Bloomberg Pitches Program to Boost Black Economic Progress
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Michael Bloomberg unveiled a plan Sunday to invest $70 billion in low-income neighborhoods throughout the country, increase the number of black homeowners, and double the number of African-American owned businesses if he’s elected president.
Bloomberg, speaking in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at a former hub of black businesses destroyed in a 1921 riot by white residents, outlined his plan to address what he called systemic discrimination in African-American access to credit and wealth creation.
“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 in his speech. “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.”
Like previous Bloomberg policy rollouts, the plan announced Sunday offers no details on how the federal government would pay for it or where the revenue would come from. His campaign has said that will become clearer when Bloomberg releases his tax plan, but hasn’t said when he plans to do so.