Fifty-eight years ago, Democrat George Wallace stood to present an inaugural address as the incoming governor of Alabama. He delivered one of the most contemptible pieces of rhetoric in American history. Railing against the rising tide of integration and the civil rights movement, Wallace thundered, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Seven months later, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to offer a vision entirely opposite. Drawing from the soaring vision of the Hebrew prophets, he dreamed of a time when “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as brothers and sisters,” when justice would “roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
To us, what happened over the next decade may seem inevitable, but to those in the moment, it was often anything but.
Buoyed by the slavish loyalty of sycophants, Wallace went on to pursue the presidency four times in the 20 years after his infamous speech. King went on to be beaten, battered, imprisoned, wiretapped, slandered, stalked, and murdered. Yet, it is King’s vision that prevailed, and it is King whom we revere as an American hero on the level of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.
The bitter irony now is that those on the Left have unwittingly embraced the stratification and exclusionary rhetoric of Wallace while denigrating the legacy of King. It’s understandable that Democrats want to rewrite history because it’s not a pretty story for their party. Jim Crow laws were created by Southern Democrats who were angry when Republicans led by Lincoln took away their slaves.
Today’s “progressives” have also accepted without question the tendentious version of American history that Wallace offered rather than the God-given equality King challenged us to realize.
Critical race theory is the idea that America is fundamentally racist, that all the cultural distinctions of our country are shot through with bigotry. CRT cultists — it is a religion immune to criticism — require thinking of society in terms of oppressor/oppressed and racial groupings instead of individuals. It would be difficult to imagine an ideology more opposed to American values or more dangerous to our unity as a country.
To combat this dishonest history, I am pleased to sponsor a bill, backed by my Republican colleagues, prohibiting the expenditure of funds to promote critical race theory in public schools. Why should American taxpayers be forced to foot the bill for a destructive Marxist ideology? It is telling that for all the supposed newness of CRT, the proposed solutions are the same warmed-over Marxism that has failed since 1917.
President Joe Biden’s Department of Education has explicitly proposed priorities related to promoting CRT in schools. My bill prohibits any public funds from advancing CRT. This would prevent any of your tax dollars from going to programs claiming things such as “rugged individualism,” “the protestant work ethic,” intent mattering, and “the nuclear family” are aspects of whiteness. How dispiriting, how foolhardy it is to tell immigrants and minorities that the very things that make the American dream possible are part and parcel of “white supremacy.” How arrogant and shocking it is to judge individuals wholly by the color of their skin and consider it progress. How ultimately divisive and, yes, racist.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina gave a stirring response to Biden’s State of the Union speech, noting that we are not a racist country and that “original sin is not the end of the story for our souls or our nation.” Wallace and King illustrate this perfectly. King died a martyr, believing until the end that American ideals would overcome American sins and that redemption was a stronger force than hate. Wallace lived until he came to renounce the man he once was. That’s the story of America. Even George Wallace can be redeemed. Yes, the wheat and the tares grow up together, but, in the harvest, things are made right. As Americans, we should be grateful for the blessings of liberty we are reaping today.
CRT rejects this true and beautiful narrative and belittles it with vitriolic intolerance. To deny our true history is perverse and an abdication of our responsibilities to the next generation. CRT denies the possibility of heroes, healing, and the reality of progress. Scott and Vice President Kamala Harris are right: America is not a racist country. Our education system should seek to tell our students the facts, not indoctrinate them with ideologies that propped up regimes previous American presidents rightly condemned as evil.
Madison Cawthorn represents North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
