[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 82 (Wednesday, May 12, 2021)]
[House]
[Page H2200]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            THE RACIST LEFT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, racism is the practice of according 
rights and privileges to an individual not based on equality under the 
law, but, rather, according to what race that person was born. It is 
antithetical to every principle our country was founded upon, from the 
promise of our Declaration of Independence that all men are created 
equal to the equal protection clause of our Constitution. It was a 
malignancy we fought a civil war to remove. For generations, it has 
been denounced by every American of goodwill for the evil that it is.
  Yet, this dangerous social pathology is now rampant in this House. 
The Judiciary Committee recently adopted a measure on a party-line vote 
to establish a commission with the avowed purpose of enshrining racism 
into law under the guise of slavery reparations.
  The biased composition of this commission--there is not a single 
Republican appointment--lays its intent bare for all to see. It is 
designed to reach into the dead past, revive its most malevolent 
conflicts, and reintroduce them into our age.
  I cannot imagine a more divisive, polarizing, or unjust measure than 
one that would use government force to require people who never owned 
slaves to pay reparations to people who never were slaves--based not on 
anything they did, but solely because of what race they were born.
  History offers us an inexhaustible supply of grievances and 
injustices that are powerful enough to stoke hatreds and resentments 
that can tear any society apart. That is what this movement is all 
about. It is evil in its effect, if not in its intent.
  Lincoln often pointed out that our country was born into a world 
where slavery was an established institution. The American Founders 
reviled it, and they placed principles in our founding documents that 
they were confident would ultimately place that wicked institution upon 
the course of ultimate extinction and would lead to a republic where 
men and women of every race and background could, together, enjoy the 
blessings of liberty. Equal justice under law means a colorblind 
society where race simply becomes irrelevant, and until recently, we 
had made tremendous progress toward that vision as a nation.
  Martin Luther King expressed the gold standard of racial harmony: 
that we should be judged by the content of our character and not the 
color of our skin. It is the equal protection of the law and the vision 
of a colorblind society stretching from the American Founders to 
Lincoln and King that is now under attack by the racist left.
  Yes, there are racists in our society. There are racists of all 
colors in every society; it is the baser side of human nature. But no 
nation has struggled harder to transcend that nature and isolate and 
marginalize its racists than have Americans.
  Yes, extremely damaging and foolish policies have disproportionately 
impacted Black communities in recent decades. Union-dominated schools 
that have failed to educate our children in inner cities, welfare 
programs that have destroyed families, and the withdrawal of police 
protection from crime-plagued neighborhoods are certainly among them. 
But these policies devastate every community where they are practiced, 
regardless of race. The answer is to change those policies, not to 
excuse them because they are ideologically pleasing to the left.
  The racist left is content to ignore all of these current ills. It, 
instead, attempts to set neighbor against neighbor and American against 
American on the basis of their race. They say this is healing. It 
is precisely the opposite. They know it. Indeed, they count on it.

  I think all Americans of goodwill and of every race and creed have 
had enough of this. We are tired of seeing our children taught to hate 
themselves and to hate each other. We are tired of seeing our country 
demonized as racist by those whose first and solitary focus is on race. 
We are tired of the lie that our Nation is systemically racist when it 
has done more to produce a civil and tolerant multiracial society than 
any people in the history of civilization.
  It is long past time that every American of every heritage denounces 
this evil for what it is and to extirpate from our civil discourse 
those race-baiters of every persuasion who have polluted our national 
dialogue and corrupted our national heritage.

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