Civil rights groups and Black leaders are speaking out against President Donald Trump‘s nominee for a top post at the U.S. Department of State, urging the U.S. Senate to reject his nomination.
At issue with the nomination of Jeremy Carl to be the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations is his past writings and statements about so-called anti-white discrimination and racist views, including the embracing of the white nationalist “Great Replacement” theory.
Carl, the author of “The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart,” has an extensive record of statements that include suggesting pro-Trump Jan. 6 rioters were treated worse than Black people during the Jim Crow segregated South and arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in public spaces, was used as an “anti-white weapon.”
During a speech at Hillsdale College last year, Carl delivered a presentation that argued that minorities have been portrayed more “positively” than whites in Hollywood since the 1960s and said films and musicals like “The Black Panther” and “Hamilton” had a “racial agenda that needs to be called out.”
“We can’t become numb to the fact that this administration is putting forward avowed white supremacists to positions of power. We should not normalize this. We should not ignore it. We should not accept it,” Desirée Cormier Smith, a senior diplomat and former State Department official, told theGrio.
The former Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice under the Biden administration explained the role of Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations is a critical one.
“That is the senior most diplomat that manages how the United States engages with and represents itself to the United Nations and all of the United Nations agencies,” said Cormier Smith, who is co-president of The Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice.
Carl, who thanked Charlie Kirk in his opening remarks during Thursday’s Senate confirmation hearing, was heavily grilled by senators who challenged him on his views and past remarks. The Trump nominee failed to answer what he considered to be white culture, despite previously stating that it was being erased as a result of mass immigration. He also struggled to walk back remarks he made fixated on the percentage of the white population.
“It’s white people against others, which sounds deeply racist to me,” said U.S. Senator Cory Booker while questioning Carl on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “Somehow you think our country’s greatness depends upon its ethnic diversity as long as white people have more numbers than others…It sounds like you have a racial hierarchy. There’s no way for me to read this in any other way.”
An enraged Booker laid into Carl, who struggled to answer the New Jersey senator’s questions about his views on race in the United States.
“You do not respect me. You look upon me as my color of my skin. You say holidays like Juneteenth are racial hustles. Don’t come here and hustle me!” said Booker.
Carl’s consideration for such a high-level State Department role also drew condemnation from civil rights groups and other Black members of Congress, who urged the Senate panel to reject his nomination.
“Not only due to his troubling anti-Black ideology, but also because of his disconcerting and limited record on issues related to international diplomacy,” said U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Clarke continued, “Beyond his troubling remarks on civil rights, his commitment to denigrating Black history deeply concerns our Caucus. Mr. Carl has not only been steadfast in his campaign to oppose the teaching of Black history in primary and secondary education, but his public record also reflects a penchant for conflating Black history with anti-white propaganda.”
A coalition of civil rights groups, including the NAACP, National Urban League, National Action Network, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and National Council of Negro Women, sent a letter to Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Carl’s views are “fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities of this role and with the values the United States must uphold on the global stage.”
“Appointing someone who has publicly questioned the legitimacy of civil rights protections and international bodies would further undermine U.S. credibility and weaken our capacity to lead with moral authority on the world stage,” said the civil rights groups.
“How could someone who has made it such racist and antisemitic and homophobic comments in the past, in very public ways, realistically engage with diplomats from around the world, particularly those from Africa, from Latin America, from the Caribbean, from Asia, from Europe, who are not white?” said Cormier Smith.
She told theGrio, “I really hope that the Republicans on the committee take heed to what Mr. Carl has said and written about non white, non Christian people, about what he said about LGBTQI+ folks, and see that this is not someone who reflects the best of America.”
