House Financial Services Committee Republicans who advocate for more diversity in the workplace and the housing market have been labeled “woke.” Even so, the plan has continued to receive support from the Republicans on the committee.
The committee’s chairman, Republican Representative for North Carolina Patrick McHenry, told Breitbart News that his colleagues were more interested in “kitchen table concerns” than diversity language.
McHenry claims that the Democratic Party has spent the last two Congresses pressing companies until they “spoke the language of its awakened social agenda,” even though this is in direct opposition to the interests of the party.
Our committee’s Democrat members wasted four years and a significant amount of time and energy trying to impose excessive rules on legitimate American business owners. McHenry said the Democrats’ primary strategy is publicly embarrassing companies into supporting the Democrats’ “woke” social agenda. Under my leadership, the Committee’s Republican members will shift their attention back to domestic problems like improving President Biden’s dismal economy and increasing access to education and other vital services.
On Friday, the conservative Washington Free Beacon reported that Republicans serving on the committee’s six subcommittees continue to give “diversity and inclusion” a lot of weight. The heading of the piece read, “Woke Agenda Survives: These House Republicans Are Sticking with “Diversity and Inclusion.”
Environmental, Socioeconomic, and Governance (ESG) investment is a way for big investors on the left side of Wall Street to fund projects benefiting the environment and society, such as those encouraging social diversity. Conservative group FreedomWorks has asked Democrats to refrain from adopting the similar language.
Byron Donalds (R) of Florida, one of five African-American Republicans in the House, has joined the committee. In the heated race that kicked off the new year, he was a candidate for House Speaker and a member of the extreme Freedom Caucus.
Former banker and financial industry expert Donalds told Breitbart News that the committee’s suggestion was “far from the road of enlightened policies like ESG investing.” The policy’s emphasis on diversity and inclusion, which he saw as an attempt to “actually energize and empower people instead of placating them,” had his support, though.
You can read Donald’s full comment down below:
As a new member of the House Financial Services Committee, one of my many goals is to increase access to financial services, remove barriers that prevent people from traditionally underserved communities from participating in our markets, and aid those in the middle class and lower in achieving greater excellent financial stability. I trust Chairman McHenry and am confident in the direction he is taking the committee. There is a widespread misunderstanding that “woke” efforts, such as ESG investment or virtual signaling on Wall Street, are to blame for the problems with diversity and inclusion that we must solve. It took the United States a long time to realize that embracing diversity and inclusion was the key to uniting the country and ensuring its people were heard rather than trying to satisfy everyone all the time.
Replacing Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) as chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee in 2019 with McHenry gave the impression that he was abandoning the Democrats’ racialized social issue agenda.
Waters described her mood as “miserable” because McHenry’s plan to promote diversity in the work of each subcommittee was “just not enough.”
Breitbart News attempted to contact other Republicans on the committee, such as Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Chair Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Capital Markets Subcommittee Chair Ann Wagner (R-MO) but did not hear back from any of them.