Nikki Haley Calls on Governors Nationwide to ‘Ban Funding for Critical Race Theory’

As parents grapple with public schools embracing critical race theory in the classroom, Nikki Haley is encouraging governors across the country to block funding for the divisive race-based content.

“Every governor in the country needs to ban funding for critical race theory,” Haley said during an interview Monday on Fox News. “Governors can decide this.”

WATCH: @NikkiHaley joins @SandraSmithFox on set to discuss the latest on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the anti-government protests in Cuba. PLUS her take on the battle over critical race theory and her plans for 2024 #AmericaReports pic.twitter.com/FnFJ4bzjW6

— America Reports (@AmericaRpts) July 12, 2021

Governors are responsible for deciding what money their respective states take from the U.S. Department of Education, said Haley, who was governor of South Carolina from 2011 until 2017, when she was appointed by then-President Donald Trump to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

She encouraged governors to decline federal funding.

Haley explained during her appearance on Fox News that critical race theory is dividing children based on ethnicity at an age when they “don’t know anything about color.”

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“Think about a 5-year-old that starts kindergarten and they don’t know anything about color,” she said. “If she’s white, you’re telling her she’s bad. If she’s brown or black, you’re telling her she’ll never be enough and she’ll always be a victim. That is harmful for the very wellbeing of our children.”

The issues Haley is addressing are not abstract, either.

In May, Faithwire reported on a father in New York City who pulled his 9-year-old daughter from her private school after he learned his child was being taught a curriculum that allegedly encourages kids to “feel bad about the color of their skin.”

The father, Harvey Goldman, has since moved to Florida. He is not alone in his concerns over critical race theory, defined below by the UCLA School of Public Affairs:

"CRT recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color. CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutral and colorblind, however, CRT challenges this legal “truth” by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege. CRT also recognizes that liberalism and meritocracy are often stories heard from those with wealth, power, and privilege."

As critical race theory continues to spread throughout the educational system, more parents are speaking out against it. But it’s not just spreading in schools.

In April, Christian pastor and apologist Voddie Baucham told Faithwire the church is facing a “looming catastrophe,” referring to some believers’ infatuation with the phenomenon, which he equated to a religion.

“This is a religious movement,” he said. “It has all the trappings of a religion. It has its own cosmology, it has its own saints, it has its own liturgy, its own law. It has all of those elements. And a lot of those things are very subtle, which makes them rather attractive to religious people.”

The crux of Baucham’s concern is Christians accepting critical race theory as the central pathway to moral betterment, in lieu of Scripture.

“We don’t need critical race theory to teach us on race, on partiality, on the sin of partiality,” he said. “I can understand if people want to say that we want to use scientific text, for example, that speaks to an issue that the Bible doesn’t speak to. The Bible is not a mathematics textbook. There’s a whole lot of things that the Bible is not, but when it comes to the relationships between people when it comes to sins based on partiality, the Bible is absolutely a textbook on that.”

As for the pushback Haley is encouraging, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has already done that.

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In June, the Florida State Board of Education banned the teaching of critical race theory in public school classrooms as DeSantis argued such curricula are “really toxic” and aimed at “trying to indoctrinate [children] with ideology.”

“I think it’s going to cause a lot of divisions,” he said of critical race theory. “I think it’ll cause people to think of themselves more as a member of a particular race based on skin color, rather than based on the content of their character and based on their hard work and what they’re trying to accomplish in life.”