YouSaid · the spoken record

Julián Castro

lines on the record: 80
first: 2017-03-27
most recent: 2017-03-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, I'm worried That folks will pretend like We've made all the progress in this country that we need to make. And as the president said very eloquently when he spoke at the foot of the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 2015.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That from the beginning it is often much more difficult to get to those same heights like the deck isn't still too often time stacked against folks. And so that I think is a reason to keep some way whether you call it affirmative action or something else, some way to offer opportunity to folks who are overcoming challenges and who were overcoming bias and to do it in a way that is respectful and that is nuanced and that also adds to the experience of the students in those universities.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Folks have these life experiences that create headwinds. And I think any process that we put in place that you have in place ought to consider that. You know, the different ways that people have overcome. Because that was the idea, I think, in the first place behind affirmative action. I will say, though, at the same time, that That if you're a young African-American growing up right now in Chicago, Philadelphia. Yet we can't pretend”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reflecting the larger society and so that students themselves can get better prepared for the world that they're going to encounter. But any process of affirmative action needs to take into account the headwinds or the challenges that different people have faced. And I think in the years since I went to college, one of the things that I have more of an appreciation of are the different ways in life that people face those challenges. You know, if you're somebody that is poor in East Texas, rural East Texas, or you're somebody that is growing up with a disability.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that a couple of things. Number one, it points out that you need You need a process that is nuanced. Folks say, you know, we don't want quotas. And I think that that's absolutely right, that you don't want any kind of quota system. That remember the idea is supposed to be that if all things being equal, when you're trying to select a class and make it diverse because as you noted, I think institutions recognize that there's a value, especially educational institutions.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know that there's a lot of debate right now. It's probably going to go back to the Supreme Court, and I certainly think that. That you know, for my kids, for instance, that they should not be the beneficiaries of an affirmative action program because they're going to have all the benefits in the world. But I do think that there was a value in that and that as states grapple with the approach they're going to take, that they need to be careful to maintain opportunities for folks who have faced headwinds.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the part of the story that he did not write about, which I told him, was that when I took the Elsat four years later to get into law school, that I scored higher than the median matriculating Stanford student that was going to law school. And my point of it was That policy had helped ensure that the that for some folks who had gone to schools that had been under invested in and you had a headwind. That it gave him a shot to compete with everybody else for the first time. On a stage, and that in my case, when I was able to compete, then a few years down the road, then I actually had excelled and done better than a lot of folks, you know, done better than the average. And I think that that's the way that that thing should have worked, that people were given a chance and then it's up to you to make something of that.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, you know, a few years ago I was doing an interview for the New York Times magazine, and I told the author, you know, if you're going to have this policy in place, then people should be straightforward about the benefits and the disadvantages. And I said, you know, I feel like that affirmative action may have helped me get into Stanford and that at the time my SAT score was a little bit underneath what I think the median matriculating student, the student that was going there. Now, I think my grades and the other stuff was right up there, did very well. But that may have been one benefit of affirmative action.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that Growing up, it makes a difference in the sense that you're always compared to each other because you walk through the world looking the same way, having so many of the same experiences as you grow up, that your identity is formed in some ways in comparison and in contrast to your twin brother, twin sister. And I think that was true with Joaquin and me. So, you know, one of us is the quieter one and one of us is the louder one. One of us was better at school and one of us was better at sports. I was better at school. But so your identity is probably formed in relation to another person more than somebody out there in the general public that just has siblings or is an only child.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I'm not sure that I would have left my own devices in this house that was very lenient. I'm not sure what would have happened, but having walk in there sort of tempered that.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They gave us a lot of latitude, but at the same time it was a household that was very full of respect and a sense that we had real worth and that you had to make something out of that. And also that you should do something for other people too. And so somehow, you know, it all worked out. The other thing that I think helped was that I was a twin. I'm convinced that I wouldn't be where I'm at if I hadn't had Joaquin because for those of the folks listening that our twins or if you have twins or siblings that are twins, you know that it's a very unique relationship and we're each other's best friend. Growing up, we were very competitive. And so I think that competition between us fueled each other to do better both in school and in sports.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, she did. But I mean, she was as liberal, so not in her political views. Yeah, but in her parent style. They were just, you asked about growing up with these two women in the household.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The hell they want. I don't even do that now. It was apparent to my kids. However, I think that the magic of it was... With our homework and other things, she actually somehow, and I still don't know how I've asked her, but she got us to. To self discipline And to want to succeed and to do well in school and to finish our homework and do the things that you should do without a heavy hand or spanking us or did your grandmother?”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think it was fascinating. And now as a parent, I look back on it. My mom was very liberal. Not just in her views, but in how she parented. I remember Joaquin and I when we were nine years old taking the bus downtown. We didn't have a car at the time. We took the bus downtown and watched in the summer of 1984. We probably watched the karate kid like six times and other movies. And she would just let us go and we would watch horror movies and eat junk food and she let us stay up pretty much as late as we wanted to.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Yeah, you know, my brother's a little bit more extroverted than I am, but he's not that much more extroverted. Neither one of us is the most boisterous person or most talkative person. But in high school, I used to talk two or three people during the day, and my brother was one of them. Just to give you a sense of... How social I was. So I didn't, you know. So not exactly student council president. No, you know, I was involved in different things and played sports, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't the life of the party”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. You just didn't hurry to get the hell out of there. You know, just people say that high school, you know, you always hear that high school is the best years of your life. That's not true for me. First of all, in high school. I was fairly quiet. I'm still not the loudest person out there. Yeah”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, he's been somebody who has offered advice consistently and a good friend through the years. And I still call him. For advice. I was on the phone with him a couple of weeks ago. But when I was growing up, there was a significance in being able to say that Henry is in that position and look, he looks like me. If he can do that, I can do that And so I think that he had that kind of impact at the time on a lot of us who were growing up in San Antonio.