Bloomberg's attempt to get black voters to forgive and forget just got a lot harder

That's not only because the former New York City mayor can be heard in the snippets of audio defending the controversial "stop and frisk" policing policy -- it's also because the way he defends it summons the age-old specter of black criminality.

On Monday night, a Bernie Sanders supporter resurfaced a recording from a speech Bloomberg gave in 2015 at the Aspen Institute. On it, he delivers a full-throated defense of "stop and frisk," a method of policing that disproportionately targeted black and Latino men.

"Ninety-five percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims" fit the same profile, Bloomberg says. "You can just take the description and Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities 16 to 25."

He continues: "One of the unintended consequences is people say, 'Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana that are all minorities.' Yes, that is true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that is true. Why did we do it? Because that's where all the crime is."

(Notably, a 2018 report from the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal-advocacy organization, documented the ineffectiveness of "stop and frisk," pointing out how crime rates fell even after New York City began to phase out its use of the program.)

Even before he officially launched a presidential bid, Bloomberg knew that he had some explaining to do -- in November, he apologized for the New York Police Department's embrace of "stop and frisk."

Since then, he's been asking, in various ways, for (black) voters to forgive and forget his promotion of that misguided policy -- and he's been doing so somewhat effectively, at least according to a new Quinnipiac poll which shows increased black support for Bloomberg.

Speaking in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in January, Bloomberg unveiled his Greenwood Initiative, a policy proposal designed to fuel economic justice for black Americans. (It's named after the section of the city that was called "Black Wall Street" until it was destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.)

"As someone who has been very lucky in life, I often say my story would only have been possible in America -- and I think that's true," Bloomberg said. "But I also know that my story would have turned out very differently if I had been black, and that more black Americans of my generation would have ended up with far more wealth had they been white."

The audio, though, comes as a reminder of where Bloomberg was just a few years ago.

On the recording, the former New York City mayor taps into one of the country's oldest traditions: targeting black men (among others) because they're seen as inherently criminal -- That's where all the crime is.

In this light, Bloomberg's apologies for "stop and frisk" since entering the race feel incomplete. It's one thing to admit to having bolstered bad policy; it's another to grapple with how that enforcement hinged on what could be described as having gone into a racial panic.

Bloomberg's response to the recording speaks to this disconnect.

"By the time I left office, I cut ('stop and frisk') back by 95%, but I should've done it faster and sooner. I regret that and I have apologized," he said in a statement on Tuesday. "But this issue and my comments about it do not reflect my commitment to criminal justice reform and racial equity."

Bloomberg then listed actions he took during his time as mayor that he believes reflect where he actually stands on racial inequality -- "We created the Young Men's Initiative to help young men of color stay on track for success, which President Obama built on to create My Brother's Keeper" -- before he turned his attention to President Donald Trump.

Yet Bloomberg never directly acknowledged his language in the recording -- and the conviction behind it -- demonstrating once again that he seems to be missing the point of a real reckoning.