Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 378 ｜ Dr. Seuss Is Racist & Everything Is Stupid

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. I don't know if you guys heard, but Dr. Seuss

00:00:15.300 is canceled for racism every single day, you guys. Every single day. Another thing dies

00:00:27.160 at the tip of the woke sword. And today it is the beloved Dr. Seuss. Actually, this is not a new

00:00:34.960 story. This has been being talked about for a long time. The reason why it's relevant today is because

00:00:40.120 the Biden administration took all Dr. Seuss books off of Read Across America Day, the annual

00:00:47.560 celebration of reading in honor of the legendary children's author, according to Fox News, whose

00:00:53.560 birthday falls on March 2nd, which is today. We will also be talking about replacing math,

00:01:02.080 you know, normal math, like two plus two equals four, with a new kind of equitable math that is

00:01:09.160 sponsored by none other than Bill Gates. And we'll be talking about what that entails. And then also

00:01:16.780 this push to replace history curriculum with Black Lives Matter activism at a variety of schools

00:01:24.440 around the country, namely in California. So we're going to talk about how wokeism is destroying our

00:01:30.920 education and is actually going to create bigger disparities and not more equity. And I'll explain

00:01:37.660 why. And then also, I think what we can do in response to all of this absolute madness. And also,

00:01:45.300 another thing I'm going to do is connect it to things that have happened in the past and why

00:01:48.920 it's not just a laughing matter, like why we should actually care about all of this craziness. So first,

00:01:55.040 let's break down this Dr. Seuss story. First of all, I love Dr. Seuss, and I love his books. Our family

00:02:03.940 loves his books. I think reading Dr. Seuss really helped me read. And I think that that is probably true for

00:02:11.140 you guys, too. And so no matter the pushback that I am going to get on saying after I explain all of

00:02:20.740 this, we're not going to stop reading Dr. Seuss in our house. And I have a guess that millions and

00:02:25.900 millions of people feel the same way. So this is according to Fox News. While Biden followed

00:02:31.060 presidential tradition in proclaiming Tuesday Read Across America Day, he bucked his predecessors by

00:02:36.280 leaving out any mention of Dr. Seuss from the proclamation. The White House didn't immediately

00:02:40.560 return a request for comment on why Dr. Seuss was left out of the proclamation. But the snub comes as

00:02:46.340 progressives have sought to cancel the beloved children's author. One of Virginia's biggest

00:02:50.780 school districts, Loudon, y'all can tell me if y'all are from Virginia, if I said that correctly,

00:02:56.760 county public schools reportedly nixed Dr. Seuss from the school's Read Across America Day

00:03:01.620 celebration, citing alleged racial undertones in his children's books. This part's interesting. It

00:03:10.240 just shows you how how fast this train has moved over the past few years. Former President Barack

00:03:16.080 Obama and former President Donald Trump both highlighted Dr. Seuss's contributions in their

00:03:20.600 annual proclamations. A Fox News review of White House archives found Obama's 2016 proclamation

00:03:27.360 described Seuss as, quote, one of America's revered wordsmiths who used his incredible talent to

00:03:34.320 instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear, which, of course, is true.

00:03:40.500 And I'll put up if you're watching on YouTube, this picture of First Lady Michelle Obama.

00:03:45.800 She it looks like she is reading to a bunch of students in the White House. She's got a big cat in

00:03:51.480 the hat person next to her and all of the precious little children are wearing the classic cat in the

00:03:57.320 hat hats. The Seattle Times reported on this, too. I thought this was interesting that Forbes listed

00:04:03.880 Dr. Seuss on as number two on its highest paid dead celebrities of 2020 behind only the late pop star

00:04:10.860 Michael Jackson. The Seattle Times reported that there are millions of books, tens of millions of dollars

00:04:16.660 made by Dr. Seuss's foundation every year because people love his books and actually demand, according to

00:04:22.420 the Seattle Times, has increased significantly over the past few years. I'm not sure why that is. If

00:04:28.700 it's like the popularization of Amazon. I know that they are very there's like a whole Dr. Seuss segment

00:04:35.300 in Target. So I'll be interested to see how long that lasts. This is what the Seattle Times also said

00:04:42.620 as adored as Dr. Seuss is by millions around the world for the positive values in many of his works,

00:04:47.660 including environmentalism and tolerance. There has been an increasing criticism in recent years over

00:04:52.540 the way blacks, Asians and others are drawn in some of his most beloved children's books, as well as in

00:04:58.500 his earlier advertising and propaganda illustrations. So like I said, we have Dr. Seuss in our house and

00:05:03.580 we have tons of Dr. Seuss books. It seems like we can't read through them fast enough. And my child,

00:05:09.960 she is she'll be two this summer. She will have a favorite Dr. Seuss book that we have to read

00:05:17.620 multiple times a day and then she'll switch to the next one. Fox and Socks is a classic is a classic

00:05:24.440 in our house. And of course, it's a classic in general, but it is a fan favorite. She loves Fox

00:05:29.360 and Socks. And if you are a parent, you know, the exhaustion associated with Fox and Socks. But it's

00:05:35.960 also fun. It's kind of like a challenge for me. I want to see if I can get through it without making

00:05:39.680 any mistakes. It can happen. As you guys know, I talk very quickly on this podcast,

00:05:45.380 but it doesn't often happen. But it's even like kind of a fun challenge for me. But in most of the

00:05:52.320 books, you don't see any depictions of human beings like they're just aren't humans. There's the cat in

00:05:58.020 the hat. There's, you know, Sneetches. There is Horton the Who. There is the Grinch. There's the

