Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 521 | Yes, Critical Race Theory Is in Schools | Guest: Tony Kinnett

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Today we're discussing the widespread teaching of critical race theory in schools and all the problems it's causing for teachers, students, and society in general. To help shed some light on what's really going on in the education world, we welcome teacher and administrator Tony Kinnett to the show. Kinnett is pushing back against the radical leftist agenda taking over the school system, and the website he started, the Chalkboard Review, aims to publish works by teachers no matter what their political affiliation is. Before we begin the interview, we start with a thorough definition of critical race theory, since the Left loves to claim that the Right doesn't know what it is. --- Timecodes: (0:35) Yes, CRT is showing up in K-12 schools! (11:00) What is Critical Race Theory? (24:13) Allie's interview with Tony Kinnett --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers has upgraded their website to handle the increased traffic that's been generated from the 'Relatable' audience as more & more of you choose to support American farms & farmers. And they have a limited time offer right now: go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE & you'll get 10 FREE bistro filet medallions with your order! Plus, save $25 on every box of mouth-watering American meats for life when you subscribe! And when you use promo code 'ALLIE' you'll get free express shipping. Annie's Kit Clubs are a great way to be creative & enjoy your favorite hobbies without the hassle & they have an amazing selection to choose from: crocheting, knitting, cardmaking, jewelry-making, quilting, sewing — even general crafting clubs that sends you some of everything. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 50% off your first kit! NetSuite by Oracle — the #1 Financial System — gives you visibility & control of your financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, & more! 93% of surveyed businesses have increased their visibility & control since switching to NetSuite. Go to NetSuite.com/ALLIE to switch today! --- Past Episodes Mentioned: Ep 495: The Truth About 'Social Emotional Learning' & What Your Kids Are Reading | Guest: Sherry Clemens https://apple.co/3qledLQ Ep 431: Dissecting the Dangers of Critical Theory | Guest: James Lindsay https://apple.co/3n11dJ4 Ep 400: Is Critical Race Theory Creeping into Christian Schools? | Guest: Isabel Brown https://apple.co/3D3kfnW Ep 353: Our Kids Are Learning What?! | Guest: Chris Rufo https://apple.co/309hVNE Ep 327: The Truth About Critical Race Theory https://apple.co/3odPGWp --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Hey, guys, welcome to relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. Go back and listen to yesterday's episode about vaccine mandates that I did with Ben Shapiro. Definitely go back and listen to our watch Monday's episode with President Donald Trump. Today we have another guest. we are going to be talking about how critical race theory actually is showing up in schools. You have been hearing breathlessly, endlessly, endlessly from liberal pundits on social media,

in the media, saying that critical race theory is something that's taught in K through 12 schools. This is a law school level, esoteric, obscure philosophy. This has nothing to do with public school education. This is not something that's happening. This is just a bunch of racist, stoking, racial anger. And this is white supremacy and white fragility and white and white and racist and white. The reality is, is that critical race theory and the tenets of critical race theory absolutely are being taught in schools.

We have talked about critical race theory a lot over the past two years. And let me just say, let me just say, I'm not trying to. to pat us on the back here, but we were one of the first conservative shows to even define critical theory, to talk about critical race theory. We were way ahead of the curve on this. Now, I will also say that there were a lot of people talking about critical theory and critical race theory before I was talking about it, obviously. They've been talking about it for decades, but there were conservatives, there were Christians who have been talking about this and warning about the tendons of critical race theory for a very long time. And so really, in the grand scheme of things, I'm, I'm,

I'm late to the game. But we have been talking about this for years now in one form or another, and thankfully more and more people are waking off to it. So the first thing I take issue with is when people say, well, these people complaining about critical race theory, they don't know what critical race theory is. They can't define critical race theory. As I've said many times, try me, try me. Unfortunately, I've spent a lot of time reading critical race theorists and reading primary

resources on critical race theory. I wish I did not know the misery that is critical race theory, but I absolutely do. The reason that we're talking about this, the reason we're going to talk about or talk to my guess is because of this Virginia election where parents were up in arms, not just about the tenets of critical race theory that are being taught in public schools, but also the gender theory that's being taught in schools and the mishandling of some terrible situations that we've talked about in Loudoun County schools. And so, So parents really did. They made this election.

