During a Wednesday night town hall moderated by CNN, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) acknowledged that the United States has a problem with racism and a lack of opportunity for minorities, but he said he wasn’t sure the issue could be solved politically.
When Rubio was asked how he would address systemic racism if elected president, the Florida senator began by addressing the relationship between the police and minority communities.
He said that most law enforcement officers are “incredible people” before launching into an anecdote about racism.
“But I also know that there are communities in this country where minority communities and the police department have a terrible relationship,” he said. “I personally know someone who happens to be a police officer and a young African-American male, who told me that he’s been pulled over seven, eight times in the last few years and never gets a ticket. What is he supposed to think? He gets pulled over for no reason, never gets a ticket. No one has any explanation for why he’s being pulled over.”
Rubio acknowledged the problem of racism, but said he wasn’t sure that government is the solution.
“We have a problem, and we have to address it as a society and as a country because I do not believe we can fulfill our potential as a nation unless we address that,” he said. “I’m not sure there’s a political solution to that problem, but there are things we can do.”
He brought up education, saying that “a disproportionate number of our children are growing up in broken homes, in dangerous neighborhoods, living in substandard housing and forced by the government to attend a failing school.” He added that kids are “going to struggle to succeed unless something breaks that cycle.”
CNN moderator Anderson Cooper then asked Rubio if he ever experienced racism himself. Rubio offered an anecdote about being teased as a child as the son of Cuban immigrants. But he said his parents “never raised us to feel that we were victims.”
Watch the clip:
