Youngkin Replaces State’s Department of Equity and Inclusion with Anti-CRT Leaders

Move over ‘Critical Race Theory’ there’s a new Sheriff in town. Newly elected Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin just ripped the roof off of Virginia’s “woke” elite. Youngkin completely gutted the employees of the state’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and then rebuilt it, filling the positions with reasonable individuals.

Christopher Rufo tweeted, “Glenn Youngkin has asked all of the state’s DEI employees to resign and tapped anti-critical race theory leader Angela Sailor to lead the department. In her first move, Sailor eliminated the word ‘equity’ and replaced it with ‘opportunity.”

Youngkin asked all of the state’s DEI employees to resign, then put Sailor in charge to lead the department. Sailor is a former policy expert at The Heritage Foundation;. Having replaced the word ‘equity’ for ‘opportunity’ at the department, Sailor is now formally the DOI “Director of Diversity, Opportunity and Inclusion.”

Citizen Free Press reports “Youngkin also issued an executive order to refocus the DEI office, tasking Sailor and her staff to work on economic opportunity, cooperation among religious groups, promoting ‘free speech and civil discourse’ at colleges and universities, and ensuring that Virginia’s history curriculum is ‘honest, objective, and complete.”

Rufo’s tweet included a link to an article by the Richmond Times-Dispatch which reported “Former Gov. Ralph Northam created the state’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in 2019 in the aftermath of the blackface scandal that nearly ended his term. The office has been unstaffed since its former chief and her four staffers, who served at the will of the governor, were not asked to stay in their jobs.”

Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Youngkin’s first executive order signed Saturday seeks to ban “inherently divisive” concepts from Virginia classrooms.

In recent blog posts for The Heritage Foundation, Sailor said that lessons arguing that “America is systemically racist,” are “the textbook definition of racism.”

“No one would argue that children shouldn’t be thoroughly taught about the evils of racism, slavery, and segregation that happened in this country,” she wrote in July in a piece titled, “Schools Hiding Behind Diversity and Inclusion Rhetoric to Spew Critical Race Theory Vile.”

“But [critical race theory] ignores the hundreds of thousands of lives that were sacrificed during the Civil War to end slavery, the long struggle of the civil rights movement to end segregation and win equality, and the reality that the nation has made great progress.”