ATLANTA – After lengthy debate that plumbed the depths of racism in American history, Georgia’s Senate Democrats were unable to convince their Republican colleagues to drop legislation that would ban preferential treatment in public colleges and schools based on race and other factors.
With this year’s legislative session ending Friday, Republican senators were rushing their measure through. They had commandeered a bill from the House of Representatives that would have given teachers a couple more days of sick time, and they had converted it into a vehicle to financially punish educational institutions that embrace diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.
The overhauled House Bill 127 then passed the Senate after nearly two hours of debate that started late Wednesday and ended moments after the clocked ticked to midnight.
The 33-21 vote fell along partisan — and racial — lines, sending the bill back to the House for a possible vote on final approval before lawmakers go home for the year.
HB 127 would allow the state to withhold funding from colleges and schools that have policies, procedures, training, programming, recruitment, retention or activities with preferential treatment based on race, color, sex, ethnicity, national origin, gender identity or sexual orientation. Colleges could also lose federal funding that is administered by the state, including for scholarships, loans and grants.
The bill would prohibit colleges endorsing “a particular, widely contested opinion referencing” words such as “allyship,” “cultural appropriation,” “gender ideology,” “heteronormativity,” “unconscious or implicit bias,” “intersectionality” or “racial privilege.” It also targets “Antiracism,” a noun coined by Ibram X. Kendi, author of the book “How to be an Antiracist” that was published during President Donald Trump’s first term.
“If you believe that discrimination in any form is wrong, then this legislation aligns with making sure discrimination does not happen in any form,” said Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, who authored SB 120, then plucked the language from his stalled bill and pasted it into HB 127.
The debate on the Senate floor had Democrats accusing Republicans of paying homage to Trump, who issued several executive orders against DEI soon after returning to the presidency in January.
The interaction exposed raw emotions, at times breaching the customary decorum of the Senate.
After Burns, who is white, explained his bill, he stood for questions, the first coming from Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, who is Black.
When Lucas rose to speak, Burns greeted him as “my good friend.”
Lucas responded: “You used to be my friend.”
Lucas noted that they were both old enough to have lived through segregation and the civil rights movement, saying he was “appalled” that Burns had “the unmitigated gall” to bring his measure to the Senate floor.
“I came from the ’60s, and you’re old enough to know what happened back then,” Lucas said, referring to segregated restrooms, water fountains and waiting rooms at train stations, all manifestations of the virulent racism of that time. “And now you have the nerve to come in here with this mess. You’re drinking Trump Kool-Aid.”
Other Republicans did not rise to speak for the measure. But last week, at the Senate committee meeting where Burns presented his version of the confiscated HB 127, Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, said the move was necessary because DEI had morphed into “neo-Marxist” ideology that had “infected” the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. It “squelches” academic freedom, he had said.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Derek Mallow, D-Savannah, said the opposite of DEI was uniformity, inequity and exclusion, suggesting that this was the intent of HB 127. “Hitler did not want diversity,” he added. “He wanted uniformity.”
Democrats introduced amendments designed to mock what they saw as the core message of HB 127 by clarifying that evolution is scientific fact, that slavery was a major cause of the Civil War and that the Holocaust “occurred.”
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Senate, ruled the amendments out of order and dismissed them, causing Democrats to assert that Republicans were afraid to debate them.
An appeal ensued, and Democrats lost that motion, but they tried eight others to keep the clock ticking, saying they would fight against HB 127 until they had exhausted all maneuvers allowed by the Senate’s rules.
They took the Senate on a tour of American racism, from its founding when Black people were enslaved, through the Civil War and the marches for civil rights and up to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery five years ago, and the legislature’s resulting repeal of an antiquated citizen’s arrest law that his white killers had used as justification for apprehending and shooting him.
The Republican majority patiently voted down each motion, until calling the final vote for passage.