Bloomberg in 2011: Black, Latino Males ‘Don’t Know How to Behave in the Workplace’
I don’t agree with being politically correct, but PHRASING!
2020 Democratic presidential hopeful former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s past remarks keep resurfacing to haunt him.
The latest appeared in a PBS interview when he asserted that black and Latino males “don’t know how to behave in the workplace.”
PBS interviewed Bloomberg about Open Society Foundations, an initiative “to enhance employment among minorities.”
The idea sounds great and in all honesty, Bloomberg’s comments had some truth to it. But his phrasing was all off.
From Fox News (emphasis mine):
Speaking to PBS in the 2011 interview, Bloomberg noted that he had donated $30 million from his foundation to Open Society Foundations, the network established by liberal billionaire financier Goerge Soros, toward the new plan to enhance employment among minorities.
Taxpayers and Soros himself contributed to the jobs initiative, which set up job recruitment centers in public housing projects, placed probation centers in “high-risk” areas, and linked black and Latino success in schools to Department of Education “progress reports.”
“Well, for a long time, people have said there’s nothing you can do about it, but blacks and Latinos score terribly in school testing compared to whites and Asians. If you look at our jails, it’s predominantly minorities,” Bloomberg said in the interview.
He added: “If you look at where crime takes place, it’s in minority neighborhoods. If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it’s virtually all minorities. This is something that has gone on for a long time. I assume it’s prevalent elsewhere but it’s certainly true in New York City. And for many, many years, people said there’s just nothing you can do about it.”
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“Nevertheless, there’s this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let’s say, 16 to 25,” Bloomberg said, “that don’t have jobs, don’t have any prospects, don’t know how to find jobs, don’t know what their skill sets are, don’t know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”
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“There will be jobs, if we can get these kids – uh, get their families together, even if their fathers don’t live with their mothers, or have never been married, or even they’re in jail, get the fathers engaged,” Bloomberg added. “Lot of statistics show that if the father is engaged, it gives the kid some understanding that he’s heading down the wrong path – and assign mentors to them.”
He went on: “A lot of these kids – it isn’t that they’re bad kids – it’s that once they’ve made a mistake, it’s very difficult to recover from that. But we have an obligation to them – if not for compassionate reasons, just for selfish reasons. Three-quarters of all kids in New York City that go to jail serve a period and come out, go right back to jail. Three-quarters of them. … We’ve just got to break that cycle.”
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Comments
Oh, I get it now. Mini Mike is like “Don is a billionaire with no filter, I’m a billionaire with no filter, of course I can win.”
Billions of dollars provides a lot of insulation from the great unwashed. (cue Mel Brooks…”it’s great to be king”)
Whatever “roots” Gloomberg had with the common man were dug up a long time ago and discarded.
I don’t like his politics, but as a former employer, what he says is true.
As a society, I think it is long past time we start rubbing peoples noses in these problems.
This is a result of piss poor parenting and a crappy culture. And in many cases poor attitudes are associated with low IQ.
Not everyone who is black or latino have these issues, and most certainly there are white people with these issues.
No one puts up with the shit from whites, in fact we dress them down publically if they act up, and usually fire their lazy, crude, ignorant, belligerent asses promptly if they are white. Some actually learn and improve as a result of being dressed down and canned a few times.
Getting a democrat to run on this is a win win. It’s like two shades harsh truth. People will stay awake for the next debate.
Bloomberg makes Trump look like a master of decorum.
Biden is just as bad. Clinton was no choir boy. Obama’s connections to the Reverent Wright were buried.
Make no mistake. This information is making its way to you because the swamp does not want Bloomberg.
The democrat strategy is opaque, even to them.
I don’t think they’d be fixing polls for somebody they didn’t want to at least become a serious candidate.
Wait for the bait and switch: Hillary’s on the move . . .
It’s called acting white, and is a very valuable skill. Bloomberg at the time was financing a program to teach it.
It’s called acting like a mature and professional adult that adds value to a for-profit company.
To me, that shouldn’t be called “acting white”. It should be called “acting like you have common sense and professional etiquette”.
Yes, but… A lot of young people come into the workforce terribly unprepared. They don’t know how to stand up straight, pay attention, look people in the eye, pay respect to the customers and fellow employees, don’t play grab-ass, follow directions from the boss even when they look silly, think before they act, arrive to work on time or early, request permission before taking off work, focus on tasks, not play with their phones every moment they can, dress neatly, speak intelligibly, write correctly, and above all, not *lie* to the boss/employees/customers.
Call it whatever you want, but employees who can do all of the above are worth their weight in gold. I just wish our schools would not try to teach the *opposite* of the above to all of the students.
