Entrepreneur Andrew Yang got the question staring everybody in the face at Thursday’s Democratic debate: What message does it send to voters that you’re the only nonwhite candidate up on stage?
He answered by invoking economic inequality, explained the barriers it creates to political engagement, and, most impressively, ended with a plug for his signature policy proposal: a universal basic income.
“It’s both an honor and disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on the stage tonight,” said Yang, the first Asian American to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. He added that he remembers people using racial epithets toward him as a kid.
“But black and Latinos have something much more powerful working against them than words. They have numbers,” he continued. “The average net worth of a black household is only 10 percent that of a white household. For Latinos, it’s 12 percent. A black woman is 320 percent more likely to die from complications in childbirth.”
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