Virginia’s Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said teaching children “inherently divisive concepts” in school is teaching youth to judge others.
“We shouldn’t play privilege bingo with children, we shouldn’t teach children that they should judge one another and one group is privileged and another group is going to find it hard in life, necessarily,” Youngkin argued.
Youngkin’s remarks came in an interview with Robert Costa on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday where he also discussed, in part, his potential run for President in 2024, abortion, and the January 6 Capitol riot.
On his first day as Virginia’s governor, Youngkin barred educators from teaching Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools.
Critical Race Theory underscores the historical impacts of racism in America in modern times, but GOP efforts to ban it from classrooms often distort the concept, Insider previously reported.
“We absolutely are pushing to teach all history, the good and the bad. And again, we can bring people together around this, as opposed to divide them,” Youngkin argues. “And we shouldn’t blame someone and have them form a view that they’re inherently racist because of their race or their sex or their religion. We shouldn’t judge one another.”
Costa called the effort to ban the theory “a challenge” and then asked a follow-up question: “Suppose your board of education comes to you Governor and says to you, ‘Governor, the Civil War, we recommend it’s too divisive. We want to call it the War Between the States.’ What would you do?”
The governor argued that the scenario would not occur.
“I think what we all recognize is that slavery was an absolute black spot in our history, I mean, it is so, so abhorrent. We have to teach it. And this is not a moment where we’re running away from these topics.”
“And this is why I’m so excited about our education agenda in Virginia,” he added.