Leave for work early, I generally had a extra 30 minutes built in, so that when something went wrong I was usually still there on time.
I owned more than one company, most related to technology, but one was a farm. When I hired a crew of about 20 each summer, based on long experience, I gave them a lecture of thinking of their job like the beginning of a young romance, one wrong move and it was over. No show, late for the days lineup, screwing on my time, stealing, all were immediate dismissal. The other side of the coin was that I spent a lot of time and money on promising employees.
A hard lessen with training, my experience was that I could take people out of the ghetto, but not one did they last long term, you just cannot take the ghetto out of them. And that was not just brown people, once a ghetto rat, probably forever a ghetto rat.
I don’t know what you mean? What do you mean, once a, always a?
I would add that many, perhaps most, think that they deserve respect without doing a lick to earn it. And they think that they are entitled to beat the crap out of those who do not give them unearned respect. That was the essence of Thugvon Martin’s mentality.
Ive noticed that attitude in regards to respect also. The ghetto dwellers murder each other with regularity over being “dissed.” The people least entitled to respect are those who think they are entitled to it most of all.
I agree with you about its value.
However, calling it “acting white” has several problems. One, it provides a meme-type aspect to trivialize the importance of developing one’s professional value. Two, it is weaponized as a tool of the race hustlers. Three, it creates bad optics (kinda like the notion that adherence to proper grammar is just a tool of white supremacy to oppress other cultures…yes, that’s a real thing)
Really…? Well, that’s too bad…new rules baby, or haven’t you heard…? I’m triggered and think Bloomberg is a closet Nazi…
Exactly right, make the enemy live up to his own set of rules.
They’ve taken everything Trump has said out of context to paint him as a racist.
Turn-about is fair play.
Yup–Bloomberg sometimes forgets lessons in correct speak. Of course Trump ignores correct speak entirely. The difference is that The Donald can get away with it, and Mini Mike can not. Assuming that Bloomberg buys the Democrat nomination, he’s going to get schlonged by Trump on the debate stage.
Somebody did a study a few years ago that determined that the taller candidate virtually always wins. Bloomberg will be finished the moment they step out from behind the podiums.
That’s funny, seeing that Bloomberg doesn’t know how to act in a Presidential campaign.
I don’t think Obama’s deficiencies in his job as President had anything to do with race.
Is there anyone whose behavior/performance/personal choices that Bloomberg approves?
Where does he get his data to form this opinion? His company didn’t employ entry-level, low-skilled workers. Stereotypes cited by a Democrat? No way, dude.
Any bets on which demographic Bloomberg insults today?
Statistical inference can be a double-edged scalpel. That said, diversity breeds adversity. Don’t indulge color judgments.
Yes, his statement is partly true. It’s not true purely as a racial statement. But it is true that a too large number of minorities don’t have even moderately good educations and don’t know how to act in order to get a job and such.
Why? That’s the key.
Is it racism? Yes, but not the way the left thinks. It’s the left’s racism – of allowing the idiocy of proper behavior is “acting white” and “math is patriarchal racism” and “it’s just their culture” and “‘thug’ is racist!” And that “soft bigotry of low expectations” wraps like an anchor chain around the ankles of too many.
And yet, the major solution for the black unemployment problem as implemented by DJT appears to be providing more jobs to be found.
That said, a major aspect of the HUD effort is to teach people how to keep their homes, once they get them.
He’s not wrong in anything that he said in that interview. But the perception is what people will see.
His connection to Soros is a huge red flag.
Everything about him is a huge red flag.
Changed NYC’s law to run a third term, then it was changed back after he had his third term.
He didn’t want Rudy to run the City after 9/11.
Guiliani would have been GOLDEN for the city then.
His full statement can be defended as fact; there are many studies that support most aspects of that statement. The problem is that a lot of people do not want to hear truth, for a variety of reasons.
Candidate DJT challenged the black voting block to take a look at how much good their continually voting for Democrats has done for them that they might want to take a look at him, “what have you got to lose?” That was not well received, at least not publicly, although it was a rational approach for them to take.
Bloomie will now have to “walk it back” or somehow try to explain it away, and assure people that he didn’t really mean it, etc… But he is tasked with building a voter base of light-weight thinkers, if they think at all rather than react. He will end up offering free-s**t just like the rest of them.
Obama is actively supporting little mike now, it might be a signal that mecheel will be his VP pick
For that all important Black vote and little like promises she won’t have to lift a finger after the race except to deposit the millions he is willing to pay them both off with..
