Providing for Consideration of H.R. Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, Rural Development, Energy and Water Development, Financial Services and General Government, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, and for Other Purposes

Floor Speech

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Ms. MACE. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition today to moving the previous question so that we can immediately consider H.R. 4698, a critical bill to ensure none of the funds made available in any legislation providing appropriations may be used to teach or advance concepts that separate individuals based on race, color, or national origin; that would assign characteristics or assumptions to individuals based on race, color, or national origin; or that would state or imply that the United States is an inherently racist country.

Critical race theory assumes that the tenets of freedom and equality, upon which our country was founded, are simply a mirage to mask systematic racism, and that our government should not provide any tax money to fund its teaching. Critical race theory is Marxist ideology that should not be taught anywhere or be used by anyone's tax dollars to be spent on our veterans or our children in public schools today.

Critical race theory assumes that to be born White is to be born guilty and to be born racist. And to be born Black is to be born oppressed or to be born a victim. These concepts have begun to trickle into our public schools, even though the vast majority of Americans disavow it and reject it.

Nothing could be more un-American than seeking to divide our young children based on factors outside of their control. You can watch many school board meetings across the Nation right now where parents, Black and White, are rejecting critical race theory.

The future leaders of our country must be encouraged to chart their own path without seeing everything through a lens of race. Rather than teaching our Black and Brown and African-American children that they are victims and they are oppressed, we can teach them that they are heroes.

We can teach them about heroes in our history like Harriet Tubman, who saved 750 slaves, rescued them in one night in Beaufort County, South Carolina; we can teach them about Robert Smalls, who commandeered a Civil War ship during the Civil War and freed himself and everyone on that ship and their families; and we can teach them about Joseph Rainey, who was the first Black American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, who was elected from the State of South Carolina, as a Republican, in fact, from South Carolina's First Congressional District.

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