Fox host: “They took God out of our schools” and replaced it with “this neo-Marxist religion” of critical race theory
Rachel Campos-Duffy: “They are indoctrinating our children. They are trying to teach our children to hate our country, to hate each other.”
Published
Citation From the June 24, 2021, edition of Fox News' America Reports with John Roberts and Sandra Smith
SANDRA SMITH (CO-ANCHOR): This is a topic you are hot on pn the weekend mornings. I see you talking about it all the time. But what is going on in this moment first, before we drill down more locally there in Loudoun County, Virginia? Because it seems like there is this new story emerging from there daily, but it appears parents are standing up more and more to this wokeness in our schools.
RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY (FOX & FRIENDS WEEKEND CO-HOST): Yeah, it's been really encouraging watching parents take back their children's education school by school, district by district. I have been really encouraged by it, and they ought to. This is -- you know, they took God out of our schools, Sandra, and the left replaced it with CRT, which is this neo-Marxist religion. And that is what it is, it's a religion of sorts. And, you know, they soften up our kids by taking God and all sense of morality and ethics out of the school, and this is the new code of ethics. This is the new morality.
But I am glad that this education secretary is being grilled at the federal level because the federal government, through the Biden administration, is incentivizing schools to take on CRT, so that they get more grant money if they are doing the 1619 program and other elements of the CRT racist agenda and curriculum. And the other thing that I think is missing, Sandra, is that parents need to understand that there is a place for their governor in this. So the curriculum is bad, but the teachers who are teaching this, who are graduating kids who are young teachers out of teachers' colleges that are being steeped in this kind of Marxist ideology, and so if we want to stop that, we have to do it at the teachers' college level, and many of those are state universities that are being funded with our tax dollars. So there needs to be pressure on governors, too, to clean up our teachers' colleges.
SMITH: I want to quickly get your reaction to Brenda Sheridan, who has suggested that the anger at critical race theory has been misplaced on the part of parents. She is the Loudoun County school board chair, and she is accusing parents of dog-whistle politics. I'll put this up on the screen. She said, “Dog-whistle politics will not delay our work. We will not back down from fighting for the rights of our students and continuing our focus on equity. Opponents of the school board who are pushing false stories about CRT have severely hurt our ability to do the jobs we were elected to do." So is the anger on the part of these parents misplaced, Rachel?
CAMPOS-DUFFY: Absolutely not, and she is part of a growing wing on the left -- Obama started it, then Omar -- Rep. [Ilhan] Omar did, too, where they said, “Oh, these parents are imagining it. Fox News is ginning up anger about this, and it's a lie." No, parents, you are not imagining this. This is a racist ideology. They are indoctrinating our children. They are trying to teach our children to hate our country, to hate each other, and in some cases, if you are white or Asian, to hate yourself. So you are not imagining this. And no one loves your children more than you. And it is now up to you to fight for it, and you have to do it school board by school board, district by district. Go to your state governor's office. Make sure that he is aware and he is putting pressures on the teachers' colleges, and there is a federal component as well. We need to stop these grants that are incentivizing schools and states to do critical race theory and the 1619 program.