Earlier today, Del. Ken Plum (D-Reston) delivered an excellent speech on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates, during which he took direct aim at Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order #1, “to end the use of inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory.” As Del. Plum pointed out in his speech:
- There are “two pages of directives that sets the administration on an investigation to find ‘inherently divisive concepts’ and ‘critical race theory’ in our schools, even though I think there’s a general understanding among most that CRT is not taught in public schools.”
- “The 14 directives have the staff looking in every document, every file folder, and seemingly behind every nook and cranny to root out ‘inherently divisive concepts’. This wild goose chase…is akin to the calls for a forensic audit of all election results to support the Big Lie that fraud and corruption in the last presidential election allowed [it] to be stolen.”
- “My big red warning light goes off with Executive Order 1, for we in the past in Virginia have gone such a path, much to the embarrassment of the state in the eyes of the nation.” Plum specifically mentioned the “Lost Cause” mythology, efforts to “gloss over slavery,” publication of history textbooks that “glossed over or ignored anything that did not comport with the established order.” According to Del. Plum, “we shouldn’t go down that road again,” to “state-sponsored official history that is gauged to create an image of oneself regardless of how untrue.”
- “Executive Order 1 seems obsessed with what is called ‘inherently divisive concepts.’ But I would suggest to you that ‘divisive concepts’ are the ones that we should discuss in an educational setting, because when we discuss those ‘divisive concepts,’ we educate people, and with educated people, we have reason and good government.”
Bingo!
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