The leader of the House Republicans Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that he supports the removal of all of the Confederate statues that are members of the Democrat party from around the U.S. Capitol.
“The bill, we’re voting on today we voted before. And I supported it, I support it now. Let me state a simple fact. All of the statues being removed by this bill are statues of Democrats,” said McCarthy.
The proposed legislation which passed the House Tuesday seeks to remove the bronze sculptures of those who supported the Confederate army in the Civil War. It also seeks to replace a bust of former Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored a key decision in 1857 supporting slavery, with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice.
Taney had written the majority opinion of the 1857 Dred Scott decision which stated that black people were not American citizens and that slavery was not prohibited under the U.S. Constitution. The decision was later overturned by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, in 1862 and 1868 respectively.
“What’s interesting, the statues that need to be removed were sent to the Capitol by states that were majority controlled by Democrats, sent to a House that had a majority controlled by Democrats, accepting of these statues. I think the bill should go further,” added the GOP House leader.
McCarthy said Democrats passed discriminatory laws, like the Jim Crow laws that separated and disenfranchised people based on the color of their skin and are still trying to discriminate based on the color of people’s skin with Critical Race Theory (CRT) initiatives throughout U.S. institutions.
“Madam speaker, today the Democratic Party had doubled down on what I consider this shameful history by replacing the racism of the past with the racism of the Critical Race Theory. They continue to look at race as the primary means of judging a person’s character,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy said that the Biden administration is pushing CRT initiatives through all federal agencies including the federal Human Resource Dept., the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Dept. of Education, and the military.
Ms. Kiran Ahuja, who was recently confirmed as director of OPM, has praised the work of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and would have the power to decide human resource initiatives and personnel policy for thousands of federal employees, including requiring CRT-type training.
During her April confirmation hearing, Ahuja was questioned by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) who expressed concerns about her past advocacy for the writings of Kendi, an “antiracist activist” and advocate for the CRT model.
“We need to rid the country of those racist policies structures and systems and replace them with more anti-racist policies and structures and systems. In other words, it is not enough to just be aware, we must then take action so that we can transform this country,” Kendi told The Atlantic.
During the confirmation hearing in April, Hawley pressed Ahuja on her views about training based on CRT, and at one point asked the new director if she agreed with Kendi that the election of former President Donald Trump was “racist progress,” and if she views the United States as a systemically racist country.
“I do understand the role of this position. I very much take that very seriously and upholding merit system principles. I also understand the value of no one should be discriminated based on their race—I was a former civil rights lawyer and I take that very seriously. I think we all uphold what Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) said which is we should be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin, and that’s the approach that I’ve taken,” she replied.
However, CRT and Kendi’s ideas oppose MLK’s vision.
“CRT, and the training to implement it is a radical ideology that focuses on race as the key to understanding society, and objectifies people based on race,” it states.