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, when he was elected, I would have been six going on seven. And I don't remember that election, but I remember a few years on. And all of the aspirations that were tied into Henry's rise. And to this day, we're friends. Obviously, he eventually served as HUD Secretary. And I served as mayor and then as HUD Secretary. And I still have mental.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, she and other folks were involved with Collecting the data and putting the argument together that eventually led to the creation of single member districts in that city and former Mayor Cisneros was first elected to City Council District 1 in San Antonio and then re-elected a couple of times eventually in 1981 he became the first Latino mayor of a major American city very inspirational meant a lot for the folks growing up during that time my brother and I grew up”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, some of it, mostly negative. You know, because who in the world wants to go when you're nine years old or ten years old to one of these speeches or rallies? I remember sitting for three hours in the main library in San Antonio while the adults talked about who knows what, you know, organizing. And I was just ready to leave. That was part of the reason that I actually did not like politics. If you had asked me at 15, did I think that I would get involved in politics? I would have said, no way. Yeah, I didn't see the point. I thought that it was boring. I just did not see that for myself.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he was a teacher, he started off early on. He had graduated from the public schools there in San Antonio and then gone and gotten his bachelor's degree at UT. And in the early 60s he graduated. He became a math teacher. And my mother and father were never married. I guess they were common-law married because they were together for 10 or 11 years. But after the age of eight, my brother Joaquin and I grew up with my mother and my grandmother.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So she worked at a couple different nonprofits and then she worked for several years at the city of San Antonio and then at the housing authority. She worked at one of the community colleges. And there was a time also after that period of activism, and I'm sure that other folks went through this during that time where I think she was penalized for being as outspoken as she was and taking on the establishment in that area. Know there are a lot of people you see this even today in different contexts if you rock the boat too much you may not be the first candidate for a job at a company or somewhere else that wants a safe bet. And I think that That she suffered from some of that. But, you know, she made it work. She and my grandmother, because after the age of eight, we grew up with both of them.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so she actually did well and one or two of the others did well enough that an analysis afterward showed that if there had been single member districts, there were one or two districts where she could have won and been elected. She was never elected. She only ran that one time, but my brother and I were born three years later in 74. And you can imagine that we grew up getting dragged to speeches and rallies and organizational meetings. She was active in different women's issues. She continued to volunteer for campaigns. I remember”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, it was nonpartisan back then for city elections, but she ran under a slate called the Committee for Body Obetterment. And I still have the poster, her campaign poster from 1971. And their slogan was give government back to the people. It was a very grassroots-oriented effort, really focused on making investments in older neighborhoods and run down neighborhoods, focused on giving more opportunity to everyone, not leaving people out. But at that time, San Antonio, like most big American cities, did not have single-member districts. So, you know, it didn't matter how popular you were in one neighborhood or one ward or segment, you couldn't afford to run citywide, couldn't get support citywide, then it didn't matter. And nobody that ran on her slate. There was at least the dominant.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And of course, by the time my mother grew up, it was better there was some progress that had been made, but you still had a very high dropout rate. You had underinvestment in primarily Latino and African American neighborhoods in San Antonio. And so the prospects for young people of my mother's age who were Latina or Latino was not what it could be. And there was a real frustration with that. And I think it got tied up completely also back then into the anti-war movement and the general activism that was going on. And that bug bit my mom. She ran for city council when she was 23 in San Antonio.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No doubt, no doubt, there was this tension in the city. You had groundbreaking congressman named Henry Gonzalez that I think was one of either the first or second Mexican-American congressmen elected. And obviously Texas being the state that it was at the time, you had limited opportunities just like you did in much of the rest of the United States for Mexican Americans and Latinos in general. When my grandmother was growing up, you could walk across storefronts, and I've seen these signs that said no Mexicans or dogs allowed.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother didn't have much interaction with her dad when she was growing up. My grandmother worked as a maid to cook and a babysitter for her whole life. That's what she did. And she was not very political. So my mother was basically a child of the 60s, this hell raiser, who graduated from high school in 1965. She went to Catholic school for all of those 13 years starting in kindergarten and then went to a Catholic university and got involved in the Young Democrats and then got involved in the Chicano movement and the sanity.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, she was born in San Antonio. She had grown up with her mom been raised by my grandmother as a single parent. My grandmother had come from Mexico when she was about six years old and she came because she and her sister had been orphaned. Her parents had passed away in Mexico and the nearest relatives that could take them in were in San Antonio. So they came through Eagle Pass, Texas in nineteen twenty two, and my grandmother ended up with this extended family. They pulled her out of school to help with the housework when she was in third or fourth grade, so she never finished even elementary school. She ended up learning how to read. She could speak both English and Spanish, and she raised my mom as a single parent.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. I jumped into politics before he did. His running joke is that I'm a minute uglier than he is. I used to in DC, I used to tell people that the way to tell this apart was that I'm the Castro in Washington with a real job since he's in Congress. These days he says that he's the Castro with a job since I'm unemployed. But yeah, we grew up with... With a mother, especially our mom that was very, very active in politics, she never held office herself, but she was involved in the old Chicano movement of the late nineteen sixties and seventies. She ran for city council in San Antonio.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and first, thanks for having me. It's great to be here and congrats on the way that you've built up this Institute of Politics in such a short time. Yeah, so my brother Joaquin and I are twins born one minute apart. I am older than he is. He says I'm a minute apart. That's how you got to be.”
2017-03-27 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 133 - Julián Castro · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source