00:06:05.420 the or is it Horton the Who or Horton and the Who's? I don't remember. And you've got, you know,

00:06:12.220 the Who's in Whoville. You've got Mr. Mr. Knox. I think that's the guy in Fox and Socks. So you've

00:06:19.980 got all kinds of creatures. You've got all kinds of different animals. You very rarely actually see

00:06:25.620 human beings. I mean, yes, there are two little kids that are in a cat in the hat. But I'm really

00:06:32.040 confused as to what they're talking about here. Apparently, there are a few books that he wrote

00:06:37.100 early on that are a little bit more problematic. And like the Seattle Times said, there was some

00:06:42.360 advertising that he had done and some propaganda that was anti-Japanese propaganda during World War

00:06:47.700 Two and apparently also depicted black people in a caricature ish way. So obviously, that is something 1.00

00:06:55.420 that offends and rightfully offends our sensibilities today. And we wouldn't condone an author

00:07:01.560 illustrating something like that today. And I'm not justifying that kind of propaganda from,

00:07:09.960 you know, probably, you know, however long ago it was, 80 years ago. But it was a different time.

00:07:18.120 People did see and do and talk differently 80 years ago than they do today, of course. And so judging

00:07:27.260 someone who was drawing 80 to 60 years ago, by today's standards is just unfair. And it's

00:07:35.380 ridiculous. If we did that to every single author, we would have no books left to read. And you do kind

00:07:41.340 of wonder if that's the point. And I will get to that in just one second. The Seattle Times goes on to

00:07:46.560 say, in 2017, a school librarian in Cambridge, Massachusetts criticized a gift of 10 Seuss books

00:07:52.540 from First Lady Melania Trump, saying many of his works were, quote, steeped in racist propaganda,

00:07:58.420 caricatures and harmful stereotypes. It's not true that many of his works are. There might be a few

00:08:04.360 works by Dr. Seuss where this is the case, but that's not true of many or even close to most of

00:08:11.080 his works. And remember, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, lauded Dr. Seuss and his books, used them

00:08:18.580 in their, you know, in their celebrations of reading and things like that. But of course,

00:08:23.900 when Melania Trump presented them with a gift, which is very kind, by the way, of Dr. Seuss books,

00:08:29.680 this school librarian said, well, this is racist. I remember that happening in 2018. A Dr. Seuss

00:08:35.280 museum in his hometown of Springfield removed a mural that included an Asian stereotype, the cat in the

00:08:41.660 hat. One of Seuss's most popular books has received criticism too, but will continue to be published for

00:08:46.340 now? Because apparently Dr. Seuss's foundation is talking about no longer publishing some books

00:08:51.540 that are problematic. Look, if you start kowtowing to this stuff, the foundation's no longer going to

00:08:57.440 be printing books because they're going to be able to find something that has a, quote, racial undertone

00:09:04.260 or some kind of hidden subliminal message, according to one random academic somewhere in the United

00:09:10.480 States, that is problematic and offensive. And so there's no longer going to be any Dr. Seuss books

00:09:17.100 if they begin ceding ground in this way. Seattle Times also says Laura Ingalls Wilder's portrayals

00:09:24.040 of Native Americans in her Little House on the Prairie, another American classic,

00:09:28.680 have been faulted so often that the American Library Association removed her name in 2018 from a

00:09:36.520 Lifetime Achievement Award. It gives out each year, which, again, is just ridiculous. Judging

00:09:43.040 people by our modern mores who lived 100 years ago or who lived several decades ago in a different

00:09:51.740 time, in a different culture, with different norms is unsustainable. It's unsustainable.

00:09:59.040 Meanwhile, we have books like The Gay BCs. I don't know if you guys have seen this kind of viral

00:10:04.500 video that's been going around on Twitter. It might have been originally filmed on TikTok of what

00:10:10.020 looks like a four or five-year-old boy going through what's called the, quote, gay BCs, like A is for 0.98

00:10:15.600 ally, B is for bi, C is for coming out. And apparently the parents are just so proud they have taught their

00:10:22.520 child this. Apparently that's not problematic. That's not offensive at all. I'm sure in a few years

00:10:28.460 when he decides that he is, he's confused about his gender, his parents will say, oh, well, yes,

00:10:34.020 he's just always been this way. This has nothing to do with anything that we've ever taught him or told

00:10:38.060 him. That is not problematic. That is totally fine. We're supposed to accept and celebrate that.

00:10:43.860 But reading American classics like Dr. Seuss, which have been proven to improve the vocabulary,

00:10:50.920 the reading comprehension and reading ability of children, that is bad because of a few cartoons

00:10:56.620 that Dr. Seuss put out, you know, a hundred years ago that we now deem racist. We're living in

00:11:05.020 backwards town. We're living in clown town, people, where up is down and down is up and girls are boys

00:11:11.720 and boys are girls and Dr. Seuss is bad and the gay BCs are fine. We also have, of course, Ibra Max 1.00

00:11:17.040 Kendi's anti-racist baby. And so teaching kids that white, bad, black, good, and that all of your 0.63

00:11:24.960 problems can be blamed on people of another race. That kind of division apparently is fine 1.00

00:11:33.260 propagandized indoctrination to teach to our children. But cat in the hat, fox and socks,

00:11:41.020 green eggs and ham, wacky Wednesday, those are all very bad. And we should refrain apparently this

00:11:48.740 from our cultural betters, this from our academic elites. Now, this might just seem ridiculous that

00:11:56.700 this is just a wokeness taking place, that this is just, you know, crazy liberals offended by

00:12:03.480 everything, which of course is true. But I think that we actually have to put it in context that it's

00:12:08.600 more dangerous than that. And it's more familiar than that. We might think, oh, everything is new.

