what i said was that i ve long believed that this country should address slavery, the original sin of slavery, including by looking at reparatio reparations. if i m president, then i m going to appoint a commission other task force to determine the best way to do that. there s a tremendous amount of disagreement on how we would do that, but let me say something about senator sanders response there. he was also asked this question in 2016. what he said on the view the other day, i think, he didn t think the best way to address this was for the united states to write a check. to my mind that may or may not be the best way to address it. however, it s interesting to me that when it comes to medicare for all, health care, you know the response has we need to write a big check, that when it comes to tuition-free or
among the most damning evidence in the case of reparations is the federal government s long history of discriminatory housing policies which have maintained the persistent gap between black and white wealth. in his article for the atlantic ta-nehisi coates quotes kenneth jackson who wrote of the housing administration s red lining plan. the federal government embraced the discriminatory attitudes of the marketplace. previously prejudices were personalized and individualized. fha exorted segregation andy shrined it. into the fha and that legacy is overseen by the department of housing and urban development. just yesterday president obama nominated san antonio mayor julian castro to be his pick of the secretary of that department. if he s confirmed by the senate, it would be the second of two positions he shares in common with my next guest, henry cisneros, former secretary of the department of housing and urban development and former mayor of san antonio and current
future, they re avoiding the present. that s the danger. if you live in chicago, you can go down the street to another neighborhood and see and see those distinctions. or just stay in your neighborhoods in evanston and not see it at all. and you can read ira katznelson and ta-nehisi coates. i thank you so much for your work. ira katznelson s newest book is fear itself. again, on your newsstands is the case for reparations. coming up next, what s putting babies lives at risk of the and how new york s first lady sparked a national conversation, lots of national conversations this week. more nerdland at the top of the hour. .and we ll replace destroyed or stolen items with brand-new versions. we put members first. join the nation. nationwide is on your side
we re talking about something that has to do with racism and that injures african-americans of all economic classes. so i want you to, professor katznelson, frame this historically for us. you make the case of reparations in the same week mtv releases a poll saying millennials think basically race is kind of over so you have a majority of millennials saying people should just get past race and having a black president means that things are okay. what do they need to know about history to help improve this? first, to note that the millennials who say that have a particular, very special set of experiences and contacts which are, alas, not representative of the united states today where the continuum has stretched. president obama on the one hand but heightened segregation, deepened poverty. the legacies of past policies continue to play out.
and it s why for many of the descentants of enslaved people, 40 acres and a mule has become a symbolic reminder of the long legacy of slavery and america s promises of redress that have never been kept. reparations that are due but still unpaid. still unpaid in part because of few policy issues divide us more than the issue of reparations. in 2005 in the aftermath of hurricane katrina, two fellow researchers and i surveyed more than 1200 americans asking a series of questions about support for federal reparations for african-americans as compensation for historic injustices. people in our study were asked do you think the federal government should or should not pay money to african-americans whose ancestors were slaves as compensation for that slavery. we also asked do you think the federal government should or should not pay money to african-americans as compensation for the system of anti-black violence and legal segregation known as jim crow. we also asked do you think that reparati