Bernie Sanders Would Be the First President to Apologize for Slavery

Makes statement at Black Lives Matter event in Philadelphia

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, (I-VT) speaks while flanked by African-American religious and civic leaders after a meeting at the Freddie Gray Youth Empowerment Center, December 8, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. Earlier in the day Sanders toured the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood where Freddie Gray lived and was arrested. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Want the short answer?" Sanders asked in response. "Yes."

The topic came up when an audience member asked Sanders about slavery.

“An American president has yet to muster up the courage to formally apologize for the 400 heinous years of rape, death, and inhumanity that occurred during the enslavement of black people in this country that still impacts million of slave descendants.”

The questioner then asked the Democratic candidate point-blank if he would apologize.

“Want the short answer?” Sanders asked in response. “Yes.”

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This isn’t the first time that he’s called for an apology for slavery.

In 2015, the Vermont senator went on a radio program and said that the nation as a whole should apologize for slavery.

“As a nation—I don’t think as a president, but as a nation—we have got to apologize for slavery,” he said to host Joe Madison on Sirius XM’s “The Black Eagle.”