A white mother from Virginia has said she plans to sue her Black son'due south school in Virginia, challenge he had been influenced by classes on disquisitional race theory and was at present having racial bug.

Fox News' Jesse Watters spoke to the female parent, Melissa Riley, during his show on Monday dark. Watters asked how being taught about critical race theory at the Henley Heart Schoolhouse in Crozet, Virginia, had influenced Riley'south son and how it had shifted their relationship.

Riley, who told the Pull a fast one on News host that her son'south father is Black and she is white, said that her son was now having issues with race.

"Nosotros didn't have any issues before, he is in eighth grade, they introduced this critical program and now he is having racial problems," she said. "He is seeing himself only as a Black man, he is seeing things that don't go his way as racism, he is finding safety in numbers."

Critical race theory is an educational issue that has divided conservatives and liberals, every bit it teaches that racism does not come but from individuals, but also that a land'south legal and other systems are inherently racist.

Clips of Riley'south chat with Watters has too gone viral on Twitter and has been viewed over 900,000 times.

"Disquisitional race theory is beingness taught in American classrooms and information technology is damaging how our children view the world," Watters said in his introduction of the segment. "Melissa Riley saw the radical curriculum at her thirteen-year-erstwhile son's heart school in Virginia. [Her son] had never talked about his race or racial issues until the school forced it on him. Melissa is now suing his school, claiming they brainwashed her son."

Watters questioned whether Riley's son would use racism as an excuse if he gets a bad grade or is rejected by a girl at school, and Riley said she believed he would.

While laughing, Riley likewise said that when she asks her son to clean the house he will refuse, claiming racism.

She added: "[The school] has completely changed his perspective, they have put him in a box.

"He is using [racism] as an excuse because they have told him that is how people see him, equally a Black human being, that the globe is confronting him and he shows it equally a negative at present."

Riley said that she spoke to the school when she realized that a program focusing on race was beingness introduced in the school.

"The school told me that [my son] could be a Blackness spokesperson for the Blackness customs," she said. "When I told them I don't think that would be appropriate, they told me that if he was uncomfortable with the conversations he, and other children of color could get to a safe identify during these conversations. That is segregation."

Black teenager
A white mother in Virginia has sued her 8th grade son's schoolhouse, challenge that the school'due south teaching of critical race theory has changed her son, who is blackness. Stock epitome of a Blackness teenager working in a classroom. Getty Images

When Watters asked Riley what her son'south father, who is African-American, idea of his son's behavior and the schoolhouse's curriculum, she replied, "I'm a single mom, so I'grand pedagogy him everything."

Kendall Thomas, a law professor at Columbia University and co-editor of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement, told Newsweek: "CRT maps the nature and workings of 'institutional racism.'"

"CRT challenges us to run into that racial injustice in America is not, and has never been, just a problem of isolated instances of private bias and private prejudice which we can solve by enacting 'color-blind' laws and policies," Thomas said. "CRT tracks the ways in which the 'color-blind racism' of today's post-civil rights era entrenches racial disparities, bigotry and disadvantage among Black, Chocolate-brown and Native American communities without ever explicitly using the language of 'race.'"

Henley Middle School Communications Officer Phil Giaramita spoke to Newsweek about the incident and said Riley had already been unsuccessful in her lawsuit.

"Ms. Riley did indeed sue the school division. She was part of a pocket-size group of parents that filed a suit earlier this year," Giaramita said.

"The suit was dismissed past the court in a ruling that supported the schoolhouse division's anti-racism policy."

Update 05/xviii/22, ii:36 a.m. ET: This commodity was updated with annotate from Phil Giaramita