The Megyn Kelly Show - Race and Schools, with Jodi Shaw and Christopher Rufo ｜ Ep. 59

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00:00:31.080 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.240 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.680 Today on the program, Jody Shaw and Christopher Ruffo.

00:00:50.060 These two are warriors in a very uncomfortable space

00:00:55.240 and that is the critical race theory that is being shoved down our throats collectively as a people

00:01:00.520 in our universities, in our K-12 schools, in corporate America and elsewhere.

00:01:06.600 And it isn't easy to stand up and say,

00:01:09.460 no, no, this is itself racist.

00:01:14.860 But both of them have been doing it.

00:01:18.340 Jody in her own personal circumstance at Smith College

00:01:22.100 and Chris on a more macro level across many schools and colleges.

00:01:27.280 And now he is organizing a real response, a real fight back.

00:01:32.680 And so they're both here to talk about their circumstances.

00:01:35.860 Jody, I don't know if you guys remember this.

00:01:38.100 I remember Glenn Lowry.

00:01:39.280 He was on the program praising her.

00:01:41.220 We talked about her video, but she, she seems kind of understated and, um, I don't know,

00:01:48.100 just sort of sweet.

00:01:50.300 And she works at Smith and she's essentially an administrative assistant there and decided

00:01:57.240 to speak out against the constant, constant shaming of white employees, assumptions about

00:02:04.440 white people and black people based on their pigmentation. 0.64

00:02:07.220 And she was a one woman pushback machine. 0.87

00:02:10.720 She spoke up and made national headlines doing it. 0.99

00:02:14.020 And now we'll tell you the consequences.

00:02:16.460 And, uh, Chris was a liberal who, uh, kind of got pulled into this by some whistleblowers

00:02:21.860 who turned into thousands of whistleblowers.

00:02:24.680 And now is running point on how we push back against this nonsense, divisive ideology.

00:02:30.980 So you'll hear from both of them in just one second.

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00:05:30.720 Okay.

00:05:31.460 And now Jodi Shaw.

00:05:34.760 Thrilled you are here.

00:05:37.180 Thank you so much for having me, Megan.

00:05:38.740 So I was sitting at home.

00:05:41.880 It was an evening in October in bed at night, you know, just surfing the net on my phone

00:05:48.280 and up popped an article with links to your video.

00:05:53.540 And I'm like, eh, I was kind of tired, whatever.

00:05:55.160 I have to click on it.

00:05:56.460 Well, I mean, I watched the whole thing twice.

00:05:59.060 I made my husband, Doug, watch the whole thing twice.

00:06:01.020 I was like, who is this heroine who not only did you choose to speak out against basically

00:06:10.920 racism, you know, they used to be called reverse racism.

00:06:15.680 I just think it's plain old fashioned racism at Smith against you, this forcing of critical

00:06:21.840 race theory down your throats at every turn.

00:06:24.020 But you found the perfect words.

00:06:27.480 Did you write out, we'll get to what you said in one second, but did you write it out?

00:06:32.460 Because what you said was so spot on and you said it so perfectly.

00:06:38.040 Oh, thank you, Megan.

00:06:40.860 Yeah, I did write out a list.

00:06:43.900 I wrote out a list of things I wanted.

00:06:47.100 And it was actually at the end of a long, it was more like a 40 minute video.

00:06:53.460 And then I, I'd gone through it a few times, quite angrily, actually.

00:06:58.580 And then I just decided, you know, I'm just gonna ask for what I want.

00:07:03.160 And I, so it turned out just to be 10 minutes and it turned out to be quite calm.

00:07:07.860 In the end, I decided that what, what am I hoping to accomplish here?

00:07:11.860 Do I just want to rail at Smith College?

00:07:13.620 Or do I want to make a good faith effort to open dialogue?

00:07:17.960 And I decided that's what I wanted to do.

00:07:20.760 And so I just stuck to, it was, it was really just a list I was improvising around.

00:07:27.240 Part of its brilliance was how calm it was.

00:07:29.920 If you had been angrier, you know how it is, especially as a woman, 1.00

00:07:33.900 you would have been too easily dismissed as an hysteric.

00:07:37.460 Or, you know, the angrier you are, the more people think you've got some agenda.

00:07:42.040 You were so measured, so matter of fact.

00:07:45.300 And all I could think when you were talking about

00:07:47.960 the things they were doing to you is

00:07:49.820 if you were black and you were saying these things,

00:07:54.500 Smith College would be on every newspaper in the country for its racism. 0.93

00:08:01.260 But that's the interesting thing about what's happening right now

00:08:04.880 is racism against people who aren't in traditionally marginalized groups

00:08:11.800 is, is it gets a shoulder shrug, even though it's just as unlawful.

00:08:16.320 Yeah, that's, I'm really glad you said that, Megan, because that has been demonstrated over

00:08:22.300 and over at Smith.

00:08:23.460 I mean, I exhausted all internal remedies.

00:08:26.440 And one of the things I did was to file an internal complaint.

00:08:30.080 And literally when I went to file the complaint, the person who has a JD,

00:08:35.180 who is in charge of processing the complaints, asked me,

00:08:37.920 she seemed incredulous to me.

00:08:40.780 And she asked me, do you believe in white privilege?

00:08:44.160 It was almost like she couldn't believe that, you know, I was filing a complaint as a white person.

00:08:50.280 And she told me a number of things like the Civil Rights Act was created for traditionally marginalized groups.

00:08:57.360 And I'm going to need to hire an outside investigator because I do not have expertise in this area.

00:09:03.460 And when I asked her to explain what she meant, she said, well, it's different because you're white.

00:09:09.700 Meaning she doesn't have, quote unquote, reverse racism, which I later found out is not actually a legal term. 1.00

00:09:17.020 And she's 100%, right, exactly.

00:09:18.580 She's 100% wrong.

00:09:19.620 Just, I want to make this clear at the beginning of the podcast.

00:09:22.820 The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,

00:09:28.120 protects individuals from employment discrimination on the basis of race and color,

00:09:32.020 as well as national origin, sex, or religion.

00:09:34.380 Title VII, I am quoting now from the EEOC website.

00:09:37.960 You don't have to take Megyn Kelly's word for it.

00:09:40.200 Title VII prohibits race or color discrimination against all persons, including Caucasians, end quote.

00:09:49.600 There is no doubt that you may not discriminate against white people because of their color either.

00:09:57.900 Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964,

00:10:03.460 and typically under various state and local statutes that get passed,

00:10:06.820 preventing race discrimination.

00:10:08.680 So it is no answer to a complaint to say, but you're white. 0.97

00:10:13.380 And it's not an assertion of white privilege for you to say,

00:10:17.280 I feel I am being treated differently because I have white skin.

00:10:23.360 So let's just back up.

00:10:24.560 Let's just back up.

00:10:25.240 And I'm going to get to your letter.

00:10:27.020 And, you know, you read it.

00:10:28.520 So I have some soundbites because I want our audience to hear them.

00:10:30.680 But can we just talk about how long you'd been working at Smith?

00:10:34.540 Let's just set it up for the audience.

00:10:35.860 You went to Smith.

00:10:37.280 And then how long had you been working there and in what capacity?

00:10:41.260 So I graduated from Smith in 93 and then lived in various parts of the country,

00:10:46.460 mostly New York City, and moved back up here in 2017 to Western Massachusetts

00:10:53.560 and started working at Smith in September or October of 2017.

00:10:59.320 So I've been at Smith for three, you know, three and a quarter years now.

00:11:06.580 And you were working in the library?

00:11:08.980 Yeah.

00:11:09.420 I started off in the library as a temporary librarian.

00:11:13.040 So I was an outreach and engagement librarian.

00:11:15.480 I was hired for my engagement skills and kind of community building and, you know, outreach.

00:11:23.540 And yeah, then I moved into residence life.

00:11:27.260 And part of moving into residence life was because of a situation that happened in the library.

00:11:35.620 That was kind of the first thing that happened to me that was pretty blatant discrimination.

00:11:41.860 So let's start there.

00:11:44.180 Let's start there.

00:11:44.820 That's the first incident when I understand you were a candidate for a higher position

00:11:49.840 in the library staff.

00:11:51.200 So what happened?

00:11:53.380 So, I mean, really, I think, and I think it's really important to provide the backdrop of

00:12:02.000 a situation that happened on July 31st, about a month before the situation in the library.

00:12:08.320 So a black student accused a white staff member, a custodian of racially motivated incidents.

00:12:15.000 She was in a house that was not open to students at the time.

00:12:19.440 It was, in fact, being used just for, it was during the summer.

00:12:22.780 And so the houses at Smith, where students normally reside, get used for summer programs.

00:12:29.600 And this particular house was being used for children's programs.

00:12:33.320 So all the staff had to have quarry checks, you know, background checks, that kind of thing.

00:12:38.320 And so she wandered in at lunch and she wasn't supposed to be there, but the dining staff

00:12:43.780 allowed her to be there because they're already accustomed to the school not backing them up

00:12:48.660 if they enforce certain rules in the dining hall.

00:12:52.380 And she ended up moving into the living room and a custodian, the staff were told, if you 0.82

00:12:59.080 see something, say something, no matter how insignificant.

00:13:01.280 That's kind of the conventional wisdom at that time.

00:13:05.640 And it was hard to see her.

00:13:08.620 The custodian had, I think he had bad eyesight.

00:13:13.360 There's a whole story around that.

00:13:15.160 And so she made a Facebook post.

00:13:18.580 So talk about the disparity in reporting.

00:13:22.180 She made a couple paragraph Facebook post and the college immediately sprung into action.

00:13:27.920 She made a Facebook post saying, this was racially motivated.

00:13:30.640 This person called campus police on me just because I'm black and this is wrong.

00:13:35.920 And the college hired an outside investigator.

00:13:38.660 And I think they generated almost 200 pages of a very thorough investigation, which concluded

00:13:45.300 there was no, it was not a racially motivated incident.

00:13:48.660 However, they maintained this narrative that it was.

00:13:53.100 They implemented programs, initiatives, discussions, dialogues, all around the systemic racism

00:13:58.860 because the student said, this is another example in a long line of systemic racism I

00:14:03.480 have suffered as a student at Smith.

00:14:05.900 Although when you read the investigative report, she was unable to provide other examples.

00:14:10.640 And they state that in the report.

00:14:12.760 So this is the backdrop.

00:14:14.340 We now have a campus that's hyper, hyper aware of race, right?

00:14:22.520 And that we have a big problem of systemic racism on campus at Smith.

00:14:26.860 All the newspapers, this was in all the newspapers, this situation.

00:14:30.260 So cut to one month later.

00:14:32.360 Just if I can just interrupt.

00:14:33.680 When was this?

00:14:34.300 What was the date that we're talking about here?

00:14:36.160 July 31st, 2018.

00:14:39.420 Okay.

00:14:39.740 So long before the George Floyd thing.

00:14:42.220 Yes.

00:14:42.820 Yes.

00:14:43.140 Okay.

00:14:43.900 Okay.

00:14:44.180 Keep going.

00:14:45.240 I had been working on an orientation presentation for 600 first year students.

00:14:50.440 It had already been approved.

00:14:52.440 It was going to involve a rap.

00:14:54.580 And some people, oh, that's so cheesy, rap in the library.

00:14:56.700 Well, I had been asked to, quote, do something crazy.

00:15:00.820 Please do not get up there and do a slideshow about the boring card catalog.

00:15:04.920 I have a musical background.

00:15:07.340 I'm a very creative person.

00:15:10.060 Whether or not one thinks it's cheesy to do a rap is beside the point.

00:15:13.140 Um, and I, you know, worked really hard on this.

00:15:16.480 I had musicians from town.

00:15:18.220 I had a sound person.

00:15:19.600 I, you know, anyone who's produced an event of that magnitude for 600 people in a concert

00:15:23.920 hall.

00:15:24.160 I was the point person.

00:15:25.880 So it's a big, it's a big event.

00:15:27.840 So I worked all, all summer on it.

00:15:30.480 Uh, the budget was approved.

00:15:31.780 Everything was fine.

00:15:33.680 Um, the July 31st, 2018 event happened.

00:15:37.040 So the campus was kind of roiling from that.

00:15:39.640 And so about a month later, it was within a week of the orientation that I was supposed

00:15:44.940 to do for these students.

00:15:46.500 My supervisor took me aside.

00:15:48.420 He said, you can't do the, the rap.

00:15:51.100 And so I said, well, why? 0.99

00:15:52.560 And he said, because you're white litter. 0.99

00:15:55.360 Those are the literal words. 0.89

00:15:56.640 So I asked him, I said, so if I were a student, um, sorry, if I were a person of color, would

00:16:03.500 it be okay?

00:16:04.120 And I didn't specify what color, which I think is interesting.

00:16:07.360 And he said, yes, he didn't even hesitate.

00:16:10.540 Yes, that would be okay.

00:16:11.900 So clearly the problem wasn't that it was a rap.

00:16:15.120 It wasn't the format.

00:16:16.240 The problem was that I was not a person of color, apparently any other color.

00:16:21.760 Um, the, the problem is that I was white and this was memorialized in an email.

00:16:26.440 And so that was quite crushing to me, um, because I was a temporary employee at the time I was

00:16:35.100 up for a position and this would have been kind of a big coup if I'd pulled it off, which

00:16:40.400 I, which I really think I would have, I would have been able to pull it off, um, quite successfully.

00:16:45.400 That's my opinion.

00:16:47.140 Um, and so that was an, an employment opportunity that was denied to me.

00:16:52.260 You wrote, or I don't remember where I saw this, maybe it was in the video, but I know

00:16:55.220 you said you felt shame after that.

00:16:58.860 I mean, I, I don't want to like gloss over how something like that makes you feel.

00:17:03.200 It's not just disappointment.

00:17:04.160 I can't do my thing.

00:17:05.140 And this feels unfair, but you had effectively been shamed that your idea was inappropriate.

00:17:11.960 Yeah, I did feel shamed.

00:17:14.200 I felt, oh gosh, I felt so many things.

00:17:18.500 I, I felt ashamed that how, you know, there was a void because at the time I, I was, I was

00:17:24.580 on board with this, you know, systemic racism is, is bad and it's a real problem.

00:17:29.260 And I have white privilege.

00:17:31.080 You know, I had all these voices in my head and I thought, oh geez, like, was I really off

00:17:36.040 the mark?

00:17:36.600 Was I being culturally insensitive, cultural, cultural appropriation?

00:17:40.380 And, and, and then I had another voice that was telling me, no, you know, this is, this

00:17:44.040 is racial discrimination, but it was, I mean, the way it was done without any hesitation 1.00

00:17:49.040 at all, memorialized in an email backed up by the Dean.

00:17:52.520 I really didn't know.

00:17:54.380 I thought, is it racial discrimination?

00:17:56.020 Maybe it's not, you know?

00:17:57.480 Right.

00:17:57.700 So you're, you're proceeding in good faith.

00:17:59.460 Like I'm open-minded.

00:18:00.720 I want to be sensitive.

00:18:02.100 Um, I, you know, I'm going to think about it and this is like the beginning of things

00:18:07.180 starting to turn and you, so you go to the Dean of the library to say, Hey, I guess I

00:18:12.140 can't do this.

00:18:12.800 And the, and I was told the quote was how you respond to this.

00:18:16.940 Jody will show us your resourcefulness and resiliency in light of your candidacy for the

00:18:23.660 full-time position.

00:18:25.500 Yeah.

00:18:26.860 Yeah.

00:18:27.300 Wink, wink.

00:18:29.340 Yeah.

00:18:29.780 That was really the whole bottom dropped out.

00:18:34.340 And I thought, Oh my gosh, I don't, I don't know if I can stay in this environment.

00:18:41.180 Um, yeah.

00:18:43.100 Cause I was at the top, really the Dean of the libraries.

00:18:46.380 Um, I remember telling my former supervisor that the person who had hired me, who was no

00:18:51.640 longer there.

00:18:52.100 And she said it, it made her feel nauseous.

00:18:55.180 What do you think the Dean was trying to say, was really trying to say?

00:18:58.300 Oh, I, I think it was a veiled threat.

00:19:02.100 You know, um, if you do not go along with this, uh, racially discriminatory behavior,

00:19:09.100 we have just placed upon you, um, then you will not be considered for this job.

00:19:15.260 It was kind of like, you know, go along with this, um, be quiet.

00:19:18.980 And it was, it was horrible.

00:19:22.500 I mean, I, there's no other way to describe it.

00:19:24.120 I was in complete turmoil.

00:19:26.840 I did go to HR.

00:19:28.160 I talked to HR, I talked to the ombudsman, nobody at Smith that I spoke to, you know,

00:19:34.700 aside from colleagues, you know, whispering on the side told me, you know, maybe you should

00:19:40.700 file a complaint.

00:19:41.460 This, this really feels like a threat or this feels like racial discrimination.

00:19:45.360 I was not, you know, it was just bad.

00:19:48.880 That's, you know, go along with it.

00:19:51.340 Yes.

00:19:51.720 By the way.

00:19:52.240 I mean, it's like, even if, if you really want to get into it, of course, there've been

00:19:56.260 plenty of very famous and successful white rappers.

00:19:59.540 So, you know, if you really want to do a tit for tat on their argument, you could have gone

00:20:03.800 there.

00:20:04.060 Um, it's, it's not an, it's not a medium completely dominated.

00:20:08.800 I mean, it's majority, I would say people of color, but not all.

