Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Floor Speech
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor and a privilege to share the podium today with my esteemed colleague, Sheila Cherfilus- McCormick, as we embark on this significant CBC Special Order hour, an hour that has come. We are going to dive deep into understanding how terms like colored people have shaped our racial conversation and histories. This isn't just an exploration of the past, it is about how we forge our future. We will be tackling the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Mr. Speaker, across every field and sector, we are seeing a retreat on this promise, and we are going to stress why it is so vital that our education system is inclusive, recognizing and celebrating our racial diversity, rather than suppressing it. We see a future where understanding our collective past enables us to shape a more equitable society.
Remember, this conversation isn't just about us or Congress. It is a conversation for every single American because together we can make a difference.
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Donald Payne, Jr. from the great State of New Jersey for his remarks.
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the honorable chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Congressman Steven Horsford, from the great State of Nevada.
It is now my privilege to yield to the Honorable Congresswoman Joyce Beatty from the great State of Ohio.
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Congresswoman Joyce Beatty for her remarks.
Kelly).
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Congresswoman Robin Kelly from Illinois for her remarks.
Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentlewoman from Florida (Mrs. Cherfilus-McCormick).
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick from the great State of Florida for her remarks.
Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank both the gentleman from Illinois and the gentlewoman from Florida for their consistent and determined presence to bring to the American people truth and, of course, inspiration. I thank them both for their great leadership. I also thank Mr. Horsford, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, for his leadership.
I think we are noted around the Nation and around the world for this outstanding presentation of great information every single week that enlightens people's minds and hearts.
Let me take just a moment to honor the Reverend Dr. Jesse Jackson, who this past weekend made a stupendous effort, as he always does, with Rainbow PUSH Coalition for its outstanding national convention, the many people who have come over the years.
This will not be a moment that I will take to completely pay tribute to Reverend Jackson, but I could not come to the floor without expressing my deep and abiding admiration for him. I have always said that Reverend Jackson, when no one else would be there to comfort those who are deprived, depressed, and simply outraged because of discrimination in this Nation, it would be the Reverend Dr. Jesse Louis Jackson who would be present and would be in the most difficult of situations. It is amazing that for decades he has consistently been doing this, over 50 years, being the first African American to run for President.
Frankly, I will say that I am in public service because of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson. My first run was in 1984. I would not have won way down in Houston, Texas, had it not been for the unbelievable, positive uprising of voters who were moved and energized, rushing to the polls, excited.
For those of us who happened to be on the ballot for the first time, a young African-American woman seeking to be a judge in the county of Harris, I could not have made those steps without the unbelievable leadership and courage of not only Reverend Jackson but his wife and his family because they were doing it together.
Let me again express my appreciation. I know it was a stupendous conference, and I know that he has selected and given the anchor to a great leader. It is a great leader who can make choices of greatness, and he has done so.
I will very quickly touch on gun violence prevention and public safety. Excuse my raspy voice, and I will not take long, but I will just say that--do we need to say it?--every day, 120 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 32,000 people die from gun violence annually, including 2,677 children under 18 years of age.
In our respective communities, we see toddlers being shot, 10-year- olds being shot, senior citizens being shot.
Let me, in particular, give credit to the Houston Police Department, as they have worked very hard to bring down homicides, investigate homicides, and the numbers have gone down. However, it is very clear that they are desperately in need of Federal action. They desperately need the universal background check, which we have not been able to do. They desperately need, in many instances, the ban on assault weapons. They desperately need requirements for gun storage.
My bill, H.R. 52, the Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safe Storage Act, named in honor of Kimberly Vaughan, a student at Santa Fe High School, who was just 17 years of age when a student entered her art class with a stolen gun and killed 10 people--stolen from the home. These guns were laid out and were owned by a family member. Firearm injury is the leading cause of death, as I said, of children.
Is it difficult to require the manufacturer to say to store guns and provide storage devices? Is it difficult for the retailer to provide storage devices? Is it difficult to be able to say as a nation that we believe in the Second Amendment, but life is so much more important?
