Virginia gubernatorial candidate and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Critical Race Theory was a “dog whistle” made up by former President Donald Trump to divide Americans.
In a video from the last debate with his Republican opponent Glenn Youngkin, McAuliffe said, “I’m not going to have parents take their kids out of schools. I don’t think parents should be telling teachers what they should teach.”
Anchor Dana Bash said, “The context of that would have allowed parents to ban sexually explicit books in schools.”
McAuliffe said, “First of all, ban any book.”
Bash said, “Let me finish my question. The question is the fact that you are getting pummeled by Republicans who say it shows that you don’t think parents should have a say in their children’s education. So my question is, do you think parents should have a say in their children’s education?”
McAuliffe said, “First of all, they do. They get to elect school boards, and if they don’t like some rules and they get rid of them.”
Bash said, “When you say parents should have a say, is that say strictly how they vote on the school board?”
McAuliffe said, “Clearly they have a say to be involved in the school boards that they pick and so forth, but they want to know are their children getting a world-class education. I did that last time I was governor. Let’s be clear, in Virginia. We’re fourth in the country on k-12. We’re number one in the country on higher ed. We have a great education system. The issue is, and he’s trying to do a back door deal on Trump, he talks about a Critical Race Theory. I have to be honest with you that’s a dog whistle. We don’t teach critical race theory in Virginia. He brings up this Donald Trump/DeVos thing on education. I hate to see people divided. I got us out of the worse economic chaos before. I’ll do it again with COVID, and I’ll do it in a bipartisan way.”
He added, “I really hate to see the division, the hatred. We’re putting these children in this horrible position. Let’s just be clear. We don’t teach Critical Race Theory. This is made-up. This is a Trump/Betsy DeVos/Glenn Youngkin plan to divide people. It really bothers me. I try to unite people. I want to give every child regardless of who you love, the color of your skin, and I’m going to build the greatest election system, but Glenn Youngkin dividing the system, dog whistles, but he will take money from public schools and put them in private and 43,000 teachers will be cut.”
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