00:20:12.500 Um, so it, it kind of falls apart the more you probe it, but in any event, no one had any

00:20:17.580 desire to be sensitive to you.

00:20:20.940 Right.

00:20:21.500 Right.

00:20:21.860 As a white person, I was thinking about that last night, Megan, about the rap thing.

00:20:25.860 A lot of people pointed that out on the YouTube comments.

00:20:28.000 Well, Eminem and Macklemore, it's, it's also, it was, you know, they were, they were talking

00:20:33.340 about cultural appropriation too.

00:20:35.420 That was in the email and isn't, I mean, rap is part of my culture.

00:20:40.120 I listened to rap.

00:20:42.000 So doesn't that mean it's part of my culture?

00:20:46.100 If it's something that's in my life that I listened to, it seems like it's part of American

00:20:50.060 culture rap.

00:20:52.100 I guarantee it was a white person saying this to you.

00:20:54.480 Was it, was it?

00:20:55.580 Yes.

00:20:55.800 All of the direct discrimination I have encountered at Smith has been other white people as far

00:21:01.240 as I can.

00:21:02.460 Yes.

00:21:02.820 Yes.

00:21:03.340 So, so you, you're intimidated, you're, you've been shamed, and then you decide you're going

00:21:10.380 to take a different job.

00:21:11.320 You're going to, you're not going to go for the promotion.

00:21:13.020 You've, you've effectively been told how that's going to work out.

00:21:15.820 You go and take a job, I guess, as an administrative assistant.

00:21:20.240 And that's when the second incident took place.

00:21:22.980 Do I have it right?

00:21:24.300 That's correct.

00:21:25.120 And in the background, a whole lot of other incidents were taking place across campus to

00:21:29.040 other people and, you know, more and more programs and, and things for white ways for white people

00:21:35.480 to, you know, talk about whiteness and so on and so forth.

00:21:39.240 So I took a job as providing administrative support in the department of residence life and thinking

00:21:47.020 that maybe if I get away from the academic side, there would be less, like it would be less racially

00:21:54.680 tense and so much about race.

00:21:56.880 And boy, was I wrong.

00:21:59.960 I didn't know this because I'm new to higher education, but the residence life departments

00:22:04.880 often have, you know, they, they do a co-curriculum and just very grounded in this kind of social

00:22:11.820 justice, critical social justice.

00:22:14.220 And so I learned that it was required of me to attend staff meetings where I needed to discuss

00:22:20.160 my identity and, and those kinds of topics.

00:22:23.320 And so I thought, well, I'll just keep my head down and go along with it.

00:22:27.760 You know, it, it really had nothing.

00:22:29.760 I could not see the connection to my job.

00:22:31.640 My job at that point was very nuts and bolts.

00:22:34.340 There was no, wasn't like the library.

00:22:36.340 There's no instruction going on.

00:22:38.180 I wasn't teaching, um, just, you know, helping students get lock changes and ID cards.

00:22:44.160 There w there was some student contact, but it, it, it didn't feel.

00:22:49.420 Well, the, the social justice stuff in res life is a whole story unto itself, but regardless,

00:22:57.300 um, I, I was mandated to attend, um, a professional development retreat in January of 2020.

00:23:06.360 And so I, I started getting nervous about that because by now, you know, I'm, I'm very, and

00:23:12.100 some other things have happened on campus.

00:23:13.600 I'm really not comfortable talking about my race at work.

00:23:17.060 And I've, I've learned that it's a very performative endeavor, these discussions and

00:23:22.680 these trainings and initiatives, very performative.

00:23:25.640 They feel fake.

00:23:26.480 And I, I just, is the phrase, I don't suffer fools gladly.

00:23:31.040 I, I just, I, it's very hard for me to go along with something that's, we're pretending

00:23:36.960 to be really having an authentic discussion about race when really it's just, it feels

00:23:43.040 like theater.

00:23:44.840 Well, and, and think about it.

00:23:46.140 If you used a different sort of form here, if they said, we have to do this with gender

00:23:51.020 and you must sit there and talk about all of the ways in which being a woman has affected

00:23:57.420 your life, the implication would be negatively and for a man positively and everything.

00:24:03.560 So I'm being told I have to sit in my workplace and I got to talk about my lady parts and I

00:24:08.360 got to talk about my menstrual cycle and, um, all the ways in which my, you know, sex, uh,

00:24:16.300 and attention by men has like, I don't want to talk about that.

00:24:19.940 No one, no one's going to be able to talk, force me to talk about my lady parts at the

00:24:24.480 workplace.

00:24:24.860 That would be obvious, but when it comes to race, they feel very emboldened to make

00:24:30.180 you, make you talk about your pigmentation, something which is also an immutable characteristic.

00:24:36.160 You have no control over it.

00:24:38.140 That's why it gets protected by the law.

00:24:40.060 Yes, that is why it's protected.

00:24:41.980 Exactly.

00:24:43.140 So you had to go to a three day retreat.

00:24:45.200 I'm told.

00:24:46.380 Yeah, it was a three day retreat.

00:24:47.540 The first day was really focused on identity, which I knew meant race in my mind, which it did 0.94

00:24:54.460 pretty much turn out to be.

00:24:56.680 Yeah.

00:24:57.440 And, and so I went and I actually approached my director about a month before and I said,

00:25:03.440 you know, I'm not comfortable discussing my race.

00:25:06.520 And I think I said, I'm not comfortable discussing my race or any other protected characteristic

00:25:10.680 at work.

00:25:12.140 And she said, no problem.

00:25:15.000 Just, just say that at the meeting, just say you're uncomfortable.

00:25:18.120 And so I thought, okay, great.

00:25:19.340 Uh, so I went to the meeting and, you know, the, the hired facilitators who presumably

00:25:26.560 have authority in this area asked us to discuss, I'm paraphrasing, please talk about your understanding

00:25:33.820 about your race slash culture as if they are one in the same, um, in the context of

00:25:40.540 your childhood years or your, your adolescent years, they, they, there was, it was like a

00:25:45.680 three-part question.

00:25:46.680 So everyone went around the room and did so.

00:25:49.600 And I was the last person to respond.

00:25:51.680 And I said, I'm not comfortable talking about that at work.

00:25:55.760 And so later in the presentation, one of the facilitators said, uh, I want to be clear

00:26:02.940 that any white person who expresses any discomfort in discussing their race when asked to, I believe

00:26:10.560 she said that, um, you might, you might feel like you want to comfort them because they

00:26:15.140 seem uncomfortable, but don't because what they're doing is they're displaying white

00:26:19.520 fragility and it's a power play.

00:26:22.160 Oh man.

00:26:22.940 Gee.

00:26:23.660 Yeah.

00:26:24.260 So when you say that, it seems like, oh, okay, that, that kind of stinks, but I cannot

00:26:29.340 tell you the feeling of sitting there with your coworkers and effectively having your feelings

00:26:35.380 that your honest feelings that you've just expressed of discomfort being framed as an

00:26:39.900 act of aggression, um, because of your color.

00:26:44.200 And I, I often wonder if my skin were any other color.

00:26:48.860 And I had said, you know, I'm uncomfortable discussing that.

00:26:51.020 The implication is that that would not happen because she said, as she said, this only applies

00:26:56.520 to white people, the way she stated, it made it seem like it only applies to white people.

00:27:01.180 She said at for white people.

00:27:02.740 So I don't, I think if I had been a black person or Latino, like I would have not, if 1.00

00:27:12.600 I had said, I am not comfortable discussing marriage at work, I probably, they would have 1.00

00:27:16.260 been like, oh, okay, fine.

00:27:18.500 Cause it's not quote a power play.

00:27:20.760 Meanwhile, you've been told to do it by your supervisor.

00:27:22.960 It's completely out of line and, and, and, and, but in line with the way these training

00:27:28.120 sessions go down.

00:27:29.280 I mean, I, I have a friend who went through one of these, uh, sessions at a school here

00:27:35.360 in New York, and she sat for two full days and listened to the black instructor, shame 0.51

00:27:43.440 the white people in the room for their white privilege and their white, uh, you know, racism. 0.89

00:27:48.500 And on the third day she ginned up the confidence to say something like, well, you know, um, sometimes

00:27:59.320 the shoes on the other foot and I have felt in comfortable situations, whatever.

00:28:03.780 She tried to just push back a little and was shamed, was shamed.

00:28:07.480 She felt completely attacked by the instructor, by other people in the class, because the whole

00:28:11.780 thing is built on the notion that white people may not speak.

00:28:15.140 The only, and not even I'm sorry, is an appropriate thing to say that they'll tell you, it's not

00:28:21.160 our obligation to make you feel better.

00:28:22.800 We don't have any obligation to take your apology.

00:28:25.080 So there's just no good way out of it for a person who feels uncomfortable.

00:28:30.920 So, so when it's over, that's when you, you fought, you did file a complaint.

00:28:35.860 Yes.

00:28:36.760 I did.

00:28:37.760 I decided, okay, now I think it was because at that point I realized.

00:28:45.140 One, now we're using shame as a tool to compel behavior.

00:28:50.820 It wasn't just, we're not just talking about suppression of speech, right?

00:28:55.860 We're talking about now public shaming is being used to try to compel me to say certain words.

00:29:03.780 And I thought now, now I, it's been made clear to me, I can no longer just abstain.

00:29:09.000 Like even at that point, even just calling in sick on a day that I knew there was going

00:29:13.400 to be a training.

00:29:14.100 I, now I knew that would be framed or could be framed as an act of aggression because

00:29:18.380 essentially that's what my colleagues have been instructed to do, to frame anything kind

00:29:24.000 of abstaining or not participating as an act of aggression.

00:29:26.760 So, yes, that's when I decided to file a complaint.

00:29:30.660 I, and I went to the, the EEO compliance officer on campus.

00:29:35.840 And that's when she asked me, you know, do you believe in white privilege?

00:29:39.320 And this law was created to protect traditionally marginalized groups.

00:29:43.160 And I need to hire an outside investigator because I do not have expertise in this kind of discrimination.

00:29:51.540 Meaning.

00:29:51.940 I love that she was the EEO compliance officer and did not understand.

00:29:56.020 I mean, she should just read their website.

00:29:57.520 Say, you don't have to work that hard.

00:29:59.120 You don't have to hire a lawyer.

00:30:00.240 Just go to the website.

00:30:01.100 It's right there that, that these laws protect white people as well.

00:30:05.340 You may not like it.

00:30:06.660 Eric Holder didn't like it.

00:30:07.860 That came out during his administration, but the law is the law.

00:30:12.180 And I, I know, I mean, Jodi, tell us because it wasn't just those two incidents.

00:30:16.420 And when, in reading up about you and your story, I walked away thinking this place, Smith

00:30:22.040 College is obsessed with race.

00:30:24.200 They were shoving it down your throat at lectures and presentations and behind the scene in questions

00:30:32.220 about students involved in altercations or like, it just seemed to constantly be their

00:30:38.460 focus.

00:30:39.780 Yeah.

00:30:40.380 Constantly.

00:30:40.980 I mean, I, I only arrived there in 2017.

00:30:44.400 It was already a topic.

00:30:46.220 And then when the July 31st, 2018 incident happened, it was like they went into hyperdrive,

00:30:51.800 right?

00:30:52.080 So then it was in hyperdrive for a while.

00:30:55.480 And then I filed the complaint.

00:30:57.180 And immediately after I filed the second part of my complaint in May, 2020, George Floyd was

00:31:03.260 murdered and BLM got active and there was a global pandemic on top of it where staff were

00:31:09.680 told, you might be getting furloughed.

00:31:11.440 Then they went into like hyper, hyperdrive.

00:31:14.480 I mean, it was, I was getting invited.

00:31:17.560 My director sent email to only the white staff in my department, inviting us to get together to talk

00:31:24.140 about how we can support the non-white staff.

00:31:27.500 And of course, and she said, Oh, well, it's optional, but you know, so I didn't go and I'm sure everyone

00:31:32.400 else went and I don't know how that went down.

00:31:35.580 We were invited to the entire school had a generating justice event.

00:31:39.920 And they said that the president said that white people are especially responsible for dismantling

00:31:45.280 racism.

00:31:45.740 This was in an email.

00:31:47.500 So I actually went to that and right in the beginning, they said, we're, we're going,

00:31:52.540 we're not going to, we're going to privilege voices of color.

00:31:55.580 So white people kind of need to take a back seat. 0.99

00:31:58.460 So, so you're right.

00:31:59.780 There's, there's no way you can win here or you're being told that first of all, here's the problem.

00:32:06.260 There's systemic racism.

00:32:07.820 And this is how you as a white person need to respond and behave in order to quote help.

00:32:14.700 It was just bombarded last summer after George Floyd.

00:32:19.600 Let's talk about masks.

00:32:21.200 You know how now like the, the push is like to double mask.

00:32:24.740 How about just wearing one mask that works?

00:32:27.080 One real mask.

00:32:27.940 Would that be okay?

00:32:29.160 That's where arm brust USA comes in. 0.80

00:32:31.400 They, they've got this gators, bandanas, cloth, fashion masks.

00:32:34.660 They're not going to get you back to work USA. 0.98

00:32:36.920 It's not going to happen for 20 years.

00:32:38.960 We've been outsourcing America's strategic manufacturing of PPE to China.

00:32:43.000 Yeah, the irony.

00:32:44.980 Oh, the irony.

00:32:46.740 When the pandemic hit, the Chinese communist party hoarded vast quantities of supplies like

00:32:51.200 surgical masks and 95s, endangering our doctors, nurses, and frontline workers.

00:32:56.540 God, it makes you angry, doesn't it?

00:32:58.200 But these guys at arm brust USA have been working for us.

00:33:01.240 Um, the American people came together, right?

00:33:04.100 When we had a shortage of mash, they, they helped each other.

00:33:06.100 They sewed masks at home, but that was never supposed to be the long-term solution.

00:33:09.760 And seeing what was happening, American companies like arm brust USA stepped in to fill the gap

00:33:14.420 in America's strategic manufacturing.

00:33:16.640 They got a factory in Texas producing millions of FDA listed ASTM level three surgical masks.

00:33:22.440 That means the top level for doctors, nurses, frontline workers. 0.57

00:33:24.960 And now we're no longer in the midst of a PPE shortage, which means during these final days

00:33:30.480 of the pandemic, just get a real surgical mask from these guys that will provide real

00:33:34.580 protection for you, your family, your business.

00:33:36.360 When somebody tries to tell you to put another layer on, you can give them the old, you know

00:33:39.920 what to do.

00:33:40.340 Go to don't shut down mask up.com for one of these masks.

00:33:45.780 Use the coupon code MK to save 20% off of your order of a pack of arm brust USA masks.

00:33:51.700 They're lightweight, breathable, hypoallergenic, and FDA listed made in America.

00:33:56.480 Don't buy the cheap knockoffs.

00:33:58.080 Don't buy those masks from China.

00:34:00.440 They're simply not sending us their best products.

00:34:02.180 This is American company looking out for you.

00:34:04.300 Go to don't shut down mask up.com today.

00:34:10.340 Previous efforts, which in some instances had been in good faith and mild to sort of

00:34:18.860 draw attention, to make people think, to bring people together, just morphed into really

00:34:24.640 dangerous, insulting, offensive messaging, which, you know, I think our next guest, Chris

00:34:31.120 Rufo is going to tell us had been percolating all along.

00:34:33.520 They just had been given a huge green light in the wake of the BLM protests and so on to

00:34:39.520 just shove it down everyone's throat and compliance, submission, open acceptance and vocalization

00:34:45.560 was the only way through it.

00:34:48.160 So you've gone through all of this.

00:34:50.560 You filed a complaint and so on, or you tried to.

00:34:53.000 Then in October, on October 27th, 2020 was when you released your video, your first Facebook

00:35:00.000 video, calling attention to all of this, the problems there.

00:35:03.360 What made you do that?

00:35:04.500 What was the final straw there?

00:35:06.120 Well, the whole time I'm thinking if, you know, I hope they investigate this complaint

00:35:13.160 thoroughly because clearly nobody was even denying that these things had happened, that

00:35:18.740 I was alleging in the complaint.

00:35:21.300 And, you know, I hope things can change.

00:35:23.340 But in my mind, I thought that was kind of my, the last gasp or the last thing I had that

00:35:31.740 I could pull out because I know the college does not like publicity, especially around

00:35:36.760 anything having to do with race.

00:35:40.160 So that summer, so I filed the complaint and that summer after George Floyd, things got,

00:35:46.420 it got, they got worse.

00:35:47.520 You know, I was getting invited to be part of the white staff, this part of the white 0.92

00:35:50.720 staff, that.

00:35:51.200 The college released a four-page document called Toward Racial Justice at Smith that had all

00:35:56.800 kinds of initiatives in it that were tied to performance evaluations and paying people

00:36:04.000 equitably across registers of identity.

00:36:08.860 And so I had all these questions, like, what does all this stuff mean?

00:36:11.980 And so I started asking HR, what does this mean in terms of my job?

00:36:15.600 Like, what is, and I started questioning the very basic terms, like, what is equity and

00:36:20.300 inclusion?

00:36:21.580 Can I have a definition of that?

00:36:23.120 And new terms, like anti-blackness and anti-racism, what do those things mean?

00:36:27.720 And so I kind of went on a quest.

00:36:29.300 I was shuffled around to different people.

00:36:31.620 My complaint was still pending.

00:36:33.660 And I think the final straw was that I was told I would have to attend a meeting, actually

00:36:39.820 a couple meetings to discuss this document toward racial justice at Smith.

