Tillerson: "Hate Is Not An American Value" - Full Speech To Students
1,101 views · Published 18 August 2017 · 16:54 · Indexed 21 September 2026
Channel: The Uptake by Bridgemakers · 2017 · News & Politics
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a powerful condemnation Friday of both hate and those who "protect or accept hate speech" in any form -- a sharp contrast with comments made by President Donald Trump on the white supremacist demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia. Speaking at the State Department to a diverse array of participants in one of the agency's student programs, Tillerson said the events of the past week had raised the issues of race relations and diversity in the workplace and that he wanted to address the topic. "It's simply important to say -- although I think it's well understood and embraced, I'm certain, by everyone in this room -- we all know hate is not an American value, nowhere is it an American value," the top US diplomat said. "Those who embrace it poison our public discourse and they damage the very country that they claim to love," Tillerson said. "So we condemn racism and bigotry in all its forms." "Racism is evil -- it is antithetical to America's values, it is antithetical to the American idea," Tillerson said. Tillerson's remarks stand as the toughest yet by a Trump administration Cabinet member against the President's declaration at a New York news conference that there were "fine people" in the crowd of torch-bearing white supremacists chanting phrases such as "Jews will not replace us." Trump also equated the actions of neo-Nazis and white supremacists and those protesting them, saying "both sides" were responsible for violence. The top US diplomat has come under fire for suggesting that values shouldn't always play a role in foreign policy decisions. In May, he told his department that "if we condition too heavily that others must adopt this value that we've come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests." But Friday, he stressed that within the US, he sees those values as nonnegotiable. The US does "honor, protect and defend freedom of speech, First Amendment rights," Tillerson said, noting that it's one of the qualities that sets the US apart from repressive regimes. But he followed it with a caveat, saying the US does "not honor, nor do we protect or accept, hate speech in any form." Courtesy Video U.S. Department of State More text from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/politics/rex-tillerson-race-america/index.html
