Burgess Owens: “I mourn for the Chinese who were denied the right to own property. I mourn for the Japanese who were put in…”

“I mourn for the Chinese who were denied the right to own property. I mourn for the Japanese who were put in concentration camps. But I also mourn much more for those descendants of African slaves who were descendants of people who were not allowed to own property for 232 years. They were not even recognized in marriage. They could not get married. Laws were made to prohibit the teaching of reading to African Americans. All those injustices do not matter, I suppose. If we start with a set of wrong assumptions, we can make a profound argument about simple-minded matters. But let us lay this aside for a moment and not discuss the need for affirmative action as a matter of justice that is long overdue. Let us just talk about how do we deal with the present situation and some of the things the previous speaker said. Why do we not let all high school graduates who qualify to go to college go to college? Why do we not open up the slots. Why do we not have open admission and have the Federal Government have a program where we expand the Pell grants and we expand all the Federal aid to the point where open admission would mean that every student graduating from high school who can reach a threshold can go on to college.”