ARLINGTON, Va. (7News) — Virginia Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears reacted to the racist sign targeting her at Thursday’s Arlington County, Virginia, school board meeting.
The sign, which has received millions of views on social media, reads, “Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then blacks can’t share my water fountain.”
“It’s a shame,” Earle-Sears told 7News about the sign. “She was holding up that sign for a whole hour, Nick, and nobody said to her to take it down. They’re spewing hate. The very hate that they say we on the Republican side are doing is what they’re doing, and it’s a shame. And remember who I am. I’m an immigrant to this wonderful country, and not only that, but I’m a Black woman, and so I’m second in command in the former capital of the Confederate States, for her to talk about a water fountain that Blacks – so she started with me, she started with me and then she went to Black people in general – can’t be at her water fountain. When did you start owning the water fountains, my good friend? And I thought the water fountains belong to everybody. Are we going back to Klan days now? Is that what you’re saying? But you’re a Democrat. You know, none of this makes any sense. And all I’m trying to do is to say parents are trying to raise their young boys, for example, to respect women, to honor women. And yet we have school systems, Loudoun school system, that wants to force these young boys to undress in front of biological girls, so they’re getting in the way of a parent who wants to raise their child properly. And then we have other school systems like Arlington, Alexandria, Prince William, Fairfax, and Loudoun, of course, who say, well, ‘Title IX doesn’t really matter’, and that, yes, they will force young girls even to undress in front of biological men.”
Over the weekend, a Vice Chair of the Virginia Democratic Party blamed what happened on the “climate Winsome Sears is creating.”
The Arlington Democratic Committee, which helped organize the rally to protest Earle-Sears, said the woman who held the sign, is not affiliated with them, and they don’t know her.
In a post dated to 2023, the Arlington County Democrats shared a photo on social media reportedly showing the woman handing out Democratic sample ballots.
“And they’re blaming me, the victim of a racist comment that conjures up everything that was bad in 1963 during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, when my father came to America, when we really couldn’t, as Black people, live where we wanted,” said Earle-Sears. “We couldn’t, well, we couldn’t eat where we wanted, we couldn’t do anything, and we were in danger of being lynched. And so here is this woman at the Democratic Party which started it. Now you’re blaming me for a racist sign? But think about it, I would not have been at the school board meeting had the Democrats not started this nonsensical idea that biological men can be women and can, of course, undress in front of our girls.”
On Friday and on Monday, 7News Reporter Nick Minock called and knocked on the door of the woman in the picture to ask why she brought the sign to the rally. No one answered the door.
As for Earle-Sears’ opponent in the race to be Virginia’s next Governor, former U.S. Representative Spanberger condemned the sign, but one of her spokespeople accused Earle-Sears of stoking division at the Arlington school board meeting.