Wednesday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT) discussed his recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing entitled, “Jim Crow 2021: The Latest Assault on the Right to Vote.”
The hearing was in response to Georgia’s new election law that many deemed racist because of the requirement to show identification to vote.
Burgess told “Fox & Friends” that it is an “insult” to suggest black people would not have ID. He called it “soft bigotry,” given all other races know how to obtain proper identification.
“I took issue because — first of all, this is an insult actually when you start looking at what this comes down to,” Owens advised. “Keep in mind … the American dream, getting to the middle class depends on having ID, depends on being able to travel, to get on an airplane, and to go to school — all those kind of things. And we have a party that is really — this is true bigotry. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations where all of a sudden black people cannot do what every other race, every other culture does — the Hispanics, the Italians, Germans, Jewish, everybody knows how to get an ID, but obviously we don’t. And that’s why … asking for ID is actually racist in their party. And so, by the way, it was Jim Crow, the Democrats, who started and pushed the Jim Crow laws; the Democrats who did all those nasty things that we are hearing about. Keep in mind — it was a party that they are now pointing to the American people. They’re the party that did all of that at the turn of the century.”
He added, “The greatest threat for Democrats is American people, no matter what color, that’s part of the middle class — those folks who are no longer dependent on government. They have faith. They have a vision for their family. They look for it because they understand and experience the American dream. The greatest threat. And that’s why I do not want black people to experience that. That’s why they’re tearing down and burning down their businesses every single year in urban communities, those that are trying to reach that middle class. So, to say that black people cannot get an ID is an insult. We are as smart, as tenacious, as desirous of the independence as anybody else. And if anyone who says that is not the truth is, again, just pure racist.”
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