West Virginia bill against schools ‘brainwashing’ students on race advances

West Virginia lawmakers advanced legislation Friday that would restrict the way public school teachers can talk about race, a bill one Republican delegate said is meant to protect kids from “brainwashing.”

During more than two hours of tense, back-and-forth debate, Del. Todd Longanacre said he doesn’t want to hear that students are being taught about “white privilege” in the classroom.

“Do we really want to teach them how to handle their guilt if they’re White, or how to handle their sense of victimhood if they’re Black?” he said.

Del. Sean Hornbuckle, one of the only Black lawmakers in the House of Delegates, held up multiple poster boards depicting incidents of historical racial violence. One depicted a portrait of 14-year-old Emmett Till side-by-side with a photo of his mutilated body in a casket. Till was lynched in 1955 in Mississippi.

“Does this make you uncomfortable?” he asked. “I’m wondering, are we permitted to still teach about this?’

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The “Anti-Racism Act of 2022” prevents discrimination based on race and the teaching in both public K-12 schools that one race is “inherently, morally or intellectually superior to another.” Teachers would be barred from telling students that one race “is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

The bill states that students can’t be taught that a person’s moral character is determined by his or her race or that a person, by virtue of his or her race, “bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race.”

The bill creates a mechanism for the reporting of complaints and for data to be collected by the Legislature on the number of substantiated complaints each…