Virginia Promotes Book Telling Teachers to Embrace CRT

Virginia’s Department of Education is promoting a book that says “teachers must embrace theories such as critical race theory.”

Terry McAuliffe has said throughout his gubernatorial campaign that the radical ideology is not taught in Virginia schools.

The department’s website provides resources for its equity initiatives, which includes a tab titled “What We Are Reading.” The list, comprised of resources the equity office recommends and references in its work, includes books by anti-racist advocate Ibram X. Kendi and Abolitionist Teaching Network co-founder Bettina Love.

“Lastly, teachers must embrace theories such as critical race theory, settler colonialism, Black feminism, dis/ability, critical race studies, and other critical theories, that have the ability to interrogate anti-Blackness …” Love wrote in “We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom.”

The book was sixth on the Virginia department’s list and was also promoted in a March 2020 newsletter. While the inclusion isn’t evidence that critical race theory is being taught in the state’s schools, Love’s book provides guidance for educators, stating that teachers need to question Whiteness and do away with phrases like “work hard” and “be nice.”

McAuliffe, a Democrat, has repeatedly said critical race theory is not taught in Virginia schools and has said his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, uses contention surrounding the radical ideology to divide people.

“It’s a dog whistle,” McAuliffe, a former governor, told WAVY TV 10 on Oct. 7. “It’s racial. It’s division. And it’s used by Glenn Youngkin and others … to divide people.”

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The Virginia Department of Education’s website said its EdEquityVA initiative is “focused on establishing equity targets, measuring equity outcomes … and implementing systemic policy and regulatory changes.” It also said an equity office within the department is charged with leading “efforts to advance education equity, eliminate achievement gaps and increase opportunity, and decrease disproportionality in student outcomes.”

The equity program includes a variety of resources, including an audit tool used to determine whether a school is hitting certain standards. It, for example, asks whether the student code of conduct includes an anti-racism statement or if language was removed from the code that “categorizes racial justice movements (Black Power, Black Lives Matter, La Raza, etc.) as racist, hate speech, or controversial.”

At the top of its reading list, which included Love’s book, the Department of Education states that the books “are the resources the Office of Equity and Community Engagement references in the development of our work, as well as texts we recommend.”

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In addition to explicitly endorsing critical race theory, Love’s book promotes other racially charged changes to the education system.

“Teachers need to be taught how to question Whiteness and White supremacy, how to check and deal with their White emotions of guilt and anger, and how these all impact their classrooms,” Love wrote in her book.

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{snip} The Biden administration previously promoted a handbook published by the Abolitionist Teaching Network, the activist organization Love co-founded.

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