00:12:14.160 Everything is crazy. This is not something that anyone would have cared about 10 years ago.

00:12:18.540 And part of that is true. But look, we've seen this kind of stuff before. I often compare what

00:12:24.640 happens on the left with the Maoist cultural revolution in China in the 20th century, which

00:12:30.680 brutally ended the lives of tens of millions of Chinese people in the name of communism. And this 0.56

00:12:36.940 didn't start primarily as a political revolution of Mao taking power politically and militarily,

00:12:42.940 but through a cultural revolution. And that cultural revolution included things that

00:12:47.420 I've compared to cancel culture, like struggle session. So someone who has a dissenting opinion,

00:12:51.700 or as Orwell would say, is guilty of wrong think, they're taken into public and they're

00:12:57.140 into the public and they're physically tortured, they're emotionally tortured, they're verbally

00:13:02.980 abused until that person recants their wrong opinion. That is basically what cancel culture is today

00:13:09.720 that was happening, you know, decades ago in Mao's China in the hopes that doing so would create a

00:13:16.780 uniform society that would openly and congruently and cohesively embrace communism. That is what Mao 0.94

00:13:25.400 hoped. And within that cultural revolution and within those struggle sessions, there was this idea of

00:13:32.620 replacing the four olds with the four new. So the four olds in Mao's China were old ideas, old culture, 0.80

00:13:41.060 old habits, and old customs. So the hope was to destroy those and to destroy anyone who still held on to

00:13:48.540 any of those old ideas through something like struggle sessions through just straight up murder and

00:13:54.420 imprisonment. That's always what we see in these kind of totalitarian collectivist revolutions, whether it be

00:14:00.240 fascist or communism. Remember, those two ideologies are very, very close together. Anyone who tells you

00:14:07.520 they're on the opposite ends of the spectrum, don't realize that the political spectrum is a circle

00:14:12.520 with fascism and communism very, very close to each other rather than a straight line with fascism and

00:14:17.620 communism on the opposite ends from one another. So in Maoist communist China during this cultural

00:14:26.860 revolution, they sought through force to replace these old ideas, old culture, old habits, and old

00:14:33.200 customs with the four news, new customs, new culture, new habits, and new ideas in the hopes that getting

00:14:41.540 rid of the old culture would be able to usher in communism, which of course Mao thought was going to be

00:14:49.300 wonderful for China. And of course, it wasn't as communism always does. It led to famine. It led to

00:14:55.720 starvation. It led to murder. It led to persecution. It led to oppression. Of course, he did all of this

00:15:01.740 in the name of compassion, in the name of progressivism, in the name of making things new and

00:15:07.760 better. This is what progressivism always does, by the way. It claims to have this great grand vision

00:15:14.280 of the world that has never fully been tried before and convinces people that it is worth it to give up

00:15:21.220 their power, to give up their money, to give up their property, to give up their freedom in exchange

00:15:26.420 for this great grand, big, beautiful future that the government is going to be able to give you and

00:15:32.360 all people. And not just that, but it convinces you that you're on the wrong side of history, that you're

00:15:37.540 an immoral person. You're a bad person if you don't get on board with all of this. And I think a lot of

00:15:43.340 times we see these kinds of revolutions as some kind of military coup or military takeover with

00:15:50.860 soldiers showing up at your house and taking away your guns and tearing apart your family, which is

00:15:56.180 what happened in Pol Pot's Cambodia, another disastrous, murderous communist revolution of the 20th 0.91

00:16:02.620 century. But it starts earlier than that. It starts with the people who are in charge turning people

00:16:10.540 against one another, making them hate themselves, hate their neighbor, hate their country, hate their

00:16:15.660 old customs, and then look to the government, look to the state to usher in something new and better.

00:16:22.240 And so Mal knew that it had to start on the cultural level. And I think the communists here today,

00:16:28.140 the leftists, whether all of them know it or not, they are ushering in the same kind of division

00:16:35.400 and hatred and book burning as we saw throughout the totalitarian 20th century. And so this is not

00:16:44.000 happening in a vacuum, mind you. This is not just a thing that we scoff at and roll our eyes at,

00:16:51.340 although it is that, of course, but it's actually more than that. Like there is some historical

00:16:56.340 precedent for this kind of stuff. And I just want you to think about it. If you are on the side of

00:17:01.880 burning books, because remember, it's not just Dr. Seuss. And you might say, well, they're not

00:17:05.300 really burning books. Okay, bear with me for a second and think metaphorically. It's not just

00:17:11.580 Dr. Seuss. It's other books that have been taken out of a distribution. Obviously, you guys know that

00:17:17.200 Abigail Schreier, who wrote Irreversible Damage about the social contagion of transgenderism among

00:17:22.700 girls, that she had her book taken offline by Target, at least temporarily, until there was a lot

00:17:29.320 of pushback. Amazon has now said that they are going to stop distributing books that they find

00:17:34.320 offensive. And so Ryan Anderson, who I have interviewed before, the interview will come out

00:17:39.460 in a couple months, but he wrote a book, When Harry Becomes Sally. It's an amazing book. It's a very

00:17:44.700 compassionate book, but it talks about this transgender moment and movement and what it means

00:17:50.020 in particular for kids and why it is so important to push back against it. And his arguments are very

00:17:57.840 sound. They're fact-based, they're science-based, they're research-based, while Amazon said, no,

