South Bend training slides denounced various ‘isms’ as violent crime surged
As a prospective Senate candidate, Pete Buttigieg is denouncing the diversity trainings that have become synonymous with the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, saying they look “like something straight out of Portlandia.” As mayor of South Bend, Ind., he championed such training, with his administration implementing a series of diversity sessions that lectured cops on “sizeism” and “languageism” amid a surge in violent crime.
Buttigieg, speaking Tuesday at a University of Chicago Institute of Politics panel on the “Future of the Democratic Party,” addressed the party’s focus on “diversity.” He said he would “always fight” to care “for people’s different experiences.” He also took aim at diversity training, saying Americans shouldn’t be made to “sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced, and it is how Trump Republicans are made.”
Cops in South Bend had a similar experience when Buttigieg served as mayor.
In 2017, with Buttigieg a year into his second term, South Bend’s police department instituted diversity and anti-discrimination training sessions aimed at “Bridging Relationships and Strengthening Community Through Inclusion,” the Washington Free Beacon reported in 2020. Slides from the sessions lamented “Implicit Bias” and presented cops with a list called “The ‘Ism’ Trail,” which denounced nefarious “isms” that perpetuate prejudice and power dynamics, including “racism,” “sexism,” “ageism,” “languageism,” “materialism,” “classism,” “colorism,” and “sizeism.”
A similar list of “Key Terms & Definitions” urged officers to refrain from using the term “hearing-impaired,” calling it “offensive” to deaf people as it implies “that their hearing is broken, and needs to be fixed.” One year after the training sessions took place, in 2018, violent crime in South Bend reached its highest level in 20 years. Buttigieg, in 2019, apologized for the police department’s lack of diversity, saying, “I couldn’t get it done.”
Buttigieg’s Tuesday comments came as the Indiana native turned Michigan resident takes a “serious look” at a 2026 Senate run in the Great Lakes State, where he and his husband moved in 2022 “because of family.” As Buttigieg eyes that run, he’s worked to distance himself from the left-wing policies that defined his failed 2020 presidential campaign.
At that time, Buttigieg completed an American Civil Liberties Union survey sent to all presidential candidates. In it, he supported taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for federal inmates and illegal immigrants—a position that helped derail Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign—and pledged to reduce the size of the “immigration detention system by at least 75%,” including by “cutting ICE’s detention budget.”
“I would direct my HHS Office of Civil Rights and Department of Justice to vigorously enforce all federal laws against discrimination based on gender identity, including ensuring the provision of all medically necessary care for transgender Americans,” Buttigieg wrote at the time. “This includes medical care for transgender individuals incarcerated in federal prisons and under immigration detention.”
Buttigieg walked back his answers last week, with his spokesman telling the Free Beacon that he “does not support slashing ICE’s detention budget” and merely pledged to “faithfully enforce all federal laws against discrimination.” His husband, Chasten, has a long history of voicing similar opinions, having argued in 2023 that minors should be permitted to undergo sex change surgeries and hormone therapy treatments.
“I believe those types of conversations and decisions should be left to a transgender person or the parents,” Chasten Buttigieg said during a C-SPAN appearance after a caller asked him about those treatments. “I know that every major medical—reputable medical—association in this country supports gender-affirming care, so I’m going to follow experts in the field and listen to them because I value those trans lives.”
Publicly, top Michigan Democrats like Sen. Gary Peters, whose decision to forgo reelection provided the opening for Buttigieg, have praised the former mayor’s potential candidacy. Privately, however, some politicos have argued that Buttigieg’s carpetbagger status could prove difficult to overcome.
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
Author
