Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said the United States needs to have an “honest conversation” about reparations and what he described as an unpaid debt stemming from slavery during a Monday appearance on Fox News.
El-Sayed made the remarks during an interview with Jesse Watters on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” where the host put the issue to him directly.
“Reparations, do you support that?” Watters asked.
El-Sayed did not answer with a simple yes or no. Instead, he argued that the country still needs to address the economic and social consequences of slavery and subsequent government policies that he said disadvantaged black Americans.
“I think we need to have an honest conversation about the incredible debt that was put upon black folks as a function of slavery, that we have yet to pay, and I just think that’s fair,” El-Sayed responded.
He argued that the discussion should begin with the fact that enslaved people were forced to work without compensation.
“Like, if people are enslaved and forced into servitude, and then we don’t actually have a conversation about all that was owed, that our own country agreed was owed, I just think that it’s past time to have that conversation,” he said.
El-Sayed also pushed back against treating the subject exclusively as a culture-war issue.
“That shouldn’t be a crazy thing,” he said. “I understand that, like, for folks who really want to inflame [the] culture war, I just think it’s important to think about how do we make sure that communities like the city of Detroit, that have been segregated so that you have a disproportionate number of people, as a function of redlining, who are forced into certain communities, how do we make sure that their schools are made whole.”
Detroit became the central example in his argument.
El-Sayed said the city recently received $700 million in investment for its schools but remains $1.7 billion behind. He rejected the argument that the gap can simply be blamed on excessive or irresponsible spending.
“And a lot of folks want to say, oh, well, that’s profligacy, etc., etc.,” El-Sayed said. “No, a lot of that has to do with public policy.”
He then expanded his argument beyond education, pointing to disparities in health and employment that he said were connected to government policy.
“And if public policy created a level in which black folks disproportionately suffer everything from maternal mortality and infant mortality, to lack of access to jobs, I think it’s important for our country to have a conversation about how do we make people whole,” he said.
The exchange left one significant policy question unanswered.
Watters asked specifically whether El-Sayed supports reparations, but the Democratic nominee did not describe a particular reparations program. He did not specify whether he favors direct cash payments, government spending targeted toward particular communities, educational investment, or another form of compensation.
