Don Lemon Asks Julian Castro if Americans Would Be Okay With Paying ‘Trillions’ for Slavery Reparations

A top topic, even perhaps litmus test for 2020 Democrat candidates is the question of reparations, and naturally it was the topic of one of the questions fielded by former HUD secretary Julian Castro during his CNN town hall on Thursday.

The questioner begin by noting that Castro has previously stated his support for “race-based reparations for blacks who have suffered because of slavery, segregation, and housing inequalities,” and then asked for Castro’s idea on how to implement that.

“I believe that we have never fully addressed, in this country, the original sin of slavery, and that because of that, we have never truly healed as a country,” said Castro. “And I’ve said that, you know, if we compensate people under our Constitution, if we take their property, why wouldn’t you compensate people who actually were considered property and sanctioned as property by the state?”

Castro said that people sometimes object to him that nobody alive today was a slave or a slave-owner, and his answer is that people benefit from the past every day. “Even though we weren’t there in past generations, we have inherited a lot of moral assets,” he said. “But you know what, we’ve also inherited some moral debts. And one of those debts that we’ve never paid is the debt for that original sin of slavery.”

“So I support legislation that [Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee] from Texas has introduced that would appoint a commission to study reparations, and that commission would make a recommendation to the president on how those reparations should be done,” he said.

He related the issue to reconciliation in South Africa, and said that there is a “healing process that needs to happen.”

Moderator Don Lemon pressed him on the actual implementation, saying that economists say “adequate” reparations would cost “trillions of dollars.”

“Do you think Americans would be okay with that price tag?” Lemon asked.

“Well I think what most Americans would be okay with is some sort of acknowledgment, first of all an apology for what happened, and some sort of direct acknowledgment for the pain that was caused,” said Castro. “You know, the amount, what that would look like, I think that that would be the role of the commission to make a recommendation on. I don’t think that that can come from one individual, because it needs to be about healing as a country, not only one prescription for what we should do.”

Watch the clip above, courtesy of CNN.

[Featured image via screenshot]