Author and activist Kenny Xu is hoping to take his fight for a "color-blind" society to U.S. Congress.
Xu is the founder of Color Us United, a North Carolina-based organization that advocates for a race-blind society and equal treatment of individuals. He’s also written two popular books, "An Inconvenient Minority" and "School of Woke," both of which put a spotlight on affirmative action and critical race theory (CRT) at American schools and universities. Along the way, he helped lead the affirmative action cases the Supreme Court ruled on in June.
Now the Republican is running for U.S. Congress in North Carolina’s 13th District, a seat currently held by Democrat Rep. Wiley Nickel, and his first test will be the GOP primary on March 5.
"My slogan is ‘Kenny Xu for Congress, Republican for a color-blind America,’" Xu told Fox News Digital.
"The reason why I used this slogan, ‘Republican for a color-blind America,’ is because a lot of conservative voters right now want to feel hope. They feel like this country is divided, they feel like they can't talk to the left, they feel like the left has gotten totally indoctrinated -- which it has -- and they just want that sense of normalcy again," Xu continued. "And a color-blind America speaks to that normalcy that we were having in our racial vision for a long time under MLK’s ideals -- the content of your character, not the color of your skin."
Xu believes that instead of Black, White, Asian and other Americans coming together, many people simply want to complain and play the victim card. But he’s hoping voters take note and elected someone who has battled against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), affirmative action and CRT.
"Everybody wants to say, ‘Well, I'm oppressed because I'm a minority,’ and people are frustrated about that," Xu said. "People want somebody to speak to that, and I'm the right person at the right time with my record of achievement to speak to it."
Xu said that he first helped expose CRT in schools to put a spotlight on discrimination against Asian and White students before it exploded into a hot-button issue for conservatives.
"When Joe Biden took office after the 2020 election, installed Kamala Harris as his vice president, who complained and constantly talked about equity and making sure that all of the races were equal… and then appointed Ketanji Brown Jackson, and specifically said, ‘I'm only appointing a Black woman justice’ and then implemented parts of his agenda that were transformative in its vision of making race more apparent in society. You see this bubbling up of anger from voters and a desire for change," Xu said.
On Monday, Xu’s campaign released an ad that features the GOP congressional hopeful sitting in a movie theater explaining his vision for a color-blind nation.
"When I was young, I was taught to be color-blind, to not assume anything about a person because of their race. Now you look around and everything is about race," Xu tells voters at the beginning of the ad.
"You can’t even watch a movie today without there being some snide comment about how divided we are as a people. Why is it that we, as Americans, the most diverse country in the world, could descend into such division? The answer is, because there is an agenda," Xu continues as clips of Black Lives Matter rallies are shown.
Xu says the agenda "harvests minority votes from their sense of victimization," and "thrives off their weakness."
"I am running for congress to take down that agenda. I believe America is the greatest country in the world," Xu tells voters.
"I simply want to defend the values that you and I grew up with when we didn’t have to worry about monuments being taken down, because we knew the past was in the past. When you could be sure that you got a job or a promotion because you were the most qualified, not because you were a certain race or gender," Xu continues in the ad. "I am running for Congress to restore merit and to preserve our core American identity that is being abandoned."
While education is a top issue for Xu, he also wants to "restore fairness" in other areas of government and is passionate about taking on the illegal immigration agenda.