When children as young as 9 and 10 are the victims of drive-by shootings intended for someone else, but it doesn't matter--I am reminded of children from Chicago to Houston who have been shot innocently, shot in their beds, or a woman who was shot in her house as the bullet whizzed close to her.
I am rising today to say that not only must we stop the gun violence, but we must also draw together, as the Congressional Black Caucus has done, to support funding for gun violence intervention. That is an important piece. We must expand responsibility to ensure that we give tools to the community to stop violence.
Workforce programs, as well, are very important. We must do it with our cities and do it with our law enforcement. Now is the time to stop gun violence in America and save lives.
Mr. Speaker, as a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I must shed light on the growing public safety concern regarding gun violence.
Every day, 120 Americans are killed with guns.
More than 32,000 people die from gun violence annually, including 2,677 children under 18 years of age.
And each year, hundreds of law enforcement officers lose their lives to gun violence, having been shot to death while protecting their communities.
Gun violence affects us all, but our government's continued lack of proactivity towards preventing gun violence has led to countless unnecessary, preventable deaths.
We cannot continue to allow countless lives to be lost to guns, when we can instead work together to save them.
It is for this reason that I, once again, stand to advocate for my bill, H.R. 52, the Kimberly Vaughn Firearm Safe Storage Act, named in honor of Kimberly Vaughn, a student of Sante Fe High School, who was just 17 years of age when a student entered her art class with a stolen gun and killed 10 people.
Firearm injury is the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the United States.
American children are twice as likely to be shot and killed as they are to die drowning. And still, there are more safety regulations for pools than gun storage.
An estimated 4.6 million minors live in homes with at least one unlocked, loaded firearm.
One in three U.S. households with children have firearms, and firearms accounted for nearly 19 percent of childhood deaths in 2021, which is a 50 percent increase since 2019.
My Bill, H.R. 52, establishes best practices for safe firearm storage to protect Americans, especially children, from improperly stored or misused firearms, to ensure that tragic deaths, such as the one of Kimberly Vaughn, do not happen again.
H.R. 52 will require labeling for weapons that says ``Safe Storage Saves Lives'' to spread awareness of the importance of storage to those that purchase firearms.
My bill will also provide grants and tax incentives to incentivize safe-storage devices to those that purchase weapons.
Gun storage will save countless lives by ensuring that weapons do not end up in the hands of the young.
We must work together to secure firearms and protect children, by passing legislation such as H.R. 52 to help prevent unintentional shootings and ensure that tragic stories such as Kimberly Vaughan never happen again.
Furthermore, despite affecting all communities, gun violence affects all communities differently, with a disproportionate effect on Black communities.
Black Americans are 10 times more likely than white Americans to die by gun homicide.
Black Americans are three times more likely than white Americans to be fatally shot by police.
And while Black Americans made up 12.5 percent of the United States population in 2020, they were the victims in 61 percent of all gun homicides.
According to the American Progress, ``this is due to a combination of weak gun laws; systemic racial inequities, including unequal access to safe housing and adequate educational and employment opportunities; and a history of disinvestment in public infrastructure and services in the communities of color most affected by gun violence.''
Black Americans are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and experience gun homicide at 10 times the rate of white Americans.
Nonfatal shootings, most of our nation's gun violence, impacts Black Americans at an even higher rate.
They experience gun assault injuries at 18 times the rate of White Americans.
Despite not directly causing these horrific events, our government shares in the blame.
Our role as executives in municipal government is to ensure we utilize every tool available to us and those provided by the state and federal government to keep our cities safe.
We need to reimagine public safety by holding law enforcement officers who violate the public trust accountable, using public health resources to address mental health crises, and ensuring all communities are not overpoliced, well-resourced with access to job opportunities, affordable childcare, and capable social services to improve the quality of life.
We need to increase the use of civilian responders deployed to incidents involving mental health concerns and disturbances or disputes.
We need to strengthen governmental agencies dedicated to violence intervention and neighborhood safety.
