Member-only story
Pete Buttigieg Is Not a Lying MF. He’s White America
Looking the other way won’t change what’s right in front of you.
Michael Harriot is a talented MF. The black writer for The Root went viral last week with a colorful headline that challenged a high-profile politician’s relationship with the truth — “Pete Buttigieg Is a Lying MF” — and the powerful essay that followed was loaded with explosive truth bombs. Boom!
It also earned Harriot a personal phone call from Buttigieg, the rising candidate for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2020 presidential election. The previous week, I received one from the A-list manager of an A-list superstar over an article I wrote for a major entertainment website.
Judging from “Pete Buttigieg Called Me. Here’s What Happened,” Harriot handled his phone call better than I did mine. Clearly he doesn’t have any trouble with the truth … at least not the truth as he sees it.
But the way I see it, Pete Buttigieg is not a lying MF. I think he actually believed what he said about education and minorities in 2011 when he was running for mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
As the gay son of black immigrants from St. Martin and Antigua, someone who grew up poor and worked my way up the proverbial ladder to achieve the American dream in New York…
