Democratic Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said this week that he is upset that 80 percent of Virginia’s teachers are white.
“We got to work hard to diversity our teacher base,” he said at a campaign event on Sunday, according to Fox News. “Fifty percent of our students are students of color, 80% of the teachers are White, so what I’m going to do for you, we’ll be the first state in America — if you go teach in Virginia for five years in a high-demand area, we will pay room, board, tuition, any college, any university, or any HBCU here in Virginia.”
The McAuliffe campaign did not answer questions about whether the former Democratic governor supports affirmative action-type policies for students and educators, or about whether he supports racial quotas for teachers.
But his campaign does support the school districts that have been implementing other forms of Critical Race Theory. In fact, his campaign website pledges to “address modern-day segregation in our schools.”
However, it appears McAuliffe isn’t willing to address racism on his own campaign. Just last week it was discovered that one of McAuliffe’s communications staffers, Renzo Olivari, tweeted a number of racist things.
Terry McAuliffe’s comms guy kinda sounds like a racist. pic.twitter.com/7IE32ECWGE
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 29, 2021
Hey @TerryMcAuliffe. Come get your comms guy. He’s showing his ass and embarrassing you. pic.twitter.com/r0qdYWICqa
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 29, 2021
Olivari deleted several of the tweets and called them “clearly unacceptable.”
“I am ashamed and I profoundly regret what I tweeted,” he said.
“I take full responsibility and I want to profoundly apologize and use this as a moment to grow and learn from my mistakes,” Olivari said under public pressure. “I will continue working to fight for communities like mine in every way that I can.”