They pushed the election in the way of Glenn Yonkin in Virginia. And that's why we're talking about this. And for whatever reason, Democrats and a lot of people in the liberal media, they just don't believe it. They just don't believe that it's anything other than a white supremacist boogeyman. And that parents who are mad about it just must be these crazy white supremacists. Here's a little montage of people in the media. media saying just that. Critical race theory, which isn't real.

You cannot teach the truth about Thomas Jefferson. You must give in comiums to Thomas Jefferson in school. Otherwise, that's critical race theory. If you even talk about enslavement, that's critical race theory. Anything that makes a white parent uncomfortable is critical race theory. We don't teach critical race theory. This is a made up. This is a Trump, Betsy DeVos, Glenn Yonkin plan to divide people.

All right. Well, there's a lot more examples than that. But this has been talked about constantly in the media on social media, that this is just this bogeyman. That was Joy Reid. She has been saying this a lot. That was her in the middle talking about that really white people and conservatives just say critical race theory is this is just talking about slavery or is just talking about racism. and white parents are just uncomfortable with kids learning about racism and slavery, which is not true. Way before we were talking about critical race theory, way before people were even worried about leftist

indoctrination in schools, people were learning about slavery, people were learning about the trail of tears, people were learning about Jim Crow. I went to a Christian private school in Texas growing up. I learned about all that kind of stuff. Honestly, it seems to me like the majority of mainstream liberals actually have no idea. what it is and especially don't know how it manifests itself. Really, what it seems like most liberals think is that it just means being critical of racism. That's what critical race theory means. I have talked to liberals who say that they're, you know, social justice, liberals, and they accuse

conservatives like me of not really knowing what critical race theory is. And then when I ask them to define it and ask them what they've read about it, what they say is that, oh, you know, it's basically just looking at how racism affects people. They don't know. I think honestly a lot of people on the left just defend it because the right is attacking it. And so it's just a knee-jerk reaction. They see it as another culture war. It's just they think that because the right says it's bad, that they have to say it's good. But if a lot of these liberals actually knew what CRT holds, they would realize that it goes

against many of the things that they say that they believe in like equal rights. And we'll explain that in just a little bit. The truth is what started out as an obscure esoteric idea by a 1970s scholar has now expanded to characterize much of the left's understanding not just about race but about human nature in general, about our society, about America's institutions, our constitution, even their understanding of truth itself. There are people in the center and on the left, professing Christians included, who will say, I don't believe in critical race theory.

Critical race theory is not something being preached from the pulpit. It's not something being taught in schools. They'll say, you know, yeah, I don't believe in critical race theory at all. But then they will say things that actually are derived from critical race theory. They just don't realize it. The concept of white privilege, for example, is a concept of critical race theory. Whether you agree with it or not, it is. Specifically, it comes from critical whiteness studies, this idea that there is a seen and unseen

collection of ways that white people use and have access to to help each other, that is mostly inaccessible to non-white people. That's originally what white privilege means. Systemic racism is a concept of critical race theory. Again, whether or not you think that it is real in 2021, it is a concept derived from critical race theorists. People really get mad when I say this, but if you read critical race theorists,

you know that that's not actually controversial to say that the claim of systemic racism is not based on hard data. It's not based on hard facts. It's based on a narrative with certain forms of facts sprinkled in to try to support the narrative. It's really a theory. It is a particular perspective. It is a philosophy that the system is to blame for all problems that are suffered by non-white people.

So it goes something like this. Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, the war on drugs, etc. All existed not that long ago, which is true. therefore it's obvious that these laws, this theory says, are the reason for racial disparities and black people's problems today. And that theory, that narrative of systemic racism sounds really believable because those were things that actually happened. Like, that's real, that's historical. But the assertion that those things were actually the cause or are actually the cause of remaining disparities today is not backed up.

with factual causal arguments. It is highly, highly debatable whether or not those policies still have a significant impact on disparities and outcomes today. But rather than debating it, CRT just accepts it as true without debate because CRT, critical race theory starts. It starts with the assumption that everything is characterized. Everything in this country is characterized by anti-Black racism. So when people say, well, I don't believe in critical race.

