In a passionate speech to the House of Commons this week, Kemi Badenoch slammed the teaching of Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter ideology in schools.
“What we are against is the teaching of contested political ideas as if they are accepted fact,” Badenoch said on the House floor in a clip of her speech that is now making the rounds on social media.
“We don’t do this with Communism, we don’t do this with Socialism, we don’t do it with Capitalism,” she continued. “And I want to speak about a dangerous trend in race relations that has come far too close to home to my life and this is the promotion of Critical Race Theory – an ideology that sees my blackness as victimhood and their whiteness as oppression. I want to be absolutely clear: This government stands unequivocally against Critical Race Theory.”
She called Black Lives Matter “a political movement” and called for members of the opposite party to condemn many hateful actions conducted by BLM (including an instance she recounted of white BLM protestors calling a black armed police officer the N-word).
Badenoch called the efforts to teach Critical Race Theory without balancing it with the opposing viewpoint in schools illegal.
Here’s the one-minute-forty-five-second clip from her eight-and-a-half-minute speech:
Badenoch was responding to comments made by Labour MP Dawn Butler, who argued that history is taught to children in the UK “to make one group of people feel inferior and another group of people feel superior.”
Butler called for the “decolonization” of history.
Badenoch opened her speech in response by detailing the many opportunities children in the UK are provided to learn about other cultures.
“Our curriculum does not need de-colonizing for the simple reason that it is not colonized,” she said. “We should not apologize for the fact that British children primarily study the history of these islands.”
Here is her full speech, well worth the entire watch:
Kemi Badenoch is a conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Saffron Walden, a town in the district of Essex lying between London and Cambridge. Badenoch was appointed as Minister for Equalities on February 13th of this year, a position within the Government Equalities Office, responsible for leading “work on policy relating to women, sexual orientation and transgender equality.”
Born Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke in Wimbledon, Kemi grew up in Nigeria and immigrated to the UK when she was 16 years old. She holds degrees in both engineering and law and was elected to the House of Commons in 2017.
In her maiden speech to the House of Commons, Badenoch spoke of growing up in Nigeria under a socialist state: “Going without electricity, doing my homework by candlelight because the state electricity board could not provide power. Fetching water a mile away in heavy, rusty buckets because the nationalised water could not get water to flow from the taps.”
“Unlike many colleagues born after 1980,” she continued, “I was unlucky enough to live under socialist policies. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone, and that’s just one of the reasons that I am a Conservative.”
Caitlin Bassett graduated from Liberty University in 2017 with her Bachelor’s in Politics and Policy. She grew up in the great Pacific Northwest, but now calls Northern California home as she pursues ministry school.
Good for her, and thanks for publishing this article.