Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 451 ｜ On CRT, the Right Is Winning

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week. So

00:00:16.280 today we are going to talk about this brand new subject that no one has ever talked about before,

00:00:21.080 least of all me. That is critical race theory. I know, I know some of you are tired of talking

00:00:29.240 about this. I completely understand if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time,

00:00:34.800 you know that we have talked about this a lot for the past year, probably every week for over a year

00:00:41.680 now we have been talking about what is often described as this kind of obscure, esoteric

00:00:47.720 law school concept of race in the law, but is actually much more common and pervasive than

00:00:57.020 that. We have been talking about it much longer than a lot of people have been talking about it

00:01:02.380 in the political commentating world. And now there are a lot of people both on the left and the right

00:01:11.100 that are discussing critical race theory, what it is, where it's showing up, how it shows up and what

00:01:18.700 we should do about it. I asked on Instagram whether or not you guys wanted to talk about theology or

00:01:24.880 critical race theory. And it was a slight tilt towards critical race theory. Now, if you're in

00:01:30.420 the crowd that wanted to break from CRT, like I said, I totally understand, but I still don't want

00:01:37.600 you to miss this episode. I am going to try my hardest to make sense of a lot of the crazy and

00:01:43.300 the confusion that we've been seeing going on. I promise you we will talk theology next week. I think

00:01:49.260 I'm going to do like the theology of motherhood. I understand if you want to break from all of this,

00:01:54.560 but I do feel that it's my responsibility in this position to keep trying to add clarity to a lot of

00:02:01.400 the noise and the confusion that we're seeing, especially among Christian circles when it comes

00:02:05.340 to critical race theory. Honestly, I am pretty tired of talking about it many days, but then I think

00:02:12.680 about it and I get all riled up again. And I remember how important it is for us to be able to dissect

00:02:18.680 and understand this. So in the past few months, the conversation about CRT on Twitter, on social

00:02:24.600 media, in the mainstream media has gone something like this. First, it was on the left. What? CRT

00:02:33.600 is not happening. Critical race theory is only taught in law school, not in K through 12 public

00:02:39.380 school. It doesn't have any effect on our conversations about race and racism. What are

00:02:43.100 conservatives even talking about? This is a boogeyman. They don't even know what critical race theory is.

00:02:47.740 There were evangelicals saying that this isn't coming from the pulpits. No Christian,

00:02:53.000 no evangelical believes this in anyone who talks about critical race theory or says that it's

00:02:57.760 something we need to worry about. They don't even know what critical race theory is. There were

00:03:01.460 Christians saying that sort of thing and have been saying that sort of thing for the past few months.

00:03:05.980 Well, that attitude has shifted to, well, actually, CRT is really good and its concepts should be taught

00:03:13.460 in schools. And, you know, it can be helpful to study scripture and it should characterize our

00:03:19.920 conversations about race and racism. And actually, if you're against critical race theory, you're a

00:03:24.620 racist. You're just like the anti-integrationists in the 1960s South, the parents protesting against CRT

00:03:31.140 or QAnon, white nationalists, as Joy Reid said on MSNBC recently. Carrie Washington posted a picture of

00:03:39.960 herself on July 4th on Instagram with a shirt that says, I love critical race theory. Amy Schumer and

00:03:50.360 Jennifer Aniston liked this picture. Now, let me ask you, what are the chances that these people

00:03:58.040 have any idea what critical race theory is? You honestly think, I'm not trying to be rude,

00:04:04.440 but you honestly think Amy Schumer is reading up on it in her spare time? No. It seems like the

00:04:09.840 majority of mainstream liberals have no idea what it is and especially don't know how it manifests

00:04:16.000 itself. It seems like they think that it means to be critical of racism. I think a lot of people on

00:04:22.060 the left defend it because the right is attacking it. They see it as another culture war issue. So their

00:04:27.500 knee-jerk reaction is to say that it's good. I think the right does this as well when the left brings

00:04:32.780 up their concerns. But I think if a lot of people on the left actually knew what CRT believes, they

00:04:38.880 would realize that it goes against many of the things that they say they believe in, like equal

00:04:43.820 rights, for example. And we'll explain that in just a little bit. The truth is, what started out as this

00:04:50.720 obscure esoteric idea by a 1970s scholar has now expanded to characterize much of the left's

00:04:58.380 understanding not just about race, but also about human nature in general, about our society, about

00:05:03.380 America's institutions, our constitution, even their understanding about truth itself. There are

00:05:08.820 people in the center and on the left, professing Christians included, who will say that they don't

00:05:13.960 believe in CRT. I would say that most people probably to the center left say that they don't hold to the

00:05:21.440 main tenets of CRT or they don't believe in all of CRT. But they will also say things that actually

00:05:27.480 are derived from CRT. They just don't realize it. The concept of white privilege, for example,

00:05:33.080 is a concept of critical race theory, specifically critical whiteness studies. This idea that there

00:05:38.800 is a seen and unseen collection of ways that white people use to help each other that is mostly

00:05:44.860 inaccessible to non-white people. Systemic racism is a concept of critical race theory. And people

00:05:50.800 get really mad when I say this. But if you read critical race theorists, you know that it's not

00:05:57.920 controversial to say that the claim of systemic racism here in America today is not actually based

00:06:03.960 on data. It doesn't rely on data. It's based on a narrative, on a theory, a particular perspective,

00:06:10.520 a philosophy that the system is to blame for people's problems. And it sounds something like this,

00:06:16.800 that slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, the war on drugs, et cetera, all existed not that long ago.