theory. But I do believe in white privilege and I do believe in systemic racism. Well, you believe in critical race theory. And those are just two examples. We'll get to more later. Let me give you a definition, a real definition of critical race theory. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch the Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. theory. This is the definition. I always try to shorten it and summarize it as much as I can, and I'm never able to because it's just, it is kind of complex. I mean, you could just say it boils down to white oppressors and black and brown oppressed and that every single thing in society comes down to that. That might be a simple way to just say it. But there are a lot more aspects

of it that I think are even more troubling and radical than that kind of reductive myopic in a historical and a logical view of the world. So critical race theory is a theory by a scholar, developed by a scholar named Derek Bell. In the 1970s, it's been around for a long time. He and the proponents of CRT would say that it is a way to examine American history and our current institutions through the lens of race. That's the most generous definition that you could give it. That is how they would define it. So Bell held that racism is not an exception in society, in American society, but it's actually a very good. its normal state. It is the usual way of doing things in America. It is intertwined not just with

our institutions, but in how most people live our lives in the U.S. So in other words, it is central to the human experience. And critical race theory seeks to examine how the centrality of race and racism has affected people's lives, black people's lives in particular, both individually and systemically. CRT is one of many critical theories. There's queer and gender theory, feminist theory. Critical theory is a school of thought that examines power structures and hierarchies within society and asserts that society's problems are due to these structures and hierarchies rather than, say, people's individual choices. So the goal of the critical theorist is to liberate, so-called, people from these structures and hierarchies, typically through major societal and political changes.

The assumption is that people are oppressed by systems that have been put in place, by the most powerful in society to keep them down. So critical theory examines these systems and offers ideas for how to finally attain liberation. Critical theory was established by the Frankfurt School in Germany, which was a school of social theory that, like Karl Marx, who wrote the Communist Manifesto, examined social conditions and hypothesized about how the poor conditions caused by capitalism and other systems could be changed by revolutionizing power structures and hierarchies. So critical theory, it's not identical to Marxism. So when you hear liberals saying, oh, they're just saying it's Marxist, it's not,

it's not exactly Marxism, but it is similar. So just as Marx, the father of communism, saw the world through the lens of class oppression, rich versus poor, bourgeois versus the proletariat, greedy capitalist versus the working class, and sought to overthrow capitalism. So every everyone would live communally and equally in harmony without any, you know, a personal profit or private property. That's what he believed. So critical theories see the world through the lens of some kind of oppressor versus oppressed. So critical race theory takes Marx's view of the world as the rich oppressors versus the poor,

poor oppressed and asserts that the world, or at least the U.S., is divided by the white oppressor and the black and brown oppressed. And the simplest and most clear breakdown of CRT is a book called Critical Race Theory in Introduction by Richard Delgado, Gene Steffen Sick, two critical race scholars. And here's how they introduce CRT. So they say, quote, critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies, and radical feminism. So from critical legal studies, it borrows the idea that there is no one right answer

when it comes to the law and legal decisions, it depends on interpretation, it depends on perspective, it depends on reasoning. It uses feminism stance on the relationship between power and social roles and quote, the unseen, largely invisible collection of patterns and habits that make up patriarchy and other types of domination. That's important because that lets us know how radical CRT is compared to most traditional Western thought about the rule of law, about due process, right, and the concept of truth. So CRT as a critical theory and as critical theory as a product of the Frankfurt School dismisses the idea that truth about society can be discovered through objective means or through the scientific method or through data. And rather truth is a matter

of a person's standpoint within power structures. So this is a matter of a person's standpoint. So this is why white people, and in particular white conservatives, are dismissed on this subject, even if they bring up data or counter logic to a particular claim about black people's oppression in the U.S. data or any points that contradict the idea that black people are systemically oppressed because of inherently white supremacist institutions can be ignored because they are coming from the wrong standpoint. The standpoint of the so-called oppressed Trump's any standpoint or facts presented by someone else. And now, It's not just white people who are dismissed by this.

It's also people who represent the construct, critical race theory says, of whiteness. So that is why a black or brown person like Winsom Sears or Ben Carson or Vody Bakum or Candice Owens or Samuelsay or all of these people who don't agree with critical race theory and don't agree with the leftist perspective on race and justice, why they are dismissed as, you know, carrying water for white supremacist or even called white supremacists themselves. is because critical race theory doesn't just see white and black as the color of your skin, but where you stand when it comes to these power structures. And so a white person like Terry McColliffe might actually be considered by this leftist view of race as more black than someone like Winsom Sears, who is a Republican and a conservative and doesn't go along with the victim mentality that critical race theory peddles. So it's very convoluted. It's very convoluted.

