COLUMBUS, Ohio — Editor's note: the video in the player above is from a previous story.
In a statement released on Thursday, Ohio attorney general Dave Yost called for the Biden administration to drop proposals within the U.S. Department of Education that would fund curriculum about racial bias and discriminatory policies in America.
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In his statement, Yost said that teachings such as critical race theory (CRT) and the 1619 Project interpret "history through the narrow lens of race." CRT is an academic framework that examines how policies and law can perpetuate systemic racism, while the 1619 Project was published by The New York Times in 2019 and "aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States' national narrative," according to the project.
“We need to learn from the real evils of slavery and racism, but these proposals will only create more misunderstanding," Yost said in his statement. "Critical race theory is nothing more than ideology posing as history and we should not confuse the two."
Yost joined attorney generals from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia in sending a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, urging the department to review the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015's directives regarding teaching "traditional American history."
“This is just more federal overreach,” Yost said. “Decisions about curriculum should remain a primarily local matter and not subjected to political whim out of Washington. Certainly, a fringe view that is not generally and widely accepted should never be mandated out of Washington, D.C.”