Virginia Lt. Gov. Sears: ‘Too many’ political leaders use race to divide Americans

Sears said that she is a shining example of being able to achieve, no matter your background, as a Jamaican immigrant.

"I think I am a visible success story that says to people, ‘You can do it. You will do it. No matter your gender, no matter your color, even no matter where you were born.’ Because here I am, this is not my country, not my culture. I came from Jamaica and here, I have made it."

"Are you going to look at the glass as half full or as half empty? Because if it’s half empty that’s a negative view of life," she told Fox News. "That’s where too many of our political leaders come from and all it does is serve their, I think, nefarious agenda to divide us and to say you’re a victim, you’re always going to be a victim, and the other people are the oppressors and so you need us."

Sears said that despite new Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's day-one executive order to ban critical race theory in public schools, that race issues shouldn't be ignored altogether.

"You have to teach about the racial issues," she said.

"We need to know where we were wrong so that we can move forward and right things. The way to right things is to have that opportunity to have a good education. It is to give parents choice. We’re going to teach everything, we’re not going to sugarcoat anything, because the one thing we’ve learned from history, as someone once said, is that we don’t learn from history."

"[Nelson Mandela] wasn’t looking for retribution. He wanted to say let’s talk about what happened and let’s move on because we must," she added. "We can’t keep dividing ourselves. Those are the kinds of leaders we’re looking for."