00:06:23.040 Therefore, it is obvious that these laws are the reason for racial disparities in black people's

00:06:28.780 problems today. And it sounds really believable because there's some truth in it, because those

00:06:34.360 were things that happened. But that assertion has to be backed that those things are what is causing

00:06:42.540 primarily or exclusively black people's problems today. That assertion has to be backed up with

00:06:47.700 factual, causal arguments. It is highly debatable whether or not those policies still have a

00:06:54.160 significant impact or a primary impact on disparities in outcomes today. But rather than debating it,

00:07:00.820 CRT accepts it as true without debate because CRT starts with the assumption that everything is

00:07:07.840 characterized by anti-black racism. Now, as a counter to that assumption, as I've said many

00:07:13.300 times, jot this down if you haven't already, read Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell.

00:07:19.600 Okay? Read Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell. It kind of busts this fallacy that every

00:07:25.320 disparity that exists must automatically be due to discrimination. So, moving on. When people say,

00:07:31.800 I don't believe in CRT, but I do believe in white privilege and systemic racism, well, then you do

00:07:39.880 believe in parts of CRT. And maybe that's okay. Maybe you want to say, okay, well, I don't agree with CRT

00:07:46.620 as a whole, but I agree with these things. All right. Just say that. Just say that you agree with some

00:07:52.720 parts of critical race theory. Now, I would push back on you accepting some parts of critical race

00:07:58.920 theory, but I think you should at least be honest about that or be honest that you just didn't know

00:08:03.820 that the things that you were pushing were a part of critical race theory and you're just now realizing

00:08:08.940 it. And those are just two examples. And we'll get to more on those things later.

00:08:19.580 So, what I'm getting at is that it's much more prevalent and pervasive than most people realize.

00:08:25.280 And we have been, like I said, gaslighted about it. Gaslighting, as I'm sure you know,

00:08:30.800 is the act of making someone feel crazy for something that they shouldn't actually feel

00:08:35.140 crazy for. So, like if a girl accuses her boyfriend of cheating and the boyfriend says,

00:08:39.760 what? You're so crazy. You're so paranoid. Why would you think that? But he really is cheating and

00:08:45.220 he has given her reason to think that he's cheating. That is called gaslighting. And the leftist

00:08:50.340 media love to gaslight. Just the other day, the press secretary did this whole number about

00:08:56.380 Republicans actually being the ones who wanted to defund the police. No, she said Joe Biden ran on

00:09:03.240 giving the police more money. I mean, that kind of brazen statement as an aside is only possible when

00:09:10.020 you know that you've got the media on your side and won't call you out for it. That's the same kind

00:09:16.540 of thing. That kind of gaslighting is the same kind of thing that we're seeing from the leftist media

00:09:21.200 about CRT. First, I want to tell you so we can kind of unpack this gaslighting. I want to tell you

00:09:28.540 what the definition of critical race theory is. People are always asking me for a definition. I was

00:09:35.000 in Sunday school the other day and someone in my Sunday school was like, can you please explain this

00:09:40.080 to me like I'm five? And it's difficult to do because I always want to try to give you some

00:09:47.220 kind of compact definition, but there's so many layers to it. And in order to try to explain to

00:09:54.320 you how it's showing up in a way that doesn't necessarily come with the label critical race

00:09:59.660 theory, it kind of, it takes a long time, but I really hope to put it in as simple terms as I

00:10:06.840 possibly can. Now you will see people on the left trying to give you a compact definition,

00:10:12.680 but that's because they don't want to unveil the multiple layers that are underneath the kind of

00:10:19.560 superficial definition of critical race theory, because the superficial definition of critical

00:10:24.020 race theory sounds really good until you actually read what critical race theorists really believe and

00:10:28.900 want to do. So let me try to give you the simple definition and then I'm going to unpack it. And this is

00:10:34.480 really important. As many times as you've heard about it, I still think it is so important for us

00:10:38.540 to understand this and be able to apply this knowledge. So critical race theory is a theory

00:10:43.320 developed by a scholar named Derek Bell in the 1970s. He and the proponents of CRT would say that it is

00:10:51.180 simply a way to examine American history and our current institutions through the lens of race.

00:10:57.260 Bell held that racism is not an exception in society, but it's normal state. It is

00:11:04.360 the usual way of doing things, he would say. It is intertwined, not just in our institutions,

00:11:10.060 but in how most people live our lives in the United States. So in other words, he would say that it is

00:11:16.420 central to the human experience. And CRT seeks to examine how the centrality of race and racism

00:11:23.120 has affected people's lives, Black people's lives in particular, both individually and systemically.

00:11:29.980 Critical race theory is one of many critical theories. There is queer and gender theory.

00:11:37.640 There is feminist theory. Critical theory is a school of thought that examines power structures

00:11:44.000 and hierarchies within society and asserts that society's problems are due to these structures

00:11:49.940 rather than, say, people's individual choices. The goal of the critical theorist is to liberate people

00:11:58.040 from these structures. Liberate is a word that you will hear a lot. Liberate people from these

00:12:03.000 structures, from these hierarchies, what they call hegemony, typically through major societal and

00:12:09.780 political changes. So the assumption of critical theory is that people are oppressed by systems that

00:12:16.180 have been put in place by the most powerful in society to keep them down. Critical theory examines

00:12:22.820 those systems. It offers ideas for how to finally attain liberation. Critical theory was established

00:12:30.260 by the Frankfurt School in Germany, which was a school of social theory that, like Karl Marx,

00:12:36.880 who wrote the Communist Manifesto, examined social conditions and hypothesized about how the poor

00:12:45.040 conditions caused by capitalism in other systems could be changed by revolutionizing power

00:12:52.560 structures and hierarchies. Critical theory is not identical to Marxism. And I do think that's

00:12:59.460 important to say. It's not identical to Marxism, but it is similar. So I don't have a problem with

00:13:04.780 people saying that critical theory is Marxist because it is very similar to Marxism and it comes

00:13:10.380 from the same school of thought. Just as Marx, the father of communism, saw the world through the lens of

00:13:17.760 class oppression, rich versus poor, bourgeois versus the proletariat, greedy capitalists versus the