00:36:43.380 And I did not, I had made very clear, I do not want to attend any more discussions while

00:36:48.240 my complaint is pending, having to do with race.

00:36:51.540 I mean, even where I just have to sit there and listen, because I did not want my not speaking

00:36:58.060 to be framed as a, I didn't want to be publicly humiliated again.

00:37:01.580 I didn't want to put myself in that position.

00:37:03.440 So I wrote emails.

00:37:05.480 I said, you know, I don't want to do this.

00:37:08.020 I don't understand what this document is.

00:37:10.980 Nobody responded.

00:37:12.040 I did meet with some people, but I was, there were no answers, no adequate responses.

00:37:18.940 Let's put it that way.

00:37:20.200 And so the week I released the video, I did send what I call my Hail Mary emails to members

00:37:27.560 of the president's cabinet and all of the people I'd ever been referred to.

00:37:31.900 And I just said, you know, just so we're all on the same page, this is, this has gotten worse.

00:37:37.120 And I find it morally, I think I use the word morally reprehensible.

00:37:42.860 I will not participate in, because they were asking me to take color into account in questionable

00:37:48.280 ways in dealing with students and other colleagues.

00:37:51.700 I do not want to participate in this.

00:37:53.780 That was, that was basically the email.

00:37:55.660 And there was no response.

00:37:57.000 These were very high level deans and members of the president's cabinet.

00:38:01.220 Nobody responded to that email.

00:38:02.740 So a week later, I released the video.

00:38:08.640 Okay.

00:38:08.840 And that brings us to the apex of our discussion, because I watched this and I thought, holy,

00:38:16.900 you know, holy moly, because I knew Smith wasn't going to like it.

00:38:21.120 And I think a lot of people had been feeling this, you know, as, as I put it to my own

00:38:28.400 school, the answer to racism is not more racism.

00:38:32.660 You know, it, that doesn't cure racism.

00:38:35.420 In fact, it just creates more on both sides and is really dangerous.

00:38:41.560 This constant obsession with skin color is incredibly divisive.

00:38:46.500 And the messaging around it has been explicitly divisive.

00:38:50.160 So, um, and a lot of people, especially in the wake of the George Floyd thing, have been

00:38:55.260 very afraid to talk about it, especially white people.

00:38:59.000 Let's be honest.

00:39:00.100 So you fire off this, um, this video and we have, we have like a two minute clip queued

00:39:08.540 up.

00:39:08.920 I said to my producer, Debbie, I'm like, make it long because there's no way I'm going

00:39:12.420 to be able to paraphrase as well as she said it in the first instance.

00:39:15.740 So let's just listen to Jody Shaw, October 27th, 2020.

00:39:19.600 I'm white and that really shouldn't be relevant, but my employer has made it clear that not

00:39:26.780 only is it relevant, but it's possibly one of the most important or if not the most important

00:39:35.340 feature of me as a human.

00:39:37.660 I've been put in a position where I had to do this.

00:39:44.340 I'm speaking for the staff who can't speak and want to be saying these things because

00:39:49.620 I have spoken to a lot of you who feel similarly to me.

00:39:54.340 So here we go.

00:39:55.300 I ask that Smith College stop reducing my personhood to a racial category.

00:40:04.020 Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself because I feel like you do that

00:40:09.560 a lot.

00:40:10.780 Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color because you

00:40:15.980 don't know that.

00:40:16.720 Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based upon their skin

00:40:21.860 color.

00:40:23.020 Stop telling me young women of color have no power or agency in this world. 0.65

00:40:27.700 Stop telling me that young white women have power and privilege over everyone else. 1.00

00:40:32.520 Equally not true.

00:40:33.500 And both of those narratives that you are teaching to students and trying to convince staff of

00:40:42.020 are very disempowering.

00:40:45.020 Stop demanding that I admit to white privilege and work on my so-called implicit bias as a condition

00:40:52.360 of my continued employment.

00:40:54.540 Stop telling me that as a white person, I am, quote, especially responsible for doing the

00:41:00.560 work of dismantling racism.

00:41:01.860 Most of us happen to make a salary around the equivalent of what it costs to attend Smith

00:41:06.840 for a single semester.

00:41:09.380 Stop emboldening students to act abusively towards staff by refusing to hold them accountable

00:41:14.600 for their own egregious behavior.

00:41:16.640 We have the right to work in an environment free from the ever-present terror that any unverified

00:41:22.480 student allegation of racism or any other ism has the power to crush our reputations, ruin

00:41:30.020 our livelihood, and even endanger the physical safety of ourselves or our family members.

00:41:36.080 Wow.

00:41:38.180 Stop reducing my personhood to a racial category.

00:41:42.440 Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on skin color.

00:41:48.320 I feel like all you should have received in response to this was, I'm sorry, you're right,

00:41:55.900 and we will stop.

00:41:58.020 The fact that Smith did anything other than say, you've got a point, is terrifying to me.

00:42:07.420 I mean, again, think of if a black person said, stop reducing my personhood to a racial category.

00:42:13.780 There would have been a panic from the Smith president to whom this was addressed.

00:42:19.400 And a white person saying, you're asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others

00:42:27.260 based on skin color should start a five-alarm fire.

00:42:30.980 That's what white people did in the 1950s and before in a way that was so damaging. 0.81

00:42:37.240 And now they want us to do it again.

00:42:39.660 One of the saddest parts of this was, there was a statement where, I think we've got this

00:42:46.200 queued up, but you said, you talked about how this had been affecting your self-worth at

00:42:52.900 Smith, and we've got this.

00:42:54.380 Here, just one more soundbite.

00:42:55.680 Take a listen.

00:42:56.060 I don't really feel valuable anymore because I don't feel like you value me.

00:43:02.940 I feel like my skin color is the most important thing about me, and that doesn't feel good. 0.98

00:43:08.720 I believe my value lies in the quality of my work, the goodness of my deeds, the essence

00:43:14.360 of my character, and the fullness of my heart, not my skin color.

00:43:18.220 These videos I'm making are really an effort to organize in the workplace for better working

00:43:22.700 conditions.

00:43:23.260 Organizing in the workplace to improve working conditions is protected by federal law, so

00:43:28.500 staff talking is protected.

00:43:31.740 I didn't want to be the one talking about it, but Smith has engaged in behavior toward me

00:43:38.900 that has pushed me over a line.

00:43:42.060 This is not a left, right, or a red versus blue issue.

00:43:45.300 This is a human issue.

00:43:47.320 I'm a lifelong liberal, in case that helps.

00:43:50.180 I love that.

00:43:52.640 I love that.

00:43:53.580 And it didn't help, did it?

00:43:56.020 It didn't help with Smith, no.

00:43:58.820 I think that signifier helps for some people on the left, because I made another video about

00:44:06.340 the left being so afraid of the left, afraid of being associated with the right, that I

00:44:12.180 think that's part of what keeps us from speaking out in a general sense.

00:44:15.720 In addition to our employers, you know, being afraid we're going to lose our jobs.

00:44:20.580 But no, it didn't help with Smith.

00:44:23.040 That's so interesting.

00:44:24.000 Right.

00:44:24.240 They don't want to be associated with the right.

00:44:25.900 And certainly in the Trump era.

00:44:27.560 Oh, gosh.

00:44:28.360 That term meant something most liberals did not want to adopt.

00:44:32.100 I mean, we've talked a lot on this program about how there's no amount of wokeness that's

00:44:36.200 sufficient for the woke.

00:44:37.620 So being liberal doesn't do it. 0.79

00:44:38.820 Being gay doesn't do it. 0.63

00:44:39.900 Being, you know, even being a person of color doesn't do it.

00:44:42.440 You have to subscribe to everything, everything and be on the right side on every issue in

00:44:47.520 case where you get sort of kicked out of the cool kids group.

00:44:50.900 What happened after you released it?

00:44:52.680 Because I know you said you've been speaking with other staff.

00:44:54.920 What happened in your life, in your world?

00:44:57.300 It's interesting.

00:44:58.020 Um, you know, I didn't know if two people would watch it and that would be it.

00:45:02.120 Or if, you know, thousands of people would watch it.

00:45:04.740 And it was, it was the latter.

00:45:06.200 Um, I, all of it's, it's interesting what happened at Smith because, you know, we're all

00:45:12.000 remote at this point.

00:45:13.300 All of the people I had spoken to regularly about this kind of thing, you know, kind of

00:45:19.100 whispering on the side, being careful, no, you know, closed doors.

00:45:22.740 Um, and P other people, this really bothered also, um, and said, well, we should do something,

00:45:29.360 but nobody, nobody, everybody's afraid of losing their job.

00:45:31.940 And so I did something and then none of those people are in contact with me now, except for

00:45:40.720 one, one person texted me and said, good job.

00:45:43.520 No way.

00:45:46.280 They, they all made very clear.

00:45:49.420 I remember texting one and she made very clear.

00:45:52.320 She did not want to be associated with me anymore.

00:45:55.720 Um, and I, I kind of understand that because it's kind of like guilt by association.

00:46:00.120 Like they know other people have seen us together before.

00:46:03.820 And now, my gosh, like I have to, like people are going to know that I'm, I'm speaking with

00:46:10.200 Jodi and I don't want that association anymore.

00:46:12.420 I mean, there is real terror.

00:46:14.700 There is terror.

00:46:15.940 But on the other hand, a lot of Smith staff and faculty have reached out to me, you know,

00:46:22.440 on the down low and we are now in touch and I'm now in communications.

00:46:28.900 I will say there is still, there are only few who, who will put their name on it.

00:46:34.920 Um, it is, it is a high terror situation, which is very concerning to me because if we are

00:46:42.020 already at that level, I'm very concerned if this keeps going, like if we're already

00:46:47.580 at a level where we can't say anything, then it, how is this going to progress?

00:46:52.960 Like what, where, where does this go next?

00:46:55.500 Like, what is the next step of this?

00:46:58.400 The first step is you might lose your job.

00:47:00.700 What if this keeps going?

00:47:02.980 That's why it was so bold.

00:47:04.120 What you did is so bold.

00:47:05.560 No, nobody does this.

00:47:06.780 They're afraid.

00:47:07.520 And for good reason, they need their jobs.

00:47:09.700 And I think you accurately read Smith's mood and understood you are taking a big risk.

00:47:16.960 It's the same reason parents don't speak out about what's happening in the schools right

00:47:20.060 now.

00:47:20.300 They don't want to hurt their child's future.

00:47:23.200 They don't want to hurt his chances of getting into a good college or getting or being well

00:47:28.080 liked at a school that leans hard left on identity politics.

00:47:32.080 Um, the students are praised for being little social justice warriors, and that's what gets

00:47:37.080 results at the university campuses too.

00:47:39.700 So all those fears are totally understandable and underscore the courage it took to do this.

00:47:47.340 The, the spike the ball moment of this video, and you know, I used to practice law.

00:47:53.180 So for me, I was like, oh my God, I love her, was the warning about how they could not fire

00:47:59.020 you for this.

00:48:01.120 Organizing in the workplace to improve working conditions is protected under federal law.

00:48:06.380 So staff talking is protected.

00:48:08.580 Boom.

00:48:09.100 I was like, um, I might need to marry Jodi Shaw in my next life and teach Smith a lesson. 0.99

00:48:17.140 How did, did you consult a lawyer?

00:48:18.680 Like, how did you understand all that?

00:48:20.840 Reading a lot.

00:48:21.980 And, and, you know, and when I was thinking, oh, it might come to making a video, it really

00:48:26.940 might come to, you know, the whole time I'm thinking, you know, this might come to me having

00:48:30.920 to do that.

00:48:31.420 So I had to think very carefully about how to do it in a way that would be most protective

00:48:37.900 of myself.

00:48:38.360 It's no guarantee.

00:48:39.460 Um, and so when I found that, that actually made me realize I could speak about more than

00:48:45.640 just race, really.

00:48:46.900 If we're talking about working conditions, that kind of opens up the field for what I can

00:48:51.440 really speak about.

00:48:53.480 Um, I am now they, they, I am under investigation now.

00:48:59.020 However, I'm not, I'm on a leave.

00:49:01.140 They, they did put me on a leave and I am under investigation, but I have not been terminated.

00:49:06.420 So this is so crazy, this piece of the story.

00:49:08.720 So I want to get to that.

00:49:09.980 But so, uh, the university president, Kathleen McCartney did respond two days later and basically

00:49:16.920 said she doesn't speak for this college or, or any part of the college.

00:49:20.580 And the video mischaracterizes our important ongoing efforts to build a more equitable

00:49:25.120 and inclusive living, learning and working.

00:49:27.240 But she's got all the buzz terms. 0.97

00:49:28.240 She knows exactly what to say and who she's appealing to.

00:49:30.480 Then she says the national labor relations act protects employees who engage in concerted

00:49:35.380 activities, including speech with respect to workplace conditions.

00:49:38.640 All employees have the freedom to criticize the policies and practices of their employer.

00:49:43.000 Nevertheless, I'm ready to affirm that the president's cabinet and I believe we have a

00:49:46.500 moral responsibility to promote racial justice, equity, and inclusion at Smith to people of

00:49:50.740 color in our community.

00:49:51.560 Please know our commitment is steadfast.

00:49:53.400 And you took that message as what, what was she saying?

00:49:58.260 Oh, well, I mean, to me, it was quite clearly like letting everyone know because by then we

00:50:04.680 were getting emails, like, please fire Joe, I think we were getting email, please fire

00:50:08.380 Jody Shaw.

00:50:10.180 That, you know, we would fire her, but we can't because of law. 0.97

00:50:16.220 I read it the same.

00:50:17.500 Right. 0.99

00:50:18.280 Like rest assured she would definitely be gone by now, but totally was like, fucking hate 0.98

00:50:24.820 Jody, but I know I can't fire her. 0.96

00:50:28.000 The part though about the, um, uh, she does not speak for any part of the college that really

00:50:32.940 kind of was like, Ooh, you know, like, am I not part of the college?

00:50:37.020 Yeah.

00:50:37.180 And she's wrong.

00:50:38.160 I mean, you, she hasn't been talking to the people that you've been talking to and what's

00:50:42.300 happened is she's created an environment there in which I think it's a silent majority,

00:50:47.780 but let's say it's a silent minority of people who share your view are terrified to be open

00:50:54.200 about the fact that they agree with you.

00:50:56.040 She needs to pause and consider that what have you done to make people who do feel as

00:51:03.120 Jody feels comfortable with expressing a divergent viewpoint.

00:51:09.420 I agree, Megan.

00:51:10.380 I mean, I, that would be the healthy, uh, thing to do, but I think, I think this fear, this

00:51:18.400 terror, I think it goes all the way up to the top.

00:51:20.900 And I think that, uh, you know, it would behoove the administration to do a little self-reflection

00:51:29.700 and consider why, why they are this afraid that that feels like fear to me.

00:51:36.060 These are fear-based responses, reactions, they're fear-based reactions.

00:51:40.380 And that maybe that's indicative of a hostile work environment and, um, that, that they themselves

00:51:47.720 feel such fear.

00:51:49.060 I I'm speculating about.

00:51:50.900 But I believe that fear goes all the way up to the top.

00:51:53.400 I think there's a lot of good point.

00:51:55.160 It's a good point.

00:51:55.960 I think here in the New York city school systems, it's not exactly the heads of school in some

00:52:00.500 instances it is, but it's the boards, the, the boards pressure them to be on sort of the

00:52:06.040 right side.

00:52:07.160 And then there's one, only one answer.

00:52:09.020 And that's being driven to by these very angry student letters.

00:52:11.860 I mean, here in New York, we had the, I know it happened in a lot of places, but you get

00:52:16.680 the sort of black at this school black at that school in the wake of George Floyd and an alleged

00:52:23.240 incidents of racism would be raised.

00:52:25.120 Some of which were horrible.

00:52:27.280 And you'd say, Jesus, you know, my God, look back at whenever it took place.

00:52:31.620 And invariably it was a long time ago, but you know, you'd be horrified.

00:52:35.320 But there were more incidents of when I went there every day in middle school, I sat alone

00:52:41.860 at the lunch table by myself.

00:52:44.020 And I really, I looked at all of that thinking, okay, so that's called middle school.

00:52:48.620 We, we all have that.

00:52:50.540 Like, and that's one of the disadvantages of having to litigate these things 20 years, 15

00:52:55.640 years, 10 years after the fact, there's no way of knowing why people weren't sitting with

00:52:59.400 you at the middle school table at this point.

00:53:01.060 It's like the Christine Blasey Ford thing, like 30 years after the fact, we're never going

00:53:04.940 to have real answers on this because the passage of time makes it very difficult to find evidence

00:53:11.460 one way or the other.

00:53:12.620 And that's why we don't, that's why there are statues of limitations on allegations in

00:53:17.120 the criminal world.

00:53:18.180 Anyway, all of it sort of plays together.

00:53:19.620 But can we just, I do want to get to what I think was clearly their retaliation against

00:53:25.120 you.

00:53:26.900 They decided that you had to be placed on administrative leave.

00:53:32.460 Why?

00:53:33.220 When and why?

00:53:34.940 Uh, so it was right after Thanksgiving, um, ah, so a month later.

00:53:40.980 Yeah.

00:53:41.500 Month later.

00:53:42.200 Yeah.

00:53:42.520 Month later I showed up and there was a meeting on my account.

00:53:44.780 You know, I showed up, I opened my computer and I'm on a half furlough by this point.

00:53:48.920 I've been for halftime furloughed.

