Democratic Senate Candidate Confronted Over ‘Offensive’ Post About Black People: ‘I Was Legitimately Curious’

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Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner was grilled on Monday over an unearthed social media post in which he asked why black people don’t tip.

During an interview with Platner on Pod Save America, host and former Barack Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor brought up the Senate candidate’s recently-unearthed, controversial Reddit history:

The first Reddit post I wanted to ask you about is from 2013. So, someone wrote on Reddit, “What is one question you’ve always wanted to ask someone of another race?” You responded, “Why don’t black people tip? I work as a bartender and it always amazes me how solid the stereotype is. Every now and again a black patron will leave a 15-20% tip, but usually it is between 0 and 5%. There has got to be a reason behind it. What is it?” How do you feel re-reading that post and what’s your response to people who hear that and think that is like textbook racism and it’s offensive?

Platner responded, “I was legitimately asking the question. I mean, that was the point of the thread, was to ask a question.”

He continued, “Amusingly enough, I remember this time when I first started bartending and then I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was Black, who was a bartender, who did a great job of walking me through structural injustice and feelings of lack of agency. There were a whole bunch of reasons and after that, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that makes absolutely perfect sense.’ It was certainly not meant as a malicious thing. I was asking the question because that was kind of the point of the thread, actually.”

The Senate candidate went on to say that while he regretted a lot of his old Reddit posts, the question about black people tipping was not among them.

“I’ve re-read a lot of the comments for obvious reasons. Many of them, I’m like, ‘Oh God.’ That one, I must say, like, I mean, I was legitimately curious and it was certainly not meant in any malicious way,” he concluded. “And I got an answer soon afterwards in reality from an actual person.”

Platner disavowed several of his old Reddit posts after they were unearthed by CNN last week, including posts calling police officers “bastards,” rural white people “racist,” and himself a “communist” and “psychedelics taking socialist.”