00:13:24.220 working class, and sought to overthrow capitalism so everyone in his mind would live communally and

00:13:30.740 equally in harmony without any personal profit or private property. So critical theorists see the world

00:13:39.880 through the lens of some kind of oppressor versus oppressed. So critical race theory takes Marxist view

00:13:48.760 of the world as the rich oppressors versus the poor oppressed and asserts that the world, at least in the

00:13:55.460 U.S., is actually divided by the white oppressor versus the black and brown oppressed. Not primarily are we

00:14:02.540 categorized by our class, but rather by our race. Critical race theory holds. So when MSNBC's Joy Reid

00:14:11.380 tweets something like this with 22,500 likes, and she says, it feels like someone should let folks know

00:14:20.860 Marxism is a theory that divisions in a capitalist society will inevitably lead to the collapse of the

00:14:29.360 class structure. Communism is the achievement of Marxism via revolution, and critical race theory

00:14:35.620 has nothing to do with either one. She is just plain wrong. This is gaslighting. She had another thread

00:14:43.240 earlier, a few weeks ago, about how CRT isn't being taught in schools. It's just this, it's just this,

00:14:50.280 you know, far-off esoteric theory being taught in law school that has no bearing whatsoever on any

00:14:58.220 conversations about race today and is certainly not influencing public school education. And we'll get to why

00:15:04.100 that's explicitly wrong, too. Over maternity leave, I read what is probably, in my opinion, the simplest

00:15:10.440 and the clearest breakdown of CRT in a book called Critical Race Theory, an introduction by Richard Delgado

00:15:17.000 and Jean Stefansik, two critical race scholars. Here's what, here's how they introduce CRT. They say,

00:15:26.220 critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies

00:15:31.720 and radical feminism. They go on to explain from critical legal studies, it borrows the idea that

00:15:39.320 there is no one right answer when it comes to the law in legal decisions. It depends on interpretation,

00:15:46.280 it depends on perspective and reasoning. There's been a lot of pushback, obviously, to that theory,

00:15:51.740 because that kind of subjectivism when it comes to the law, as you can probably guess, is pretty

00:15:56.620 dangerous. Critical race theory also uses feminism stance on the relationship between power and social

00:16:03.320 roles and, quote, the unseen, largely invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up

00:16:09.460 patriarchy and other types of domination. That's important because that lets us know how radical CRT is

00:16:17.360 compared to most traditional Western thought about the rule of law, due process, rights, and the concept

00:16:23.940 of truth itself. CRT, as a critical theory, and critical theory as a product of the Frankfurt School,

00:16:31.960 dismisses the idea that truth about society can be discovered through objective means or through the

00:16:39.220 scientific method or through data, and rather that truth is a matter of a person's standpoint

00:16:45.800 within power structures that's so important to understand how it rewrites epistemology,

00:16:51.420 has a new way of seeing what truth is. So this is why CRT would assert that white people,

00:16:57.900 in particular, white conservatives, should be dismissed on this subject, on the subject of race

00:17:03.460 or racism. Even if white people bring up data or counter logic to a particular claim about black

00:17:09.960 people's oppression in the U.S., data or any points that contradict the idea that black people are

00:17:15.580 systemically oppressed because of inherently white supremacist institutions can be ignored,

00:17:21.360 according to CRT, because they are coming from the wrong standpoint. The standpoint of the so-called

00:17:28.000 oppressed trumps any standpoint or facts presented by someone else. This is standpoint epistemology.

00:17:35.240 So critical race theory asserts that white isn't just a skin color, so you don't just dismiss people

00:17:41.240 based on their skin color, but it's actually whiteness. That whiteness is a racist system that's

00:17:48.100 not completely independent from white skin, but it can be. That whiteness is also a way of being,

00:17:55.180 a way of thinking. Also, it's psychological, and that non-white people can actually internalize it.

00:18:02.660 So this internalization of whiteness would be demonstrated, they would say, by a black person

00:18:08.940 like Thomas Sowell, who would reject the idea that America is institutionally racist today and that

00:18:15.680 the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow are to blame for all of minorities' problems. He writes about this a

00:18:21.740 lot, and his argument is based on data. But that is dismissed because they would simply say that he

00:18:28.060 has internalized whiteness and is not coming from the correct standpoint because he's not siding with the

00:18:33.620 standpoint of the oppressed that says the entire American system is racist. He is to be dismissed.

00:18:41.260 And that is where you get someone like the Yale psychologist a few weeks ago, you probably saw

00:18:46.720 this in the news, saying that white people and people who have internalized whiteness, I guess,

00:18:53.060 are mentally deranged, she argued, that we have pathological problems. That comes from CRT. That comes

00:19:02.460 from the CRT idea, basically, that racism has infected everything, including white people's minds,

00:19:11.320 and therefore it is impossible for white people to really know truth. They need the clarity of the

00:19:17.400 oppressed minority to show them what is true. It's a very mystical, Gnostic idea that, again,

00:19:25.000 is not rooted in objective fact, but in a theory that is much more religious and ideological than

00:19:31.200 physical or factual. So in this way, critical race theory is self-certifying. It is unfalsifiable,

00:19:38.860 meaning it cannot logically be argued with. If you argue with critical race theory,

00:19:44.560 the idea that black and brown people are all systemically oppressed in the U.S., it's because

00:19:48.600 you have been infected by whiteness, CRT says, whether you are white or not. And so that is why so many

00:19:56.120 critical race theorists shut down debate because it's set up in a way so that it cannot be argued

00:20:02.620 against because it dismisses the existence of counter facts and counter logic as something that

00:20:07.820 is illegitimate because the people that are presenting it don't have the right standpoint.

00:20:12.560 It's really incredible how this has duped so many people. A great example of how this manifests itself

00:20:18.760 is with CRT's dismissal of the fact that Asian Americans have the lowest crime rates,

00:20:25.360 the highest graduation rates, the lowest fatherlessness rates, the highest median incomes.