00:53:51.300 So I showed up and there was a meeting with, um, an HR rep and a Dean from my division.

00:53:56.400 And I had kind of been expecting this meeting, uh, because I was supposed to meet with them

00:54:01.440 all that month and it kept getting pushed off about, about something else.

00:54:05.660 So I showed up and the first few sentences that came out of the Dean's mouth, I knew this

00:54:11.760 was not the meeting.

00:54:12.600 I thought it was, um, she told me that your colleagues have been, uh, your, your actions

00:54:19.540 have had a negative impact on your colleagues and they feel harmed by your behavior.

00:54:23.540 That's how she started the meeting.

00:54:27.420 And then the HR rep took over and made several allegations in a very hostile tone.

00:54:34.280 And that's what I took away from the meeting.

00:54:35.780 It felt, I took me about three weeks to really get over that meeting.

00:54:39.600 It was, it was so hostile, several different allegations.

00:54:43.760 Like there was a tweet you made that was disparaging about the college and you're not allowed to

00:54:48.020 do that because it wasn't about your job.

00:54:50.020 So it's not protected by the NLRA.

00:54:51.880 And, you know, I pointed out how it was connected to my job.

00:54:55.420 Um, she said, I made a statement about the affinity houses.

00:55:00.020 We have two affinity houses on campus for, uh, one for black students, one for students

00:55:04.120 of color and wanted to know how I could continue to support those students.

00:55:08.300 I don't recall ever making a statement about the affinity houses, but I assured her I could 0.99

00:55:12.820 continue to support the students in those houses.

00:55:15.940 Um, and then the final thing was you forwarded a bunch of emails to your home account.

00:55:21.880 From the departmental account.

00:55:24.160 Now the departmental account, you know, a bunch of people have access to it.

00:55:28.120 Um, we were getting, you know, a whole spate of angry letters from mostly alums saying,

00:55:34.340 please denounce Jody Shaw. 0.67

00:55:36.260 She, Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist.

00:55:39.020 And she talked to Tucker Carlson there. 0.65

00:55:41.100 Ergo, you need to denounce her.

00:55:44.260 Um, please terminate her that those kinds of emails. 0.98

00:55:47.880 And so I was, I was forwarding them to myself.

00:55:50.020 They were about me.

00:55:51.220 And she said, why did you do that?

00:55:52.920 Why did you forward those emails to yourself?

00:55:54.400 And I said, well, I have a potential legal action against Smith college.

00:55:58.560 So I'm collecting documents.

00:56:00.380 And then she said, well, one of the emails contains student information.

00:56:03.440 And I didn't know which email she was referring to.

00:56:07.300 So I asked her, you know, can you tell me which email it is?

00:56:10.020 And she said, you should know you forwarded it to yourself.

00:56:12.580 So I did go, I did go home.

00:56:14.680 I go home.

00:56:15.420 I was at home.

00:56:16.160 I checked the email and there, there was reference to a student from a third party in an email.

00:56:21.060 Um, but I assured her, you know, she said, you, that's a via, that's a privacy, a violation of FERPA.

00:56:29.300 Um, it's a privacy, privacy policy violation.

00:56:32.600 And I assured her, you know, it's, it's not because I had not, I've not shared those emails with anyone else.

00:56:37.540 No third party has seen those emails.

00:56:39.980 Um, and she seemed a little taken aback by that.

00:56:42.840 Um, I guess she hadn't thought of that, but in the end, I was not under investigation for any of those things.

00:56:48.500 It was just that one email.

00:56:50.800 And so they said they needed to conduct an impact assessment investigation into that one email.

00:56:56.020 The fact that I had forwarded it to my home account.

00:56:59.840 And so, yeah, clearly it's pretextual.

00:57:03.880 It's clearly pretextual.

00:57:05.640 This is so obvious.

00:57:06.700 I would love for this to wind up in front of a jury somehow.

00:57:10.060 I would too.

00:57:12.100 So, so I want to ask you what your next move is.

00:57:15.180 You're on administrative leave as they investigate this.

00:57:17.660 Um, so you're still getting paid, but if they like, what, what's, what's your next move?

00:57:24.680 If they, if they fire you, I assume you're going to sue them.

00:57:29.120 Well, yeah.

00:57:29.520 If they refire me, that's retaliation. 0.67

00:57:31.520 I am exploring my options, Megan.

00:57:36.560 Good.

00:57:37.360 You have a lawyer.

00:57:38.160 You have a good lawyer.

00:57:39.220 I do have a lawyer.

00:57:40.380 I have a good lawyer and, um, there's, yeah, I'm, I'm looking into it.

00:57:49.940 So can I ask you, cause you asked, or you mentioned you don't make a lot of money in

00:57:55.260 your job at Smith college.

00:57:57.440 Um, I read that you're a single mom.

00:57:59.840 Is that true?

00:58:01.400 Yes.

00:58:02.340 I mean, I, yes, I I'm divorced.

00:58:05.660 Okay.

00:58:06.260 So you've got a child, you've got to support your child.

00:58:09.260 You've got to support yourself.

00:58:10.780 You did not have a tenured position.

00:58:13.560 So if they fire you, what's the plan to pay the bills?

00:58:17.440 Well, I am going to be working in, I'm going to be doing maintenance.

00:58:25.240 I'm going to be painting sheds and removing snow and learning a trade.

00:58:33.500 Basically, uh, I'm going to be working with somebody who does, um, you know, he's a carpenter

00:58:38.740 going to kind of be his little apprentice and learning how to do maintenance.

00:58:44.480 Um, because I kind of think, uh, that might be the, uh, a woke proof area working where

00:58:54.760 I just, I, I, you know, it will be another pay cut, but it will pay the bills and I won't

00:59:03.820 have to, you know, I can, my mind can be my own.

00:59:07.160 Let's put it that way.

00:59:08.040 I can think of the thoughts that I want to think while I'm working and I can do my job

00:59:12.400 and feel good about having done my job and go home.

00:59:15.340 And that's really all I ever really wanted was just to be able to do my job and, and feel

00:59:21.680 good about what I was doing and then go home.

00:59:25.400 My mind can be my own.

00:59:27.500 I can think my own thoughts while I'm working.

00:59:30.280 This is absurd.

00:59:31.740 We have crossed over to the point of absurdity.

00:59:34.660 So with all of that, right, with, you know, you're going to be shoveling the snow and you've

00:59:39.940 got a single, you've got a, you've got a kid to support and, and you don't have a financial

00:59:44.680 partner to support you at this point.

00:59:46.600 I have a partner.

00:59:48.040 Oh, good.

00:59:48.720 Okay.

00:59:49.460 Yeah.

00:59:50.480 Yeah.

00:59:51.060 But are they supporting you financially?

00:59:52.840 Cause that would be helpful.

00:59:56.500 Yeah, that would be helpful.

00:59:57.760 Um, so why, so aside from improving working conditions at Smith college, why, why do this?

01:00:07.280 Why put your neck on the chopping block and was it worth it?

01:00:13.240 Uh, because I have, I actually have two kids.

01:00:16.200 It's really for them.

01:00:18.100 I don't think I would be doing this if it wasn't for them.

01:00:21.720 Um, because I'm very, very worried, Megan.

01:00:25.560 I'm very worried.

01:00:26.760 I, I do know a little bit about history.

01:00:31.620 I, I see something forming that seems dangerous to me.

01:00:37.460 Um, and I, I have two white boys, you know, and I want them to know that who they are is

01:00:46.520 more important than, than what they're, what they look like.

01:00:49.440 And I want them to grow up in a world that, you know, rewards their, their hard work and, and not

01:00:57.400 what they look like.

01:00:59.040 So it's, it's really for them for their future.

01:01:02.300 Um, and also something that a lot of people don't know is as I, I am a songwriter, you know,

01:01:07.740 I'm an artist and there's that too.

01:01:10.180 I, I see a very dark future for the arts.

01:01:14.040 If we can't establish that there is a human, a universal human condition really is, is what

01:01:20.520 I think is, we're losing that.

01:01:23.320 Um, and that's a whole nother discussion, but really it's, it's for my children.

01:01:27.380 And was it worth it?

01:01:29.480 Uh, yes, I would say the, the relief that I feel in coming out and being honest.

01:01:36.720 So anybody else thinking about doing this, the practical matters are serious conditions,

01:01:44.400 serious things that you have to consider, serious considerations, but the relief I feel

01:01:51.260 at telling the truth and being out of the closet, so to speak, is immense.

01:01:56.060 I feel like the relationship, I lost relationships, but I have gained so many connections now with

01:02:03.040 people that are authentic and real, and I can speak openly.

01:02:08.800 I, I forgot what it felt like, to be honest with you.

01:02:12.080 It just feels such a relief.

01:02:14.940 It's such a relief.

01:02:15.860 So yes, at this point, I could say it's worth it.

01:02:18.940 I don't know how I'll feel a year from now, but definitely.

01:02:22.240 There's real activism starting in this space with people like our,

01:02:26.060 next guest, Chris, starting to fight back and organizing legal groups and so on to push

01:02:31.280 back on this awfulness and whatever happens at Smith.

01:02:35.140 I, I think for whatever it's worth, you should become a part of that.

01:02:39.100 You're such an effective communicator.

01:02:41.520 You have such a gentle way of expressing yourself, but it's like my friend Janice Dean.

01:02:45.840 I always joke that she wrote this book called Mostly Sunny, but, and she is mostly sunny until

01:02:51.280 she looks like the slasher and psycho with the big butcher knife slashing at you. 1.00

01:02:55.580 So like, if you get on the wrong side, like Governor Cuomo did, she knows how to, she knows 0.99

01:03:00.080 how to defend herself.

01:03:01.140 And that, you kind of remind me of her in that way.

01:03:04.260 And I think you should use your powers to continue to use your powers to help others and maybe

01:03:09.920 do a podcast.

01:03:10.620 But I, I kind of hope you do separate from Smith because I don't think you belong there.

01:03:15.580 And, um, I bet you the next chapter is going to be the best one yet.

01:03:19.360 Thank you, Megan.

01:03:20.040 I, I do.

01:03:21.080 I didn't mention that, but I, I do have aspirations in those areas.

01:03:25.000 Yes.

01:03:25.540 Good.

01:03:26.200 Well, I will help you however I can.

01:03:28.440 And I think I speak for my audience and I say, we're rooting for you.

01:03:31.360 All the best.

01:03:32.260 Thank you for your courage.

01:03:33.860 Thank you so much, Megan.

01:03:36.640 I know what's going to make you happy.

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01:04:42.660 And now before we get to Chris, we are going to do a feature that we call Asked and Answered here in the Megan Kelly Show where our executive producer, Steve Krakauer, swings by with some questions that the viewers or the listeners want to know.

01:05:04.160 So what do we have today, Steve?

01:05:05.560 Hey, Megan.

01:05:05.940 Yeah, this one came to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.

01:05:10.500 We're getting a lot of great ones in there so everyone can keep them coming or just send it to our social media accounts at Megan Kelly Show.

01:05:16.840 But today's sort of a personal one.

01:05:18.520 This one comes from Lynette Kelly, and she wants to know what was absolutely required of you when you were growing up and also what are the non-negotiable expectations you have for your children?

01:05:29.700 We might be related and she's, you know, she's seeing if my my roles were the same as hers.

01:05:35.700 They probably were because all Kellys have a certain sensibility in my experience.

01:05:39.840 So there were certain that number one, non-negotiable in my family of origin and my current family, my nuclear family now is a sense of humor, like the ability to laugh at yourself and definitely at others, too.

01:05:52.800 It's fun to laugh at others, you know, when they're not around.

01:05:55.280 You don't want to laugh right in their face.

01:05:56.800 But like if one of us tripped, oh, my God, we'd be merciless with one another.

01:06:00.680 I saw that I can't like if I'm walking down the street now and I trip, I'm like, oh, God, did they see it?

01:06:05.960 Because I know I'm going to get it.

01:06:07.400 My family is going to gang up on me, laugh, and it makes me laugh.

01:06:10.260 I love it.

01:06:11.160 And if you can't laugh at yourself, good God, you're going to have a difficult time in this world.

01:06:14.900 So also, I have really unattractive toes.

01:06:17.540 They're super long.

01:06:18.440 They're like fingers.

01:06:19.500 My toes are like fingers.

01:06:21.100 And my family was merciless to me about them growing up.

01:06:25.660 And we laughed.

01:06:26.780 You know, you got to like build in a little bit of a thick skin on your kids because life's going to throw a lot harder things at them than that.

01:06:32.300 And if you can practice laughing at yourself on small matters or, you know, long spidery toe matters, I think it sets you up well for life.

01:06:40.800 The other thing is my mom, she was always there with emotional support.

01:06:44.040 My mom is she's a psychiatric nurse, so she understands emotional support.

01:06:48.120 But she shored us up so that we could do it for ourselves.

01:06:51.420 And she never swooped in to save us when we screwed something up.

01:06:54.280 You know, she let us fall and get ourselves back up.

01:06:56.980 She used to have a sign on our kitchen cupboard that read, lack of planning on your part does not justify an emergency on my part.

01:07:04.800 And man, did we live that.

01:07:06.860 I remember somebody wrote into the Kelly file, a stranger to me who had worked with my mom at the Albany Veterans Hospital for years.

01:07:13.880 That's where she was a nurse. 1.00

01:07:15.120 And he told a story unsolicited about how he remembered a day he was talking to my mother in her office.

01:07:21.420 She got a call from me saying, I forgot my homework at home.

01:07:25.340 You know, I was in high school.

01:07:26.080 I'm like, I need it.

01:07:27.380 I'm going to get in trouble with this teacher.

01:07:28.620 It was due today.

01:07:30.000 And asking my mom.

01:07:31.880 Now I laughed at the thought that my mom would have done this, like that the 50-year-old me knows exactly what would have happened.

01:07:39.080 But the 16-year-old me was confused.

01:07:41.500 And I asked my mom to go back to leave her job, go to my house, get the homework assignment and bring it to me at the high school. 0.86

01:07:46.160 And he remembered her laughing.

01:07:47.620 The absurdity of that.

01:07:49.560 In no world was my mother going to do that. 1.00

01:07:52.360 And it wasn't because she didn't care about my grades.

01:07:54.780 It was because she cared more about my character than this particular grade or assignment.

01:07:59.640 And the message she was trying to send was personal responsibility.

01:08:03.720 You know, and again, lack of planning on your part does not justify an emergency on my part.

01:08:07.540 And I'll tell you what, I didn't forget my homework ever again.

01:08:11.780 It only takes a few of those moments for you to learn the lesson.

01:08:14.700 And a little tough love goes a long way.

01:08:18.240 We do it now for our kids, too.

01:08:19.780 And it does work.

01:08:21.620 Just a little goes a long way.

01:08:23.960 So maybe that's been your experience, too, Lynette, as a fellow Kelly.

01:08:28.500 If not, I recommend it.

01:08:30.680 And thanks for asking.

01:08:32.080 Chris Ruffo, thank you so much for being here.

01:08:39.700 It's good to be with you.

01:08:40.780 Since many of our listeners won't know what your background is, can you just tell us, like, because you're you've become this sort of warrior against this critical race theory and this crazy racist teaching that's getting shoved down the throats of our American school kids, of corporate America employees.

01:08:57.780 Sort of everywhere we look and you've been sounding the alarm on this like nobody else, you and Jody.

01:09:03.660 So what's your background?

01:09:05.060 Sort of how did you get to this point of activist on this issue?

01:09:09.400 Yeah, it's it's kind of a backwards, backwards leaning story.

01:09:13.480 But, you know, I spent the first 10 plus years of my career directing documentaries primarily for PBS.

01:09:18.480 And I was probably a kind of center left person 10, 15 years ago and and slowly saw some of these theories creeping into the documentary world, the art world.

01:09:29.920 And then as I shifted to do more politics and reporting, it kind of bit back in this really extraordinary way where all of a sudden, within kind of months of the death of George Floyd, it seemed like these critical race theory based programs and were everywhere in every institution and every corporation and every workplace.

01:09:51.880 And I stumbled into reporting on it really through chance, a source at the city of Seattle sent me some documents and said, hey, you should really look at what the Seattle Office of Civil Rights is doing.

01:10:04.740 And so I filed a records request.

01:10:06.280 I forgot about it for about a month and I finally got it back.

01:10:09.120 And the documents that I found were absolutely astonishing.

01:10:12.580 I mean, they were teaching as a kind of entry level employee training for white employees.

01:10:18.420 They were segregating them by race.

01:10:20.340 They were telling them that they had internalized white supremacy, that they needed to denounce their own kind of inborn characteristics and and join essentially a kind of cult of anti-racism.

01:10:31.980 And as soon as I broke that story, the floodgates opened and I started getting first tens and dozens and then hundreds of people all across the country telling me exactly what was happening in their institutions.

01:10:44.900 Right. It was their own me to me to me to me to. 0.90

01:10:47.960 We've seen it here in New York.

01:10:49.600 I mean, in all the schools for sure.

01:10:51.780 But it reminds me of a couple of years ago when there was this one school in particular that made the news because they were doing this when it came to gender.

01:11:00.400 They were separating the little boys and the little girls and having the girls write down the list of grievances that not they, but women have against men and then shouting, shouting at the boys for perpetuating this unequal system.

01:11:15.560 And like even at that far left school, parents were pulling their kids after that, like, hell no.

01:11:21.200 You know, like this is too much.