00:18:04.140 that's just too much. We're going to take it off of our website. Meanwhile, of course,

00:18:09.080 they are still distributing things like Mein Kampf and all of these actual terrible books. If you are

00:18:16.020 on the side of the people who are burning books, metaphorically or literally, we actually saw Antifa

00:18:22.640 burning, I think it was the Constitution and also burning the Bible in places like Seattle and

00:18:28.340 Portland. We've seen that over the past few months. If that is your side, it's time for you to just take

00:18:33.900 a moment of self-reflection for a second and say, all right, am I on the wrong side of this? Like,

00:18:40.200 am I a part of the bad guys? If you weren't on the side that is for destroying the four olds and to

00:18:49.180 replace them with the four news because you've bought in to the same lie that dictators and

00:18:55.040 totalitarians have been pushing for centuries, that they are going to usher in something better,

00:19:02.020 some kind of anti-racist, fully progressive, tolerant future. And in order to get there,

00:19:10.060 you think it's important to cancel classic American authors because of some problematic cartoons that they

00:19:16.180 wrote 80 years ago or that they drew 80 years ago, you need to ask yourself if you might be on the

00:19:21.480 wrong side of things. I'm not saying that you have to agree with me on everything or that you have to

00:19:25.980 be like a Republican. I'm just saying maybe don't be on the side of totalitarians. Like maybe don't be

00:19:32.420 on the side of these tiny tyrants. Maybe don't join the mobs that are constantly trying to cancel

00:19:37.860 people based on standards that we just came up with 10 minutes ago. We talked about this in my book

00:19:43.520 that this is the result that this kind of thing is actually, I'm not talking specifically about Dr.

00:19:50.140 Seuss, but I'm talking about just the constant hamster wheel that society is on to try to come

00:19:56.000 up with new definitions of right and wrong based on what? Based on people's opinions, based on people's

00:20:01.540 feelings, based on a tiny minority of the country who is offended. All of that goes back to godlessness

00:20:07.720 and our inability to see that morality has already been decided. It's already been dictated by a god

00:20:14.160 who is higher than us, who is higher than the government, who is higher than the social cultural

00:20:20.080 powers that be. And we as Christians have the privilege of being able to go to scripture to say

00:20:26.060 what right is, what wrong is, what good is, what bad is, what true is, what false is. But when you have a

00:20:31.480 culture that has replaced the god of scripture with the god of self, you are constantly going to be

00:20:38.080 exhausted trying to figure out what the new moral code is. Because based on what? Like based on your

00:20:44.620 own feelings, based on your own emotions, based on your own perceptions. And so that's where you kind of

00:20:50.940 get this constant exhausting clamoring for a new form of righteousness because so many people today

00:21:00.680 don't know where righteousness comes from. They don't know the author of morality. They don't know

00:21:06.040 the source of truth. And so they're trying to come up with their own truth and their own morality.

00:21:10.680 They're canceling other people in the process. They're self-righteous in doing so, refusing to look

00:21:17.400 at their own mistakes. And it just leads to all kinds of chaos. So any kind of pushback against

00:21:24.320 all of this madness, it's not enough just to say, you know what, I'm going to reject wokeism, which

00:21:30.180 of course I think is well and good. And there are plenty of people that don't share my biblical,

00:21:33.960 you know, worldview who do reject wokeness. And I think that's great. But essentially, it's got to go

00:21:41.340 back to the why and the why of resisting every single, not all true progress, but the why to

00:21:51.760 getting off this hamster wheel of cancel culture and getting off this hamster wheel of trying to

00:21:58.340 find new standards of offensiveness and new standards of righteousness every single day in

00:22:04.860 every single sphere of the culture. The answer to that is realizing that we are accountable to God.

00:22:10.980 That we move closer and closer into scripture or further and further into scripture to find what

00:22:17.260 is good and right and true. We don't look to the world and to academics and to random experts and

00:22:22.920 to social media influencers or podcasters or politicians to tell us what is right and what

00:22:29.040 is wrong. And I also think there is something very Christ-like and very Christian in refusing to be 1.00

00:22:35.040 offended by everything. Refusing to take offense in everything and refusing to cancel people based on

00:22:42.140 something they did a long time ago or based on something that they said that we don't like. There's

00:22:47.720 something so very worldly and I would even say demonic if you read, for example, James 3 about this

00:22:55.780 constant cattiness and constant offense and constant clamoring to be the first person to cancel an idea

00:23:03.860 or an author or a book. It's no way to live. It's no way to live, people. And I think we have a

00:23:09.900 wonderful opportunity as Christians to say, wow, I'm so glad that I do not have to abide by the standards

00:23:16.380 of the world. And, you know, someone was saying, how do we push back against this on Twitter? And so,

00:23:22.360 of course, I think that it has to do with what I just said on a spiritual level, but just on a practical

00:23:27.220 level, like how we push back against madness, like canceling Dr. Seuss, is you just say no. You just

00:23:34.220 say, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to participate in that kind of craziness. Now, if you

00:23:40.860 don't want to read Dr. Seuss, that's fine. Like, if that's too much for you and you truly don't want

00:23:47.140 to support Dr. Seuss, that's okay. Like, I'm not going to make the same decision for me and my family,

00:23:53.120 but you can make that for you and your family and you can stop buying Dr. Seuss books. And I think

00:23:57.640 that's fine. Like, I'm not going to shame you for that, but you have no right to shame me for not

00:24:02.120 doing that. I mean, you see how that's kind of a ridiculous standard, right? The fact of the matter

00:24:07.640 is, like I said at the beginning, Dr. Seuss has really helped a lot of people read. And I think

00:24:12.140 that this is going to create more disparities between those who do read books like Dr. Seuss and those

00:24:18.940 who don't. Yes, of course, Dr. Seuss is not the only author who has come up with really amazing books

00:24:23.940 that have helped kids read, but they're classics for a reason. Like, they have been used to help

00:24:30.920 kids read and write and spell and for, you know, speech therapy for decades for a reason because they

00:24:40.120 really are the best of the best. There's a reason why he is the second highest paid dead person

00:24:46.400 in America. It's because his books are so good. And so if you have one group of people who says,

00:24:52.340 you know what, we're going to keep reading these books and they're going to help my kids read.

