Rampant Racism, CRT, and The Fall Of Education ｜ Dr. Carol Swain
Summary
A Black professor at Emerson College says that whites and blacks should not have meaningful relationships because of their race. Carol Swain is a former tenured professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt and author of Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House.
Transcript
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There's a black professor at Emerson College has just been promoted to become an interim
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dean. She says that whites and blacks can't really have meaningful relationships, should
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not have meaningful relationships. And I thought to help me work through this, I would like
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to invite on a black woman happens to be a professor herself with whom I do have a wonderful
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relationship to see if we can disprove this theory. I'm talking, of course, about Carol
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Swain, former tenured professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt, has lots of fancy degrees,
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has lots of fancy awards from academic institutions. The author of, among other books, Black Eye
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for America, How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House. Carol, thank you for coming
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Are we allowed to have a relationship anymore? No, that's over because the interim dean
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Isn't that so sad? All I can say in the truest Southern sense, bless her heart.
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I would say I can't believe she said this, but I can believe it. And I'm not even surprised
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when I read these things anymore. You know, they seem to occur day by day and week by week.
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Some other divisive, outrageous, false racial ideology. I mean, we've just seen justice for
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that racial attack on Jussie Smollett. His attacker was brought to justice, happens to
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be himself. Complete racial hoax. So I guess my first question for you is, Carol, how is
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Well, first of all, the house is America. And if you look at what was happening last summer
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after George Floyd's death, I think we had 50 straight days of some city, you know, in
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turmoil, vandalism, fires, deaths. It has turned apart the country because it is pitting whites
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against blacks. And that professor at Emerson College, she was married to a white man. She
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divorced him because of his race. And I would say that CRT is so divisive that it's reached
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the point, you know, that it's breaking up marriages and this racial visceral hatred that
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she has espoused. Had she been a white person, she would have lost her job by now.
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Right. Because it would have been it would have risen to the level that even a tenured
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professor would not be able to get away with that if they were white. And so what I feel
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about America when I look at all of these racial incidents that are occurring and I look at
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how they handle it if the perpetrator is black versus a white perpetrator and the whole idea
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that people make the argument that black people cannot be guilty of racism.
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That white people cannot be victims of hate crimes. It is ludicrous and we cannot have true
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equality in America until we hold everyone to the same standards of conduct and behavior
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Well, it seems like this professor's actions undermine her claim. And you see this in a lot
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of the left's racial theory. She is espousing this idea that black people and especially black women
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are exceptionally oppressed and white people and especially white men are the oppressors.
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And so she says this view. She says white people and black people can't have relationships. She leaves
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her husband because of his race and she gets away with it. Whereas, as you say, if a white person had
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done that, obviously their life would be ruined. So doesn't the reaction to what she has said and done
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suggest that perhaps she is of the privileged sex or race and that maybe the situation is kind of the
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opposite of what she's saying that it is? Of course, it's the opposite. There's no truth to it. But
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the whole idea that we would give her a free pass, that she would be able to make those outrageous,
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dangerous, damaging statements, be in a position to be a role model, you know, for hundreds,
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if not thousands of students. And it would just, you know, we treat black people as if that kind of
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behavior and attitude is somehow normal behavior. It is not normal behavior. It's obscene. It should
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be condemned. And it grows out of this critical race theory because it's all about dividing people
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on the color of race, on the color because of the color of their skin, but whites as the oppressors
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and racial and ethnic minorities as the victims. But it is rooted to critical theory, which takes many
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forms. There are other critical theories. And so they divide homosexuals from heterosexuals, males from
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females, rich from poor, blacks versus whites. These are all critical theories. They're rooted in
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Marxism and, you know, postmodernism and all kinds of other things. And it is dangerous and destructive
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for our society. In my book, Black Eye for America, which happened to be co-authored with a young
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white guy who started off as a research assistant. And because this young white guy was such a good
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scholar, I promoted him to co-author. We look at what CRT is, where it came from,
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how it manifests itself in our society, why it's un-American, why it runs counter to our constitution
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and our civil rights laws. And then we have two chapters on how to fight back against it.