01:11:23.180 It's not even liberal conservative. 0.80

01:11:25.160 It's sane and insane. 0.98

01:11:27.240 You know, I I don't this is not anti black. 0.96

01:11:30.420 This is.

01:11:30.900 And that other thing was not anti girls rights.

01:11:33.800 It's it's sane and insane.

01:11:36.760 Yeah, I think that's right.

01:11:38.300 And what we're seeing is a really interesting political realignment where old line liberals or kind of New Deal liberals or kind of Clinton style liberals are really caught in this place where they're trying to figure out where they find a home.

01:11:52.640 And, you know, I'm at this point firmly in the kind of conservative camp, but, you know, I've really tried to open my arms and welcome in people on the center and center left who are really kind of revolted by this people who, you know, believed in the civil rights laws, believed in equality under the law, believed in individual protection of individual rights.

01:12:13.000 Those are really all under assault by the very far left that have taken identity issues and tried to really look at the foundations of our society and really try to shift them.

01:12:25.880 And the schools is a good point.

01:12:27.400 I broke a story recently in Cupertino, California, very similarly to what you're talking about, where the teacher basically said every student, you have to break down and deconstruct your identity.

01:12:37.680 Now, these are eight and nine year olds, third graders, deconstruct your racial identity or sexual identity, create an identity map, and then we're going to divide you on a kind of ranking of power and privilege.

01:12:50.980 So separating a classroom full of eight and nine year olds into the oppressors and the oppressed.

01:12:56.300 And, I mean, it's absolutely crazy.

01:13:00.200 And unfortunately, we're in a cultural moment where it's actually scary for a lot of people to call out something that is really just blatantly wrong, totally inappropriate.

01:13:11.600 But people are so scared of being denounced on these racial and cultural issues.

01:13:16.300 In a lot of cases, they remain silent.

01:13:19.320 Yep.

01:13:19.660 Because it's happening again.

01:13:20.820 I mentioned gender, but it happens with the trans issue, too.

01:13:23.260 So the sort of messaging on on trans boys and girls is shoved down your throat like there are way more than two sexes.

01:13:31.740 There could be hundreds.

01:13:33.160 And if you push back, it's, you know, you're transphobe.

01:13:36.640 And so parents are having this shoved on their kids.

01:13:38.740 And many departments we're going to get into critical race theory with you because you've taken a hard look at that and gotten a lot of reporting on it.

01:13:45.440 But just keep in mind for the audience at home, this is happening on many different cultural fronts, all of which are deeply problematic.

01:13:51.840 This is social experimentation on, as you point out, kids who are eight.

01:13:57.620 Right.

01:13:57.880 And the Cupertino article that you wrote, I saw that.

01:14:01.340 And you had written that students were told these are little ones told that they live in a dominant culture of white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able bodied, Christian, English speakers who created and maintained this culture in order to hold power and stay in power.

01:14:14.960 And you point out, this is a well-off school district.

01:14:20.340 No one is oppressed there.

01:14:22.420 And the parents in that particular case are mad about what happened.

01:14:26.920 Yeah, they were outraged.

01:14:28.140 And the kind of wrinkle in this story and really the kind of wrinkle in our identity politics that's emerging, especially here on the West Coast, is that the parents who mobilized against this program were Chinese-American.

01:14:40.700 It was a group of about a half dozen Chinese-American parents.

01:14:43.840 They banded together.

01:14:45.180 They demanded a meeting with the principal and they shut it down.

01:14:48.020 And I think this is really significant for two reasons.

01:14:50.920 One is that, you know, Asian-Americans, it's very difficult to call them white supremacists.

01:14:56.840 I mean, it really doesn't make any sense.

01:14:58.580 So they don't have that kind of fear of being denounced on those terms.

01:15:03.440 So they can act kind of more directly, more bluntly.

01:15:07.000 But two, you look at the kind of racial composition of our institutions, of universities, of kind of testing.

01:15:17.360 And Asian-Americans are going to be the biggest losers of this kind of new race-based apportionment of power and privilege. 0.99

01:15:26.400 So we're moving away from a kind of system of individual merit determines your opportunities, individual achievement towards a kind of group-based and identity-based distribution of power and resources.

01:15:38.560 And Asian-Americans are looking at the numbers and they're saying, we are right now an overrepresented in college admissions and in certain high prestige fields, especially in the math and sciences.

01:15:51.680 And they're looking at this not only for their own self-interest, but some of the Chinese-American parents at that school and frankly, in other places or in the Seattle area where I live, they say, hey, we've seen this playbook before.

01:16:05.240 When you try to deconstruct identity, pit group against group, come up with these kind of really aggressive kind of strategies of cultural change, this is straight out of the cultural revolution.

01:16:19.920 And some of these parents told me, we fled China to get away from this.

01:16:25.280 And now we're finding ourselves seeing it here in America.

01:16:28.640 And that's why they're standing up against it.

01:16:30.480 Right. And the Chinese education experience has been studied and discussed by a lot of scholars.

01:16:37.460 But it is interesting because there is a culture of academic achievement and it doesn't matter whether you come from a very rich family or a very poor family.

01:16:46.620 There is a culture of working hard and getting good grades and that that's prized.

01:16:51.400 And so they're not in favor of, as you wrote about the San Diego Unified School District, abolishing homework deadlines.

01:16:59.300 And some other schools are getting rid of grades, getting rid of the SATs, getting rid of anything that would reward that kind of hard work and hours and hours of grit that they they would like to be rewarded for the amount of effort they are willing to put into their academic careers.

01:17:15.800 Yeah, that's exactly right. And I mean, ultimately, right, no matter what systems that we create, there's really no substitute for hard work, for achievement, for excellence.

01:17:26.020 And, you know, even in my own household, you know, my wife is Thai American. 0.95

01:17:29.220 She grew up in a slum in Thailand, very poor.

01:17:32.620 Her mother was able to flee, come to the United States and had a difficult time really growing up in poverty. 0.98

01:17:38.540 But her mother drilled into her head, study hard, work hard, learn English, you know, go to college, do all of these steps, because this is a place of enormous opportunity.

01:17:50.560 And, you know, you escaped some system that was really rigged against all people into this new system.

01:17:58.000 And, you know, my wife was able to excel.

01:17:59.940 And I see it even at home with our kids, you know, our our oldest child, who's 10, came home with a B plus.

01:18:05.860 And my wife was furious. She's like, B plus is not good enough.

01:18:09.520 We're going to have to do an extra hour of homework every night with mom.

01:18:12.860 We're going to have to push, push, push. We know that you can do better.

01:18:16.320 And I think that, you know, that small experience is indicative of even the academic literature that shows that Asian Americans consistently put in more hours of studying than any other group and consequently have really good outcomes.

01:18:31.540 And I think the solution isn't really to do what we're doing now, which is basically saying, get rid of homework, get rid of the requirement to show up on time, get rid of standardized tests, really try to basically eliminate anything that could distinguish people based on academic achievement.

01:18:48.280 And just lump people into these really kind of kind of crude, chromatized kind of skin color based groupings, but actually figure out, hey, what are the students that are doing most successful doing?

01:19:01.180 And this goes for all categories. What are successful white and black and Asian and Native American students doing?

01:19:07.160 And how can we replicate what's happening with those students more broadly to try to rather than lower the bar?

01:19:13.920 We want to lift the floor. But that's really hard to do. And a lot of these ideologues have no interest in doing it.

01:19:21.020 Just to pick up on a point you just made, you talked about some of the quote training, diversity training that was being done at the Department of Homeland Security.

01:19:28.420 And one of the terms you were just basically discussing, which is merit, right, meritocracy and working hard, right, and believing that this is a land of opportunity that was specifically derided by the DHS diversity trainers as as racist as they say.

01:19:46.200 I took notes from your article that whites have been fed a racial curriculum based on falsehoods, unwarranted fears, and they believe in their own white superiority, that they've been socialized into oppressor roles and that there is a myth of meritocracy and statements like anyone can succeed here if they work hard enough and the most qualified person should get the job.

01:20:08.860 Those statements are racist and they're harmful. They're code for people of color are lazy or incompetent, need to work harder. 0.94

01:20:15.140 Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty common meme or a pretty common idea in the social justice circles and in trainings all over the country, this idea that meritocracy is a form of white supremacy, this idea that punctuality is a form of white supremacy, objectivity even.

01:20:32.120 So any kind of abstract noun that we think of as a kind of value or a virtue, the critical race theorists argue that that's merely a camouflage for racial domination and oppression.

01:20:45.140 So all of these things that you think are neutral or in some cases good are actually under the surface bad because they enable a system of white supremacy, et cetera.

01:20:56.240 Another one is colorblindness. Colorblindness, the critical race theorists tell us, is actually racist because it, again, enables a system of discrimination and oppression under a kind of false pretense of equal protection.

01:21:10.440 So it's really a upside down world in a lot of ways. And I think the big problem is even people who mouth this stuff, right, the people in the training sessions and the diversity trainers themselves, they say in kind of their language, oh, these things are all kind of white supremacist values.

01:21:30.060 They should be deconstructed. They should be deconstructed and denounced. But how many of them show up to work on time?

01:21:35.440 How many of them try to gain achievements and credentials and academic awards or prizes or publications?

01:21:44.360 How many of them function in a day to day basis as if objectivity is a kind of basis for rational decision making?

01:21:53.880 The answer is all of them. I mean, the thing that is so infuriating is that they will browbeat their opponents in the most vicious terms when their actual behavior reflects that they have internalized, adopted and even value those same structures.

01:22:12.100 And I think it's really up to us to call them out.

01:22:15.060 But at least they feel bad about it, right? They've got guilt over it.

01:22:18.300 Yeah. And it's just it's just a performance. That's the thing. It's like, you know, I've had a number of trainings, actually, even one that came into my email email box today.

01:22:27.160 The new thing now is to introduce yourself in a meeting, not only by your name, but actually introduce yourself by your race, your gender and your name.

01:22:37.500 So you're now basically in meetings and in in school districts and in government agencies where you say, hey, I'm I'm Chris.

01:22:45.620 I am. I'm a I'm a I'm a white male and my pronouns are he and him.

01:22:49.860 And it's like we do this kind of unconscious dance where we try to check all the boxes of what's polite and what you're supposed to do and what's expected to avoid, you know, the kind of blowback.

01:23:02.560 But, you know, does anyone really believe it? I'm not convinced that my God, it's it's absurd.

01:23:07.680 I this is this is what I'm going to say. Megyn Kelly, figure it out.

01:23:12.320 That's ridiculous. Yeah, it's absurd. 0.99

01:23:14.860 I know transgender people. I have transgender family members and they don't want to have to say pronouns.

01:23:20.480 The whole point in switching over and sort of living in the in the body and in the gender that they felt they were meant to be born with is to live in that gender. 0.86

01:23:30.340 And if they wanted more attention called to the fact that, you know, they had transitioned, then maybe they'd be in for they'd be in favor of this.

01:23:38.480 But if they're living life as a woman and they were born as a, you know, in the body identified as male, they don't want to have to run around saying pronouns all the time.

01:23:47.140 They just want you to call her her or she.

01:23:49.120 It's like there's a real split within the transgender community about this pronoun thing. 0.96

01:23:53.080 So there's you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. 0.98

01:23:55.560 And I mean, like saying your race, I can open your eyes. 0.94

01:24:00.680 It's absurd where we're going, prioritizing all the wrong things.

01:24:04.680 Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, you know, the answer is actually much more simple.

01:24:09.020 You know, they the the kind of social justice crowd is basically saying all of these things are kind of kind of kind of irredeemable evil.

01:24:18.920 We need to overthrow the very basic foundations of our society or in order to rectify them.

01:24:24.780 But the solution actually, in so many cases, is really simple.

01:24:28.280 It's basic courtesy.

01:24:30.120 It's recognizing people's individual dignity.

01:24:32.400 And if you come across someone, I don't know, this is what my practice is saying.

01:24:36.580 OK, this person is maybe transgender identifying as a woman.

01:24:41.160 And I just I just use that thing and then be very open to any feedback that's different.

01:24:46.420 Try to respect and honor people's choices.

01:24:49.420 And you don't necessarily need this kind of cultural revolution underneath.

01:24:53.060 But I'm pretty convinced at this point that a lot of these kind of games that are set up.

01:25:00.080 Right. These are really games that we're required to play.

01:25:02.640 These kind of loyalty tests or litmus tests to the cause are really just mechanisms.

01:25:08.300 They're not actually important in themselves to a lot of these people, but they're mechanisms for a broader pattern of cultural revolution.

01:25:16.520 And the old ideas that kind of failed, you know, century after century, kind of from, you know, the 1840s onward with with kind of Marxism and then centralized planning in the 20th century.

01:25:29.980 They kind of they're zombie ideas.

01:25:32.840 They never die.

01:25:33.700 You can't kill them.

01:25:34.980 And they come back in these reformulated ways.

01:25:37.220 And I think that in a small way, these little games that we play as a society are reflective of deeper currents of a political movement that wants, you know, revolution, that wants fundamental change.

01:25:50.140 Can we talk about that?

01:25:50.840 So let's go back and just talk about what critical race theory is.

01:25:53.460 I think a lot of people think they have a general idea, but don't really understand what is critical race theory.

01:25:58.740 Yeah, and critical race theory is a kind of academic movement that started really to kind of blossom in the 1990s and was really relegated to academia.

01:26:08.560 And the idea is that is to kind of use race as a lens through which to analyze society and basically saying analysis up to this point has discounted the importance of race.

01:26:21.040 We should really look at race, racial discrimination, racial oppression, and as at that point, I agree. 1.00

01:26:27.820 I think that's actually important.

01:26:29.200 So the kind of premise is correct. 0.65

01:26:31.100 But they take another step, which is to say that they make a kind of historical judgment and then a legal judgment and a cultural judgment that the United States is fundamentally and irredeemably racist and white supremacist.

01:26:47.200 And that all of our institutions, from the founding of the country to the current day, are merely kind of cover or smokescreens for racist oppression.

01:26:59.180 And the critical race theory is actually started out of law schools.

01:27:03.080 And their idea was that the fundamental rights that we have as Americans enshrined in the Constitution, articulated in the Declaration, are actually kind of perpetuators of evil.

01:27:15.840 And that we should essentially overthrow the constitutional order and end the kind of unfettered protection of speech, end individual rights as individuals, end private property, which is another form of discrimination, and then end kind of 14th Amendment protections that you're all treated equally under the law.

01:27:38.640 For the critical race theorists, these aren't actually signs of progress.

01:27:41.580 Even the Civil Rights Act, even the Civil Rights Act, even desegregating schools, they were very skeptical of this because they say it gives the appearance of progress, but actually doesn't change the fact that racism is as bad in 2021 as it was in 1814.

01:27:58.420 Oh, good God.

01:28:00.040 So I know it has its roots in cultural Marxism.

01:28:04.920 Are you able to explain what that means?

01:28:08.060 Yeah, I can explain it.

01:28:09.120 You know, everyone's on the left, people's heads explode when you say cultural Marxism, because they say that's not a real thing.

01:28:15.900 It's a made up kind of problem.

01:28:17.900 But this is how I describe it.

01:28:19.740 And I think it's accurate.

01:28:20.580 And people have been using the term cultural Marxism since the 1960s and 70s.

01:28:26.040 So it has a kind of lineage, but I would best describe it in this way.

01:28:30.640 In kind of old style Marxism from, you know, Karl Marx, based on kind of coming out of the work of Hegel, the idea was that there's a kind of dichotomy in society between the oppressor and the oppressed.

01:28:45.120 And in Marxist time, he thought that class analysis was really the most fundamentally important dynamic in society.

01:28:52.840 So there was a kind of bourgeoisie, so the owners of capital, the owners of factories, the owners of financial institutions.

01:28:59.860 And then there was the proletariat, the kind of downtrodden workers and laborers at the bottom.

01:29:06.540 And I mean, there's a certain truth to that, right?

01:29:09.660 But what they tried to do from Marxist time through the 20th century was we need to have a kind of communistic central planning system that overthrows the kind of capitalist domination.

01:29:23.080 And it didn't work out very well.

01:29:25.220 Actually, it led to, you know, more than 100 million deaths around the world.

01:29:30.560 Those systems collapsed.

01:29:31.940 And even in the states that are nominally communist, like China, they've abandoned that kind of economic system.

01:29:38.820 So in the 1960s, a group of philosophers and scholars called the Frankfurt School that eventually actually came, many came to the United States, said, hey, we know that the kind of Marxist revolution has failed.

01:29:52.640 They understood this by the 1960s.

01:29:54.640 So we have to find a new strategy to get to that revolutionary goal, to get to that goal of overthrowing the kind of European capitalist society.

01:30:04.280 And they said, what we need to do is now focus on identity and on race and to create a coalition of the dispossessed.

01:30:12.900 That's the kind of key framework.

01:30:14.260 And they got to work kind of putting together that ideology.

01:30:18.080 It was picked up and then modified and changed and adapted by the critical race theorists in the 1990s.

01:30:24.160 And then with an almost astonishing speed, after the death of George Floyd, these ideas that had been brewing for a half century were all of a sudden perpetuated in every corporate office and every government agency and in every school in the country.

01:30:38.820 It's something, you know, to their credit, they patiently developed and built and perpetuated this in academia until the time was right where it was just caught fire.

01:30:50.920 So what do they want?

01:30:52.220 What is the end goal?

01:30:53.560 They want to get rid of meritocracy.

01:30:55.300 They want to get rid of grades.

01:30:57.040 They they want to get rid of white privilege.