00:20:30.840 Immigrants from India, for example, have a far higher success rate across these categories than

00:20:35.480 white people. So if this is the case, how can the central assertion of CRT be true that we live in a

00:20:41.860 white supremacist system upheld by white privilege that is set up to maintain white supremacy?

00:20:46.040 Well, CRT just dismisses this kind of claim with the model minority myth. Delgado describes this as

00:20:54.020 the myth that Asians are industrious, quiet, good minorities that fit well within the white system

00:21:00.280 of the U.S. and that that kind of myth is harmful because it ignores that some Asian subgroups are

00:21:07.320 impoverished in the U.S. and because it, quote, causes resentment against or it causes resentment among

00:21:13.880 other disfavored groups such as African Americans. So remember when we were talking about a few months

00:21:21.600 ago before maternity leave, a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes, a conversation that you may have noticed

00:21:28.000 died out really fast because almost every single crime that was reported on or caught on camera was

00:21:34.060 a black person perpetrating the violence. We were told that this, too, was actually caused by white

00:21:40.360 supremacy on MSNBC. A Washington Post columnist blamed white supremacy for the violence. Professor

00:21:46.540 Jennifer Ho wrote for the outlet The Conversation that white supremacy is to blame for black on

00:21:52.420 Asian violence. Now, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, white people are most likely to

00:21:58.300 be victimized by white people with violent crime. Black people are most likely to be victimized by

00:22:03.260 black people. Hispanic people are most likely to be victimized by Hispanic people, but Asian people

00:22:09.180 are most likely to be victimized by black people. So a very logical question would be, how is this

00:22:15.280 white supremacy? Because, as CRT asserts, the resentment that black people may feel towards Asians

00:22:23.100 is because of white people perpetuating the model minority myth and because white supremacy defines all of

00:22:30.440 our institutions. Everything that bad that happens is one way or another because of whiteness. Now,

00:22:39.660 of course, CRT doesn't actually address the data about Asian Americans. I mean, you can call it what you

00:22:45.680 want. You can call it a myth. The data is there. Asian Americans are most successful in generally

00:22:51.760 statistically across a variety of categories than white Americans are. It is hard to explain how

00:22:59.520 that could be possible in what someone like Isabel Wilkerson calls a racial caste system that

00:23:05.380 upholds white supremacy at all costs. Because remember, critical theories reject the idea that social

00:23:12.840 ills have anything to do with personal choice, but rather have to do with oppressive systems. The success of

00:23:19.120 Asian Americans and in certain immigrant groups in the U.S. is very inconvenient to that theory

00:23:26.680 because that would mean that by different choices, it may actually be possible to have different life

00:23:32.600 outcomes no matter what your skin color is. And that suggestion, we are told, is wrong and it's racist.

00:23:38.640 You can't even bring that up. You see how this idea subverts how we traditionally look at culpability,

00:23:47.200 intent, justice, evidence, truth itself. And you could see how, if it characterized our justice system

00:23:54.940 and our laws, it would drastically change the Western rule of law, due process, the idea of

00:24:00.240 inherent rights. And that is actually what it seeks to do. And this is the most radical part of critical

00:24:06.300 race theory that I just don't think most people, even on the left, realize or understand. And I'm going

00:24:12.660 to explain that in just one second. So the authors of this critical race theory book write about this.

00:24:24.220 In the book, they explain that one of the primary tenets of CRT is a critique of the liberal order.

00:24:32.640 And by liberal, that does not mean leftist. That means basically Western democratic systems and the

00:24:39.180 Western rule of law and the concept of inherent rights. The critique of the liberal order in CRT is

00:24:46.600 a critique of the concept of the law being colorblind. Crits, as critical theorists are a lot of times

00:24:53.920 called, they believe that the equal application of the law to people of all races and backgrounds is

00:25:00.060 actually wrong because they say it doesn't properly redress past injustices. This is the whole foundation

00:25:08.380 of Ibram X. Kendi's book on anti-racism, that colorblind laws aren't enough because Kendi and other

00:25:14.480 crits would argue that it's impossible to be not racist. One has to be actively anti-racist,

00:25:20.620 which means purposely setting up the law systems sentencing to benefit people of color, even if

00:25:27.360 that means negatively impacting and discriminating against white people. So here's how they explain

00:25:33.400 in the book why CRT rejects the idea of a colorblind set of rights or execution of the law.

00:25:39.480 Quote, if racism is embedded in our thought processes and social structures as deeply as

00:25:46.100 many crits believe, then the ordinary business of society, the routines, the practices, and

00:25:51.940 institutions that we rely on to do the world's work will keep minorities in subordinate positions.

00:25:58.500 Only aggressive, color-conscious efforts to change the way things are will do much to ameliorate

00:26:05.460 misery. So this is why activists say ACAB, all cops are bad. This actually stands for a different

00:26:13.500 word, but I won't say it just in case you're listening with kids. Even if there are individually

00:26:18.340 good people that are cops, they would say all cops are still bad because there are no good cops in a

00:26:26.360 racist system. Because CRT rejects the idea of judging people by their individual actions and rather

00:26:33.500 judges people by group and by the systems that they uphold either actively or just complicitly.

