Hoyer Remarks at Press Conference Announcing Resolution on the Great Replacement Theory
“Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Too many days of violence and grief. Too many days. We grieve with your family. We grieve with your loss of your loved ones – whatever that relationship was, it was one you counted on. I want to thank Representative Bowman for his leadership in so quickly acting to confront this hate and bigotry, which for far too long, as the Speaker said, has been with us, and he said as well.
“Throughout history, we’ve seen twisted ideologies concocted to justify violence and exclusion against Black and Latino people, against Jewish people, against Asian people, and people who are somehow different. Bryan Stevenson has a museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and he says the first thing you need to do to mistreat people is to make them less than people. Not worthy of that admonition that we hold those truths to be self-evident, that all men, and certainly in the nineteenth century they would have said, all people are created equal, and endowed by God with certain unalienable rights. And that is to life, to life, to life.
“That kind of belief however, fails to understand that America does not belong to one group or another. It’s a nation where all who love freedom, democracy, and the rule of law can find a home. That’s the criteria: being a good citizen, building a better future for themselves and their families. Our nation’s motto, as the Speaker so often intones, E Pluribus Unum. To that extent, it’s almost like a marriage where two people become one. What our founders said, that the people who come here become one. One nation under God. We all come from different backgrounds – my father was born in Denmark, in Copenhagen. Many of you behind me and in front of me, have parents, or you yourselves, come from other lands. That’s what America is about.
“The so-called Great Replacement Theory is just the latest version, [Madam Speaker] as you said, just the latest version of the old idea that America does not belong to all Americans and that it’s not all Americans who belong to this country. [This resolution has] spread online, and that’s one of the problems – hate is so easy to spread today and so quickly spread, and so insightful, which is what happened in Buffalo. Mr. [Brian] Higgins was on the Floor just this morning speaking about that hate, so I’m pleased to join you knowing full well this isn’t new: when the Irish came to Boston, they were the others. When the Italians came to Providence, they were the others. When the Jews came to New York, they were the others. African Americans were here, and they were the others.
“It is times as these signs say, to stop hate. That’s what this resolution is about. Congressman, thank you so much for bringing it to the Floor in a timely fashion. I was honored to be able to facilitate its voting this day, by the Congress of the United States of America, saying no to hate. Thank you very much.”
