Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. Secretary of the Health and Human Services, was called out for past remarks he made about Black children during a testy exchange on Capitol Hill.
On Thursday, during a hearing with the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, Secretary Kennedy was challenged by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., on his suggestion that Black children taking psychiatric drugs should be “re-parented.”
“In a 2024 podcast interview, you suggested that Black children on ADHD medication should be re-parented. You said, ‘Every Black kid is now just standardly put on Adderall, SSRI, benzos, which are known to induce violence,’ and that those children are going to have to go somewhere to get re-parented,’” said Sewell.
The Alabama Congresswoman continued, “Mr. Secretary, you’ve already admitted that you are not a board-certified physician, and you’ve already admitted that you did not go to medical school. Have you ever re-parented, or parented, I should say, a Black child?”
Kennedy Jr., the son of former U.S. Senator and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and who has been denounced by his famous political family, quickly denied Sewell’s quoting of him from the 2024 interview with 19Keys on the “High Lvl Conversations” podcast.
“I don’t even know what that phrase means…I doubt that I said. I’m not going to answer something that I didn’t say,” said RFK Jr.
“You absolutely said it,” replied Sewell. “To be clear, you’re not a doctor, you have no medical degree, and you have no formal medical training. You have never parented a Black child.”
Kennedy did, in fact, say that Black children taking various kinds of psychiatric drugs would be “re-parented” while running for president in 2024 as a Democrat and later an independent, before he suspended his campaign and endorsed then-Republican candidate Donald Trump. On the podcast, Kennedy floated the idea of using federal dollars under the Peace Corps to create wellness farms and rehabilitation facilities for Americans “dependent on drugs.”
He said, “Either legal drugs or illegal drugs, psychiatric drugs, which every Black kid is now just standard put on Aderall, SSRIS, Benzos, which are known to induce violence…Those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get reparented to live.”
Though Kennedy repeatedly denied he said it, Rep. Sewell took the opportunity to school the nation’s top health official on the history of Black children being separated from their parents dating back to chattel slavery in the United States.
“During slavery, Black children were taken from their parents and sold with no regard for their humanity. And after slavery, Black families continued to face forced separations through Jim Crow laws, discriminatory policing, and child welfare systems that too often assume that Black parents were unfit,” said the lawmaker from Selma. “Even today, Black children are removed from their homes at higher rates than white children, not because of their greater harm, but because of longstanding bias and built-in institutionalism.”
Sewell continued, “For you to suggest that Black families are not capable of raising their own children is deeply offensive, sir. You are the Secretary of Health and Human Services for the world’s most powerful country, and your words matter. When you suggest that re-parenting Black children, when you sow doubt about the safety of vaccines, and when you promote unproven statements that have no basis in science, you endanger the lives of everyone across this nation.”
“Those children have parents, and to suggest that they have to be re-parented is offensive,” she added.
While Kennedy’s remarks about Black children predate his time as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he has faced various criticisms for controversial statements and policy actions since taking office. He has suggested that Tylenol causes autism in children without any scientific evidence, and reconfigured the nation’s top vaccine panel to limit the number of vaccines recommended for children, which posed a risk to Black children who already experience racial disparities in vaccine access. The move to limit vaccines was blocked by a federal judge.
“American lives are at stake,” said Rep. Sewell, “and it’s time that you start acting like it, sir.”
