On June 25, California Rep. Lateefah Simon made sure her voice was heard loud and clear at a congressional hearing that appeared to have the sole purpose of discrediting and dismantling DEI.
When Republican Virginia Rep. John McGuire used a Dr. Martin Luther King quote out of context to justify the White House’s anti-DEI crusade, it was too much for the 48-year-old from the Bay Area.
Simon ripped into McGuire and other attendees who reduced MLK’s words into a pithy soundbite, telling them to “keep Dr. King’s name out of your mouth!”
An edited clip of her explosive speech has been circulating on social media, drawing both criticism and praise.
The hearing, titled “Sacrificing Excellence for Ideology: The Real Cost of DEI,” was held by the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services, which has oversight of federal health care policy. Simon was allowed four and a half minutes to speak after listening to testimony on the supposed evils of DEI, including a hypothetical scenario put forth by McGuire of being operated on by an underqualified surgeon.
McGuire of Virginia told the room, “To me, DEI stands for ‘didn’t earn it,’” before blasting former President Joe Biden’s DEI policies as “disastrous… Marxist, it destroys innovation and motivation.” He then asked the witnesses gathered at the hearing if they agreed with Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous quote that people should be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin.
Cue the fury. Simon acknowledged it was a “difficult conversation to have” before unleashing her outrage.
“There are so few folks who have actually studied, who are clear on the theology of freedom of King. Very few of you have read and studied and have sat in Ebenezer Baptist Church, so I would ask you: You keep Dr. King’s name out of your mouth!” she admonished.
“He and the mothers and the fathers of the civil rights movement and the movement for emancipation not only would be struck by the conversations in this room, but would be shattered by the consequence of lives, of hatred, of abuse of this administration in the name of folks who worked to make this country more free…. This conversation is not about an acronym, it’s just not,” she said.
Simon, who was born legally blind and is the first Muslim member of Congress from California, had a long history of civil rights advocacy before entering politics and was the youngest woman ever to receive a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship.
“I have spent my career fighting for people who traditionally have not had a voice in places of power,” the San Francisco native told NBC News in the lead-up to her election in November 2024.
At the hearing, she referenced her great-grandmother who had a “literal yoke on her neck,” and reminded the members that people of color “had to fight tooth and nail to gain access to the front door to this Capitol.”
The fiery clip of the hearing is putting Simon on people’s radar, whether for good or bad.
“I was unfamiliar with Rep. Simon. Thank you for this introduction,” wrote one commenter on X. “Powerful words. Maga [Republicans] ALWAYS quote MLK Jr, yet just as they do [with] the Constitution, they pick and choose only which parts they like.” While others found her “too much,” saying, “This is why the democrats are losing voters. Too much performance. Too much grandstanding. Win with facts and ideas, not songs and dances.”
