Virginia’s Democrat governor candidate called Critical Race Theory a “right-wing conspiracy,” despite the fact that the practice undoubtedly exists.
Terry McAuliffe said that the hot button issue is a “right-wing conspiracy … totally made up by Donald Trump.” He also blamed his 2022 Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin.
But, there’s plenty of evidence that the Critical Race Theory exists, and that it is being taught in our schools.
Just days after McAuliffe declared the practice to be a “conspiracy,” National Education Association (NEA) president Becky Pringle said that the union’s teachers “are not going to back down” from teaching Critical Race Theory.
“We are not going to be afraid to teach it, because we know that to not teach it, we are not telling the truth,” Pringle reportedly said.
According to a report from Free Beacon, the NEA has donated at least $125,000 to McAuliffe’s campaign committees since 2013.
There is plenty of other evidence that Critical Race Theory exists, and is not simply a “conspiracy,” as McAuliffe said.
Nicole Hemmer, an associate research scholar at Columbia University, recently wrote an opinion piece in CNN where she admits the practice exists, and slams Republicans for opposing it.
Hemmer wrote:
And while there’s nothing particularly novel about this particular moral panic, it is serving a useful political purpose: arguing about critical race theory shifts the conversation away from the continued consequences of structural racism.
That conversation opens up challenging issues about equity, affirmative action, reparations, and government intervention to dismantle racist systems — all of which face significant opposition from the right — and can only hurt a Republican Party that has grown dependent on the politics of White racial grievance.
In another example of Critical Race Theory being taught in schools, “Californian third-graders were made to ‘deconstruct’ their racial identity and rank themselves according to their ‘power and privilege’ in school. Teachers told students they lived in a “dominant culture” of ‘white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speakers,” according to the Center for Renewing America.
“Seattle Public Schools train teachers that the education system commits “spirit murder” against black kids — ‘murder[ing] the souls of black children every day through systemic, institutionalized, anti-black, state-sanctioned violence,'” that same organization said. “In recent training sessions, white teachers were told they needed to ‘bankrupt [their privilege] in acknowledgment of [their] thieved inheritance.'”
– – –
Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to dabroscareports@gmail.com.
Background Photo “Virginia Capitol” by Mike Fonseca CC2.0