From the Archives: Rep. Burgess Owens on the One Positive Thing to Come Out of the CRT Controversy

(Update: Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah won re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives on November 8, 2022. This post was first published in July 2021.)

Representative Burgess Owens recently appeared on Fox News to talk about “critical race theory” (CRT).

Owens, a former NFL player, flipped the Utah seat he occupies from blue to red in 2020, defeating Democrat Ben McAdams. Mia Love famously flipped the same seat from blue to red in 2014, becoming the first black person ever elected to Congress from Utah and the first black woman elected as a Republican from Utah. The seat flipped again when Love lost to Democrat McAdams in 2018.

The host asked Rep. Burgess what he thought of teachers embracing CRT.

He called CRT “pure racism.” Rep. Burgess said he grew up in an area where people where taught to see others “from the prism of their skin color,” but overcame it. He said this is why school choice is so important. One positive thing to come out the CRT controversy is that parents across the country now have sympathy and empathy for other parents who don’t have access to choice to get away from the “bullies and cowards” in government schools.

Watch the clip below for more:

Rep. Owens and Senator Mike Lee (both from Utah) earlier this month wrote a letter to the IRS commissioner protesting his decision to deny Christians Engaged non-profit status, claiming that the group’s principles on “the sanctity of life, biblical marriage, and biblical justice” were associated with party platforms.

The IRS reversed the decision after a backlash.

“Religious prejudice should never be tolerated, especially from our federal institutions,” Rep. Owens said after the reversal. “I’m glad to see this biased determination reviewed and corrected.”

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3 comments

  1. CRT means that in high school American History 101, the discussion of slavery should begin before the unit reaches the Civil War.

    • No, that’s NOT what it means. When I was in school, in the 1950s and 60s, we discussed slavery beginning with the colonial period!

      CRT teaches that our entire history was based on slavery and therefore the US Constitution and all our institutions are fatally tainted with it and should be abolished and replaced. In reality, our history is the story of our long struggle to live up to the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence: that everyone is created equal and that we’re endowed by our Creator, (not the government) with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

      Slavery was a contradiction of that ideal, which is why it was always controversial and eventually led to the Civil War – followed by abolition, the women’s rights movement, the Civil Rights movement, etc. We keep trying to include everyone in that definition of “all men are created equal” (which, BTW, never was intended to mean “all white males” as the CRT people claim).

      CRT as practiced in the classroom sees everything through the lens of race, and is dividing children into racial categories instead of seeing everyone as belonging to one race: the human race. Not something that ought to be encouraged, IMHO.

      • Anne,
        That’s the same History that I was taught and the reason I am,
        Anti-Slavery and Anti-Segregation!
        CRT is Segregating classrooms by Hue one ones skin.