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And so we see CRT as a danger. In fact, I have argued that it is the civil rights issue of our day.
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You know, we're told that, and it seems that a lot of people know, that CRT began
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in Harvard Law School with theorists such as Kimberlé Crenshaw. And after that,
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things get a little confusing because what the left says is CRT remained in Harvard Law School
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and didn't really go anywhere else. And it's not being taught in lower schools and it's not in our
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corporations. And then, of course, out of the other side of their mouths, they're saying,
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and actually CRT is in all of these places and that's a good thing. But it's a little hard to
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pin down. I remember, I think it was Martin Jay, the sympathetic historian of the Frankfurt School
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and critical theorists generally, said that critical theory is less its own discipline than it is
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a gadfly on other disciplines. That it's sort of an analytical framework that begins to infect
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all of the other disciplines. It does. So how do you go from Harvard Law School to
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CRT ostensibly everywhere else? You mentioned Kimberlé Crenshaw, and so I'm going to give credit
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to Derek Bale. I don't know if you read in school, Faces at the Bottom of the Well and his
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fictional account, Space Traders. I think Kimberlé was a student of his and she brought us
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intersectionality. But the CRT is clearly rooted in the critical theories related to the cultural
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Marxists. And it just morphed and it has infected every institution and discipline within the academy.
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And I guess it would have been OK if it had stayed at the universities, but it got into departments of
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education. And when the Obama administration came to power, it was not long. By 2012, that was when you
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saw it really infecting K through 12 education and the criminal justice system with arguments about
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restorative justice. And and so, you know, people are becoming more aware of it because of George
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Floyd's death and the money that's been poured into it from corporations trying to buy peace and
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virtue signaling. Money has given it, you know, more strength than it should have. But it is something
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that we should all fight against. It's very harmful to racial ethnic minorities as well as to, you know,
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Caucasians. It's harmful to our American society. And we should not give people that divide us in the
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way CRT theorists do a free pass. And we should not give them access to our children.
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So now, how do you stop it? Because there are governors such as Ron DeSantis who are going in
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using the power of the state and saying, look, the state has obviously a role in education. A lot of
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these are public schools. And so we're going to say, no, you're not going to teach this stuff to our
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kids. Then you have some people, maybe the more libertarian minded who say, no, we don't want to kick
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any books out of school. We just want to teach all sort of points of view and we'll open the curriculum
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up to everyone. And we don't really want to use state power. So in terms of the nuts and bolts of
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how you get this poison out of our lower school, you know, middle school, high school, even elementary
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school. Right. How do you do that? Well, I can tell you that it is in K through 12. And you may have seen
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some of the research. I know that you have a, you're a little boy. How old is he now? Like
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eight or nine months? Yeah, he's a little over 10 months now. Okay. Well, according to some of
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these race theorists, by six months, a baby can be racist. And so little white babies and little
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Jewish babies or whatever, they can be racist. And so Sesame Street and Nickelodeon and all of those
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children's programs are trying to indoctrinate these children. And they're trying to make them
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see color because naturally kids just, you know, they see their friends, they see people around them,
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they see who they like, but we're trying to consciously teach them to see color and to guilt
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out white people to make them feel ashamed, especially if they come from a normal family,
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a two parent family. If they've been successful, then that's undeserved wealth.
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You know, that's white privilege. And I have been around long enough to know that,
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you know, white privilege, a lot of it, there's black privilege, there's Hispanic privilege.
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In most cases, it means that your parents made good decisions and you're benefited from it.
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And it is in the K through 12, there are books that they may not be quoting Derek Bell and
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Kimberly Crenshaw or Richard Delgado, but they're taking their ideas,
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and they're distilling it down to children. And it creates, I would say, a hostile learning
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environment, shaming, bullying of children and teachers. And it's just unacceptable. And it's
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un-American to allow that. We should all fight back against it.
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You know, I have no evidence that my son is racist, but I'm open to the possibility because I know that
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my son is sexist because he loves mommy and he has absolutely no interest in daddy.