Delgado and Stefan Sik also explained that one of the primary tenets of CRT is a critique of the liberal order by liberal. That doesn't mean leftist. It just means basic Western democratic systems and the Western rule of law. So it actually holds in derision the idea of inherent rights and constitutional rights, the right to do process, free speech. They actually argue that these are all tools of the oppressor. So critical race theory, it's radical. It is truly radical. It doesn't believe in the Constitution.

doesn't believe in constitutional rights. It doesn't believe that America has ever been a place that has granted liberty and equality for all people, but that it is inherently white supremacist. And so even though Ibermax Kennedy and even though Nicole Hannah Jones who wrote the 1619 project and whatever that woman, that white woman's name is, who wrote white fragility, Robin DiAngelo, even though they don't call themselves critical race theorists, they are all peddling the same nonsense, that America is inherently innately racist, that white people are inherently innately racist, and that the entirety of the institutions

and systems in the United States are so infacted by white supremacy that there is no way that we will ever be able to achieve their version of justice, equality, and liberation until we hold all white people back and we tear them. systems down and we build it into some new fangled, convoluted, in my opinion, corrupted version of equity. It's truly radical. It is revolutionary. And again, it's not based on fact. It's based on this hypothesis that we were actually founded on the enslavement and oppression of people and that we are still carrying forms of enslavement and oppression today. It's really hard to make that case when you look at how far black Americans have come. Also, when you look at the fact that every single civilization

has had slavery, every single ethnicity has been both an oppressor and oppressed. Every person of every skin color probably has oppressed people somewhere in their lineage. So this collectivist idea that America is only exclusively and systemically a form of oppression for non-white people, it just doesn't hold up to facts. And if you bring up, for example, that Asian Americans are far more successful across a variety of categories, including Asian immigrants than white Americans, they have a higher graduation rate, they have a lower divorce rate, they've got a lower fatherlessness rate, they've got a higher median income than white Americans.

And so if you ask logically, how can America be a white supremacist nation if white people aren't supreme when it comes to most of the categories that we view as categories of success. They'll call that a model minority myth. They'll say that's offensive. That's pitting Asian people against black people. Really, we need to just be putting, you know, white people against non-white people. And they won't deal with your facts. They won't deal with your data. They won't deal with your logic. They'll actually just say that that's all a construct of whiteness. They don't want a colorblind society. They want more division. They want more segregation. They actually think that this is going to somehow accomplish liberation will look,

critical race theory and its philosophies have been driving the most radical wing of racial activism, so-called social justice activism in the Democratic Party for a long time. The people who are fueled by this kind of theology and ideology have been leading the cities who are made up of majority black and brown constituents for decades. And has that achieved liberation? I don't think so. But again, if you bring up those kinds of logical or data-driven points, then you're just dismissed as some kind of white supremacist.

And so in that way, critical race theory is self-certified. It can't actually be argued against. It is axiomatic. It is really more of religious dogma than anything founded in truth. And so when professing Christians, they find themselves latching on to this kind of thing by saying, well, systemic racism is a fact in 2021. White privilege is a fact. in 2021, you might agree with some parts of that. But to say that those are all givens, that we

just must accept those as a reality, well, you're not actually trafficking in truth. You have believed and are peddling critical race theory whether you want to believe it or not. And we do see forms of this, absolutely, in the public school system by separating oppressed versus oppressors, by talking about the inherent evils of the United States. We're not just talking about teaching the good and the bad and the ugly of American history, which everyone is all for, but we are actually talking about resegregation, demonizing whiteness, demonizing Western civilization, demonizing America, and also putting a stumbling block or an obstacle before black and brown kids by saying there's this insurmountable thing called white privilege and you'll never be as successful.

It's breeding resentment. And it is also, a lot of people are angry because it is taking the place of kids actually learning critical thinking, actually reading the classics, learning about math and science and STEM, all of these things that parents want their kids actually learning about. Not to mention it's unbiblical. We don't have time to get into all of that right now, but critical race theory is partiality. It is judging people by their skin color, assuming their experiences and their inherited oppression and where they stand in the world based on the color of their skin rather than based on fact. God hates partiality, Exodus 23-3, Leviticus 1915, Deuteronomy 117, Deuteronomy 16, 19. And we've talked about this many times. We'll link some

previous episodes where we talk about the dangers of critical race theory and where it is cropping up. Tony, thank you so much for joining us. Can you tell everyone who you are and what you do? I am Tony Kennett. I am the founder of the Chalk Board Review, which is an education publication for all teachers. And then I am the science coordinator for now for the Indianapolis public school system. Okay. Tell us why you said for now. Well, so I've exposed a lot of stuff going on on the inside of Indianapolis in the last couple of days. Some might say that even after I've been in two HR meetings before for really small things that kind of weird to be pulled into HR over tweets, saying rest in peace, Rush Limbaugh. I wonder how they're going to react at this point. I've received no emails of any kind this morning. So none that I usually get.

