A West Virginia state senator is aiming to defund woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT) programs in favor of merit-based scholarships.
“I want to put an end to all of” the woke, Marxist poison infecting young minds in educational institutions,” Sen. Patricia Rucker (R) explained to me. That’s why she’s sponsoring the “Restoring Sanity Act,” which, as Campus Reform detailed, would take public college and university money away from DEI personnel to redirect it rather to “merit scholarships for lower-income and middle-income students, first generation college students, or to reduce tuition and mandatory fees for resident students.”
When I asked Sen. Rucker why she sponsored the legislation, she highlighted how DEI and CRT actually encourage the very thing their proponents claim to oppose: discrimination. “I am very concerned about the potential of reverse discrimination or ANY discrimination based on race. It is wrong whether one is discriminating [against] any race including Caucasians,” Rucker stated. She has a point: why should taxpayer dollars fund hate-filled, divisive Communist propaganda?
She added, “So when I hear about CRT being pushed or the DEI policies in some institutions, I want to put an end to all of it. All public institutions are using public tax dollars and tax dollars should definitely not support any of those concepts or discriminatory practices.” Hence her “Restoring Sanity Act” to address the issue.
The legislation has not yet passed the state senate. According to Campus Reform, the West Virginia bill would also target diversity statements from college applicants and “preferential consideration to an applicant, student, staff member, or faculty member due to any opinion expressed or action taken in support of another individual or a group of individuals on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation.” No more diversity hires.
Other targeted concepts reportedly include “social justice, intersectionality, neo-pronouns, heteronormativity, gender theory, racial or sexual privilege, critical race theory, and any related formulation of these concepts.”
More states need legislation that undermines the DEI/CRT indoctrination destroying our education system and the next generation. No money should be going to promoting these pernicious ideologies or rewarding people purely based on external characteristics such as skin color rather than merit.
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Many great Americans have long understood that rewarding people based on race is just as wrong and harmful as punishing them for the same reason. Discrimination against white people and Asians is just as racist as discrimination against black people. As former slave and educator Booker T. Washington observed, “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.”
Washington warned that some such men didn’t want the black American “to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” It’s a critique that still applies today. We need to reject race-baiting and gender ideology. The West Virginia legislation is a start.