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So I don't know, maybe he's racist. Who knows? These kids, according to the left, they're so evil
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Guess how the research is? It's my understanding that part of the research to determine that these
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babies are racist is that they prefer some faces better than others. And I'm thinking that if I'm a
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baby, I'm going to prefer the faces that are changing my diapers and beating me and hugging
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me, those are going to be the people that I prefer. And so if that makes me racist as a baby, then,
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you know, so be it. That means that in every ethnicity, there's a whole bunch of racist babies
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if they're being raised by their biological parents that took care of them and show them love.
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That's right. I know my baby. I suppose he is anti-Italian because my wife is not Italian. I
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am. He doesn't have any interest in me. So it's, as they say in The Sopranos, it's anti-Italian
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discrimination. And really, I mean, we're kind of joking about it, but you are seeing the left go
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more and more into not just putting this stuff in the minds of grad students or college students or
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high school or middle, but it's going down to elementary. It's going down to preschool.
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And at the same time, you're seeing this coupled with a move from the left to get more and more
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kids into preschool earlier on and to keep them in college later on. I mean, you see the growth of
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education too. Well, Michael, we're focused on CRT and, you know, that's what we're talking about
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today. But just as dangerous is a critical queer theory, critical gender theory, because they are
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sexualizing kids that are in kindergarten and, you know, they're confusing them, telling little
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boys that they may not be little girls and they can. I've heard stories of children after they get
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this sex education being terrified that they're going to turn into the opposite sex. And so we're
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focused on one thing, but there are other critical theories that are just as dangerous. They don't
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belong in K through 12 education. And we have to root it all out.
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It's a very good point because while we focus on critical race theory, frankly, the critical
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sex and the gender theory is probably more dangerous. I mean, the sexual distinction in
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human beings is much more fundamental than any kind of racial differences. And so what is the solution
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to this though? Because in the old days, you would say, look, we know that there are boys. We know
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that there are girls. We know that boys and girls naturally want to do certain things together and
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people might have aberrant desires and understandings. But look, there's true, there's
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false, there's natural law, there's certain things we're supposed to do. And so get in line with what's
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with the telos, get in line with the natural order and the theology of the body, if you wanted to use
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a technical term. Today, we're not allowed to say any of that. We're not allowed to say
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that there's any better sexual behavior than any other sexual behavior. We're not allowed to say
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there's any substantial difference between men and women. We're barely allowed to say that there's
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such a thing as objective truth. So how do you go back? Well, I can tell you that again, like
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the Obama administration, I don't want to say it was the root of all evil because evil preceded the
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Obama administration. But the activism of the LGBT community, where it pertains to our children,
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where you have transgenders and, you know, lesbians and homosexuals talking about their sexual behavior
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to the children, you know, and just really pushing the activism that some people warned about. They said
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it would happen. And of course, they said, Oh, no, it wouldn't happen. And I don't know if you
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followed the fact that the Biden administration is trying to change the policy at the Department of
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Education, so that they no longer track sexual activity between adults and children. Like these
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teachers, you know, that assault their students, engage in pedophilia, they don't want to track those
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numbers. And it's just, and I don't see that getting a lot of attention. It's not getting the
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immediate attention that it should. You know, we should be up in arms about it, because it does lay
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the groundwork for normalizing pedophilia. We know a lot of it takes place in the classroom with
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teachers, because we see all these teachers, you know, that are having sex with their students.
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The whole idea that an administration would argue that we don't need to collect that data and make
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it public. It's absurd. You know, I actually had not heard about that story, but I'm not surprised.
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Some years ago, conservatives said, as we always do, we said, this is a slippery slope. And if you
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permit certain sexual ideologies, the next thing you know, the left is going to try to normalize
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pedophilia. And they told us that was completely insane, and it was never going to happen. And you just
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had a professor who came under fire recently for using the term minor attracted person. He said he
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wanted to, he or she, I don't really know because his gender was sort of confused. So I'll use him as
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the single gender neutral pronoun. But he said that we need to destigmatize pedophilia because
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they're born that way, because they have these desires, and the desires are static their whole lives.