Normally I have 15, 20 emails in a morning. It's been eerily silent all morning. And that is because, for those who don't know, while we're recording this on a Friday, so this will actually come out on a different day. But as we're recording this, last night you went on Tucker Carlson. You had a video that came out on Twitter. That's how I discovered you,

talking about how critical race theory actually is in schools, at least where you are, but it's not necessarily under the explicit name of critical race theory. So that's why you're a little skeptical that things are eerily quiet in your inbox. Can you tell us why you made the video and reiterate what the video is about? What did you say? Absolutely. So I've been writing in conservative education policy for some time, but in my work life, I have been working as a science coordinator, as a science instructional coach for the district of Indianapolis.

And my job is to go around and make sure that the science curriculum is up to snuff for our 30,000 plus students. I'm supposed to help teachers become better teachers, not just in science, but kind of across the board. And in the last year, it's gotten really weird. Some of the stuff the district has started putting out, they've always been really to the left, but things that they started expecting of their teachers to do, grouping us into these weird sessions where they would, tell us that, you know, this systemic racism that white people are responsible for is ruining the entire country and that IPS is going to fix it by utilizing these principles from Kimberly Crenshaw and Gloria Ladson Billings, these critical race theory as they wrote it in the early

90s and early 2000s. So finally, I honestly had enough. I've been held to double standards. They've literally sent out an email earlier this year telling parents, telling principles that if a parent emails you, you tell them that we are not teaching. teaching critical race theory. And with the Youngkin election and everything going on, now all of these people are coming out on media and saying not only is critical race theory not taught in K through 12 classrooms. Not only is it not even a legal framework anymore at some graduate

level, you have people going on national media and saying it just simply doesn't exist. Right. But it's fake. Nicole Wallace, MSNBC, a supposed Republican, Hardy Harty Har, who said critical race theory, which isn't a thing. And so, and there are other guests saying the same thing. It's amazing how they've shifted. all the way to there, that it's basically just this imaginary boogeyman that the right just made up. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, continue on, obviously, we know that that's not real, that it is showing up in classrooms,

but continue on what you were talking about in the video, how it is showing up. Well, there are two basic arms of learning and instruction. There's curriculum, which is the stuff that you learn in class. It's the actual facts, the actual standards, the math, the history, the English, etc. And then there's pedagogy, which is how it's taught. And so we can legally tell parents, we can, you know, kind of wink and say, well, we're not actually using critical race theory and our standards. We're not teaching it as part of the curriculum. But realistically, once those school doors shut and the administrators are alone with the staff, they implore us to make sure that

we're teaching our students from a critical race theory pedagogy, which just means that when I teach, it's through a lens of systemic racism in the United States, this racist essentialism. And so that's more of what I want to communicate to parents. I just can't stand the line to parents. I don't think that's in any way acceptable. And that's what finally pushed me over. Yeah. And give us some examples of how this is showing up in the classroom. Maybe a lot of parents, while meaning parents, maybe even conservative parents, might not recognize it because it's so often brought in under the guise of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance, and equity, all of these very good and just and righteous sounding terms that no one wants to push back against because

no one wants to be seen as a racist or bigot. But it's not really about diversity and inclusion and tolerance, is it? Right. No, it's all about the buzzwords. In education, we love our buzzwords. They make sound so smart. We went to our graduate programs and we learned to say things with such nuance and Talk about mitigating these incredible factors. So how it looks in classroom is the teacher will walk in and say, guys, to encourage equity and to encourage racial justice and all of these things that sound really great for our communities, I'm going to have you all stand up and do a privilege walk. And we are going to determine that because of your skin color, not your heritage even,

now it's about the phenotype, the skin color. You look white. So if you're Cuban or you're a light skin Hispanic person, you're out of luck. Sorry, you're white now. Yeah. And we make students do these privilege walks. and at very young ages determine how racist they must be and how privilege they must be. And there's the soft bigotry of low expectations.