00:26:40.680 And in calling for color-conscious efforts, they are calling explicitly for partiality in the law

00:26:47.760 for certain kinds of discrimination and sentencing and all sorts of justice-related issues to show favor

00:26:53.920 to some and disfavor to others based on race, to try to right past wrongs and to tear down the racist

00:27:02.540 structures in the hopes that it will lead to equal outcomes for everyone. They admit that currently

00:27:08.300 colorblindness is how our judiciary works. They don't make the argument that the judiciary is purposely

00:27:14.280 anti-black, but that colorblindness doesn't do enough to help black people. Now, I just want you to

00:27:21.220 remember this, that God hates partiality. He makes this point over and over again. Exodus 23.3,

00:27:28.220 Leviticus 19.15, Deuteronomy 117, Deuteronomy 16.19, and many more passages and New Testament passages

00:27:35.860 are explicit that God hates partiality and judgment and that he himself shows no partiality. He calls

00:27:42.940 partiality either to the poor or to the rich evil, unjust, wrong. At the heart of CRT is a love for

00:27:52.000 partiality. At the heart of God is a hatred for partiality. And let me say that again. At the heart

00:27:58.440 of CRT is a love for partiality. At the heart of God is a hate for partiality, which is why the two

00:28:05.900 cannot coexist in the same way that any racist system, whether it's against black or brown people

00:28:11.060 or the opposite direction, is against what God calls good. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either

00:28:18.540 confused about CRT or confused about God. CRT calls for a different set of standards for black and

00:28:25.420 brown people than for white people. So they judge the morality of laws, not by their impartiality,

00:28:32.300 but by their impact on the so-called oppressed. This is exactly what Kendi writes about, that if there

00:28:38.900 is a policy that causes a disparate impact on black people, it is racist. And actually the dissent

00:28:44.500 on the Supreme Court about a recent voting law basically said the same thing, that you judge a law

00:28:54.320 not by its intent, not by whether or not it was set up with the intent to be racist, but whether or not

00:29:01.620 it has a disparate impact. So Kendi and other CRTs believe in somehow engineering society so that black

00:29:10.500 people are pushed forward and white people are held back until there is magically no difference in

00:29:17.260 outcome. This is what every communist has always believed, except all you have to do is switch out

00:29:22.500 black and white with poor and rich. It's the same old thing. This is what Thomas Sowell calls cosmic

00:29:28.220 justice, which is often referred to as social justice, but he calls it cosmic justice because

00:29:33.640 it is an attempt by elites, by academics, by policymakers to engineer society from the top

00:29:40.880 down by holding back some groups, hoisting up other groups, never realizing that this does not work

00:29:47.240 because it doesn't account for personal choice. It ends up hurting everyone except for the people

00:29:52.520 doing the engineering who never have to pay for the cost of their bad ideas. It is cosmic because it is

00:29:59.140 intangible, mystical, an ethereal type of so-called justice that never practically works because it

00:30:06.360 gets human nature wrong. Like all left-wing philosophy gets human nature wrong. It echoes every form of a

00:30:14.200 collectivist type of governing ever that has always failed and ended in misery. So it shouldn't surprise us

00:30:20.780 that this kind of mentality always ends in some kind of wreckage and destruction because CRT and other

00:30:32.000 critical theories reject the idea of rights. Here's what Delgado and Stefan Sick say about this. They say

00:30:41.100 crits are suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely rights. They hold that moral and legal rights are apt to

00:30:50.300 do much less good than we like to think. So they go on to explain that our system grants procedural

00:30:59.180 rights like that of due process, but it doesn't always guarantee what they would call substantive

00:31:04.720 rights, a right to housing, for example. And so crits say that this kind of system wrongly

00:31:10.200 emphasizes equality of opportunity rather than what they would want it to emphasize, which is equality of

00:31:17.140 results. That's what CRT wants. CRT also says rights basically just exist in the United States to serve

00:31:24.980 the interests of the powerful. They give an example of free speech. Free speech, they say, protects the

00:31:30.400 powerful because hate speech tends to hurt the minority disproportionately. So it rejects the idea that

00:31:39.200 more good speech can battle bad speech. Here's the funny thing. BLM is what it is because they have

00:31:46.980 been allowed in a free country to criticize cops, the government, our foundation, the system without

00:31:54.660 fear of punishment. Critical race theorists get to trash the United States without fear of punishment

00:31:59.660 because of free speech. It is lucrative to rag on white people, to rag on America. In a white supremacist,

00:32:06.820 oppressive, what they often say is a fascist country, would any of that be possible? In a country without a

00:32:13.500 first amendment, would that be possible? No, of course it wouldn't. So that's one huge contradiction

00:32:18.920 that I actually saw reading this book about CRT is that it simultaneously questions the goodness of

00:32:25.860 rights, especially a right like that of the right to free speech. And yet it exercises that right to

00:32:33.040 try to make its point and to push back against what it sees as hate speech or bad ideas. CRT, though,

00:32:38.780 holds the reason, I think, why there's this contradiction and why they think the way that

00:32:44.540 they do about rights is because it holds to structural determinism, which says that, quote,

00:32:52.080 according to this book, our system, by reason of its structure and vocabulary, is ill-equipped to

00:32:58.320 redress certain types of wrong. Hence the revolution and the revolutionary talk. Hence the hatred on the 4th of

00:33:05.360 July toward our constitution, our declaration, our founding. Hence the constant talk on the left about

00:33:12.140 how free speech or religious liberty and the Second Amendment, our First and Second Amendment rights,

00:33:17.200 are nothing more than ways to maintain the power of those at the top. And they don't even realize

00:33:23.360 that these, a lot of people, some do, but a lot of people don't even realize that those ideas are from

00:33:29.100 CRT. CRT, in school, in church, in the media, is wherever there is talk of white privilege,

00:33:37.140 of oppressed versus oppressor, of intersectionality, of systemic racism, in the hush that surrounds

00:33:45.320 stories involving Black people that don't fit the oppressed versus oppressor narrative. It is found

00:33:52.380 in the spotlight that is placed on stories involving white people that do fit that narrative. CRT is not

00:34:00.260 just talking about slavery and discrimination and racism. That's another form of gaslighting that

00:34:04.860 we've seen from people saying, oh, people who want to ban CRT in schools or who don't want teachers,

00:34:10.540 you know, teaching the principles of CRT in schools, they just don't want people to talk. They just don't