01:30:59.340 But like, what does the world look like in Ibram X.

01:31:03.620 Kendi's utopia?

01:31:05.880 Well, there's two answers.

01:31:08.160 I'll give you the kind of the broad answer.

01:31:10.400 And then I'll answer on Ibram X.

01:31:12.200 Kendi.

01:31:12.500 I have a paper coming out that describes exactly this world.

01:31:14.880 But the bigger picture is that when you ask folks, and I've asked this to a lot of people in my reporting, what do you want?

01:31:22.500 They never answer with a kind of positive.

01:31:25.020 They never answer with we want a society that looks like X, Y and Z, that institutions function in this way.

01:31:31.020 It's almost always a negative or a negation.

01:31:34.880 It's basically saying, well, we want to destroy capitalism.

01:31:37.680 We want to be anti-racist.

01:31:39.620 It always functions in what kind of philosophers call negation.

01:31:44.880 So denying, dismantling, deconstructing, interrupting all of those verbs that you hear in the language of social justice are all really fundamentally negative.

01:31:54.660 And from Marx onward, even Marx had this problem where Marx never really said, what does the great kind of socialist communist society look like?

01:32:03.220 His answer was very vague.

01:32:04.680 It basically said, well, we can't even understand how glorious this utopian future will be until we destroy the nightmare that we have today.

01:32:12.460 And the social justice folks, in many cases, operate on the same framework where they say, we have to destroy racism, patriarchy, capitalism, et cetera, et cetera.

01:32:24.740 And then out of the ashes, a kind of beautiful new world will emerge.

01:32:29.480 So that's one.

01:32:30.600 Second, Ibram Kendi is a bit more specific.

01:32:33.000 And it's frankly totalitarian.

01:32:35.180 He wrote a piece for Politico that said, we need to have a department of anti-racism that is permanently funded, staffed by unelected experts, theoretically appointed by people like Ibram Kendi.

01:32:48.040 And this department of anti-racism should be essentially a fourth branch of government that has the power, and this is in the article, anyone can read it, that has the power to nullify or void any law at any level of government in the United States, and also has the power to monitor the speech of policymakers, which would include, you know, you would assume journalists and think tanks, et cetera.

01:33:11.380 And essentially to shut down any speech that is not anti-racist.

01:33:17.240 So in this world, it would have a kind of omnipotent fourth branch of government that has total power to regulate speech and total power to control the law in every level of government in the United States.

01:33:32.120 I mean, if that's not a kind of authoritarian and totalitarian regime, and he publishes it in the pages of Politico and then wins the kind of praise of all of the kind of technocratic class from Twitter to academia to the media.

01:33:47.240 And it just it blows my mind that if you could get away, you know, get away with outlining something like that very bluntly and face not only no pushback, but get the kind of universal praise of America's elites.

01:34:03.340 Oh, I mean, Politico just had to melt down the staffers there because Ben Shapiro for one day edited the playbook like basically the website and its editorial for one day.

01:34:12.780 I didn't I don't remember any pushback when Ibram X. Kendi published these ideas on the site.

01:34:18.160 This is this is madness.

01:34:20.020 Instead, you've got David Remnick of The New Yorker out there saying, I love I love he's like a brother to me, Ibram X. Kendi, as he like.

01:34:27.420 Pushes ideas that are un-American, that is that really is cultural Marxism, that's actual Marxism.

01:34:34.340 And right now people are in such a cowed position that the only response we're hearing is, yes, more.

01:34:42.460 I I'm an ally and I submit. 0.95

01:34:45.600 And if you don't, you you get called anti-black, anti-person of color and a white supremacist.

01:34:53.080 Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say, though, like I get that a lot of people saying, oh, aren't you scared of being called this or that? 0.62

01:34:59.740 And it's like, well, you know, I've been called this and that.

01:35:02.580 And, you know, you survive, you move on.

01:35:04.720 And and people who actually can read your work and know your character, you know, will make a better judgment.

01:35:10.380 But we also live in this weird moment that I've seen pieces in academic articles and popular press where they're saying that logic is white supremacist, math is white supremacist, square dancing is white supremacist.

01:35:26.040 I've seen even that from a very well-known Black Lives Matter activist in Seattle that Barack Obama is a white supremacist.

01:35:32.760 I mean, we've defined white supremacy as essentially anything in this moment that people on the left don't like.

01:35:39.440 And I think it's doing, hopefully, over the kind of short and medium term, people will say, well, wait a minute.

01:35:46.400 If logic and objectivity are white supremacist, I mean, we've reached kind of beyond the point of absurd.

01:35:52.680 And this this epithet, which is really the worst thing that someone can call you in modern day America.

01:35:58.120 Right. It's a reputation destroyer.

01:36:01.820 If once it loses its meaning by overuse, it's kind of like the boy who cried wolf.

01:36:06.160 And I think we're getting close to that point where people are going to start saying, hey, wait a minute.

01:36:12.620 You know, the SATs aren't white supremacist showing up to work on time isn't white supremacist.

01:36:18.400 You know, the adults need to start putting their foot down and just saying, none of this.

01:36:23.100 Stop. It's too much.

01:36:24.980 Let's look out for people who are poor.

01:36:27.000 Let's look out for people who are suffering.

01:36:29.120 But this isn't helping anyone.

01:36:32.560 The other piece of it is I talked about this with Douglas Murray not long ago last week, which was what what a lot of these folks seem to want is not equality.

01:36:41.560 As they say, they want whites to be cowed and self-flagellating and in a permanent apologetic stance for sins that were committed hundreds of years ago.

01:36:55.500 And that like I've been saying all along, that is no way forward for the country.

01:37:00.920 It's the same thing these sort of radical feminists were doing to men when the Me Too movement exploded and then imploded. 1.00

01:37:08.500 Right. Like they went too far.

01:37:10.280 They they they just started to sweep up any man with any small transgression in their Hoover.

01:37:16.600 And then the movement lost all power because people just became afraid of them, started rolling their eyes at them and started to avoid them.

01:37:25.760 And I think that it's really cynical in a lot of ways where they're using race as this kind of emotional battering ram because they know that it's extremely effective at eliciting a response and getting results as far as practical political power.

01:37:42.280 But if you look at actually what does the world look like, I don't think it's saying, hey, we're going to voluntarily renounce our positions in the universities, step down from our positions on corporate boards and elevate elevate people in our place that reflect the kind of demographic preferences of our policy statements.

01:38:02.500 I think it's a political move and it's the left that is a multiracial left elite that is using the kind of, frankly, using black pain and suffering and historical trauma in order to advance their own agenda. 0.53

01:38:19.500 Again, that actually isn't isn't a kind of predominantly African-American agenda.

01:38:26.960 It's really a kind of predominantly left agenda that is.

01:38:30.780 Oh, yeah. I've said many times this isn't about white versus black.

01:38:34.940 This is about left versus right and not even because I think most of the left are with the right on this.

01:38:40.820 It's this crazy faction on the hard left, hard sort of radical left.

01:38:46.120 Right. I don't mean people who like Bernie Sanders economic policies.

01:38:49.980 I mean the radical left that's pursuing this crazy woke world that's unattainable and dangerous.

01:38:56.740 Those are the it and and they tend to be upper west side white women. 1.00

01:39:01.760 I mean, it's like, yes, there are some black people saying, but like they're the ones pushing this. 0.99

01:39:06.020 They're the ones doing the self-flagellating and making the rest of us feel.

01:39:09.440 I mean, their messaging actually is that if a black person makes any allegation, not believing them is racist, that that calling the police on a black person suspected of a crime that has been witnessed by a store manager in CBS is racist.

01:39:27.660 Right. Like it's it's getting to that point where upholding the law, pursuing due process is considered racist.

01:39:38.720 Yeah. And if you if you look at it, that's really the battlefield right now.

01:39:44.080 They're really going after criminal justice.

01:39:45.900 And I think they're going after criminal justice primarily because, you know, they already have kind of what you might call cultural hegemony over blue cities.

01:39:55.300 Right. This kind of far left ideology is really running the show in New York and San Francisco and Seattle and and D.C. and Boston.

01:40:04.160 But in these cities where they have pretty much total domination, there's one sector of society that they don't.

01:40:12.300 It's the criminal justice system. It's prosecutors. It's courts. It's it's jails.

01:40:17.840 And you notice their rhetoric is, you know, abolish courts, abolish prisons, you know, abolish the police.

01:40:25.520 And they sense that that is really in their kind of apocalyptic worldview.

01:40:30.940 That is the final impediment to their revolution.

01:40:34.160 The criminal justice apparatus is really the last vestige of historical oppression in these cities.

01:40:41.980 And it just you can just feel all of the energy just converging on that point.

01:40:47.840 And what they're doing in New York and other cities is now being reflected because as cities are depolicing or decriminalizing or even defunding in some cases,

01:40:59.340 you see crime come back again.

01:41:02.620 And it's almost like we forgot the lessons of the 1990s in New York, where we actually had to take proactive measures to to to make society more peaceful and safer, especially for minority communities.

01:41:16.440 It's almost as if we've forgotten all those lessons and we've been swept up in this mania.

01:41:21.340 And the latest numbers from the FBI show, you know, double digit increases in homicides in dozens of cities.

01:41:27.060 In some in some cases, 50, 60, 70 percent, the biggest one year increase in recorded history.

01:41:34.140 And at what point does that evidence and that true suffering and that kind of horrific violence start to make those, you know, upper west side wine moms start to reevaluate their, you know, their candy fanship? 0.96

01:41:49.680 I don't know. We'll have to see.

01:41:51.600 Yeah, no, we did. We defunded our police by a billion dollars here in New York.

01:41:55.900 Now we've got shootings have doubled. Murder rate is up by 50 percent.

01:42:01.800 Gun violence has surged to levels not seen in years.

01:42:06.000 And for what? Because we were told after the killing of George Floyd that this is a systemic problem,

01:42:12.660 that the police were hunting black men trying to kill them in the streets, which was a lie. 0.97

01:42:17.320 It was a lie. The data do not support it. 0.97

01:42:20.860 And in fact, here in New York City, go ahead and read Coleman Hughes in City Journal here in New York City.

01:42:26.260 The the rate at which police have killed unarmed black men or even just black men or even just defendants,

01:42:34.500 suspects in general, has fallen precipitously over the past 20, 30 years.

01:42:39.260 So we're going in the right direction.

01:42:40.740 But because of a lie perpetrated by the media and activists who do want to like Black Lives Matter,

01:42:45.480 who do want to, and I quote, dismantle the nuclear family, 0.91

01:42:48.320 we're having money taken away from the very communities who most need the police.

01:42:52.820 And and the murder rate is going up.

01:42:55.340 You know, the murder rate has doubled as a result.

01:42:58.140 No one no one seems to give a damn.

01:43:00.660 I like I've said this before, Chris.

01:43:03.520 I am going to be fine.

01:43:05.080 I live in a nice and a nice doorman building.

01:43:07.700 I'll make sure I have security if New York goes to hell or wherever I am.

01:43:10.940 It's I'm worried about my fellow women in the inner city who are the ones who want cops. 1.00

01:43:16.640 And if you pull blacks in the inner cities, they'll say they want more police presence, not less. 0.52

01:43:21.400 And yet my fellow women on the Upper West Side who are in the Lululemon Lycra have decided to make to feel better about themselves. 0.82

01:43:29.880 They need to defund the police.

01:43:31.280 I know it's like it's straight out of a Tom Wolfe novel.

01:43:35.220 It really is like it's really amazing.

01:43:37.200 And I think on one hand, it's so absurd that it's almost like funny in a kind of dark way.

01:43:41.420 But the more serious point is is is this is that the the great kind of moral crime of critical race theory and its related political movements is that it serves to kind of establish and strengthen elite status.

01:43:56.440 So if you are a professor or a pundit or a media personality on the far left, this stuff is great for business.

01:44:02.960 It's great for your reputation.

01:44:04.780 But actually, it does nothing to help the people that are most vulnerable, that are most kind of dispossessed, that are living in the poorest neighborhoods.

01:44:13.580 And, you know, I spent actually five years directing a film for PBS about America's poorest cities.

01:44:19.280 And I spent, you know, months and months and months in some of the poorest places on Earth or in the country, rather, including a housing project in Memphis.

01:44:28.420 It was 100 percent African-American, nearly 100 percent rate of poverty.

01:44:32.400 And I spent so much time talking to people, listening to people.

01:44:37.680 And it struck me that from that experience to then thinking about the rhetoric from critical race theory, these are people that live in two completely different worlds.

01:44:47.660 The actual concerns of people who are living in poverty, living in housing projects have nothing to do with the concerns that are coming out of the mouths of the kind of academics and journalists who profess the kind of new racial orthodoxy.

01:45:04.400 Those solutions that come from the top actually would do nothing to help people at the bottom.

01:45:09.700 And as I'm going to be arguing in an upcoming paper, actually, in a lot of ways, actually make things worse, both through crime and also through how institutions are refigured.

01:45:20.220 It actually undermines those institutions like strong families, like strong communities, like strong churches that are actually the foundation of these places.

01:45:30.520 And I think that, you know, we shouldn't be afraid to oppose this movement, because I think it's intellectually bankrupt, but it's also morally bankrupt.

01:45:41.860 And I think both of those are tremendously important.

01:45:45.260 Just to follow up on my stat from Coleman Hughes's article, one of the many in City Journal in 2018, the NYPD killed five people down from 93 people in 1971.

01:45:55.780 Can you just talk for a minute? Because I your articles are always so good, Chris, and they go through like the craziness of this critical race theory.

01:46:04.820 And I'm just going to tick off a couple of things, but I want to pivot to God and family after this.

01:46:12.220 But like these are just a couple that you've you've publicly outlined at the Treasury Department.

01:46:16.280 They were being told America was built on the backs of the enslaved. 0.80

01:46:19.580 All white Americans are complicit in a system of white supremacy. 0.99

01:46:22.000 Whites share an inborn racist and oppressive streak. 1.00

01:46:26.700 OK, whiteness, whiteness includes white privilege and white supremacy. 0.99

01:46:32.580 All whites struggle to own their own racism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:46:35.520 OK, and then. 0.93

01:46:36.940 Oh, and and by the way, they say, as you have to sit in the discomfort of your own racism as a white person, as black employees tell you about their pain.

01:46:44.860 Again, they warn the black employees that that they, quote, have no obligation to like you, thank you or feel sorry for you or forgive you.

01:46:53.460 So it's a sowing division. I read it and I have a note here.

01:46:56.400 Forgive me. My note reads.

01:46:58.440 This is so fucked up. It is fucked up. 1.00

01:47:00.500 I'm sorry, but it is. 0.99

01:47:01.760 And then I got on to an article you wrote about the San Diego Unified School District having been radicalized.

01:47:09.280 They're getting rid of the homework deadlines and they did.

01:47:12.240 They bring in Bettina Love or were they just talking about something?

01:47:15.960 They hired her to speak at two separate events.

01:47:18.020 OK, so Bettina Love, according to what I read in your piece, starts by telling the teachers that they're colonizers and they're sitting on stolen, stolen native land and that they're racist, that American schools are guilty of the spirit murder of black children, that racism runs deep in the U.S. 0.83

01:47:35.100 and blacks alone know who America really is, that public schools don't see blacks as human.

01:47:40.520 Again, public schools don't see blacks as human and are guilty of systemic anti-blackness and the spirit murder of babies and that whites are directly responsible for the plight of, quote, dark children. 0.95

01:47:54.560 Whiteness reproduces poverty, failing schools, high unemployment, school closings and trauma for persons of color and that white attendees must undergo anti-racist therapy in order to overcome their racism, ignorance and history of harm. 0.81

01:48:08.400 I cannot imagine how a white teacher hearing that would feel.

01:48:15.980 I can guess it's not more unified and not not less colorblind, right?

01:48:23.140 Not not more colorblind, but shamed, disempowered, loathed, divided.

01:48:31.160 This is this is this is evil.

01:48:34.640 That like this kind of talk now being embraced by a whole school district is evil.

01:48:41.040 And was there any pushback?

01:48:42.720 Like, do the teachers?

01:48:44.420 What did they do?

01:48:45.480 Did they just take it?

01:48:47.320 Yeah, I mean, this is this is they held one of these speeches for all the principals of schools in the San Diego School District, which teaches more than 100000 kids.

01:48:55.960 And then on the kind of teacher training over the summer and people sat there and took it and didn't protest, didn't stand up, didn't object, didn't file a kind of complaint.

01:49:09.520 Luckily, one of the teachers sent me all of the documents and said, this is outrageous.

01:49:14.180 Can you please report on this?

01:49:15.560 But please keep my identity anonymous because I'm terrified of getting fired.

01:49:20.480 I'm terrified of getting mobbed.

01:49:22.420 But this needs to be out there.

01:49:24.340 And it's absolutely crazy.

01:49:28.020 And you can almost sense the glee that this woman, Bettina Love, who's a professor, I believe, at the University of Georgia.

01:49:33.820 She is really denouncing people in the most kind of vicious terms straight to their face.

01:49:41.200 And they're sitting there and saying, yeah, yeah, we agree.

01:49:44.240 We are inherently evil. 0.96

01:49:46.100 We spirit murder babies.

01:49:47.920 We I mean, like the most like the verbiage is so out of control.

01:49:51.540 It's almost like hard to believe.

01:49:53.920 But it's racist happening everywhere.

01:49:56.640 It's absolutely racist.