We need to pass legislation, such as H.R. 48, the Gun Violence Reduction Resources Act of 2023, which will work to hire additional Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive agents and investigators to enforce gun laws.
We need to pass legislation such as H.R. 46, the Mental Health Access and Gun Violence Prevention Act, which will authorize funding to increase access to mental health care treatment to reduce gun violence. Being that:
Suicide is the leading cause of gun related deaths in America;
more than 60 percent of deaths by guns in the country are the result of individuals using these weapons to commit suicide;
approximately 1 in 4 American adults have a mental illness and nearly half of all adults in America will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime; and
less than half of children and adults with diagnosable mental health problems receive the treatment they need.
Gun violence is a nonpartisan issue with bipartisan solutions.
We act as though as hands are tied behind our back, despite the countless options at our disposal.
I join my CBC colleagues in advancing their bills that work to prevent gun violence.
Protecting our communities and protecting our family's need to be a priority.
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee from the great State of Texas for her comments.
I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Honorable Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove from the great State of California for her remarks.
I would like to take a point of privilege and speak to the Record. Mr. Speaker, may I make an inquiry about the time remaining?
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heart burdened by the weight of history and a spirit ignited by the promise of the future. We gather here in these hallowed halls of power, where words bear the weight of action, and action shapes the destiny of our Nation.
But the words uttered by our fellow Congressman--and I have waited for a sufficient response for him to apologize to the Honorable Congresswoman Joyce Beatty and to other Members that seek truth and justice--but he has remained silent, and he says he has misspoken.
Misspoken means to also not have been made clear, so if he could clarify his remarks on who is a colored person--as the grandson of two soldiers that fought in U.S. wars, I would like to know what he was speaking about for colored.
When my grandparents could not go on the first-class car after returning from Europe, at the Union Station had to go sit in the second-class car for colored people, behind Nazi POWs that were allowed to go in the first-class car, we are trying to overcome a horrid racial past.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you a little history. When we hear, as African Americans, our brothers and sisters referred to as colored people in the year of 2023, it doesn't just make us uncomfortable, it transports us back through centuries of struggle, resilience, and a pursuit of justice often denied.
I stand here before you today, not just as a Member of Congress, but a freedom fighter. Our fight as Americans started before the country was even born. It has been over 400 years when the first persons that were imported from Africa had been enslaved.
Nearly two centuries after, in 1787, our Nation held a Constitutional Convention. It was there that the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise was struck. Three out of five Americans that had been enslaved were counted as representation for taxation, not for votes. The humanity of a person was whittled down to a fraction.
Can you imagine the audacity, the horror?
Just 2 years later, in 1789, we stand witness to a profound paradox that happened; the same 1789 that gave birth to this illustrious institution, the United States of House Representatives, founded in 1789.
On the one hand, we celebrate the inauguration of our first President, President George Washington--his picture stands proudly in this Chamber--a milestone in our Nation's narrative.
Yet, let us not overlook the uncomfortable truth that this esteemed leader was himself a holder of Americans enslaved; a chilling reminder that our Nation's foundation was laid with the sweat and blood of those in chains.
In the years that followed, from 1740 to 1834, Southern slave States employed another insidious tool to maintain the oppressive status quo, the anti-literacy laws. I have not been able to find any other nation that had instituted or enacted anti-literacy laws.
Imagine a system so threatened by the enlightenment of its subjugated people that they made it illegal for the enslaved and free people of color to learn to read and write.
In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted, transforming ordinary citizens into accomplices for the slavery system. A free territory was no longer a sanctuary. It could transform into a hunting ground for those seeking freedom. Aiding the enslaved, a profound act of humanity was suddenly a criminal act punishable by fine and imprisonment.
This Act didn't just target the enslaved. It cast its nefarious shadow over the entire Nation, implicating all in the perpetration of this abhorrent institution.
In the wake of this Act, 7 years later, in 1857, the Supreme Court reached a decision in the Dred Scott case that shook the very foundation of freedom and human dignity.
