Dear Congressman Raskin,
Your voice for democracy rang hollow on September 19th when you stood with the Republican majority to honor Charlie Kirk through House Resolution 719. You called it “positive” to condemn political violence while dismissing Kirk’s deeply troubling legacy as “surplus verbiage.” This calculated political expedience reveals the moral bankruptcy that has infected our representative government — and it demands an answer.
I am writing to you not just as a constituent, but as a Black father raising a twelve-year-old daughter in Montgomery County — the same county you represent, where 98% of the land was once plantation soil. My daughter attended Luxmanor Elementary School, named after the very plantation where Josiah Henson was enslaved as a child before being sold to Isaac Riley. She walks daily on ground sanctified by the blood, sweat, and tears of her ancestors. When you honored Charlie Kirk, you desecrated that sacred space.
Charlie Kirk was not a victim who deserves our unqualified sympathy — he was an architect of racial hatred who spent his career systematically dehumanizing Black women and undermining civil rights progress. The Congressional Black Caucus understood this when they condemned your resolution, stating it was “an attempt to legitimize Kirk’s worldview — a worldview that includes ideas many Americans find racist, harmful, and fundamentally un-American”.
Kirk repeatedly questioned the intellectual capacity of the most accomplished Black women in America, claiming that Michelle Obama, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sheila Jackson Lee “do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously”. He argued they had to “steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously”. When encountering a Black woman in customer service, he openly wondered if she was there “because of her excellence, or because of affirmative action”. This was not policy debate — this was the poisonous rhetoric of white supremacy dressed in academic language.
Kirk called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “mistake” and dismissed Martin Luther King Jr. as a “myth”. He promoted the Great Replacement Theory — the same conspiracy that has motivated mass shootings targeting Black and Latino communities. This is the man you chose to memorialize as someone who “worked tirelessly to promote unity without compromising on conviction”.
You justify your vote by claiming the resolution “repeatedly condemns all political violence.” But Congressman Raskin, you know better than this. You witnessed January 6th firsthand. You felt the terror for your daughter’s safety that day. Would you have voted for a similar resolution honoring David Duke if it contained boilerplate language condemning violence? Would you have called the “surplus verbiage” about his racist beliefs just political maneuvering to be overlooked?
The answer is no, and we both know why. Kirk’s attacks on Black women felt comfortable to you precisely because they didn’t target your community. You could afford to trade away our dignity for the appearance of bipartisan unity because the cost wasn’t yours to pay.
You represent Montgomery County, where in 1860, 38% of residents were Black — with 5,421 enslaved and 1,552 free. Our ancestors built this county with their unpaid labor, cleared its forests, tilled its soil, and raised its crops while being denied their basic humanity. After emancipation, they established over 40 communities throughout the county, building churches and schools with their own hands while facing systematic exclusion from white society.
Today, my daughter learns in a school system that was racially segregated until 1958. She attends a school built on plantation land where children who looked like her were once bought and sold like livestock. When you voted to honor Charlie Kirk — a man who argued that accomplished Black women lack the intellectual capacity for serious consideration — you sent her a message about her worth in America.
You owe my daughter an explanation. Explain to her why you think a man who questioned whether Black pilots are qualified deserves congressional honor. Explain why someone who claimed Black women “steal white people’s slots” should be celebrated for promoting “civil discourse”. Explain why her great-uncle’s service in Korea fighting for a democracy that denied him full participation means less than your political calculation.
Explain to her why she is still fighting to be seen as fully human in a country that her ancestors built, while you honor the very voices that deny her humanity.
You reassure yourself that Montgomery County hasn’t elected a Republican in over thirty years, but there is no Democratic infrastructure here to protect you from a serious challenge. Your vote revealed that when the moment of truth arrived, you chose political convenience over moral courage. Black voters will remember this betrayal. We always do.
I would rather be represented by an honest Republican than a feckless Democrat who trades our dignity for the illusion of civility. At least a Republican’s opposition would be transparent rather than cloaked in the language of reluctant pragmatism.
Only two white members of Congress — Representatives Seth Moulton and Mike Quigley — had the moral courage to join the Congressional Black Caucus in opposing this resolution. They understood that you cannot condemn violence while simultaneously celebrating the rhetoric that enables it. They recognized that “surplus verbiage” about Kirk’s racist beliefs wasn’t political theater to be dismissed — it was the defining characteristic of his public life.
Your inability to see this distinction reveals the poverty of your moral imagination. You have spent your career building a reputation as a defender of democracy, yet when democracy’s promise was tested against your political comfort, you chose comfort.
Political violence is indeed unacceptable, and Charlie Kirk’s assassination was wrong. But memorializing him as a champion of “civil discourse” while ignoring his systematic dehumanization of Black Americans is not healing — it is erasure. It is the same pattern that has allowed this country to celebrate Confederate generals while ignoring their defense of slavery, to honor founding fathers while minimizing their participation in human bondage.
True healing requires truth-telling, not the sanitization of hatred for the sake of false unity. Your resolution was not about lowering the temperature of political discourse — it was about raising the temperature of racial resentment by legitimizing Kirk’s worldview through congressional honor.
Congressman Raskin, you have built a career on Dr. King’s legacy while demonstrating that you fundamentally misunderstand his message. King warned against the “white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice” — moderates who prefer “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
Your vote embodies this negative peace. You chose the absence of tension over the presence of justice. You chose political expediency over moral courage. You chose to honor a man who spent his career arguing that people who look like my daughter lack the cognitive capacity for serious consideration.
When you stood shoulder to shoulder with Charlie Kirk’s legacy, you turned your back on us. We will not forget this betrayal, and we will not forgive it. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice — not toward the comfortable compromises of cowards who trade dignity for political survival.
The soil of Montgomery County remembers its history. So do we.
Garrick McFadden, Esq.
Father, Attorney, Constituent
GAMESQ, PLC
North Bethesda, Maryland