A video clip from a Kentucky Democrat tore up the internet, going viral after she said she feels guilt on a daily basis for being white during a speech defending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public schools. State Rep. Sarah Stalker made the comments during a meeting of the Kentucky General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Education on Tuesday.
Stalker started her statement by stating she was going to reveal her true feelings on the topic, before launching into an explanation of the shame she feels for being white. “I’m going to be honest. I don’t feel good about being White every day, for a lot of reasons,” Stalker can be heard saying in the clip of her jaw-dropping speech. But it didn’t end there.
The Kentucky Democrat goes on to talk down about being white, referring to the race she was born into as being a “point of privilege.” She continued, “That I get to move through the world in a way so many other of my colleagues and friends and family members and members of the community don’t get the privilege to do.”
Stalker then goes on to lament that while she allegedly gets to do a whole lot of things that people of other races don’t get to do, she still doesn’t have as much privilege as white men. “And I’m just a woman. A white woman. If I were a white man, I would be functioning from a point of even greater privilege,” she said.
The congresswoman then brought up how not having diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in schools is a missed opportunity to teach kids about reflecting on the color of their skin and how it provides them privileges that, she reiterated, people of color allegedly do not have.
“I think we’re missing an opportunity. When kids have a moment to reflect about how the color of their skin does and does not allow them to move through the world — running to them and trying to stifle that and trying to say you shouldn’t feel bad, so, we don’t ever want to expose you to something that is going to make you have to pause and have maybe some internal feelings — it’s a missed opportunity for some really good dialogue,” Stalker said.
Later during the meeting, Stalker denied that DEI programs are “making people feel bad about being white,” despite her previous admission to having felt guilt about her race. She then attempted to make the case that these programs are focused on recognizing the “historical privilege that White people have always had in this country,” which she claims still exists today.
"*" indicates required fields
Watch her here:
According to Fox News, Stalker noted the level of diversity within the state’s largest school district, Jefferson County Public Schools, which represent a total of 145 different spoken languages and where a whopping 63% of students are part of the free and reduced lunch program. She then defended her position by saying that DEI isn’t about excluding White people, but including everyone else.
“What the efforts of DEI are trying to do within a school setting now is to pull in other students,” Stalker continued, according to Fox’s report. “Their stories are relative. Their culture, their history, those things are important to see reflective in the reading material. And if we don’t allow those things to come into our textbooks and to come into our conversations in the classroom in a constructive way, then we are simply just trying to whitewash things and I find that to be incredibly problematic.”
The viral video drew the attention of SpaceX CEO and former head of the Department of Government Efficiency Elon Musk, who posted on X, “What an evil woman.” His response pulled in over a million views in less than 24 hours.
Featured image: screenshot from embedded video