01:49:57.540 And I think if you if you take the language and you if you if you kind of flip the kind of racial categories, this is some of like the most toxic and awful stuff from 100 years ago from eugenicists and white supremacists and Klansmen.

01:50:13.580 I mean, the language, the categorizations and even intellectually, what they're doing is they're reviving three key concepts, in my view.

01:50:21.020 One is race essentialism, this idea of whiteness, that every white person is not an individual, but can be reduced to a racial essence.

01:50:30.580 That's what people argued again 100 years ago.

01:50:33.560 The second one is kind of collective guilt.

01:50:37.120 That's a strategy that totalitarian regimes have used to manipulate people where you're saying you are in this category and someone, you know, did something bad in your category.

01:50:48.400 Therefore, you also are responsible or guilty for that bad thing.

01:50:52.780 And third, in a lot of cases and a lot of institutions now, they're reviving neo segregationism.

01:50:58.840 They're reviving segregation by saying they're calling them affinity groups or or or kind of other kind of euphemisms for it.

01:51:06.540 But they're actually holding training sessions and meetings explicitly.

01:51:11.460 This is the room for blacks. 1.00

01:51:12.740 This is the room for whites. 0.98

01:51:14.180 And this is the room for the others, the kind of Asians and and, you know, Latinos and and Native Americans and and and Indians.

01:51:23.200 A lot of my friends are Indian.

01:51:25.020 They're like, where do I fit in?

01:51:26.260 I don't know what I am.

01:51:27.640 The Asians and the Indians are most confused by all this.

01:51:30.040 They're just like, this seems bad.

01:51:31.800 Where do we go?

01:51:32.860 I don't like this.

01:51:34.260 You know, I've talked to a lot of folks in the tech sector about this and kind of cracking jokes.

01:51:40.060 But it really is bizarre.

01:51:42.380 Like it's 2021.

01:51:44.440 We're now having racially segregated workplaces.

01:51:46.900 We're now, you know, explicitly saying we need to get rid of equal protection and and go back to kind of race, race based decision making.

01:51:55.420 And it's happening quickly.

01:51:57.520 It's happening kind of in a profound way.

01:52:00.860 And I think that as a as a reporter, as someone covering this, it's it's it's kind of darkly fascinating to watch society get consumed by this mania.

01:52:11.200 Yeah. And I'm, you know, frankly, scary if you have children, as I know you do and I do and Jody Shaw does.

01:52:18.160 It's scary.

01:52:18.980 I don't want to pass this baton to them.

01:52:21.360 You know, I've joked before that it's I can get targeted, of course, because I'm a white woman and that's power adjacent in the in the language of these critical race theorists.

01:52:29.800 I'm a woman. So I got that going for me.

01:52:31.880 So I have a right to speak.

01:52:33.020 But I'm white, which is power adjacent, you know, a white woman. 1.00

01:52:36.940 So I'm power adjacent to white men. 0.96

01:52:38.440 But then I did the worst thing you could possibly do, which is I created I have three children, but I created two, two little white future men. 0.94

01:52:45.700 Right. So it's like poor white men. 0.72

01:52:47.700 They like good God.

01:52:49.540 They talk openly behind the scenes about how they know that's the worst thing to be.

01:52:53.080 Everybody looks at them as though they hate everybody who's other than a white man. 0.97

01:52:56.540 And it's all nonsense. And they've been subjected to a lot of racist, sexist talk like they're again. 0.97

01:53:04.080 The answer to racism is not more racism.

01:53:06.560 So I want to ask you because Douglas Murray says the answer to this.

01:53:10.140 And I know you're going bigger picture, which we're going to get to.

01:53:11.920 But his answer in the moment is for somebody to stand up at the at the schoolhouse or the corporate boardroom and say,

01:53:19.020 I will not allow you to re-racialize my company, my country or myself. 0.99

01:53:27.760 I I will not talk in these terms that you are trying to force me to talk in.

01:53:33.460 And honestly, Jodi Shaw did it. 0.75

01:53:36.780 She just talked to her and her words were stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. 0.99

01:53:44.100 Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on skin color.

01:53:51.680 OK, and now Jodi Shaw has been placed on administrative leave for some BS pretext of a you forwarded one email that may have had a student's information to your personal account.

01:54:02.600 Obviously pretextual that they got rid of her because of or trying to because of her video because of her speaking out.

01:54:08.740 So my question to you is, let's let's talk micro before we go macro.

01:54:14.900 What do you think the teacher in the moment should do?

01:54:17.640 What do you think the Jodi Shaw should do in the moment?

01:54:21.820 I know I think that's exactly right.

01:54:23.120 And there was another whistleblower at the Sandia National Nuclear Labs that emailed all of his colleagues a kind of painstaking rebuttal of some of these programs.

01:54:32.420 And again, he was placed on leave.

01:54:34.560 Luckily, we were able to advocate for him.

01:54:36.560 So he retained his job.

01:54:37.780 But I think that's exactly what needs to happen.

01:54:40.820 People need to have courage.

01:54:43.220 I think that the value that matters more than anything in this moment is courage.

01:54:47.340 And courage, by definition, requires putting something at risk and in many cases, putting your job at risk.

01:54:55.560 And this obviously isn't a solution for everyone.

01:54:57.840 Everyone has to kind of judge their their life kind of structure and their risk tolerance.

01:55:03.440 But for the courageous among us, they have to stand up, stand tall and just say, no, I won't do this.

01:55:12.140 I won't comply.

01:55:13.020 It's not appropriate.

01:55:14.220 It's wrong.

01:55:15.460 And it violates these core values that I have and we have as a society.

01:55:20.880 And I think that people are so scared that they can get away with this right now because they've bullied people into submission.

01:55:29.660 But as more people stand up and say no, it's going to encourage others and then hopefully others after that until you have enough people where you just can't fire all of them.

01:55:41.000 They can actually stand tall together and I'm seeing very encouraging small scale stories all across the country of people standing up in schools and the workplace and have been successful.

01:55:52.560 And I think that as these stories replicate, we're going to get two things.

01:55:55.200 We're either going to get success stories that can be kind of models for future action or in some cases, we're going to get martyrs, people who have been canceled.

01:56:05.720 And those are tragedies, obviously, but they also kind of serve as a kind of rallying point and and also as a kind of a point for condemnation of these systems that are willing to sacrifice individuals to uphold this ideology.

01:56:23.160 That's funny because I can relate on a couple of those fronts.

01:56:25.620 I feel like I've definitely been attacked, in my view, unfairly for, you know, statements about race that were factually correct.

01:56:36.040 Anytime I see you trending on Twitter, I'm always like, oh, boy, what's going on now?

01:56:40.620 Oh, yeah.

01:56:40.940 And it doesn't and it can be about it can be about anything.

01:56:43.160 You know, it doesn't have to be about race.

01:56:44.260 I just I I actually do kind of love how much I irritate the far left and the Twitter people that that kind of brings me enjoyment. 0.99

01:56:50.620 I love that they don't they're too stupid to realize how much power they give me. 0.99

01:56:53.540 Go ahead. 1.00

01:56:53.840 Make me trend again.

01:56:54.560 Get my name everywhere.

01:56:55.540 Fine.

01:56:56.600 All you do is is is increase my name recognition and keep me in the news.

01:57:01.420 And then they tell you you're irrelevant.

01:57:03.380 That's weird how you follow me and tweet about me and make me trend then anyway.

01:57:07.500 But obviously, I can relate on a personal level.

01:57:09.640 But and I've talked publicly about having to pull my kids from their schools.

01:57:12.800 You know, I mean, at my boys school, they actually circulated a memo, which which they wanted to be mandated reading for all faculty that said in every children where I'm sorry,

01:57:23.020 there is a future killer cop that white children are being indoctrinated into black death. 0.75

01:57:34.860 I mean, I'm sorry, but it took something that egregious for us to say and goodbye because things had been ramping up there at a slow but steady pace for for months and months and months. 0.93

01:57:48.760 Not every school will be that explicit and that offensive.

01:57:51.680 But parents, if you won't do it for yourself, you have to do it for your kid.

01:57:55.740 Who who would let a teacher who'd been indoctrinated in that kind of thinking have access to their little one?

01:58:02.040 Right.

01:58:02.520 Like.

01:58:02.760 Like, I sat and thought, who is it?

01:58:07.520 Is it my little love?

01:58:08.760 Is it my little six year old?

01:58:10.320 Is it his best friend?

01:58:11.740 Like, how dare you?

01:58:13.320 How dare you?

01:58:14.820 And I do think, like, it's OK to feel some outrage at what's being done to our kids if you won't feel it for yourself.

01:58:22.160 Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

01:58:24.240 And, you know, working on this investigative series on schools all over the country.

01:58:28.200 And it's not just New York and San Francisco, it's Missouri, it's others, other kind of small cities where you wouldn't expect it.

01:58:34.960 And it really is kind of strange.

01:58:38.460 And I'm working on some research right now in Portland, Oregon, which is really kind of ground zero for the madness.

01:58:44.220 And they're implementing a curriculum and teacher training and kind of kind of administrative positions to I'm saying this.

01:58:54.180 It's it's a kind of hyperbolic, but it's actually not.

01:58:57.200 They're training child soldiers to fight this kind of race conscious revolution. 0.51

01:59:02.840 And I say that because the actual materials that I've had leaked to me outline very clearly.

01:59:08.860 We need to reform white identity into becoming a kind of member of this anti-racist movement.

01:59:15.080 We need to train our kids how to protest, how to host demonstrations, how to get on the streets.

01:59:20.660 And then the results of this kind of political education in predominantly public schools in Portland is that you have now dozens of minors being arrested as as kind of members of Antifa rioting.

01:59:34.660 Waving guns at crowds, throwing bricks and bottles and rocks at police, lighting buildings on fire.

01:59:43.500 All of these crimes and kind of rioting are being, in some cases, led by and then executed by children.

01:59:52.260 And what happens when you get those kind of underlying ideologies that lead to these outcomes cemented in school curriculums throughout the state of Oregon?

02:00:04.160 And especially in an egregious way in the city of Portland, you are training kids to be born angry, fearful, entitled, this kind of toxic mix of all of these attributes that's going to lead to, you know, chaos and destruction.

02:00:20.760 Whether it's self-destruction, whether it's actually just collapsing people's sense of value internally, or, and sometimes as a result of, external destruction.

02:00:31.760 Society is wrong.

02:00:32.900 Society is oppressing me.

02:00:34.200 Society is evil. 1.00

02:00:36.560 Burn it down. 0.99

02:00:37.660 And that's what I think we're seeing. 0.85

02:00:40.100 It's brainwashing.

02:00:41.440 It's cult-like.

02:00:43.220 And it's wrong.

02:00:45.000 It's morally wrong in every way.

02:00:46.660 And, and then, by the way, so before I move off of this, I did want to ask you, it's not, it's not all about alienating people by race, by gender, and so on.

02:00:55.600 More and more, it's alienating children of faith from God and their families.

02:01:03.400 Like, we're seeing more and more of that creep up in some of the literature that's getting leaked and talked about publicly.

02:01:08.620 And I can say, I mean, I know that, uh, I'm personally familiar with a book that was shared, um, at the kindergarten level that, um, in talking about the Harvey Milk case, put God says no on the page of what's wrong.

02:01:23.880 Right.

02:01:24.360 So the little children are being told what God said when God said that this was wrong.

02:01:28.480 Um, God's wrong.

02:01:29.660 And, you know, you can talk about, um, sexual identity and sexual preference, and, and you can talk about gay marriage, which I support and always have in a way that brings your political view forward, but you should not be telling six-year-olds that God is wrong.

02:01:47.580 And I think this is what really upsets in my experience.

02:01:50.660 I have a lot of black friends who that, that's, that was the last line for them when it comes to this stuff, like that, uh, my friends don't like this critical race theory either, but.

02:01:59.660 But pushing God as like the purveyor of wrongness, it goes, it's a bridge too far.

02:02:07.740 Yeah.

02:02:07.980 And I think what you're talking about illustrates the really kind of two separate lineages, the two separate genealogies of, of activism, let's say.

02:02:18.960 And there's one that is in the kind of Martin Luther King vein, the civil rights movement.

02:02:23.260 Now, a lot of people forget that the civil rights movement was emanated from black churches.

02:02:27.620 It was deeply rooted in Christianity and then also deeply rooted.

02:02:32.440 And, and Martin Luther King wrote about this and spoke about this in the principles of the declaration and the constitution, um, that they, that he felt, and many people felt correctly, weren't being fulfilled, weren't being honored by society.

02:02:45.060 So you have that kind of one lineage, right?

02:02:48.920 The origins of the civil rights movement, again, uh, in the kind of, uh, constitutional principles and the declaration and in Christian churches, predominantly Southern, uh, black churches.

02:02:59.420 And Black Lives Matter, um, they like to claim that they are the new civil rights movement or the extension of the civil rights movement, the natural successor to the civil rights movement.

02:03:09.820 But they don't believe in either of those things that were the fundamental structures of the civil rights movement.

02:03:16.680 They're explicitly atheistic.

02:03:19.460 I mean, they're, they're kind of denying, uh, uh, Christianity as an oppressive structure.

02:03:25.840 Um, again, in the same way that Marx kind of attacked Christianity and religion 150 some years ago.

02:03:34.060 And they're also against the constitution.

02:03:38.020 Critical race theorists make this explicit in their academic work.

02:03:40.820 They say, we are really down on the constitution.

02:03:43.860 We really, uh, are skeptical of it.

02:03:46.620 We want to, we want to reformulate it.

02:03:48.660 It actually is a structure of systemic racism, et cetera.

02:03:51.880 So you have this thing that I think we need to separate.

02:03:55.820 The civil rights movement is not Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter is not the civil rights movement. 0.89

02:04:01.340 And I think what we're finding in the black community and then in the wider, you know, community of all Americans is that we're being faced with a choice.

02:04:10.100 Which value and vision do we want to pursue and uphold and strengthen?

02:04:15.100 Um, and, you know, I think, I think pretty clearly, um, uh, the, the value and vision that is based on the constitution and on a kind of, uh, the kind of Christian principle of equality, uh, under God is far superior than the, the, the position of a kind of Marxist revolution and kind of vicious identity-based politics that we see in our streets today.

02:04:39.060 Mm-hmm.

02:04:40.920 So that, that leads me to the macro, which is larger solutions.

02:04:45.700 And you are one of the few people working on real solutions to this, to this problem.

02:04:53.040 Now I retweet all your stuff because it's always so spot on, but I've been saying for a long time that I feel like the law is the answer to this.

02:05:03.000 And a lot of the cultural craziness we're seeing the, the law, I'm not saying it's perfect.

02:05:08.640 I'm not saying you don't have judges who are, you know, political one way or the other and let that creep into their rulings.

02:05:13.380 But my overall experience of the law is judges follow it.

02:05:18.100 It's the very nature of being a judge and it doesn't actually allow for that much identity politics to creep in.

02:05:26.080 It's not to say it never does, but it doesn't really allow for it in the way it could in an academic institution.

02:05:30.600 And we talked about this with Jody, but people may not understand the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. Constitution and its equal protection law do not allow for racial discrimination against white people.

02:05:46.380 That is illegal. You may not treat a white person as less than or give them a lower job or what have you, discriminate against them because they have the immutable characteristic of white skin, something over which they have no control. 0.82

02:06:04.820 So you're trying to organize a group of lawyers, Chris, because I saw you say the other day it's up to over 100 lawyers who have now volunteered to help you do what?

02:06:14.000 Yeah, well, you know, the context is that, you know, last year, as many of the listeners might remember, some of my investigative reporting caught the eye of President Trump, who passed an executive order banning these critical race theory trainings from the government.

02:06:29.660 And when Joe Biden won the election, I realized that that executive order probably wasn't going to last.

02:06:37.380 And sure enough, one of the first 15 things that he did was get rid of that executive order banning critical race theory.

02:06:44.000 And but in that kind of intervening period, I said, all right, well, rather than just, you know, throw in my hat, we need to get activated.

02:06:52.060 We need to figure out what's the next strategy.

02:06:54.940 And I took a series of calls with a lot of the conservative think tanks and legal foundations, people who are, you know, kind of expert lawyers, very experienced.

02:07:04.500 And I said, hey, I think that we could, you know, take some of my whistleblowers.

02:07:09.220 I now have probably more than a thousand different whistleblowers with documents and evidence.

02:07:13.720 We can pick some of these cases and then all, you know, hand them off.

02:07:18.060 And you guys can start suing these institutions in federal court, you know, making the argument that these are violations of civil rights because they traffic in racial stereotypes.

02:07:28.620 They constitute a kind of race, race based harassment.

02:07:31.980 They create a toxic work environment.

02:07:33.920 They also compel speech.

02:07:36.320 So we have a number of great kind of constitutional cases we can take.

02:07:40.240 Here was the problem.

02:07:41.240 So all of these great institutions are like, hey, we're big institutions.

02:07:45.980 We're bureaucratic.

02:07:47.020 We typically don't fight on culture issues.

02:07:49.340 We don't have a kind of dedicated staff to fight these issues.

02:07:53.380 We're really interested.

02:07:54.860 We're really excited about this.

02:07:56.140 We think it's important, but we're just not there yet.

02:07:58.820 And as you know, you know, a lot of the conservative legal foundations have been more focused on economic issues, on regulatory issues, licensing, etc.

02:08:08.040 And are not really ready for this culture fight that we're in the middle of.

02:08:13.840 So I was kind of discouraged.

