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HARRIS: Advocating Tribalism
In August 2018, Sen. Harris complained that critics of “identity politics” were employing that term to disparage various demographic groups whose members tended to form voting blocs centered around race, gender and sexual orientation. She then noted, approvingly, how Democrat Doug Jones had won a 2017 special election to determine who would fill the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama recently vacated by Republican Jeff Sessions. “But that didn’t just magically happen,” said Harris. “It happened because black women have been putting in the work, going door to door, organizing even when the cameras were focused elsewhere.”
During the February 24, 2019 airing of MSNBC’s AM Joy, host Joy Reid asked Sen. Harris if, during her presidential campaign, it “would it be difficult for you to advocate race-based policy.” In her response, Harris said: “This term ‘identity politics,’ people will use that term — it’s like people used to talk about the race card. They bring this term up when you talk about issues that are about race, about sexual orientation, about religion. They’ll bring it up when we are talking about civil rights issues as a way to marginalize the issue, as a way to frankly try to silence you or shut you up. We need to call it what it is, which is to try and divert away from a conversation that needs to happen in America. Why? One, because we must speak truth. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism are all real in this country, so we need to have that conversation and address it….”
In 2018, Sen. Harris introduced the Ensuring Diverse Leadership Act, an affirmative action-style bill requiring the Federal Reserve to interview “at least one individual reflective of gender diversity and one reflective of racial or ethnic diversity.”
In May 2020, Sen. Harris introduced the COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force Act, aimed at providing Congress and various federal agencies with “reports and recommendations related to racial and ethnic disparities in the COVID-19 response.”
In July 2020, Harris introduced the COVID-19 Bias and Anti-Racism Training Act, a bill that that called for the Department of Health & Human Services to “award grants to health care providers, public health departments, tribal organizations, schools for social workers and health professionals, and other nonprofit entities, for bias and anti-racism training to reduce disparities in COVID-19 response efforts.”
WALZ: Injected Identity Politics into the COVID Pandemic
In compliance with Governor Walz’s wishes, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) in 2020 instituted a policy that made monoclonal antibodies — a very effective coronavirus treatment that was in short supply and thus had to be rationed — more accessible for nonwhite people than for whites. Specifically, MDH devised a point system to help medical professionals determine which COVID-positive patients ought to qualify to receive the precious, relatively scarce antibodies. In that system — where 4 points were necessary to designate someone as a “highest-need” COVID patient — 2 points were automatically allotted to anyone who could be classified as “BIPOC” — i.e., Black, Indigenous, or People Of Color. This meant that BIPOC status alone would earn a person just as many points as the presence of cardiovascular disease, obesity, or diabetes — co-morbidities known to dramatically increase the likelihood of serious or fatal outcomes for COVID patients.
WALZ: Promoting an Obsession with Race & Grievance
As governor of Minnesota, Walz strongly supported the creation of a so-called Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Center at the Minnesota Department of Education “to build toward an education system committed to anti-racism.” As the Daily Signal explains: “[A]nti-racism author-activist Ibram X. Kendi explains that anti-racism requires … government policies to discriminate with the intent to rectify past discrimination. As Kendi describes it: ‘The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.’”
WALZ: Pushed for Race-Obsessed “Ethnic Studies” Courses in Schools
Walz pushed for Minnesota schools to establish Ethnic Studies requirements regulated by radical activists. Katherine Kersten, senior policy fellow at Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment, explains: “The radical Ethnic Studies addition to Minnesota’s proposed social studies standards encourages students to disrupt and dismantle America’s fundamental institutions. … The model curriculum’s ‘guiding principles’ call for ‘transformative resistance’ and repudiate ‘forms of power and oppression’ that include ‘cisheteropatriarchy’ and ‘anthropocentrism’—the belief that human beings are superior to animals. The curriculum originally incorporated student chants to bloodthirsty Aztec gods …”
In May 2023, Governor Walz signed a law requiring elementary, middle, and high schools to begin including such ethnic studies courses as part of their curricula over the ensuing three to four years. The courses are designed to analyze “perspectives of people of color” and “the ways in which race and racism have been and continue to be social, cultural, and political forces” that create “contemporary systems of oppression.”
WALZ: Used Public Funds to Pay for Racially Discriminatory Conference
On September 25, 2024, the Daily Caller reported that Minnesota State Library Services, which was part of Governor Walz’s administration, was using public funds to pay for an upcoming “professional development and network-building” retreat intended exclusively for “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, or People Of Color) librarians. “A sign-up form for the event allows those seeking to attend the program to select from an assortment of races and sexualities to describe themselves,” said the report, “but ‘heterosexual’ and ‘white’ are notably missing from the options available.”