Bloomberg criticised for 2011 comments saying black and latino males 'don't know how to behave in the workplace'

Mike Bloomberg’s past comments about race have once again stirred controversy after a newly unearthed interview from 2011 showed the presidential hopeful saying black and Latino males “don’t know how to behave in the workplace”.

Mr Bloomberg was serving his third term as New York City mayor when he made the comments in an interview with PBS NewsHour. The interview was about a new $127m initiative meant to empower black and Latino men, which Mr Bloomberg was spearheading at the time.

“There's this enormous cohort of black and Latino males, age, let's say, 16 to 25, that don't have jobs, don't have any prospects, don't know how to find jobs”, the former mayor said.

He went on to suggest the “cohort” of black and Latino males he was referring to “don't know what their skill sets are, [and] don't know how to behave in the workplace where they have to work collaboratively and collectively.”

The former mayor also touted New York City’s historically low crime rates under his tenure in the interview, describing it as “particularly important to black and Latino kids, and their families and their neighbourhoods, because that’s where the crime is”.

The comments quickly went viral online after the interview was resurfaced earlier this week. Donald Trump’s supporters quickly jumped on the video, including the president’s eldest son, who wrote in a tweet: “Bloomberg is everything the media claims Trump is, and they won’t do anything about it. What a disgrace.”

The newly revisited interview also showed Mr Bloomberg saying: “If you look at where crime takes place, it's in minority neighborhoods. If you look at who the victims and the perpetrators are, it's virtually all minorities.”

He added: “This is something that has gone on for a long time, I assume it’s prevalent elsewhere, but it’s certainly true in New York City, and for many, many years people said there was just nothing you could do about it.”

Mr Bloomberg, one of the last Democratic candidates to launch a presidential bid during the 2020 election, has garnered significant support in recent weeks among black and brown voters. He appeared to have taken support from former Vice President Joe Biden, who analysts said previously maintained a stronghold of diverse supporters in states like South Carolina.

But with his rise in the polls have come questions about his support for a controversial “stop-and-frisk” programme the New York City police department implemented under his tenure, which targeted minority communities and was later ruled unconstitutional.

A previous recording of the former mayor speaking at the Aspen Institute in 2015 also caused trouble for his presidential campaign after it showed Mr Bloomberg seemingly defending the programme and explaining why he wanted to “put all the cops in minority neighbourhoods”.

“Ninety-five percent of murders- murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.,” he said. “You can just take a description, Xerox it, and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16-25. That's true in New York, that's true in virtually every city.

Mr Bloomberg has since apologised for supporting the controversial policy.

The former mayor also launched a new initiative under his campaign titled “Mike for Black America”, telling a crowd of supporters: “We're going to triple the wealth of black families to substantially close the racial wealth gap.”

“We did it in New York City, we can do it here”, he added.