Rep. Lateefah Simon (D-CA) blasted four Republican witnesses for appropriating the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a hearing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Speaking Wednesday before a House Oversight subcommittee, Simon addressed the majority's witnesses: Dan Lennington of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, Judge Glock of the Manhattan Institute, and Erec Smith of the Cato Institute.
"This is a very, very difficult conversation," she explained. "I'm a great-granddaughter of someone who had a literal yoke on her neck. A literal yoke."
"And I wanna be clear that four out of the five of you last year posted on your social media the words of Dr. King," she continued, "and there are so few folks who actually have studied who are clear on the theology of freedom of King. Very few of you have read and studied and have sat in Ebenezer Baptist Church, so I would ask you to keep Dr. King's name out of your mouth!"
"If you, like me and the many scholars who will be watching studied King, you know that he and the mothers and the fathers of the civil rights movement and of the movement for emancipation not only would be struck by the conversations in this room, but would be shattered by the consequence of lives of hatred, of abuse of this administration, in the name of folks who worked to make this country more free."
Simon noted that "it was never the plan to have people of color" in Congress.
"In fact, folks had to fight tooth or nail to gain access to the front door to this Capitol," she remarked. "Today's hearing says quietly, and actually out loud, who the majority believe is allowed to belong in this country. They used Dr. King's name in deep vein, who has a place in the hierarchy that was never meant to be questioned."
The lawmaker accused Republicans of wanting to "push us back to a segregated America based on race."
"It is a bigotry. It is a hypocrisy," she insisted. "Republicans, like I said before, will quote Dr. King all day, will bring forth Lincoln and will talk about Frederick Douglass in the same breath that they are gutting civil rights offices in our governments, in the same breath where they seek to ban AP African-American studies that tells the true story of this country."
"These attacks are central to a broader agenda," Simon added, "that bans books, that erases history, and redefines its national identity in narrow and violent terms."
"A 1950s America is what the goal of this conversation is, and some of us say hell no."
