Watch — Amy Coney Barrett on Being Called a ‘White Colonist’: Accusations Are ‘Cruel and ‘Hurtful to My Children’

Senate Judiciary Committee
Hannah Knudsen

Judge Amy Coney Barrett described some of the attacks against her, such as being called a “white colonist” for adopting two Haitian children, as “cruel” and “hurtful” not just to herself, but to her children.

On Tuesday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) brought up remarks made by a Boston University professor, who recently ranted on social media about “white colonizers” who “adopted Black children.”

The professor says “that because you and your husband have two children of color that you’re a white colonist,” Kennedy said. “The implication is that you’re racist and that you use your two children as props.”

Barrett responded:

Senator Kennedy, it was the risk of people saying things like that which would be so hurtful to my family that when I told Senator Graham this morning that my husband and I really had to weigh the costs of this, it was saying deeply offensive and hurtful things — things that are not only hurtful to me but are hurtful to my children, who are my children, who we love and who we brought home and made part of our family, and accusations like that are cruel.

“Yeah they are. How low can you go,” Kennedy said, adding that he did not want to ask the question with her children present.

In September, Ibram X. Kendi, director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, took to social media to suggest white people who adopt black children are racist, using their children as “props in their lifelong pictures of denial.”

“Some White colonizers ‘adopted” Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity,” he wrote.

“And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point,” he continued. “It is a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.”

“I’m challenging the idea that White parents of kids of color are inherently ‘not racist’ and the bots completely change what I’m saying to ‘White parents of kids of color are inherently racist.’ These live and fake bots are good at their propaganda,” he added. “Let’s not argue with them.”

Others on the left, feminists, particularly, have attacked Barrett over her status as a mom. During Tuesday’s hearing, Barrett said she and her husband had to carefully consider the attacks that would be used against their family, should she accept President Trump’s nomination.

“We knew that our lives would be combed over for any negative detail. We knew our faith would be caricatured. We knew our family would be attacked,” she said:

And so we had to decide whether those difficulties would be worth it, because what sane person would go through that if there wasn’t a benefit on the other side? And the benefit, I think, is that I’m committed to the rule of law and the role of the Supreme Court in dispensing equal justice for all. I’m not the only person who could do this job, but I was asked and it would be difficult for anyone, so why should I say someone else should do the difficulty if the difficulty is the only reason to say no?

“I should serve my country, and my family is all in on that because they share my belief in the rule of law,” Barrett added.

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