By Barrett White
On May 4, South Bend, Indiana mayor and 2020 presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg gave an impassioned speech and posed for photos at a campaign fundraiser at Chapman & Kirby in Houston’s East Downtown. But before shaking hands with eager fans and donors at the public event, the openly gay Democratic contender sat down for an intimate, transparent conversation with some of the city’s most notable Black spiritual leaders at the private residence of Houston community leaders Vince Pryor and Alan Dettlaff.
Around 20 attendees gathered to speak with Buttigieg, among them spiritual leaders, a small press team, and a group Pryor called “Houston’s next generation of leaders.”
The conversation, however, was never meant to center solely on religion. Buttigieg, though quickly becoming a Democratic favorite, lost points with many progressives during a recent CNN town hall in which he voiced opposition to voting rights for incarcerated individuals. Currently faced with a justice system that disproportionately incarcerates people of color—and oftentimes with sentences that do not match the crime committed—Buttigieg’s position struck a nerve with many progressives who otherwise saw him as a possible frontrunner for the primaries.
Buttigieg took a seat in the living room, surrounded by community leaders Dee Dee Watters, Marvetta Walker, Darnell Fennell, Leslie Jackson, Shon Stewart, and Jeffrey Campbell. Harrison Guy, chair of Mayor Turner’s LGBTQ Advisory Board, moderated the conversation.
Guy, who also identifies as a gay man, began by questioning Buttigieg, an Episcopalian, on leveraging his own identities of being both gay and Christian. “People understand one category that you belong to, but don’t understand how it fits into another that you belong to,” Buttigieg said. “We are fortunate enough to belong to a very welcoming faith community. Chasten and I were able to get married in our church.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks with community leaders Dee Dee Watters, Marvetta Walker, Darnell Fennell, Leslie Jackson, Shon Stewart, and Jeffrey Campbell. Harrison Guy, chair of Mayor Turner’s LGBTQ Advisory Board, moderated the conversation. Photo: Pete Buttigieg/Facebook
Turning from sexuality for a moment, Buttigieg offered further insight into how different aspects of his identity intersect—this time, in regards to being both Christian and a politician. “I’m from a faith tradition that counsels us to be skeptical of structures of power and authority and government,” he continued. “So actually, I experience more contradictions between being a person in civil authority and a person of faith, than being gay and a person of faith. Of all of the things that put moral pressure on my soul—being in love is not one of them. Being in the military is one of them. Being an instrument of the law is one of them.”
The conversation, conducted in a roundtable interview style, covered transgender rights, racism, and even touched on reparations. “Replacing a racist law with a non-racist one isn’t enough,” Buttigieg said of his leadership style in South Bend. “It has to be anti-racist.” He continued to describe his efforts to better the South Bend police by implementing body camera efforts, racial bias training, public posting of police encounter information for community transparency, and by sending his police chief to take an intensive policing course with the Obama White House.
Houston activist Dee Dee Watters expressed that, as a Black transgender woman, she was unsure as to whether Buttigieg’s identity as a gay man would translate into affirmation of and protections for trans individuals. “I get it—or at least I want to get it. You tell me if I get it,” Buttigieg responded. “As a cisgender white male, I get to be a part of the alphabet soup of the LGBTQIA+ community, but I don’t know the first thing about what it’s like to be a trans woman of color. I do, though, know what it is liked to be othered, and to be a part of a group that is marginalized. I can at least grab ahold of that when I try to better understand your experience.”
Watters acknowledged that there is no right answer to her concern, but that Buttigieg seemed to be on the right path. “The most constructive way to think about privilege is to think about how it allows you to be of use to others who don’t share that privilege,” Buttigieg finished. “I realize that [my] being able to talk frankly about this issue, [as] a Midwestern white guy, could, in a certain way, draw some of the heat off of trans residents who I could be there to help.”
Before the conversation closed however, Pryor called out the elephant in the room. “When we saw your rise, getting up in the polls, we were really excited about this. And then you had the town hall [with CNN], and you were talking about allowing people to vote who were currently in prison, and you had that hard ‘no.’ That sent chills down my spine. Because what I heard was that you were unwilling to dig into why people of color feel so strongly about this, when we know that our criminal justice system, for hundreds of years, has been skewed as a social control device. So when we know that the system is broken, why would you have such a hard ‘no?’” Pryor asked.
“I will continue to be very clear that, for the formerly incarcerated, it’s a no-brainer that voting rights should be restored,” Buttigieg responded. “There are also a lot of people in prison for non-violent drug offenses who should not be in prison to begin with. And when we have legalization [of marijuana]—which I believe we should—we should also have expungement and retroactive rights.”
“Our justice system is not just,” Buttigieg added. “We know the disparities which have happened. I understand the expectation for the next president—especially if that next president is going to be white—to be the most forward-looking we’ve ever had on questions like this.”