The Court ruled that all Black people, regardless of their status as free or enslaved, were not and could never become citizens of the United States. This wasn't just a judicial ruling; it was a heartrending affirmation of the racial prejudice deeply rooted in our society, a prejudice that permeated even our Nation's highest courts.
In the year 1863, we saw a light, the Emancipation Proclamation. Freedom--after 246 years, freedom, it seemed, was finally within our grasp. A bloody Civil War, fought over the right to keep human beings in bondage, ended 2 years later, our Nation's deadliest war, and we dared to dream of a new dawn for our people.
Yet, as the sun of liberation rose, the shadows of oppression heightened. In a bitter twist of irony, freedom unveiled a new face of subjugation. The Black Codes of 1865 were enacted.
Though the iron chains of slavery had been shattered, this new set of manacles were fastened around us, chains woven with legal threads and tightened by the grip of racial bias. They were not as visible as the shackles of old, but they were no less oppressive, no less real.
A century later, in 1963, at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., gave voice to the bitter truth: ``One hundred years later, the colored American is still not free.''
A hundred years after emancipation, the struggle was far from over. We had been unshackled, yet we remained bound by the chains of systemic discrimination, segregation, and marginalization.
The term ``Jim Crow law'' surfaced in 1892. Just 4 years later, there was Plessy v. Ferguson. The verdict cemented the doctrine of ``separate but equal,'' which inherently meant being unequal.
Despite these oppressive circumstances, our ancestors fought with courage and determination. They fought for the Civil Rights Act in 1866, and fought in 1964, 1965, and 1966.
Our ancestors fought for the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. Our ancestors fought for the 14th Amendment to have equal protection under the law and guaranteeing citizenship. They fought for the 15th Amendment so that we could have the right to vote for African-American men.
These victories did not come easy. They were bought with blood, sweat, and tears of our forebears.
Today, we find ourselves in 2023, but the echoes of our past are loud. Our colleague, Mr. Crane, has evoked the ghost of a very painful past by addressing us in this Chamber as colored people.
We have served in every war, Mr. Crane. It is a term as archaic as the prejudices it represents.
In doing so, he blurs the line between past and present, reminding us of an era we have struggled to move beyond. His words are not just a singular lapse in judgment but a symptom of a much larger disease--a disease that seeped into the highest courts of our land, where the 14th Amendment--the very symbol of our freedom--has been twisted into a weapon against affirmative action.
This very amendment, a cornerstone of liberty and equality, has been misused to dismantle a policy intended to level the playing field that has been historically skewed against African Americans.
Our attention is then drawn to the targets of this regressive decision: Harvard University, founded in 1636, and the University of North Carolina founded in 1789. The Supreme Court in 2023, cited the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, in the name of Make America Great Again.
Now, we have our colleague (Mr. Crane) using the words ``colored,'' the words that my mother and father had to see growing up in South Carolina and Florida and Virginia for colored water fountains, colored schools.
Can we please move forward? Can we please demand an apology to this great body of distinguished men and women from Mr. Crane?
I ask: Is it truly a coincidence that these specific institutions have been targeted as the battlegrounds for the dismantling of affirmative action, or is it an insidious reminder of our painful history, a pointed jab at the very heart of our struggle for equality and access in opportunity?
The African American community has been in bondage longer than we have ever been free. Our exclusion has lasted longer than our inclusion. Even half a century after the Civil Rights Act of 1965, we ask ourselves: Are we truly free to meritocratically grow?
This timeline, this history is a testament to our resilience. It is a reminder of our past, a measure of our progress, and a marker of the journey ahead. We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, those who have struggled, and those who have sacrificed. We owe it to them and to ourselves to keep the flame of justice burning bright.
This journey has been long, and it is not over, but we will not falter, we will not tire, we will not rest until we can unequivocally say that we are free--until justice is not just a word in our Pledge of Allegiance but a reality in our lives.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. JACKSON of Illinois.
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