00:34:15.500 want their kids to talk about racism. They don't want their kids to learn about Jim Crow or discrimination

00:34:19.800 or the Tulsa massacre. That is not true. Doing away with CRT does not do away with talking about

00:34:27.040 those things. Actually, CRT, because it is so radical and it's meant to be radical, guys,

00:34:31.840 that's not just my interpretation. Like, the people who study CRT believe that it is radical compared to

00:34:38.100 the Western tradition of rule of law and due process. That has created, by the way, the greatest

00:34:46.100 civilization that has ever existed in the history of the world. They know that it's radical compared

00:34:50.540 to that. CRT gets in the way of us talking about racism and slavery and real oppression. It gets in

00:34:58.720 the way of us talking about it factually because it purposely colors these subjects with a particular

00:35:04.500 narrative and a theory rather than factual historical analysis with an aim towards improvement

00:35:10.120 and unity. Because CRT, at its core, is revolutionary. It is explicitly anti-Western. It is explicitly

00:35:18.780 anti the liberal order, anti the Western rule of law. It does not try to cover that up. That's not just me

00:35:24.780 writing down that slippery slope. That's not me trying to fearmonger. That's what it says that it is.

00:35:32.080 It does not want to coincide with the Constitution or a Democratic Republic or a colorblind society.

00:35:40.700 So there is no reason for your average liberal and certainly a Christian to accept any part of CRT.

00:35:48.000 There's just not. Now, you can talk about, like I said, oppression and racism and real instances of

00:35:55.460 injustice, and you should. But CRT is not the way to do it. It is divisive. It is partial.

00:36:00.700 It is based on one man's perception of the world and history and relies on glaring omissions of data

00:36:08.160 to try to support that narrative. And yet this is happening in K-12 public schools. This was a tweet

00:36:15.840 by the president of the largest teachers union. You guys know how I feel about teachers unions,

00:36:21.800 Randy Weingarten. She tweeted this on July 6th. She said, critical race theory is not taught in K-12

00:36:28.040 schools. The rights culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism, or discrimination

00:36:33.200 as such to try to make it toxic. They're bullying teachers to try and keep them from teaching the

00:36:38.080 truth. That's what I'm talking about. That's the gaslighting I'm talking about. That is not true.

00:36:41.900 Here is, I'm going to read you a motion from a recent meeting with the National Education Association,

00:36:52.180 again, the largest teachers unions, one of the largest teachers union in the country. So it says

00:37:00.020 this, the NEA will, with guidance and implementation from the NEA president and chairs of ethnic minority

00:37:06.020 affairs caucuses, it will provide an already created in-depth study that critiques empire,

00:37:12.560 white supremacy, anti-blackness, anti-engineity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism,

00:37:20.140 ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society,

00:37:27.380 and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and or 1619 project. And so Randy

00:37:33.920 Weingarten is lying. They are saying behind closed doors, of course, this became public, that,

00:37:41.140 yeah, we are against any bans on critical race theory. Everything that I just read you

00:37:45.340 in that paragraph is from critical race theory. That is not saying that we shouldn't critique

00:37:50.960 white supremacy where it has actually existed. But this is pushing the assertion that our entire

00:37:58.160 system, that capitalism, and all of the systems that have created the United States are affected by

00:38:05.900 white supremacy, anti-blackness, the patriarchy, racism, all of these different forms of oppression.

00:38:12.400 And then they list the 1619 project, which has been admitted by the New York Times, by Nicole

00:38:17.420 Hannah-Jones herself, that was not a historical rendering of the United States. Again, just like

00:38:22.620 critical race theory, it is based on narrative. It is based on an assumption, this idea that America

00:38:28.980 has been built on racism, and that our real founding was actually in 1619, not 1776, and that

00:38:35.920 we weren't just founded with racism and slavery, but that we were founded on racism and slavery,

00:38:40.920 and therefore everything, including our constitution, is all bunk, and it needs to be done away with,

00:38:46.100 because nothing good can happen out of a racist system. That is radical stuff that the largest

00:38:51.460 teachers union in the country is saying that they will teach in K-12 public schools.

00:38:56.760 They are saying that they also will join with Black Lives Matter at school and the Zen education

00:39:01.820 product to call for a rally this year on October 14th, George Floyd's birthday, as a national day of

00:39:10.080 action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression. Talking about police brutality and

00:39:18.340 says, USA's economy slash social order is built on interactions between different cultures and races

00:39:24.180 to deny opportunities to teach truth. That word is doing a lot of work here about Black, Brown,

00:39:30.640 and other marginalized races. Minimalizes, minimalizes, I've never heard that word, teachers,

00:39:37.360 the necessity for students to build efficacy. The ancient African proverb says, know thyself.

00:39:43.320 That is, if I remember correctly, a Greek proverb, not an African proverb.

00:39:50.620 Um, the, the teachers union also says that they are going to push back, um, against, they're going

00:39:56.780 to push back against any parents who fight against CRT. They're going to try to expose them and

00:40:01.680 basically bully them into compliance as if these teachers own your children. They do not. As we

00:40:08.080 talked about yesterday, they do not. One of the points of order from this meeting says that they are

00:40:13.040 going to share, publicize through existing channels, information already available on critical

00:40:16.600 race theory, what it is, what it is not, have a team of staffers of, uh, for members who want to

00:40:21.760 learn more and fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric. Now, if CRT, again, isn't being taught in schools,

00:40:28.180 why would you have to fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric and share information with other NEA members

00:40:33.100 as well as their community members? So they're basically trying to bully parents into compliance and

00:40:39.000 tell you that you are a racist and that you're against the truth about marginalization in this

00:40:44.400 society. If you are against CRT, again, we see this movement from CRT isn't being taught to actually

00:40:50.380 it has to be taught. And if you're against CRT, then you are a racist. This to me shows that they

00:40:57.840 are, they are losing. They know that they're losing ground on it. Thankfully. I mean, this is one,

00:41:03.380 I think of the rare instances where, uh, conservatives gained ground more quickly than the left could.

