Buttigieg details plan targeting systemic racism

White House hopeful Pete Buttigieg on Thursday unveiled new details of a plan aimed at tackling “racist structures and systems,” promising to invest in policies to help African Americans.

Dubbed the Douglass Plan, after abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the policy would combat systemic inequalities by reforming health care, education, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and voting rights on a federal level.

{mosads}Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Ind., first outlined the plan a month ago in an op-ed for the Charleston Chronicle in South Carolina. 

Buttigieg’s campaign on Thursday said he would increase federal resources for historically black colleges and universities and other minority institutions by $25 billion, eliminate mandatory minimum sentences and set a goal of tripling black entrepreneurs within a decade.

Other parts of the plan, like abolishing the Electoral College and replacing it with a national popular vote, have already been publicized on the campaign trail.

Buttigieg’s campaign has struggled to garner support with African Americans. A CNN poll released last week found the mayor polling at zero percent with black voters nationally.

He faced backlash from his constituents for his response to the police shooting of Eric Logan, a black man, in South Bend last month. 

Buttigieg took time off from the campaign trail to deal with the fallout. 

Tensions erupted at a local town hall when black residents called out Buttigieg and Police Chief Scott Ruszkowski for what they said was South Bend’s systemic failure to deal with the city’s law enforcement.