A major suburban Washington, DC public school system continues to take heat for a racially and politically charged AP Government test question that caused outrage in the otherwise liberal district, with Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears telling Fox News such curriculum just further divides a fractured nation.
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) will remove a test question given to a college-level social studies class that equated liberals and conservatives with specific racial and gender demographics.
It asked students in multiple-choice fashion which depictions of liberals and conservatives are "accurate" and listed "young White males, middle-aged urban lesbians, and "southern male migrant laborer" among other delineations.
Sears, who is Black and also an immigrant from Kingston, Jamaica, said it is destructive to suggest people belong in certain political confines based on their race, creed or national origin.
"Here we are: what century are we in? And what we're trying to do is to reach all peoples, and we're saying, don't put people in boxes, don't stereotype anyone, because I'm sitting here, an immigrant, Black woman, veteran, former small business owner, etcetera – and yet I have chosen a different political party than whatever other people might think," she told "The Story."
Sears is notably the first Black woman elected statewide in Virginia, and previously made history when she upset a two-decade Democratic incumbent in the state's House of Delegates in her Virginia Beach district.
Sears noted the same progressive folks who decry stereotyping and speak out in favor of freedom of expression appear to be the ones at the same time painting conservatives and others as only falling within certain attributes.
"They're the ones who are doing the stereotyping. So it is sufficient to say that America must remain America. We've got to be a free country, otherwise you see what we turn into," she said.
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Sears said she was angry when she heard about the latest kerfuffle in Fairfax, remarking that she and Gov. Glenn Youngkin have long stressed the importance of schools returning to reading, writing and arithmetic, and excising woke or politically-charged curricula from their classrooms.
"Our children are already behind and these kinds of questions divide them," she said. "[It] turns one group into oppressors, another group into the oppressed… you wonder why there are so many fights in schools these days. So that's why parents need to continue to be vigilant."
She later concluded the episode shows how certain people think only of others as members of their racial or ethnic group, rather than people with self-determination.
Earlier this year, Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares announced an investigation of the school system after reports that high schools withheld letters of commendation on standardized tests from some students on the theory that it would hurt the feelings of students who didn’t receive them.
The College Board, which administers the national AP (Advanced Placement) curriculum, said it had no part in creating the question, and condemned it as "antithetical to the content" of its testing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