00:41:09.640 Now, remember all of our major institutions, big tech, um, now the, the government, the,

00:41:16.020 the executive branch, the legislative branch, um, the, uh, the major corporations, the education

00:41:22.860 system, these huge teachers unions, they are all on the left. And so for conservatives to gain

00:41:29.740 ground on this and to be, um, making any kind of impact is honestly pretty impressive when you

00:41:37.120 consider the institutional power, uh, that the left has to push back on this. But at this point,

00:41:43.780 like the word has gotten out to a lot of parents about what this is and parents have experienced

00:41:49.520 this. They've experienced this. Now I want to play a clip of, um, a parent of a student at a public

00:41:57.000 school, very calmly and reasonably talking about why the tenets of critical race theory are so damaging.

00:42:04.440 My name is Ian Rice. I've got two children here in the Caledonia school district. Um, it's very

00:42:10.100 apparent here by all of the parents that have spoken that this board and the school district

00:42:14.880 is failing. Um, more importantly, I came here to talk about political race theory. This theory was

00:42:21.580 never meant to be brought into grade schools, high schools at all. It's actually taught in the

00:42:27.600 collegiate atmosphere. And more importantly, the legal portion of the collegiate atmosphere to see

00:42:32.520 different laws through the lens of race from an ethics and an ethical standpoint, right? Not for

00:42:39.680 grade schools and high schoolers. The problem with bringing it to high school and grade school level

00:42:45.020 is that we don't have the educators to properly teach these kids. Instead, they're using it as their

00:42:50.440 own agenda to indoctrinate the kids to hate each other. And whether you believe that to be true or not,

00:42:56.060 the reality is that's what's happening. Critical race theory is teaching that white people are bad.

00:43:02.020 That's not true. That would teach my daughter that her mother is evil.

00:43:08.620 You already have an educator within your staff that has pulled my daughter aside

00:43:12.460 and said, well, you're a minority, so you know better than to engage in certain things.

00:43:19.400 When I was brought to the school's attention, nothing happened to that educator. Instead,

00:43:24.000 my daughter was brought in, and she was ridiculed. So my question is now, with critical race theory

00:43:31.420 being brought in, what is your criteria to educate the educators? And who are you to educate my children,

00:43:39.300 or any of our children, in life issues? That's our job. Your job is to teach them math and science.

00:43:46.840 Our job is to teach them about life. I believe racial issues and tensions across the U.S. are

00:43:54.300 nowhere near what they used to be decades ago. Do we have a long way to go? Sure. Do we still have

00:44:00.080 individuals out there that need to be taught? Absolutely. But I believe the people here don't

00:44:04.520 look at me as a black man. They look at me as a man standing in front of you addressing the issue

00:44:08.520 that we all are very passionate about. Now, does that man who, if you're listening to this and you

00:44:15.760 didn't see, is black? Does he strike you as a racist? Does he strike you as a white supremacist?

00:44:23.280 Now, Crits would say that he has internalized whiteness. But honestly, let's think about the

00:44:28.680 logic of that kind of accusation. Does that man seem like someone who is pro-segregation,

00:44:35.480 who doesn't want his child to learn about racism and slavery and discrimination in the United States?

00:44:41.660 No. You are being told that as a parent, you don't have the responsibility, you don't have the

00:44:49.500 right, and you don't have any reason to speak up about this stuff. But take the courage that that

00:44:53.740 man showed that many parents have shown in front of their school boards. Take their courage and

00:45:01.080 apply it to your own life. I guarantee you this makes a difference. You know how I know this makes

00:45:05.440 a difference? Because the NEA got so much pushback on this motion that they publicized or that got

00:45:10.160 publicized, that they ended up trying to take it down so that no one could read it anymore.

00:45:14.020 The same thing with Black Lives Matter. On their website, it used to say that they wanted to

00:45:18.580 dismantle the nuclear family. And that is also a part, a subset of CRT and against the Western

00:45:26.960 liberal order. They think that the nuclear family is a part of that. They're wrong, but they think that

00:45:33.980 they want to dismantle it. When people, even people on the right, raise a respectful ruckus about this

00:45:40.760 kind of stuff, it can absolutely make a difference. It might not seem like it does, and it might not

00:45:45.300 always be publicized when it does make a difference, but it can make a difference. And even if it doesn't

00:45:49.980 right away, I promise you, I promise you that chipping away at this kind of toxicity is the right

00:45:57.100 thing to do. And that over time, we can gain ground. So you need to double down on this kind

00:46:02.500 of stuff. Do not be scared about talking about why CRT is wrong and why it should not be taught in

00:46:09.900 schools. And you know what? If the phrase critical race theory turns off the people that you're talking

00:46:14.380 to, it just makes them shut down. Or saying the word Marxism makes people think that you're just a

00:46:19.260 fear monger and that you're just talking about a boogeyman that doesn't exist. You don't have to use

00:46:23.420 those actual terms. You should know enough now about what critical race theory is practically,

00:46:28.900 what it looks like to understand when it's happening, how it's happening. And you have

00:46:34.680 to equip yourself enough to be able to push back against it in a respectful way. Those of you who

00:46:39.040 are in my book club on Facebook, Women's Book Club with Ali Stuckey, We Read Tactics, a great way to

00:46:44.160 have a conversation about this kind of stuff is just to ask questions. Ask questions about it. Try to get

00:46:50.620 people to define their terms and to clarify what they mean. I asked someone recently who said that

00:46:55.660 they were a proponent of critical race theory if they were also for dismantling the Constitution

00:47:01.400 and getting rid of the idea of inherent rights and colorblind law. And of course, they said,

