‘Welcome to Being Black!’ Ted Cruz and View Hosts Throw Down on Affirmative Action

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrapped up his Wednesday interview on The View by battling hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sunny Hostin on affirmative action.

Cruz’s time on The View was surprisingly civil, though things got heated in the final minutes of the interview as Hostin and Goldberg questioned the “framing” of affirmative action in Cruz’s new book Going Further, which centers on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Hostin told Cruz she read the book and thought it was “great,” though she questioned why Cruz and Thomas would not be more in support of affirmative action policies.

“So what I don’t understand how you handle in the book is why is the lesson from his experience that we should eliminate the remedy rather than eliminate the racism that made the remedy necessary? I don’t understand that,” Hostin said as the audience cheered. “I mean, I genuinely don’t understand the framing in the book.”

“So I will say the word affirmative action encompasses a lot of things. If you’re talking about removing barriers and talking about expanding access then I’m for that. He’s for that. Everyone is for that. If you’re talking about quotas and discriminating based on race then Justice Thomas has been the clearest defender of the principle that the Constitution prohibits the government discriminating based on race,” Cruz said.

Hostin noted that Thomas said his Yale degree was “diminished” because people thought he earned it thanks to affirmative action.

“So there was a reason for that. When he came out of Yale law school, he did very well in law school. He applied and not a single law firm would hire him. Every law firm he interviewed said no,” Cruz explained.

“Welcome to being Black!” Goldberg declared, jumping into the debate.

After some back and forth with Cruz, Goldberg said, “This is why it’s so hard for us to understand why you framed it that way. But the other thing is he’s a constitutional scholar. How does he not remember that we weren’t part of the Constitution? There’s a reason people didn’t start off [the same]. We weren’t all equal.”

“He talks about that at length because the Civil War and reconstruction, 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The 13th Amendment ended slavery, the 14th Amendment protected equal protection, and the 15th Amendment protected the right to vote, specifically for African Americans,” Cruz said.

“So why are we still talking about it if it protects all of this? That’s the thing I guess I don’t understand,” Goldberg said.

“Why are we rolling back the protections?” Hostin asked as Goldberg noted they were out of time and ended the segment.

When Goldberg had first announced Cruz’s appearance at the opening of the show, the host had to shut down some booing from the audience, warning them to be “respectful” of their Republican guest.

“Look, this is a place where Barbara Walters made sure that anybody who wanted to come and have a good conversation could come,” she told the audience.

Watch above via ABC.

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