00:24:57.020 And you have all of these kids who have really been helped by his books. And then you have a whole

00:25:02.940 other group of kids who is what getting educated by the gay BC is an anti-racist baby. Like, who do you

00:25:09.780 think is going to end up bad? Like, who do you think is probably going to end up a better reader,

00:25:14.520 like with better reading comprehension and better enunciation and things like that. I just think

00:25:22.100 it's going to create more disparities between the woke and the non-woke. It's going to create more

00:25:27.700 gaps in understanding, more gaps in culture. It's just going to create more division. Now, as for us,

00:25:35.740 like I said, we're not going to stop reading Dr. Seuss. Thankfully, we, I mean, like I said,

00:25:42.660 we love Dr. Seuss in our house and I really do think it has helped my child be very verbal. Like

00:25:48.820 she's just an extremely smart girl, probably regardless of Dr. Seuss. I mean, she's known

00:25:55.180 her alphabet since she was nine months old. And so I, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Dr. Seuss has

00:26:04.560 been a part of our reading Rolodex since she was born and it's not going to stop. I think that's true

00:26:10.720 of many parents. So I'm giving you permission as if you needed it to continue reading Dr. Seuss to

00:26:18.780 your, to your kids. All right. I do want to move on to this, this story about equitable math and how

00:26:28.820 this also, I think is going to create more disparities between two groups that is, that is

00:26:35.960 very troubling and why, again, I think that we should be pushing back against this kind of craziness.

00:26:45.500 Okay. So there is something called a pathway to equitable math instruction. It is a toolkit that

00:26:53.160 is apparently being given to middle school teachers to teach math more equitably. This was originally

00:27:00.400 given by the Oregon Department of Education. According to the Daily Wire, the department is

00:27:07.340 promoting a program for teachers that seeks to, quote, dismantle racism in mathematics,

00:27:13.440 alleging that focusing on the right answer is a symbol of white supremacy. The newsletter encourages

00:27:21.440 teachers to sign up for the training, which the New York Post previously reported includes a section

00:27:25.700 with 14 things associated with white supremacy culture, including perfectionism, objectivity,

00:27:35.360 and individualism. Objectivity is described in the workbook accompanying the training as, quote,

00:27:41.860 the belief that there is such thing as being objective or neutral. The program's toolkit also encourages

00:27:48.420 teachers not to focus on the single correct answer, but to come up with at least two answers that might

00:27:53.500 solve this problem and to challenge standardized test questions by getting the right answer,

00:27:59.180 but justify other problems by unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem.

00:28:05.020 So let's back up a little bit. Let's remember what equity actually means. We've talked about that twice

00:28:10.040 on this podcast, that equity doesn't actually mean fairness. It doesn't actually mean equal treatment.

00:28:15.160 It means the desire for everyone to have the same outcomes. In this case, equity doesn't mean the same

00:28:21.520 outcomes as in the same answer to a math problem. Equity means everyone ending up with similar or the

00:28:28.020 same grades. That is what they are trying to accomplish. What the Department of Education and

00:28:34.560 this particular toolkit is setting out to do is to make sure that kids apparently who aren't typically

00:28:40.220 getting as good of grades in this math class, they would say BIPOC kids, that they need math to be 1.00

00:28:48.120 changed or manipulated for them in order for them to get better grades in the class and feel as

00:28:53.960 successful so that it doesn't seem that who they would say are white and Asian kids are actually

00:29:00.300 succeeding more than they are. This is the same kind of goal that has been set forth in San Diego

00:29:07.660 schools, for example, by trying to get rid of any grading scale that has to do with class behavior or has

00:29:14.420 to actually do with test scores. And so this is in the way of equity in that it is trying to get rid

00:29:22.840 of objective standards so that there are no more gaps in outcome in between groups in the hopes that

00:29:30.740 this will also, I don't know, lead to equality. The problem is, of course, is that equal outcomes are

00:29:38.040 impossible, that individuals are different. We have different talents. We have different abilities.

00:29:42.940 We have different capacities to understand. I am never going to be able to be great at math. I was

00:29:51.460 never going to be able to take the AP calculus test because that's not how my brain works. That's not how

00:29:57.360 God made me. And so it was not unfair for someone to be able to take calculus in high school, but I had

00:30:05.140 to be stuck in my pre-cal or finite class. And they ended up taking the AP calculus test and got some

00:30:13.120 credit for college or they got to put it on their resume, which maybe helped them apply for scholarships

00:30:19.520 or get into a better college than it did for me. Whatever it is, that's just life. God didn't make

00:30:25.840 me with the ability to do math as well as other people or to understand physics or chemistry as well

00:30:32.520 as other people. And it's not unfair that people used the abilities or maybe even the opportunities

00:30:38.340 that they had to be able to advance their career or to get into a particular college or to apply for

00:30:44.580 a scholarship. So in order to make it so-called equitable for me, they would have had to punish

00:30:51.900 the people who were good at math, who were excelling with math by taking away the standards. As someone who

00:30:57.540 is not good at math and who would have very much benefited from this new subjective form of

00:31:03.920 equitable math, I am standing against it and saying it's okay that not everyone is great at math. I

00:31:11.640 don't need the standards to be lowered. And talk about racist and patronizing. Non-white kids don't 1.00

00:31:18.100 need the standards to be lowered for them. Now, I understand people are going to push back and say,

00:31:22.180 well, systemic racism is making it impossible for these kids to succeed. If that's the case,

00:31:28.200 still, which I don't believe, by the way, but still, the answer would not be getting rid of

00:31:34.420 standards altogether or changing the objective reality that math problems in general, that they

00:31:42.260 have an objective, solid, singular answer. So equity in math is not something that is desirable at all.

