Julián Castro will not rule out reparations to descendants of slaves
The Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro will not rule out direct payments to African Americans in reparation for the legacy of slavery – a stand that separates him from his 2020 rivals.
“If under the constitution we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property,” the Obama-era housing secretary and former mayor of San Antonio told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
Castro was among a pack of 2020 candidates to speak this weekend at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, in one of the biggest gatherings of the Democratic field yet.
Other candidates are discussing the benefits of tax credits and other subsidies rather than direct payments for the labor and legal oppression of slaves and their descendants. The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, for example, wants to put resources such as Medicare for All and tuition-free college into distressed communities.
Castro said he did not think that was the proper argument against reparations.
“It’s interesting to me,” he said, “that when it comes to Medicare for All, healthcare, the response there has been, ‘We need to write a big check’. That when it comes to tuition-free or debt-free college, the answer has been, ‘We need to write a big check.’
“And so, if the issue is compensating the descendants of slaves, I don’t think that the argument about writing a big check ought to be the argument that you make, if you’re making an argument that a big check needs to be written for a whole bunch of other stuff.”
He did not say that if elected he would push for direct compensation to descendants of slaves, saying instead he would appoint a commissioner or task force to make recommendations.
On Saturday night, a Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom Iowa poll concerning the Democratic field put Castro at 1% support. The poll winner, former vice-president Joe Biden, at 27%, has not yet declared his candidacy.
Castro told CNN he was “articulating a strong, compelling vision for the future of this country” and said he could tell he was “going to gain traction”.
If we compensate people because we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were property?