The Patriot Post® · A Black Republican Talks Race
Utah Republican Congressman Burgess Owens is a black man who is the descendent of slaves. His grandfather proudly served in World War I, and his father served in World War II. Undeterred by living in the actual Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, Owens attended college and became an all-star football player. He went on to have a respectable career in the NFL, earning a Super Bowl ring along the way. Owens knows the value of hard work. He also knows racism when he sees it. And Burgess Owens will tell you straight away that today’s Democrat Party is exhibiting “true racism.”
Since taking office, Owens has proudly stood on the front line to fight against the Democrats’ incessant race-baiting. He had the chance to speak his mind at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s sham hearings into voter election laws this week, where he called out President Joe Biden and the Democrat Party for using the memory of Jim Crow as leverage in their attempt to defeat Georgia’s voting law.
“What I find extremely offensive,” Owens said, “is the narrative from the Left that black people are not smart enough, not educated enough, not desirous enough of education to do what every other culture and race does in this country: get an ID.”
Owens further explained that Georgia’s election law does not even come close to establishing the systemic hurdles to minority voting that were present during the Jim Crow era in the Deep South. And he speaks from experience — something Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sorely lacking.
It’s not just voting, though. Owens also spoke out against reparations for blacks, pointing out the impracticality and logistical impossibility of calculating and distributing taxpayer money and who should get it.
More importantly, says Owens, “Reparations teach separation and convey a narrative that black Americans are a hopeless, hapless, and oppressed race entitled to handouts. The core of the debate certainly does not represent black America’s potential, nor the 150 years of legal, social, and economic progress achieved by millions of American minorities.”
Owens’s words drive right to the fact that the Democrat Party doesn’t think very highly of blacks in America. At every turn, under the guise of protecting them, Democrats portray blacks as needing special attention and privileges when it comes to getting a job, obtaining a college education, buying a home, and many other tasks. Blacks in America should not feel soothed by this rhetoric. They should feel insulted.
The extent of concern Democrats truly have for blacks is directly proportional to how many votes they can draw from them. Democrats buy those votes with free stuff and the promise of better education and job opportunities that they never seem to deliver. They use victimology and race-baiting as a means of convincing blacks that the Democrat Party is the only way blacks will get ahead in this country. They conveniently sweep aside the fact that Democrats were the slave owners, Jim Crow was a Democrat creation, Democrats fought against civil rights legislation for decades, and their current policies have repeatedly failed to improve the lives of blacks in America.
Burgess Owens speaks the truth about the real source of racism in this country. More voices should join him.