00:31:51.880 Because some things just cannot be argued against. I would love, I would love to be able to argue

00:31:58.880 math problems. I would love for math problems to be subjective because that's where I live. I live

00:32:04.280 in the realm of the subjective and the argumentative and the idea world. That's what I love. That's what

00:32:13.300 I enjoy. That is what I am much better at than the world of objectivism. But I also understand that

00:32:21.100 some things just can't be debated. Do you really want the person who builds the bridge to be an 0.98

00:32:29.000 expert in equitable math? Do you want your pilot? Do you want your plane engineer? Do you want your

00:32:35.520 pharmacist? Do you want the person who is formulating medicine to be good at equitable subjective math?

00:32:41.980 Or do you want them to be able to get the right answer? Do you want your nurse who was trying to

00:32:46.020 formulate the right dosage of your medicine as you're in the hospital to be good at equitable

00:32:50.340 subjective math? To be able to say, oh, there's probably multiple answers to this dosage calculation.

00:32:56.500 Or do you want them to be pretty exact when it comes to life or death?

00:32:59.920 I would say the latter. So this has real life consequences. So not only is it patronizing,

00:33:05.480 not only is it racist, not only is it not really actually going to lead to any kind of long-term

00:33:13.800 equity, but also it puts society in danger because we rely on math. We rely on the objectivism

00:33:22.600 that is science or at least a lot of science. And when we take that ability away from children,

00:33:29.820 we take that away from society. We take that away from our future. We take that away from all of the

00:33:37.700 different spheres that actually rely on mathematics. And you know, one person who I know understands this,

00:33:44.940 who I know knows this, maybe better than anyone, that is Bill Gates. And yet the Bill and Melinda

00:33:51.440 Gates Foundation, they are the ones that are funding this insanity. Now you think that Bill Gates,

00:33:58.520 the owner, the founder of Microsoft doesn't understand that there are objective right and

00:34:04.700 wrong answers when it comes to math? He knows. He has to know. Do you think that he is going to hire

00:34:11.520 someone? Do you think he has ever hired someone who is not good at math if their role required them to

00:34:18.100 be good at math? Like, do you think computer programmers, well, I actually don't know anything

00:34:22.900 about computer programming to even say this. But as I understand, it's a pretty kind of objective

00:34:29.000 science in a lot of ways. Do you think that he is going to apply subjective standards to that kind

00:34:34.500 of person when it comes to roles in his company? Of course not. His company has relied on math and

00:34:39.800 science. And so I know he knows the importance of objective answers in math. So why is he funding this

00:34:46.260 kind of thing? You know what I say about Bill Gates, who is the center of so many conspiracy theories?

00:34:52.980 If you don't want to be the center of so many conspiracy theories, stop being sketchy. Like,

00:34:57.640 stop being a sketchy guy. Like, maybe just be normal. Stop buying all the farmland in the United

00:35:02.720 States and funding equitable math if you don't want to be the center of all of these conspiracy theories.

00:35:09.140 And so what is really what's what's really behind all of this? I'll tell you a theory that I came up

00:35:14.060 with the other day is that we've got people, you know, who purport to be woke and with it and

00:35:21.080 helpers of humanity like Bill Gates. We've got the Oregon Department of Education. We've got all these

00:35:26.500 educators saying that they are the ones fighting for social justice. They're the ones fighting for

00:35:30.480 racial justice. They're the ones fighting for marginalized kids. And yet they're coming up with

00:35:35.460 these kinds of systems and and kinds of curriculum that are ultimately going to hold kids back and hold

00:35:42.660 society back and are going to create more gaps because the kids with two parents who care about

00:35:50.280 their education and really care about them succeeding in life are going to make sure that their kids know

00:35:56.680 math. They're going to make sure that their kids know the two plus two equals four. And they're going to

00:36:02.160 make sure that their kids succeed in science and all of these arenas that require objectivism.

00:36:08.580 The kids who are going to be left behind are going to be the kids whose parents can't afford to be as

00:36:13.500 involved, who don't know to be as involved. And if they're arguing that disproportionately those are

00:36:18.440 black and brown kids, then what you're creating is a further racial divide. And so my theory is, is that

00:36:25.500 the real white supremacists are the people that are pushing this kind of stuff in the name of equity.

