Clyburn: Republicans Taking ‘Black History Out of the Schools’ by Calling It ‘Theory’

Representative James Clyburn (D-SC) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Republicans were attempting to remove “black history” from schools by calling it Critical Race Theory.

Partial transcript as follows:

MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman, two prominent Democrats came out this week with some words of advice to the Democratic Party, Michael Bloomberg and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and both said that Democrats need a course correction. Bloomberg said parties headed for wipe out in November up and down the ballot because it’s distracted. Voters perceive the party too focused on culture wars. Secretary Clinton also said ‘We can’t get distracted, whether it’s the latest culture, war nonsense or some new right wing lie on Fox or Facebook.’ Do you agree that these things are problems?

CLYBURN: Well, culture wars are a problem, but it’s not coming from the Democrats–

BRENNAN: –But the focus by Democrats on that.

CLYBURN: Well, I don’t think any of us are focused on that, but we cannot allow these kinds of things to float around out there. When you’re talking about Critical Race Theory, we aren’t putting that out there. But you can’t stand idly by and allow that to exist. Listen, we have a critical race problem in this country and we know it, and we got to stand up to it. We can’t let people just take black history out of the schools agenda and call it a theory.

These are racial facts. It is just important to me for my grandchildren to learn about Lewis Latimer, as it is to learn about Thomas Edison. But for Lewis Latimer, Thomas Edison’s light bulb would never have worked. And those are facts that should stay in our classrooms. And when people are taking books of black authors out of the schools, that to me cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged.

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