Glenn Grothman: “I thank the gentleman from Indiana for introducing this amendment. I think it is a commonsense amendment. Right now…”

“I thank the gentleman from Indiana for introducing this amendment. I think it is a commonsense amendment. Right now, there are all sorts of rumors out there that when people are admitted to the service academies--who, after all, are going to wind up running our military, the one part of our government that cannot fail--preferences are being given and they are not always taking the best people that they can. I want to point out something that is a little bit offensive about this whole diversity thing. Diversity for people like the Democratic Party, sadly, is solely determined by your genetics or your DNA or where your ancestors were 200 years ago. I will give you an example to show the foolishness of it and that the real goal here, I think, is to divide Americans. If I am one-quarter Peruvian, I can identify as Hispanic. I can identify as Hispanic despite the fact I have never spoken a word of Spanish and never been south of the border in my life. The people who just want to divide America would say that I have a unique perspective growing up in a Milwaukee suburb, despite the fact that I am one- quarter from a different part of the world. This is preposterous on its face, and it will inevitably lead to division as we are educating our military that they should look at people by where their ancestors came from, not as individuals.…”