00:47:08.660 no, I'm not for that. I do think the Constitution is hypocritical. And this person was being very

00:47:15.000 respectful. And we had a great conversation about it. But this person also doesn't believe they say

00:47:20.740 that they agree with CRT. And then they say that they don't agree with a big part of CRT, which is

00:47:26.560 basically a huge critique and a revolution against the Western rule of law that a lot of liberals say

00:47:34.540 that they like. And so I think it's really important to kind of push that and to ask those

00:47:40.360 questions and to get people to be as clear and as specific as possible when it comes to what they

00:47:46.980 think the problems are when it comes to race in America, when it comes to justice in America,

00:47:51.920 how they're defining racism, how they're defining justice, and not just what they think the problems

00:47:56.740 are and where they're coming from, but also what the solutions are and what data they have to back

00:48:02.220 that up. And we should be prepared to do that, too. We have to get to the point to where

00:48:06.140 we are on the same plane and using the same definitions of terms as the people on the other

00:48:12.820 side of this debate. And if that means not actually saying the word critical race theory or the term

00:48:18.180 critical race theory, not actually using the word Marxist in order to have a productive dialogue,

00:48:23.540 then I encourage you to do that. I understand the other side will shut down really easily and

00:48:27.540 basically just call you a racist. I would say you don't even have to push it with those kind of

00:48:31.740 people. You don't even have to have those conversations. There's a large swath of people in the

00:48:35.940 middle who are waiting to be informed about this and whose minds are ripe to change and to go in the

00:48:44.840 direction of what is actually true when it comes to this kind of stuff. Now, I want to end on one

00:48:51.840 question that I see a lot or I guess one topic that I see a lot is about anti-whiteness and if CRT is

00:48:59.360 explicitly anti-white or if it's just coincidentally anti-white and the reaction to some of that

00:49:05.620 Okay, here's the question. Is CRT anti-white? And I understand that most people will just say

00:49:17.120 yes, because certainly that's what it sounds like and it is, but I posit that it is incidental.

00:49:25.520 It was not actually set up to simply or exclusively or centrally be anti-white because of some kind of

00:49:33.460 hatred of white people. Now, that is how it is manifesting itself, but that is not what it was

00:49:39.060 set up to be. It is meant to be, just like all critical theories, anti-hierarchy, anti-white power

00:49:46.660 or whiteness, which again can be independent from the color of someone's skin, anti-Western. Now,

00:49:52.640 unfortunately, like I said, how it manifests itself is in the explicit condemnation of white people as a

00:49:58.420 whole, which sadly inevitably is going to push people into a white identitarian movement that

00:50:06.300 spells a whole lot of trouble for the country in the same way that black solidarity, I'm not saying

00:50:12.060 that all black people are the same or all black people agree, but black solidarity arose from black

00:50:17.980 people being marginalized and wrongly castigated and caricatured in the same way that any minority

00:50:24.660 solidarity arises from being treated as other or being treated as less than by everyone else.

00:50:30.640 So white solidarity is going to come together as a reaction to white people being constantly maligned.

00:50:38.060 I don't want that. Like, I reject that. I think that we should resist that because majority

00:50:43.900 solidarity along racial lines in contrast to minority solidarity has always ended really badly

00:50:52.740 throughout history. But that is human nature. Joining with others who are being maligned and

00:50:59.100 unfairly criticized for the way that you are and forming an alliance to try to compete against the

00:51:08.540 ones doing the maligning, that is unfortunately just what arises from this kind of tribalism. And that

00:51:15.620 is not going to end well. Like I said, I think that we should resist all kinds of that tribalism and

00:51:21.540 primarily looking at each other and creating alliances on the basis of racial identity.

00:51:28.380 That's what CRT pushes. And unfortunately, I think there's going to be a very negative and ugly backlash

00:51:34.080 to it. So like my suggestion is that we all back up from using racial identity or racial essentialism

00:51:44.020 as an identity, as a way to form these collections and form group identities and trying to fight against

00:51:57.420 each other based on the color of our skin. That sets us back. That will not end well, like I said. And so

00:52:04.880 that's one thing that I think that we have to resist is that kind of identitarianism and resentment

00:52:11.940 and bitterness as a reaction to all of this and realize that CRT is not primarily an attack on

00:52:20.820 white people. It is an attack on what it sees as power. It is an attack on the Western rule of law.

00:52:27.780 So it is going to be consequential if it is taken to its logical conclusion. It is going to be

00:52:34.860 consequential for people of all races equally, not just white people. And that is how I think that

00:52:40.620 we have to see it. And that is why I think it is incumbent upon people of all different colors,

00:52:46.560 of all different backgrounds to fight against this where you see it and to resist its language,

00:52:51.180 to resist its ideas, to resist its indoctrination, because like all left-wing revolutions, it will end

00:52:57.420 badly both for the revolutionaries and the victims of the revolution. Instead, we have to love our

00:53:05.900 neighbor as we love ourselves. Instead, we have to take on impartiality, both in our own lives and when

00:53:12.920 it comes to how we teach our children, how we preach to our congregants, the kinds of laws and the

00:53:19.540 policies that we advocate for. Impartiality is a principle of Christianity that God emphasizes again

00:53:25.920 and again, and is going to be the only way to unity. Like I said on Tuesday, we don't want to chop down

00:53:32.020 the tree of liberty. Yes, we water it. We allow it to grow so that its branches grow more full and longer

00:53:38.940 so that it can give more shade to people against the scorching sun of tyranny. But just because we

00:53:45.640 don't like that the tree isn't growing as quickly as we think that it should be, that's not a reason

00:53:51.800 to chop down the tree. CRT wants to chop down the tree. I can't get on board with that. All right,

00:53:56.860 that's all I have to say for today. I will be back here on Monday. See you guys then.

00:54:02.020 Bye.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 08, 2021

Ep 451 ｜ On CRT, the Right Is Winning

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