Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 02, 2021


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


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

167.59547

Word Count

8,190

Sentence Count

482

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

17


Summary

Dr. Seuss is canceled for racism every single day, you guys. Every single day. Another thing dies at the tip of the woke sword, and today it is the beloved children s author. Today's episode is all about why we should stop reading Dr Seuss in our homes.


Transcript

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
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
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
00:11:17.040 Kendi's anti-racist baby. And so teaching kids that white, bad, black, good, and that all of your
00:11:24.960 problems can be blamed on people of another race. That kind of division apparently is fine
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
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
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,
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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.