Say a white candidate puts on a
dashiki, visits a black church, and speaks in
Ebonics about how much he cares about the black community. Unless he's got a history of doing all of the above in his private life, that's blatant pandering, and everyone involved knows it. Whether they care or not depends on how much they trust the "I'm on your side" signalling; it's an implicit promise that your voice will be heard once he is elected.
Now say a white candidate never does anything like that, and he announces he'll dump money into black districts, black community service projects, and
HBCUs. That person is
also pandering, but if you care about getting money to those places, the pandering works just fine. It's tacit vote-buying, with a promise of future money instead of an immediate bribe. Usually it's wrapped up in the same kind of signalling the first guy did at the church; the "problem" of politics is deciding whose future promise to trust, based on their campaign signalling.
Finally, say a white candidate merely promises to appoint a number of black people to high-visibility positions on his staff. This is also pandering, even if the black people in the crowd do not directly benefit from being hired; it is generally benefiting the
class of people they identify with. This is partly why the left pushes class identification and class analysis so hard, because it lets them deliver "benefits" for minimal effort to people who buy into that identification.
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