COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I want to join my colleague Senator Cantwell in congratulating Senator Hirono and all of us for almost unanimously passing this bill that would try to stop discrimination against Asian Americans. I am happy that passed. There was only one vote against it.
I just don't think it goes far enough. I think it is ludicrous, it is odious to me, that in the year 2021, we have major universities in the United States of America that are setting quotas on their admissions for Asian Americans--not quotas to have enough Asian Americans, quotas to keep Asian Americans out. They are, and everybody in this body knows they are doing that.
Harvard is in litigation over it. Harvard officials have already stated that but for their quotas, there would be twice as many Asian Americans at Harvard as there are now if they base the decision solely on academic achievement. And that is wrong.
There is no way to discriminate in the right way. Discrimination is discrimination. Judge people on the basis of their academic achievements.
President Biden has talked an awful lot about the error of discriminating against Asian Americans, and he is absolutely right. What is the first thing he did? He pulled his Justice Department off of filing litigation to try to stop these quotas on Asian Americans and universities. I mean, if there weren't double standards around here, there would be no standards at all.
So I strongly encourage--Senator Cruz and I offered an amendment to Senator Hirono's bill to try to fix this. Unfortunately, we couldn't get 60 votes. In fact, I don't think a single--maybe I am wrong in saying this, but not very many of my Democratic friends voted for it.
But I would say to President Biden, now, if you are serious about ending discrimination against Asian Americans, tell your Justice Department to get off its ice cold, lazy rear end and do something about it. Stop the quotas in higher education.
Anyway, that is not, really, what I came up to talk about.
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