Politics

Elizabeth Warren Calls For ‘Race-Conscious Laws’

Elizabeth Warren stands at a podium. By Tim Pierce from Berlin, MA, USA (Elizabeth Warren) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for “race-conscious” laws Friday night.

The Massachusetts senator spoke Friday night at ABC’s Democratic debates in New Hampshire where she emphasized the need to correct racism within the United States. Her comments came after fellow candidate Bernie Sanders said at the same debate that “we have a racist society from top to bottom.”

“You have to own up to the facts, and it’s important to own up to the facts about how race has totally permeated our criminal justice system,” she said.

“You know, for the exact same crimes, study after study now shows that African-Americans are more likely than whites to be detained, to be arrested, to be taken to trial, to be wrongfully convicted, and to receive harsher sentences.”

“We need to rework our criminal justice system from the very front end on what we make illegal all the way through the system and how we help people come back into the community,” Warren added. “But we cannot just say that criminal justice is the only time we want to talk about race specifically.”

“We need to start having race-conscious laws,” she said.

WATCH:

We cannot just say that criminal justice is the only time we want to talk about race. We need race-conscious laws. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/FA0BeuPYYv

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 8, 2020