02:08:16.280 And then I said, you know, I'm going to take one more of these calls.

02:08:19.540 And then in that final call before I was going to throw in the towel, I talked to a small group of private attorneys and they said, hey, we don't have bureaucracy.

02:08:29.660 We don't have any decision making tree.

02:08:32.220 We can start suing right now.

02:08:34.200 And then I realized, OK, I can't just hand this off.

02:08:37.680 I'm going to have to actually organize this myself.

02:08:39.940 So I found a kind of a network of advisors from some of the some of the institutions, but then also cobbled together a network of private attorneys and smaller legal foundations.

02:08:52.260 Our coalition has already filed three cases.

02:08:54.980 We're going to be filing another one in the coming weeks.

02:08:57.100 And then, you know, all of a sudden I get now more than 100 other attorneys that are volunteering to file lawsuits in dozens of states around the country.

02:09:04.980 So what I'm viewing this as the strategy on this piece is relentless, decentralized legal warfare with the ultimate objective of getting a case before the United States Supreme Court.

02:09:18.000 And if we win there, it will have an immediate ripple effect in every school, every government agency and every corporation in the country.

02:09:25.780 That would say what?

02:09:26.580 What's the ideal Supreme Court ruling?

02:09:28.140 That would say critical race theory based programs, these programs that traffic in the concepts of race essentialism, conspelled speech, racial harassment, racial stereotypes are violations of the Civil Rights Act and and violations of the U.S. Constitution.

02:09:44.160 And then we would have the precedent so that any employee that is going through these programs could say, hey, the Supreme Court very clearly ruled that what we're doing here is illegal.

02:09:53.720 They can reach out to to me and our network of lawyers to send a cease and desist.

02:09:58.660 And then, again, I think a lot of people who are in risk management, who are in kind of corporate legal departments are going to say this is a liability.

02:10:08.860 This is a risk.

02:10:09.640 This is actually illegal.

02:10:11.100 Get rid of it.

02:10:11.760 And the kind of proof of that is that after we got the executive order, every Fortune 500 company in the United States that does business with the federal government that the president banned from conducting critical race theory trainings, we saw them immediately cease all of these programs.

02:10:29.540 So we know that they can press a button and knock it off and stop it.

02:10:34.120 But we have to have the legal leverage to force them to do so.

02:10:39.080 And that's what we're going to do.

02:10:41.760 Mm hmm.

02:10:42.500 And there are a lot of these corporations, their heart's not in it.

02:10:45.320 They're they're paying the ransom.

02:10:46.720 They're afraid, too.

02:10:48.000 And same with a lot of these school boards.

02:10:50.420 They're afraid.

02:10:51.560 They're afraid that they're going to get targeted.

02:10:53.620 They're going to be called racist if there's one racist incident at a school.

02:10:57.160 And let's face it, racism is not gone in America.

02:11:00.360 We all know that.

02:11:02.100 But it doesn't mean systemic racism.

02:11:04.060 It doesn't mean the whole country has to change.

02:11:06.700 We have to get rid of capitalism and an entire school district needs to change the way it does its hiring, the way it does its education.

02:11:11.760 They have to replace math with critical race theory training.

02:11:15.480 You know, they're bumping curriculum for these mandated sessions for students and teachers.

02:11:21.680 None of that is true.

02:11:23.280 But the corporations are afraid and need cover.

02:11:27.540 You know, frankly, they need cover.

02:11:28.780 They need PR cover. 0.98

02:11:29.840 And a Supreme Court decision or a legal decision, which would be 100 percent on the money, as far as I'm concerned, lawfully, legally saying this is not lawful, would do it.

02:11:40.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

02:11:40.880 I mean, I think corporate corporations, I mean, you know, are are are cynical entities in a lot of ways.

02:11:46.960 Right.

02:11:47.220 They're very kind of practical politics.

02:11:49.420 They want to defend the bottom line.

02:11:52.740 They want to protect against bad PR.

02:11:55.820 But if you shift the incentives, these corporations are going to adapt very quickly.

02:12:01.020 And I think that, you know, a lot of people say, oh, it's you know, it's everywhere.

02:12:05.320 It's in schools.

02:12:06.320 All hope is lost.

02:12:07.780 I'm optimistic because I think that what we're seeing right now is a kind of fad.

02:12:12.660 And I think I look at figures like Ibram Kendi as kind of like gurus, you know, in the 1960s and in the 90s, it's like you have the kind of yoga kind of fads and health food fads and kind of other cults, you know, that you can watch like a part Netflix series about.

02:12:31.860 And I think we're going through a similar moment.

02:12:33.800 And I think that it's a fad.

02:12:36.420 It is a kind of cult like structure.

02:12:39.540 It is scary.

02:12:41.640 It's overwhelming.

02:12:42.620 It's being successful.

02:12:44.060 But ultimately, I think our country and our institutions and our people in the United States are going to come to their senses at a certain point and recognize that we can be, you know, supportive of reducing racial inequalities and care about racial inequalities.

02:13:02.040 But actually, at the same time, oppose this method, oppose this philosophy, oppose this program.

02:13:07.580 And I think once we get to that reasonable point and we have a kind of silent majority that turns into a maybe a little bit more vocal majority, we can kind of, you know, crush this at its roots.

02:13:21.640 We can kind of excavate some of the most kind of bankrupt ideas from this movement, expose them to the light, and then Americans will simply move on.

02:13:34.580 Okay, and to those who say you are misreading the national mood when it comes to race in America, what say you?

02:13:50.460 Well, I mean, it's right there in the language, right?

02:13:53.260 The national mood.

02:13:54.740 Moods.

02:13:55.200 What are moods?

02:13:55.860 Moods are kind of fleeting and transitory emotional states.

02:13:59.320 And I think that you can't be, just like in personal life, right?

02:14:02.340 If you and I just reacted 100% according to our moods, I think we would have major problems.

02:14:09.920 And I think as courageous people and as kind of intellectuals with integrity, we have to say we recognize the national mood is here.

02:14:20.040 And we're actually going to stand against the national mood, even if temporarily it causes us problems.

02:14:25.460 It gets us flack, it gets us, you know, insulted in the New York Times, because we know that after this mood passes, the country is going to be here.

02:14:33.540 These are the fundamentals.

02:14:34.880 These are the structures and values we care about.

02:14:36.760 And, you know, I'm happy to stand against the current mood.

02:14:40.320 And I think that we have to remember, too, and I think this is an important thing I've been thinking about a lot, is that you look at how they're using incidents, right?

02:14:51.840 You look at how they are notching up these victories.

02:14:54.000 It's almost always predicated on an emotional moment, right, where it was George Floyd that gets replicated billions of times in the media.

02:15:03.080 It's, you know, whatever kind of story that is the emotional anchor to a lot of these movements is that, you know, obviously you can lament the tragic death of George Floyd.

02:15:15.280 But what they do is they create this emotional premise where if you don't agree with all of our solutions, therefore you, you know, you don't care about George Floyd.

02:15:26.480 You don't care about X, Y, and Z.

02:15:27.760 And I think that we need to break that logic.

02:15:29.920 We need to say we need to separate out premises from conclusions and say, you know, not let people essentially manipulate the country by using emotionally charged kind of affectively loaded incidents or images or experiences to justify these huge political programs.

02:15:50.920 That once you really look at it and think about it and step back from that emotional overload, aren't actually connected by any kind of rationality or logic.

02:16:00.560 Well, especially when the incidents that they are using are dishonestly represented, you know, I'm not saying the tape wasn't the tape on George Floyd.

02:16:09.860 But again, as Coleman's pointed out, you could find the exact same story with a white victim every time.

02:16:18.060 And especially the George Floyd case, a guy named Tony Timpa had exactly the same thing done to him, 13 minutes under the knee, begging for his life.

02:16:26.920 And after he expired, the cops made jokes about him and they were not prosecuted.

02:16:32.040 The charges against them were dropped.

02:16:34.300 Breonna Taylor, same thing had happened earlier, I think that same year to a white person inside of his home.

02:16:41.860 No, not warrant the same like the the knee jerk resort to race is not always supported and no one will go back and be honest about that, nor is it always police brutality that's unjustified.

02:16:55.480 We've been talking about the Jacob Blake case and it was very clear early on that there were reports he was, in fact, armed and that's why he got shot.

02:17:02.040 But I've seen almost no coverage of that piece of the story after the same media went over and over and over telling us he was unarmed.

02:17:09.140 So people need to be aware that we're being manipulated by people with an agenda.

02:17:13.940 It's not blacks versus whites. 0.87

02:17:16.100 Again, it's hard leftists versus the rest of us.

02:17:20.080 They're trying to manipulate us to advance their own agenda and in some instances make themselves feel good as virtue signalers.

02:17:27.680 But as you point out, we're not there to service the mood in particular of one small activist group.

02:17:33.000 If we were, we never would have had the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because of the loud majority or the loud minority in the in the country at that point didn't.

02:17:42.020 They wanted segregation. Right.

02:17:43.540 It was sort of the white Jim Crow folks down in the south who said the mood of the country doesn't support equality.

02:17:49.960 We didn't listen.

02:17:51.200 We followed the law.

02:17:52.100 And when we didn't think the law was good enough, we strengthened it.

02:17:54.600 So anyway, I do believe the law is sort of at the heart of what our future is.

02:17:59.660 And before I let you go, I got to ask one other question.

02:18:01.600 That is, how are you feeling about Joe Biden and these issues?

02:18:08.940 Yeah, I don't know.

02:18:10.080 I kind of have kind of conflicting kind of conflicting thoughts about it.

02:18:15.100 But I think Joe Biden, I mean, let's face it, Joe Biden is a kind of back slapping New Deal Democrat who, you know, he isn't a social justice warrior.

02:18:25.580 That's just not his personality.

02:18:27.120 It's not his generation. 0.99

02:18:28.900 But I think what you've seen is that, well, I don't think Biden's instincts are there.

02:18:34.660 What does concern me is that certainly the vice president's instincts are there.

02:18:38.640 Certainly his social media team's instincts are there.

02:18:40.780 And then all of the different kind of cabinet members and subcabinet officials are there.

02:18:47.680 And, you know, I think, you know, I thought of Joe Biden as kind of, you know, as like a carapace, like a kind of armor that was kind of battering through the election.

02:18:59.280 But within kind of protected by that armor was the kind of modern Democratic left, the kind of identity politics base, the equity instead of equality based folks.

02:19:09.800 And we're seeing that in some of his cabinet choices.

02:19:13.460 Actually, the superintendent of San Diego schools who hosted the spirit murder sessions and lavished praise on the speaker.

02:19:21.760 She's actually been nominated for deputy secretary of education.

02:19:24.720 So I'm not so much worried about, you know, Grandpa Joe, but I'm I'm very much worried at the kind of administrative level where these programs and ideologies are being implemented in the federal government.

02:19:39.760 So I don't know. I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of torn, but but, you know, ultimately optimistic.

02:19:46.860 I think that, you know, one silver lining I voted for Donald Trump, you know, didn't vote for him in 2016, voted for him in 2020.

02:19:55.340 But one silver lining for him being out of office and and even again, I oppose banning the president from Twitter.

02:20:05.340 But given that that's the factual reality, one one thing of him being gone from our kind of national Twitter timeline is that the left cannot say simply orange man bad.

02:20:17.640 They actually have to now defend the ideas, defend the policies.

02:20:22.000 So we have an opportunity in the next four years to actually make this a substantive debate and not give them the excuse.

02:20:28.540 Well, you know, Donald Trump is bad.

02:20:30.700 So that's what I hope will happen.

02:20:33.400 But we'll have to see if somebody listening wants to help you.

02:20:37.600 How can they do that?

02:20:39.040 Yeah. You know, you know, the best thing that we can do is we're establishing a coalition that is three parts investigative reporting.

02:20:47.160 So if you have any critical race theory trainings that are happening in any institutions in your area, send me an email at Chris Rufo at ProtonMail dot com.

02:20:56.360 Second, we're recruiting lawyers.

02:20:58.500 So if you're an attorney, send an email to that same address letting us know you want to get involved.

02:21:03.500 And then third, if you want to support my reporting and my work, you can visit my website at ChristopherRufo dot com.

02:21:10.680 That's Christopher R-U-F-O dot com.

02:21:13.160 And, you know, now have about a thousand different people making small monthly contributions.

02:21:18.840 That's been a huge source of excitement and inspiration and also help, you know, provide support for my ongoing efforts.

02:21:29.100 They're going to kick you out of Seattle at this rate.

02:21:30.800 Well, you know, it's so funny.

02:21:33.400 Like I I actually, you know, in January or last January, a year ago, I moved out of Seattle for a lot of these reasons.

02:21:39.820 I mean, the political culture in Seattle is extreme.

02:21:42.580 They were harassing me, harassing my wife, started harassing my kids and it just became untenable.

02:21:50.640 So we we moved to a small town in Washington state.

02:21:55.180 And it's it's awesome because I went from, you know, walking home from the office in Seattle and having random strangers flip me off to, you know, having now, you know, driving home and having my neighbors and say, oh, man, I saw you on Tucker.

02:22:12.600 Awesome job.

02:22:13.380 So it's been quite a culture shift and and, you know, it's been just a huge blessing for us to, you know, to flee the city.

02:22:22.940 And then given all the covid stuff, it was just lucky timing.

02:22:27.740 Well, I don't mean to sound like Dan rather, but to to reiterate what you said and what Jody Shaw said to courage is the word of the moment.

02:22:36.740 And it's going to take a lot of it.

02:22:38.380 You've shown it.

02:22:38.960 She did, too.

02:22:39.540 I hope our listeners will as well in whatever ways they feel comfortable or can muster up because now it is not a time for the meek.

02:22:47.300 It's a time to stand up and fight for for true equality, for love, for support, for wellness, for our communities, not for divisiveness and shaming and awful presumptions about people thanks to immutable characteristics.

02:23:02.400 We were trying to get away from that as a as a country for the better part of five, six decades.

02:23:08.640 And we should continue doing that.

02:23:10.980 Chris, thank you so much.

02:23:12.880 Thank you.

02:23:13.580 It's really great to speak with you and appreciate all your support.

02:23:18.520 Our thanks again to Chris Rufo and Jody Shaw.

02:23:21.480 I want to tell you that today's episode was brought to you in part by Armbrust USA.

02:23:25.200 Go to Don't Shut Down Mask Up dot com and enter code MK for a 20 percent discount on your first order of Armbrust USA masks.

02:23:34.340 Now, listen, I want to ask you to do me a favor.

02:23:37.440 Go subscribe to the show.

02:23:39.540 Would you subscribe to the show?

02:23:41.600 Download the show and give me a rating five stars, if you please, and a review.

02:23:46.240 And I haven't done this on the show yet.

02:23:47.880 I've never done this before.

02:23:48.800 But can I just I read all the reviews and there was one I loved so much.

02:23:53.860 I actually thought I'd share it with you.

02:23:55.340 Forgive me because I feel self-aggrandizing, but it was so clever and it made me smile.

02:23:59.740 And it was like the only one I've ever shared with Abby, my, you know, my assistant.

02:24:03.660 Like she's like my little sister.

02:24:05.140 Here's the headline.

02:24:06.120 It's from Dan T in Georgia.

02:24:08.260 And the headline of his review is five star hate.

02:24:12.140 OK, I like how it begins.

02:24:13.740 Megan Kelly is very talented at having conversations, and that's why I hate this podcast.

02:24:20.500 I subscribed thinking I would listen when she had someone interesting on the show.

02:24:24.120 But I have to listen to all of them because every guest is interesting.

02:24:27.200 I have other things to do, like listening to books, streaming TV, live sports and sports podcasts.

02:24:33.100 But I get sucked in every time I start listening to an episode.

02:24:36.600 It might help if she weren't so reasonable and smart.

02:24:39.320 I'm loving this guy to him.

02:24:40.260 I'm out here trying to find shallow entertainment, to forget about the crazy right-wing politics

02:24:45.640 and the insane left-wingers.

02:24:47.580 But I'm a sucker for common sense people that love the country, so I keep listening.

02:24:53.720 Apart from restoring what little faith I have left in journalism and politics,

02:24:57.680 I can't think of any reason to listen to this.

02:25:00.180 I love Dan T. in Georgia.

02:25:05.820 Dan, thank you so much for the clever, funny, kind review.

02:25:10.960 And I have to tell you, one thing I've noticed in reading the reviews, we have smart listeners.

02:25:14.880 You people are smart.

02:25:16.560 The comments have been really, really good and insightful and thoughtful.

02:25:21.140 You know, occasionally you get the like, you're hot.

02:25:23.700 That's fine, too.

02:25:24.680 As you know, I'm not one to tell somebody not to say that.

02:25:27.640 But I love it.

02:25:29.020 So it's a great way for us to stay connected and communicate, right?

02:25:32.600 I just wish I could write back.

02:25:33.820 So this will be my way of writing back.

02:25:35.360 I'll read one on the show or we can talk about it.

02:25:38.120 And in the meantime, we'll talk on Friday.

02:25:41.140 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

02:25:43.140 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

02:25:47.860 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

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02:26:39.260 Let's see.

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02:26:39.800 Let's go with mac.

02:26:40.260 inhas.

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02:26:41.740 Let's go.

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02:26:47.000 Sit.

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02:27:01.100 See.

02:27:01.280 Could you.

02:27:02.240 Let's go.

The Megyn Kelly Show - February 03, 2021

Race and Schools, with Jodi Shaw and Christopher Rufo ｜ Ep. 59

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