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And his view was that they can't change them in any way. And so if you're going to begin with
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those premises, then what's the flaw in that logic? Well, let me tell you, his research is not
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very original because back, I would say, 20 years ago, they were using the concept, some people
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are intergenerational intimacy. And that was a euphemism, you know, for sex between adults and
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children. And so in academia, you know, you get paid for coming up with ideas, and usually the more
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bizarre, the greater the reward. And so he just gave it a new spin. I think it was a professor at Old
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Dominion University, and I believe he lost his job. But he was clearly confused sexually by just
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looking at him. And, you know, I don't know. But he was certainly laying the groundwork for
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relationships between adults and children. And they have openly made the argument at times that it
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benefits the children. We have a sick society around us. And I think that if we are going to
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restore anything that resembles, you know, our Judeo-Christian roots as Americans, we're going
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to have to confront some of this stuff. And they may call us names. They will call us names because
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they do always call us names. But it is worth it. If you speak up, then someone else will speak up.
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And before you know it, you have Moms for Liberty and Moms for America. And you have all of these
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groups of people that were not activists, but they are there fighting hard for their children.
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But if we're going to transform the culture in this way and transform the whole conversation
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and get rid of some of these crazy ideas, then it seems to me we have to be able to say that some
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things are better than other things. Some desires are better than other desires. That we actually can
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kind of shape, to at least some degree, shape our desires. You know, you practice the virtues,
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then it gets a little easier. You start practicing vices, it gets a little harder to stop. It's kind
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of like a drug addiction, right? The more drugs you do, the harder it is to stop doing it.
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But then what you're going to be told is, hey, you can't legislate morality. Stop forcing your
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religious views on me. Who's to determine what's right and wrong? And you get this breakdown.
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We're told that in a totally secular society, total separation of church and state,
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you're not allowed to have those kinds of opinions in the public square.
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But wait a minute. You know, they make that argument, but they actively proselytize. They
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actively indoctrinate our children. They actively recruit. And so we need to have enough courage to
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call it out for what it is. And it doesn't matter what they say. Look at what they do.
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Hmm. That's a good point. Yeah. You say, I'm going to proselytize at least as much as you are,
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guys, which means basically you could bring back the Spanish Inquisition and it would probably
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be not even close to what they're doing. Carol, I've got to let you go, but where can people find
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the book? I think you had two books out last year?
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I do. Let me tell you this, Michael. Black Eye for America, How Critical Race Theory is Burning
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Down the House. It's my first bestseller. It was self-published. It sold over 20,000 copies,
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you know, with me promoting it. And then I had a book released in September. Now this book is not
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as popular, so I need you to help me popularize it. It's a counter-cultural living. What Jesus has to
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say about life, marriage, race and ethnicity, gender identities, and materialism. And I use my life and
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my mistakes. And I've had a messy life. I'm in my 60s, Michael. When you reach my age, you know,
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you've been through a lot of stuff. And I can talk about how not to do life, but Jesus has a better
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way. And it's a short book. I mean, it's shorter than Black Eye for America. And both of those books
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are well under 200 pages because I know people are busy. They don't have time to sit down with a long
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book. And so I want, I'm writing for the American people and I'm writing to be read and I'm writing
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to help transform lives. And I believe that we will win this victory. And I tell people to be
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encouraged. What you see with your eyes is not the true reality. There's more of us than there are of
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them. I love it. I'm very pro short book, Carol. You know, some of my favorite books ever written,
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I think are the most profound are really short because they say most books should be essays.
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Most essays should never be written. And people go on and on and on, but you just distill it,
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give them exactly what they need. So the two books, I can't believe you would write. I've written two
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books ever. And one of them didn't even have words. You write two books in a year. Black Eye for America,
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How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House, and Countercultural Living, What Jesus Has to Say
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About Life, Marriage, Race, Gender, and Materialism from one of the greats,
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Carol Swain. Carol, thank you for being here. Thank you. My pleasure. And Merry Christmas.
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Merry, you're not allowed to say that, Carol. You can't say that, but Merry Christmas to you as well.