00:36:31.120 And we're all just being gaslit. The rest of us who believe that, hey, everyone should be held to

00:36:37.900 equal standards. Sure. We should help people who need help reach those standards. We should give

00:36:42.660 them the tools that they need to be able to succeed. Yes, absolutely. But everyone should be treated

00:36:48.380 fairly. Everyone should be treated equally. We should try to help those that need help, but let's not

00:36:54.760 lower the standards. That's a soft bigotry of low expectations. We're all being told that we're

00:37:01.100 racist for believing that, for believing in objective truth. Meanwhile, the people who are

00:37:07.400 lowering standards for specifically black and brown students are the real white supremacists. 0.86

00:37:12.640 That's that's my theory, and that they're all just trying to distract everyone else by by telling you

00:37:18.200 that those who actually care about fairness and those who actually care about real equality are the

00:37:23.120 ones who are the racist. I think the best thing that you can do is just to say, no, I refuse your

00:37:28.440 characterization. I refuse your insanity. Parents have to refuse this insanity. The fact of the

00:37:34.700 matter is, is that two plus two does equal four. There are many more complicated math problems that

00:37:40.760 have an objective answer that must have an objective answer that think the Lord people smarter than me

00:37:45.280 have figured out. I am never going to be relied on to build a bridge. Thank goodness. Like I think

00:37:50.760 about all of these people who are more, you know, English rhetoric minded, like I am big picture

00:37:56.600 minded like I am being in charge of like building planes because their teacher in middle school

00:38:02.360 told them that they were great at equitable math. Dude, we're going to get a lot of crashing bridges and

00:38:08.560 a lot of crashing planes. If people with my ability to do math are in charge of that because their

00:38:14.160 middle school teacher gave them an A in equitable math, that's going to be a real problem. So there are

00:38:19.300 tangible consequences to all of this. I think there are economic consequences. I think there are

00:38:25.520 employment consequences to all of this. I think that there are a lot of social and cultural ramifications

00:38:31.400 when one group of kids can do actual math and one group of kids can't. And so we see once again that

00:38:38.100 progressivism, wokeism, it destroys, it destroys. Like all progressivism does is says everything that already

00:38:44.800 exists or has existed for a long time is bad. So let's get rid of it. And when someone asks, well, what's that

00:38:50.920 actually going to lead to? Like, do we have any evidence to, to think that's going to lead to

00:38:55.220 something better? There's no, no, no, no. It's, it's fine. It's going to, whatever is new is going to

00:39:00.320 be good. We never actually know where the train of progressivism is going. It doesn't actually have

00:39:05.200 any kind of provable destination. It just says, we're just going to keep going in this direction.

00:39:11.620 And we don't really care who we take down in our wake. That's true when it comes to the gender identity 1.00

00:39:16.500 insanity. It's true when it comes to the critical theory stuff. It's true when it comes to the

00:39:22.920 nonstop cancellations of people, a different cultural and, uh, in time context, uh, than the

00:39:30.000 one in which we live, it just keeps rolling. And look, we got to hop off the train and we got to

00:39:36.080 encourage other people to hop off the train too, because I'm telling you progressivism, it, the train

00:39:41.320 tracks go off the, go off the edge of the cliff. That's where I can tell you that it goes

00:39:46.100 progressivism always claims to have this like utopia, beautiful destination of equality and

00:39:52.080 happiness. It never leads there. It never has led there. It always goes off the cliff. So you've

00:39:57.280 got to hop off. There are some people that I just, I just want to put my hands on your shoulders and

00:40:02.720 say, please wake up, please wake up and realize that this is madness that you don't need to be a part

00:40:07.680 of, please, because it's wrecking society. It's wrecking the lives of children who, who can't

00:40:14.900 consent to this stuff. By the way, as I've talked about on this podcast, children are always the

00:40:20.380 unwilling, unconsenting, um, products of, uh, not products of, but, uh, subjects of progressive

00:40:30.180 social experiments, whether it's the redefining of gender and the family, whether it is quote

00:40:37.160 comprehensive sex ed, whether it is school shutdowns, whether it's abortion, whether it's

00:40:43.500 this woke curriculum, kids are always the unconsenting subjects of these progressive

00:40:49.240 experiments. And we never asked for a second, like, how is this actually going to make them

00:40:54.040 their lives better? How is this actually going to improve things? Um, but unfortunately the

00:40:59.860 cultural, social, political powers that be just keep moving ahead with the train of progressivism.

00:41:05.420 And it's up to us to get off. Okay. I want to talk about one more story just quickly that goes

00:41:11.740 along with all of this, um, and the rewriting of history specifically in the name of progressivism.

00:41:18.220 So this is a, according to tablet magazine, an article titled California is cleansing Jews from

00:41:24.220 history quote in the fall of 2016, California's then governor Jerry Brown signed into law a mandate

00:41:30.600 to develop an ethnic studies program for high schools in California. The ethnic studies model

00:41:35.900 curriculum is for high school students in California. It's a very diverse area. And so

00:41:40.980 a lot of people were on board with this because of course it sounds good. Um, ethnic studies, cultural

00:41:46.600 diversity, these are things, especially in a very diverse area that you would think is a very healthy

00:41:51.800 thing to promote and a healthy thing for kids, uh, to, to learn. But Alina Kaplan is a former senior

00:41:58.980 vice president of one of California's largest affordable housing nonprofits. She was okay with

00:42:04.040 it. Uh, uh, initially this ethnic studies law, because again, it sounds good, but she actually saw the

00:42:10.260 first draft of this curriculum and she couldn't believe it quote. She saw that a list of historic

00:42:15.860 U S social movements, ones like black lives matter, hashtag me too, criminal justice reform also

00:42:21.920 included the boycott divestment and sanctions movement for Palestine and described it as a

00:42:28.620 global social movement that currently aims to establish freedom for Palestinians living under

00:42:33.740 apartheid conditions. So obviously a very biased against Israel, the BDS movement, literally,

00:42:40.040 uh, its goal is to ruin and destabilize and to, to weaken Israel. And it kind of, uh, paints Palestine 0.89