We just had a meeting the other day in which it was discussed that while our black and Hispanic students weren't scoring very well on state reading tests, all of our teachers were still giving them A's and Bs in the classroom just alongside students who weren't black or Hispanic, which was really weird. It sounds like the soft bigotry of low expectations to me. That doesn't sound like that's helping. children, petting them on the back when they're not meeting standards. That's how it shows up. Is we treat black and Hispanic students like they are inferior victims. And then we treat white students as though they are horrific oppressors. And that's what it looks like on the day to day. Just has nice words painted over it. So we hear it a lot in the rendering of history that sometimes

comes from the classroom like Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States type teaching 1619. old Zen. Right. 1619 project type teaching, which is not at neither of those sources are actually even meant, intended to be historically accurate. They are actually intended to be a particular narrative or particular perspective of what the authors of those sources want American history to look like, where white means oppressor, a black and brown always mean oppressed and therefore every institution in the United States is permeated by that oppressed versus oppressor, versus black dichotomy. Real history is a lot more complicated than that. There's good, there's bad, there's ugly. That's the problem with critical race theory. It's not teaching kids about race and history. It's about teaching people about a particular, and I would even say, prejudiced and a historical view of history. That's why people have a problem with all of this. But it's not just showing up in the history classroom or in the English classroom or in social studies or whatever. It's showing up in math and science, right? It really is. And that's kind of the weird thing.

in my domain of science, there's been such a push to make sure that we're meeting these weird racial quotas in our programs. We're putting a weird emphasis on how equitable our texts are and making sure that all of these science texts, we're adopting a science curriculum this year. So I'm reading hundreds of different science texts, articles, et cetera, trying to make the right choice for our district. Well, they put us on a committee, and now they have a racial equity committee looking over my shoulder to make sure that the books that we choose are equitable.

And they have all of these examples because there's no way that a black or Hispanic student could ever understand the same examples as a white student could. That's called culturally relevant pedagogy. That's Gloria Ladson Billings again. And so it props up some math and science. We're starting looking at a partnership with Indiana University that analyzes how a math teacher teaches and then analyzes what the students of color score in that class to determine how racist the math teacher is. It's wild. Oh, my goodness. Can you explain that a little bit more?

they determining how racist a math teacher is, by how many equitable, so-called equitable examples she's using? Well, it kind of depends. So the Racial Equity Institute out of the Carolinas comes in every year we pay them oodles, canoodles, and toasters, strudels of money to come in and give this big, huge, long lecture to us. That's our tax dollars, correct? Oh, absolutely. So your property tax dollars are going straight to some racial equity group to come in and lecture us about water. And they come in and there's no data that supports a lot of the claims they're making about ethnomathematics, for example. That, you know, math. In the world is that. Yeah, the theory that math has been dominated by white faces for such a long time, you know,

even though we're using Arabic numerals and even though we draw a lot of the concepts of trigonometry from the Islamic Golden Age, etc. It's apparently dominated by white male, cisgender normative nonsense. And so ethnomathematics is more equitable. It's about teaching the history and the process and the color of the people that were coming up with these things and really just theorizing these incredible whatever's because you could never find your multiplication tables useful despite the fact that I use my multiplication tables every day. That's the only reason I know what seven times seven means anything. So equitable or ethnomathematics is more about the process, but not even necessarily the process of how you get what seven times seven. You know, what seven

is, but I guess how these formulas were formulated by people of color and how colonization, I'm sure, and imperialism and oppression and all of these things kind of go into the history of mathematics. But at the end of the day, that's not going to teach someone how to build a bridge. It's not going to teach someone how to engineer a plane. It's not going to teach someone how to calculate the dosage if they're a nurse. So what are the repercussions of kids, especially, like I would. would say this disproportionately affects kids who don't necessarily have involved parents who are raised

by maybe a single mom who doesn't have time to pay attention to all of their homework. Like what are the repercussions for these kids who are not learning simply that 2 plus 2 equals 4, but that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is a construct of white hegemony? Well, think about it. You just talked about all of the industries that those students could never participate in because they didn't have a good enough grounding in mathematics. So all of the trades education fields that would make a lot more than I'm making at Indianapolis public schools that I wish I had known about when I was in high school are not being given to

these students. Instead, they're all of these airy social dynamics that we really want our students to focus on that don't do anything for trades education. I mean, we're in the middle of a massive supply shortage in this country. I really wish we had more people going into trades education, working in industries like contracting and lumber and HVAC, etc. But we're not preparing our students for that. In fact, we're ostracizing large parts of our communities that work in those trades because we're afraid of stereotyping the Hispanic community. Don't want to talk about contract and drywalling work because that could have some type of anti-Hispanic or excuse me, latinx implications. It's silly. It's performative and it's going to cripple our students in the modern

