Mayor Pete Warns Against “Identity Politics” [VIDEO]

NBC News reports:

Pete Buttigieg sought to diffuse weeks of fraught questions about white privilege and his struggles attracting minorities to his campaign by calling out fellow Democrats on Saturday for playing “identity politics” and pitting one group’s grievances against another’s.

In a risky speech to the Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBT rights group, Buttigieg warned of a “crisis of belonging in this country,” arguing it was exacerbated by “so-called identity politics” that emphasize how one person hasn’t walked in another’s shoes — “something that is true, but it doesn’t get us very far.”

The New York Times reports:

“I may be part of the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But being a gay man doesn’t even tell me what it’s like to be a trans woman of color in that same community, let alone an undocumented mother of four or a disabled veteran or a displaced autoworker,” he said at the event.

Mr. Buttigieg recalled the experiences of several historically oppressed groups and the political movements that brought greater social and political equality, including Latino farm laborers, black civil rights activists and the early gay rights movement that grew out of the Stonewall rebellion in Greenwich Village.

He called for “the beginning of a new form of American solidarity” among people who understand that they live “in a society that sees us for what makes us all different.”

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:

Buttigieg touched on a wide range of progressive policy positions, including LGBTQ rights, reproductive health, labor unions, cybersecurity, climate change, big money in politics and gerrymandering. “We can’t let this election be about the president,” he said.

“Because if Americans see us spend all our time talking about him, they’ll be left with the question: ‘Who is talking about us?’”