Memo to Media: The Grievance of Virginia School Parents is Not Imaginary, It’s Justified

The left-wing mainstream media spent last week gaslighting and dismissing the grievance of school parents and others who participated in the Virginia election, which the Republicans swept, winning the gubernatorial, lieutenant governor and attorney general races. Glenn Youngkin won the race for governor over Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

During MSNBC’s election night coverage, co-host Joy Reid said that, in Virginia, education is “code for White parents don’t like the idea of teaching about race.”

On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross said Youngkin’s victory was “about the fact that a good chunk of voters out there are OK with White supremacy. Let’s call a thing a thing. Actually, scratch that. They are more than OK.”

“I suspect that the 57 percent of White women that voted for Youngkin do want to pretend that [slavery] didn’t happen and they don’t want their White children,” said Sunny Hostin, co-host of ABC’s The View on Wednesday as the show was leading into a commercial break.

On Tuesday, New York Times’ Lisa Lerer and Jeremy Peters wrote, “Pushing a mantra of greater parental control, Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, stoked the resentment and fear of some white voters, who were alarmed by efforts to teach a more critical history of racism in America.”

The cause of this media-wide meltdown: Education was a top issue for Virginia voters, especially school parents, leading up the election. For months, parents protested at school board meetings over onerous coronavirus requirements, and schools going for too long without in-person instruction.

Parents were upset not only over excessive coronavirus restrictions that have caused for there to be long periods off virtual learning, but also students being taught a far-left curriculum that infused tenets of critical race theory, as well as being exposed to sexually explicit material no parent would want their kids in grades 12 or below to see.

First, on Covid restrictions: Children who don’t have certain pre-existing conditions are at little risk of facing severe symptoms from Covid-19 – whereas anyone unvaccinated against mumps and measles is at risk of getting those diseases – which has sparked protests from parents who don’t want their children to be forced to be vaccinated or wear a mask.

Second, the loss of in-person learning due to the pandemic has increased social isolation among children and worsened access to the help and other resources students can get inside schools.

Third, while critical race theory may not be taught in the way it is at the higher education level, its tenets have still seeped into the teaching of kids. Positive phrases like “equity” and “equality” mask the racist curriculum that is borne out of critical race theory, which insists upon teaching the disputed notion that racism in America is institutional. Last time I checked, it’s 2021, not 1961. Contrary to the repeated lies on CNN, MSNBC and elsewhere, CRT is taught in Virginia schools, according to the state’s department of education and Fairfax County Public Schools website.

Finally, there were parents in Old Dominion who were upset that their children were being taught sexually explicit material in the classroom. In May, parents at a meeting in Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) – where the school district allegedly covered up sexual assaults in their schools – read disturbing excerpts of books assigned to an English class for ninth graders.

According to Fox News:

One LCPS parent who wished to be anonymous said parents were not told of the curriculum change to include the books after the initial class curriculum didn’t list them.

One book depicted a scene where a man beats a woman, stuffs her in a closet, then continues to beat her when she asks for water or makes a sound.

Another book assigned by LCPS teachers to their students depicted a sex scene.

“When the original syllabus was given to the parents of the honors English class in August, these books were not part of the list,” the parent said. “They added them without informing the principal or the parents.”

It is worth noting that outside Fox News and the right-wing media ecosystem, there has been little mention of genuine concern that parents have with sexual material that is inappropriate for high school students. This is inexcusable.

It is high time that the mainstream media stop dismissing — as either racist or imaginary — upset school parents who want their children to have a quality and uncorrupted in-person education and, contrary to McAullife’s belief, should have input into their children’s education. The mainstream media indifference to what is actually happening in Virginia is part of the reason parents made the difference in the latest election.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.