During his 2021 campaign, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin committed to gutting neo-Marxist ideologies from state institutions. So, why won’t he commit to vetoing a bill that would require medical practitioners in the state to undergo “unconscious bias” training to keep their medical licenses?
Passed by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly last month, Senate Bill 35 aims to force the Virginia Board of Medicine to require health practitioners to complete “unconscious bias” and “cultural competency” training to renew their medical licenses. The bill would also require the board to select certain organizations “that identify and facilitate an evidence-based curriculum to comply with this legislation.”
“That the first unconscious bias and cultural competency training required pursuant to § 1 of this act shall be comprehensive and cover how unconscious racial bias affects care during pregnancy and the postpartum period,” the bill reads. “Subsequent unconscious bias and cultural competency training shall provide relevant practice-related content as determined by the Board.”
While Virginia Democrats hold one-seat majorities in the House of Delegates and Senate, S.B. 35 received significant support from Republicans. The measure passed the Senate with the backing of 15 Republicans (36-4) and all 21 Democrats. The bill cleared the House in a 57-41 vote, with six Republicans voting “yea” and two “not voting.”
While primarily sponsored by Democrats, S.B. 35 is co-sponsored by GOP Sen. Christopher Head. The Daily Caller highlighted recently how “the ‘Traditional Values’ section of Head’s website … says that the Virginia state senator regularly fights for ‘legislation that limits government interference in our daily lives’ and ‘opposes the radical teaching of CRT in our public schools.'”
While speaking with the Caller, Head claimed there is “no correlation between this and CRT which is a curriculum that seeks to indoctrinate children,” and that such training “is necessary to ensure the life of the mother and child are protected.”
Contrary to Head’s claims, unconscious or implicit bias training is a common component of critical race theory (CRT) and has been proven to be scientifically inaccurate to the point that some of the researchers who developed such tests have now repudiated them as wildly inaccurate and unreliable. These trainings falsely claim to uncover hidden racism in people’s souls, thus smearing people on false and unscientific grounds.
When pressed on whether Youngkin intends to sign S.B. 35 into law, Youngkin Press Secretary Christian Martinez told The Federalist that the governor is “reviewing the legislation that has been sent to his desk, as he continues to watch how the General Assembly chooses to act on other important priorities.”
Youngkin ran on rooting out racialist ideologies such as CRT from state schools during his 2021 gubernatorial campaign against Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Upon taking office in January 2022, the Republican governor signed an executive order banning the use of “divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory,” in K-12 public education.
Since Youngkin’s inauguration, investigative journalists and conservative media personalities have uncovered how these neo-Marxist ideologies aren’t just permeating public education but also medicine and many other American institutions. Last week, for example, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro published a thread on X documenting how several medical institutions are using DEI — an offshoot of Marxist orthodoxy — to “recruit more [racial] minority surgeons and stop hiring so many ‘walls of white men,’ especially after the death of George Floyd and the ensuing riots in the summer of 2020.”
Youngkin has until March 8 to decide whether he will veto S.B. 35.
.jpg){kind=link}