00:42:49.460 as this freedom fighting nation against the evil imperialist Israel, which is just not an accurate

00:42:56.880 depiction quote. She was shocked that in a curriculum that would be taught to millions of students,

00:43:01.980 BDS is primary goal. The elimination of Israel was not mentioned. Kaplan also saw that the 1948

00:43:08.360 Israel war of independence was only referred to as the Nakba catastrophe in Arabic and Arabic verses

00:43:14.620 included in the sample lessons were insulting and provocative to Jews. And so we actually see this

00:43:20.700 very weirdly and very rampantly in progressivism. And it kind of goes back to the works of Karl

00:43:28.640 Marx, even though he was ethnically Jewish, he wrote, uh, you know, the work on the Jewish question

00:43:34.040 where he called Jewish people hucksters. And so wherever we see this kind of leftism and Marxism,

00:43:39.560 as well as where we see fascism and all kinds of totalitarianism, we almost always see a streak

00:43:45.900 of antisemitism in it. Um, it kind of goes with this leftism. We see it also in the UK, unfortunately,

00:43:53.720 uh, the, the new curriculum, this article says, which will eventually be promulgated throughout the

00:43:58.900 California school system of 6 million children would critique empire and its relationship to

00:44:04.120 white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cis hetero patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and other forms

00:44:11.200 of power and oppression. According to the proposal, it would build new possibilities for post-imperial

00:44:16.960 life. This is nonsense that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance. Capitalism is

00:44:24.340 classified as a form of power and oppression, even though it is the economic system that has

00:44:30.400 lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system. And although classism, homophobia,

00:44:37.600 Islamophobia, and transphobia were also listed as forms of oppression, antisemitism was not Jewish

00:44:42.940 Americans were not even mentioned as a minority group. Um, it also talks about the dangers of Zionism 0.93

00:44:50.780 racism and, uh, uh, and of course continues to talk about the Jewish people and the Jewish religion in a

00:44:58.980 negative light. The state board of education is going to vote on the curriculum on March 17th. So just in a

00:45:05.760 couple of weeks. So, uh, intersectionality is very strange. You guys know what intersectionality means. It means

00:45:12.480 allotting, uh, basically social value, allotting even credibility and political capital to people based on the

00:45:20.760 identity. So based on their skin color, based on their sexual orientation and the whiter you are, the

00:45:27.880 worse it is, the more straight you are, the more quote, cisgender you are, the more Christian you are, the 0.91

00:45:34.540 more Western you are, the worse, uh, you are perceived to be. This goes right in line with kind of critical

00:45:41.460 race theory, which puts race as the primary identification of oppression or oppressor. Um, and so

00:45:49.840 we see some contradictions though in that is that we see for whatever reason, Jewish people and Asian

00:45:58.440 people being kind of cast into the white bad category on the basis of, I don't know, perceived

00:46:07.100 privilege or the, their ability to accumulate wealth in general or their general success as kind of these

00:46:15.760 racial, ethnic and religious groups when it comes to Judaism. And so critical race theory and

00:46:21.820 intersectionality very often put them off to the side or put them on the side of the oppressor when

00:46:27.500 it's convenient, uh, for them to do so. And we've seen this kind of ugliness specifically against Jewish

00:46:35.280 people, uh, for a very long time and the ramifications of it have never been good. And I, I do fear how this

00:46:43.040 will translate into real life and into policy, especially in places like California, but critical

00:46:48.780 race theory is a threat to everyone. Obviously, as we also saw with quote equitable math, uh, this

00:46:54.600 kind of intersectional worldview, it blinds us from the reality of right and wrong because we're

00:47:00.660 categorizing people not based on their actions and their words and, and whether or not they're

00:47:05.480 actually moral, but based on these superficial identifiers, which is just another form of racism.

00:47:10.080 So this is going to lead, continue to lead all of this, this cultural revolution, this malice like

00:47:15.480 cultural revolution is going to lead to a lot of division. It's going to lead to violence. It's going

00:47:20.100 to lead to stupidity. And now is our opportunity to hop off, to push back where we see it, to not let

00:47:27.440 your child be indoctrinated with this madness. And just to continue in what we know is good and right

00:47:33.980 and true. Thankfully, we already have a standard setter and that is Christ. And as I always say,

00:47:39.640 don't let anyone tell you that it's not enough to follow him and to love God with all your heart,

00:47:44.520 mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Thankfully, he is our proof

00:47:49.600 of objective truth. He is the source of truth, not just when it comes to what we see in creation,

00:47:54.920 natural revelation, but also when it comes to spiritual reality, special revelation.

00:48:00.560 Um, so he is our source of moral truth. He is also our source of scientific truth. He is the source

00:48:05.840 of reality. So we don't have to wonder whether or not math is quote, equitable, uh, because of him,

00:48:12.120 we believe in the existence of objective truth. And all of that is important, whether it comes

00:48:17.260 to math or to history. All right. That's all I got for today. I will see you guys back here tomorrow.

00:48:22.300 All right.

00:48:23.400 All right.

00:48:25.820 We'll see you next time.

00:48:26.520 All right.

00:48:27.980 All right.

00:48:28.480 All right.

00:48:33.720 All right.

00:48:34.820 All right.

00:48:41.340 All right.

00:48:44.140 All right.

00:48:48.820 All right.

00:48:49.340 Let's go.

00:48:49.540 All right.

00:48:49.960 All right.

00:48:50.580 All right.

00:48:50.940 All right.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 02, 2021

Ep 378 ｜ Dr. Seuss Is Racist & Everything Is Stupid

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