Bigotry and Policy Will Not Be Tolerated

Floor Speech

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Mr. GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, and still I rise. I rise today, Madam Speaker, to take a stand for liberty and justice for all against bigotry and hatred.

I rise to call to our attention, Madam Speaker, that the refusal to resign because of blatant bigotry is a symptom, the refusal to resign when it is obvious, intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, that there is the bigotry. The refusal to resign when there is clear and convincing evidence of bigotry, when there is guilt beyond all doubt, when there is a smoking gun, the refusal to resign under these circumstances is a symptom.

The problem is at the Presidential level. It is the refusal to take on a President who has exhibited bigotry in policy. When we allow bigotry in policy to proceed with immunity, we allow persons to believe that they, too, can emulate that which comes from the highest office in the land.

Madam Speaker, this level of bigotry in policy cannot be tolerated. You have, in Virginia, a Klansman and blackface next to each other in a yearbook. It has been acknowledged as that of the Governor.

With that acknowledgment and with that additional indication that it was done on a previous occasion, blackface, there is enough evidence not only to ask that the Governor resign, but to demand that he do so.

But I understand why this level of bigotry is going to be tolerated to a certain extent, because we don't want to take on the President. If we allow the President to exist with his bigotry, how can we demand with any degree of credibility that the Governor resign?

We have to start at the top. This level of bigotry is trickling down to this extent that people are going to refuse to acknowledge their bigotry. They will lie and deny. They will do all that they can to stay in office.

We have to take a stand, and I stand today to say that we cannot allow this incident to go unchecked. Because what will we do next when there is a Nazi standing in a photograph and there is a noose in a photograph, there are swastikas?

This is going to continue. It doesn't end with Virginia. This is but one symptom, and we have to do what we have always done.

It has been our policy when this level of bigotry surfaces, when it shows its ugly head, we take it on. There is a means by which we can deal with bigotry in policy, but if we allow political expediency--the belief that we ought to defeat a bigoted President--to trump the moral imperative to remove him from office, the moral imperative to impeach bigotry emanating in policy from the Presidency, we have a moral imperative to do so, and we can do so.

There is a committee that can convene to deal with bigotry emanating from the Presidency creating the symptoms that we see in others who refuse to leave office after their bigotry has been revealed. There is a committee that we can convene. That committee is called the Congress of the United States.

Any one Member of Congress can call to the attention of this august body that such thing has happened; and when it is called to this body's attention, we can take a vote, we can go on record.

Are we going to allow bigotry to emanate from the Presidency or will we go on record? I say we go on record.

I am one Member of Congress who, after 400 years of bigotry and hatred and slavery and all of these other ugly features and evidence of harm to society--forgive me for getting so wrapped up in it, but I have to say it. After all of this, for 400 years, it is time for Congress to take this vote.

We have had 400 years to deal with it, and we haven't. What better way to deal with bigotry in this country than to say to the world: We will extricate a President from office for his bigotry?

There will be a vote on impeachment, regardless of what the Mueller commission says.

Bigotry in policy will not be tolerated.

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