Since he was elected, Governor Glenn Youngkin has tried to remove the term equity from the classroom and the code.
When Glenn Youngkin was appointing people to his administration, he made a small but important change to one of the job titles, removing the word "equity" from director of diversity, equity and inclusion.
"I think we just have a very confusing word in the word equity," the governor said at a press conference last year arguing against equity programs in the classroom. Now, his director of diversity, opportunity and inclusion says DEI is dead, a proclamation he made at a speech to the Virginia Military Institute according to reporting by the Washington Post.
Jatia Wrighten is a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies the political behavior of marginalized communities.
"Equity is one of those words that really does allow people who want to leverage hate to be really effective in doing so because most people read equity and they think something else."
She says the fear is people are receiving benefits they have not earned.
"The problem is that there is no such thing as a level playing field in the United States," Wrighten explains. "There is a long history of exclusion and discrimination and racism and sexism that makes it quite difficult for different people to achieve or even to gain these sorts of opportunities."
Predictions of the death of DEI may have been premature, though, because now the governor is facing calls for his director of diversity, opportunity and inclusion to resign.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
