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Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt is facing backlash after suggesting that America is a white homeland that "belongs to us."
Schmitt made the controversial comments during the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. earlier this month. During his speech, titled "What Is an American?," Smith argued that the U.S. is fundamentally a white homeland rooted in European settler history.
America is “not a universal nation,” the senator declared.
“America doesn’t belong to them — it belongs to us,” he continued. “We can no longer apologize for who we are.”
Schmitt went on to celebrate a tradition of European settlers who he said "repelled wave after wave of Indian war band attacks." He portrayed all of America's major achievements as inherited from those founding European populations.
“Our people tamed the continent, built a civilization from the wilderness. We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims who poured out onto the ocean’s shores," Schmitt said.
Schmitt closed his speech, saying, “We’re not sorry. Why would we be sorry? America is the proudest and most magnificent heritage ever known to man.”
The Republican senator faced backlash for publicly promoting white nationalist narratives. Critics said Schmitt’s rhetoric presents non‐white people, immigrants, and Native Americans as threats to American heritage.
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