled “Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF” — that detailed Harriot’s own path to educational attainment, and pointed out the obstacles that the kids Mayor Pete was talking about face:

This is not a misunderstanding. This is not a misstatement. Pete Buttigieg went to the best educational institutions America has to offer and he—more than anyone on the goddamned planet—knows that everything he just said is a baldfaced lie. Majority-minority schools receive $23 billion less in funding than majority-white schools, according to a recent study by EdBuild. Black students in Indiana, the state where Buttigieg serves as mayor, and across the country, are disciplined more harshly than white students. But even though Buttigieg has never attended a school with more than 10 percent black students, he thinks he knows what’s stopping black kids from achieving their educational dreams. Apparently, it’s not the fact that the unemployment rate for black college graduates is twice as high as the unemployment rate for white grads. Black college graduates are paid 80 cents for every dollar a white person with the same education earns. White people leave college with lower debt and higher earnings. White kids get more resources, more advanced classes and have access to more technology. But Pete says it could all be solved with a vision-board.

Buttigieg campaign rapid response researcher Rodericka Applewhaite defended Buttigieg, casting his remarks as a call for greater diversity in the classroom.

Personally, Pete’s plan is vital. I grew up in town a fifth of the size of SB. Leaving our small town, for any opportunity, was something that was not a imaginable option for several minority students. My HS focused on kids with “promise”…which often fell on racial lines — Rodericka Applewhaite (@Rodericka17) November 24, 2019

Buttigieg is leading the polls in Iowa and is near the top in New Hampshire, but has thus far attracted very little support from black voters.

Watch the clip above, via @RzstProgramming.

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