In a last-ditch effort to appeal to Virginia voters before they cast a vote in the gubernatorial election on Tuesday, Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe claimed that the state has too many white teachers and that school staff need to be more diversified.
“We’ve got to diversify our teacher base here in Virginia,” he yelled. “Fifty percent of students in Virginia schools, K-12, 50 percent are students of color and yet 80 percent of teachers are white. We all know what we have to do in a school to make everybody feel comfortable in school so let’s diversify.”
McAuliffe's closing message: Va has too many white teachers
“50% of the students at Va. schools K-12, 50% are students of color & yet 80 percent of teachers are white. We all know what we have to do in a school to make everybody feel comfortable in school. So, let’s diversify" pic.twitter.com/TJC2beResW
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) November 1, 2021
McAuliffe ended his rant against white teachers with a pledge to pay teachers’ room, board, and college tuition if they teach for five years in a “high demand area” in Virginia.
In 2019, McAuliffe said that implementing a “diversity” and “inclusion” curriculum was “just as important as your math class [and] your English class.”
“We’ve got to do a better job in our education system. … Early on, we’ve got to start teaching, talking about these issues, much earlier than we’ve done it before. We don’t do a good job in our education system talking about diversity, inclusion, openness and so forth. We don’t,” McAuliffe said in an interview on C-SPAN.
YIKES: @TerryMcAuliffe says that promoting "diversity [and] inclusion" in elementary schools is "just as important your math class [and] your English class." He wants to institutionalize the principles of critical race theory—and drive a permanent wedge between parent and child. pic.twitter.com/T4OTNzxCEw
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 25, 2021
“We got our textbooks, but you know there has to be a big part of ‘how do you fit in into the social work of our nation and our fabric?’ How is it that we deal with one another is to me as important as your math class, your English class and so forth,” he added.
More recently, McAuliffe has repeatedly denied that critical race theory is taught in the state even though, while he was governor from 2014-2018, the Virginia Department of Education explicitly pushed public schools to “embrace critical race theory” and “engage in race-conscious teaching and learning.”
Several school districts in the state have also promoted curricula and trainings based on critical race theory, including an article titled “White Teachers Need Anti-Racist Therapy” promoted by Alexandria City Public Schools.
As Ricardo Roberts, a candidate for District B in Alexandria, told The Federalist, many Virginia districts are pushing “anti-white rhetoric.”
“My wife is white and she teaches at Yorktown High School,” he said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with race, with your skin color, it has to do with you really, really care.”