When discussing issues like this it is very important to clearly state the difference between “culture” and “race.” I understand the difference and can see how Bloomberg is likely pointing out how one can’t take a person raised in “ghetto” or “gang” culture and then plop them into the middle of a work environment where they are supposed to act in a supportive as opposed to a combative participant. Phrased improperly though, it immediately goes to he’s rayciss! One of the great aspects of The Wire which is rarely discussed is how Stringer Bell tried to bring the business model into the drug world which his brother Avon thought should be driven by a constant violence model. McNutty, the investigating detective, summed it up best when he visited Stringer’s apartment and muttered “who was this guy?” The problem that a lot of minorities have with the business world is that they see it as a “white world” and not as a business culture that has its own set of rules, which for the most part are very different than the rules which they might have been raised with. We frequently point out how academics and .gov types would never survive in the private sector, but I can tell you that it is just as hard for those raised in the private sector to adjust their thinking to the academic world, where activity seems to be favored over actual achievement. I always think back to Woody Allen having to deal with the politics of the dinner party for the academics in Annie Hall when all he wanted to do was watch the Knicks game like a normal person. Or the movie exec in The Player who had to go to AA meetings not because he had a drinking problem, but because it was where all the big deals were being signed. These are dark comments about our society, but they are true nonetheless, where one has to play the game to get ahead even if they don’t agree with the game or the ground rules. Did I mention that I am retired. 😉
The issue isn’t really whether he’s right.
The issues are:
1. He’s got a dictatorial artery in him. Or maybe two arms, two legs, and one brain that are dictatorial.
2. The dems are reversing their positions on everything they claim to believe because of him (thus, they never believed what they said – all just posturing for vote-getting, which we already knew).
3. He’s buying people off (a la Stacy Abrams, $2 million for her little venture in Georgia) to forgive him.
4. if Trump said the same things – of if any other American said the same things, they’d excoriate us in a minute.
5. He’s a wanna-be dictator. Whatever they claim about Trump wanting to be king is a lie, and the ones leading the parade know it. But Bloomberg, he’s the real deal, “I shall be king,” and if you don’t see it yet, my pity for you when you vote for him and discover it the hard way.
He also insulted every farmer in America and across the world:
“”I could teach anybody, even the people in this room” to be a farmer, said Bloomberg during a 2016 talk at Oxford University in a now-viral clip in which he called agriculture a “process”
“You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn, he added.”
An NYC elitist’s view of what it takes to be a farmer.
Especially if you’re planting wheat or soybeans.
I can’t disagree with him that Hip-Hop culture and being raised in it makes it diffcult to function and communicate properly in a typical office workspace.
The kind of rules in Hip-Hop culture like demanding respect the instant you think you are dissed is not going to fly in an office and the person will be considered disruptive from the get-go.
Worse is coming for Mayor Bloomers Poppins.

Democrats talk about Trump international business, Bloomberg is completely all hooked up to China.
Via The Intercept:
I AM ONE of the many women Mike Bloomberg’s company tried to silence through nondisclosure agreements. The funny thing is, I never even worked for Bloomberg.
But my story shows the lengths that the Bloomberg machine will go to in order to avoid offending Beijing. Bloomberg’s company, Bloomberg LP, is so dependent on the vast China market for its business that its lawyers threatened to devastate my family financially if I didn’t sign an NDA silencing me about how Bloomberg News killed a story critical of Chinese Communist Party leaders. It was only when I hired Edward Snowden’s lawyers in Hong Kong that Bloomberg LP eventually called off their hounds after many attempts to intimidate me.
In 2012, I was working toward a Ph.D. in sociology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and my husband, Michael Forsythe, was a lead writer on a Bloomberg News article about the vast accumulation of wealth by relatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping, part of an award-winning “Revolution to Riches” series about Chinese leaders.
Soon after Bloomberg published the article on Xi’s family wealth in June 2012, my husband received death threats conveyed by a woman who told him she represented a relative of Xi. The woman conveying the threats specifically mentioned the danger to our whole family; our two children were 6 and 8 years old at the time. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos reports a similar encounter in his award-winning book, “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China,” when the same woman told Osnos’s wife:
WeazilZippers
Need more popcorn…
Drip, Drip, Drip
You can be sure more about Bloomberg will be coming out.
We’ll see if he can buy his way out of all of it.
Some politicians shoot themselves in the foot, this one’s aiming at his head.
Has anyone checked with Bill yet? Is he getting tingles from the DEM Noms?
Based On Tax Filings, Bill Kristol’s Been A Democrat For Years
https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/19/based-on-tax-filings-bill-kristols-been-a-democrat-for-years/