Bloomberg’s Blind Spot on Racial Injustice

I covered Michael Bloomberg for years and have many stories about him. But this one is my favorite because it reminds me of what a real leader can be.

It was the summer of 2010 and anger was building over an Islamic community center to be built near the World Trade Center site, where two deep gashes still wounded the earth, a constant reminder of the thousands who died.

Word of the project quickly spread, sparking an outpouring of small-minded bigotry. Fox News regularly condemned the plan — how dare Muslims gather so close to where Muslims attacked us? Some family members of those who died there in the Sept. 11 attacks rallied against the project. Pressure mounted on then-Mayor Bloomberg to kill it, or move it somewhere else.

Bloomberg, though, would have none of it.

“New York City was built by immigrants,” the mayor said that August, speaking with the Statue of Liberty behind him.

“We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else,” he said, his voice filled with emotion. “In fact, to cave to populist sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.”

I wondered where that man was this week when Bloomberg, testing the waters for a Democratic presidential bid, stubbornly doubled down on what is arguably his greatest mistake in office: the aggressive use of the policing strategy known as stop-and-frisk that resulted in millions of innocent black and Latino people being stopped on the streets.

“I think people, the voters, want low crime,” Bloomberg told The New York Times in an interview about his presidential aspirations. “They don’t want kids to kill each other.”

Bloomberg, a billionaire who ran New York City for a dozen years, transformed it with bold ideas, like banning smoking in public places and building new parks, that improved the everyday lives of many New Yorkers.

But he could also be oblivious to the needs of people without his money and privilege, often brushing aside concerns about the crisis of affordable housing, for example. Of all his blind spots, though, stop-and-frisk may be the most glaring.

A federal judge in 2013 ruled that the way the Bloomberg administration implemented the policing tactic was unconstitutional. Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, had long argued that crime would rise without stop-and-frisk. But they were wrong. Nearly five years after Bloomberg left office, pedestrian stops are down sharply from their peak in 2011, and overall crime has continued to fall. Some of the strategy’s prominent supporters have now acknowledged that the drop in crime shows that they were mistaken.

Bloomberg, a proud technocrat, is fond of the phrase: “In God we trust. Everyone else bring data.” Yet when it comes to stop-and-frisk, the facts don’t seem to matter to him. His lack of introspection on this subject diminishes his considerable legacy.

It was not the only subject upon which Bloomberg offered less-than-enlightened thoughts in the interview. He also questioned the movement against sexual assault and harassment.

“The stuff I read about is disgraceful — I don’t know how true all of it is,” he said, before casting doubt on the allegations of sexual harassment against Charlie Rose, who used to produce his PBS show from Bloomberg’s offices.

This is all classic Bloomberg: sincere, but also arrogant and sometimes outrageously out of touch. His remarks disparage the experience of racial minorities and women in America. For someone who may seek the Democratic nomination for president, the stance is particularly inexplicable.

Michael Bloomberg can be better than this.

If he is serious about running for president, which those close to him believe he is, he needs to show voters that he can learn from his mistakes.

He should not only apologize for his administration’s use of stop-and-frisk, he should begin listening seriously to black and Latino voters in a way he never did as mayor, visiting communities of color. While he’s at it, he might want to also listen more to women.

Some high-ranking Democrats in Congress, like Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, are encouraging Bloomberg to run, according to people who have spoken to him.

The Democratic Party is changing. So is the country. If he wants to run for president, Bloomberg will have to show voters that he can change, too.