Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., expressed concern that the U.S. Navy is promoting discrimination by including books about critical race theory on a recommended reading list, specifically pointing at Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.”
At a Tuesday House Armed Services Committee hearing on the Navy’s 2022 budget request, Lamborn asked Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday why that book was on the Navy’s professional reading}t argues that the entire American system is corrupted from top to bottom by racial prejudices which account for all differences in outcomes in our society,” Lamborn said. “And one sentence out of that book says, ‘The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.’”
The congressman then questioned what place such a book has within the context of the U.S. military, even if the reading list is merely voluntary.
“How does exposing our sailors to the idea that they are either oppressors or oppressed and that we must actively discriminate to make up for past discrimination improve our Navy’s readiness and lethality for great power competition?” he asked.
