Rep. Burgess Owens says he imagines a world where race isn’t “a measure of intelligence and potential.”
“Unfortunately, over the past several years, the political Left has tried to drag us down,” Owens wrote in an opinion piece published in Fox News on July 21. “They are intent on teaching Black and Brown students that the system is stacked against them, there is nothing they can do to stop it, and it is better to live in a perpetual state of victimhood.”
Owens said he witnessed racism first hand during his childhood “in the Jim Crow South.” But on the other hand, he said he saw the opportunity the U.S. has to offer.
“I was raised by educators who taught me that success was possible; I just needed to work for it. And I did,” he said.
That’s the reason he started the Merit Caucus to start conversations about overcoming challenges through hard work and rejecting notions of racism when it comes to high standards and expectations, as the Deseret News previously reported .