economy. So what is the goal then? What are, what is this curriculum preparing kids for? If not real life? I think it's really in two parts. So I think the goal realistically is just a preen. A lot of people are bored and they want something to prine over. And so this is something that at the end of their day, they can come home and they can feel really good, that they advocated for someone and it makes them feel really great when they're angry, when they participate in their Orwellian, two minutes of hate. And it gives them a passion and a drive for doing things. Realistically, I think that the district is wrestling with this as a whole. Superintendent Johnson has her big, masterful plans that she's going to carry through because our academics are pathetic.

Our scores are dismal, so she doesn't want to be responsible to the Indiana Department of Education or to the parents of the community. So she needs a project to look like she's actually doing something. And for the Black Lives Matter Resolution and the 1619 Project Resolution, she gets to look like she's doing something, even though realistically our kids' academics aren't getting any better. In fact, we're crippling them socially and emotionally as well. Yeah. And you know, it's that aspect that I think has woken a lot of parents up who aren't necessarily political. or maybe they typically vote Democrat.

It's not just what these kids are learning. It's also what they're not learning. And I have talked to several moms, one mom in particular, outside of Dallas and Texas, a conservative area. She was not just saying all of this sexually explicit, racially divisive, you know, LGBTQ material that her young kids were learning as young as five, they were learning about gender identity. And then her eighth grader was learning, was recommended a book by her social studies teacher. that opened up with different ways and how-toes on how to commit suicide, glorify child rape, pedophilia. Suicide? Are you serious?

Yes, yes. And people can go back and listen to that episode. We'll link it in the description to this episode. I mean, terrible, terrible stuff. And this particular teacher is very much a left-wing activist teacher. And so, of course, this mom, she's a Christian conservative mom. She was obviously upset about this. But what has gotten other parents upset, even if maybe they ideologically agree with some

of that stuff is what the kids are not learning. They said the same thing. Their scores are abysmal. Their eighth graders, a lot of them are reading at a third grade reading level for no reason, for no reason. And so you're creating a bunch of, I guess, dumb activists. Maybe that's the goal. I mean, it's really embarrassing, but this is again, most likely from what we can tell from the early data, what flipped Virginia for Yonkin. I mean, you have all of these parents of every color in Creed who are upset at how the public schools are doing things. And then his campaign comes out, Randy Weingarten from the union comes out, like as a last ditch effort to save the election for McColliffe, to suggest that the only people who are concerned are white parents and all of the

black and Hispanic parents are looking around going, we care just as much as the white parents, what we don't exist because we don't agree with you. And this is, again, this is just the exact same racial pawns on a chess piece that have been in education for a very long time. You don't care about the parents and the kids. Their color is just a way for you to feel better about your activism. And it goes to show how convoluted that word racist has really become that, I mean, that that's the accusation that's been launched since the Virginia election that, oh, they voted for racial, white ignorance, whatever it is. They can say that you voted for the Republicans that won the three Republicans, only one of whom is white, by the way.

because you're a racist white person. But if you didn't vote for these other guys who are white males, it's because you're racist. It doesn't make any sense. Obviously, the Republican side included a Cuban American, a Jamaican American, who was the first black woman to be elected to a statewide office. The left obviously cares about that identity politics. But apparently you are actually more black and you're more equitable if you are a white person who voted for a white Democrat than you are if you are a black parent who voted for a black

woman to become lieutenant governor. It's insane. Is it not insane? Oh, it's hilarious. There was just a guy that I speak with pretty regularly in Indiana. He used to be the vice president of the Indiana College Democrats. And he thought he had this really great tweet lined up. Look at all of these members of the Indiana General Assembly and of like the representatives they send to Congress. Only one of them is black. And then it turned out that that was false. And now, of course, we're going to the Virginia election and we elect not only the first black lady lieutenant governor, but also the first son of or the first child of immigrant attorney general and a fine gentleman. And yet there's no, you know, there are no posts made.

My racial equity office didn't send us any emails about this historic moment in genuine racial equity inequality. Instead, it doesn't fit their agenda. So it gets left out. Yeah. More racial pawns. And it just goes to show. maybe this gets to the heart of what we are talking about, about the why behind this curriculum.

It shows that it's about power. It's not really about helping people of color. It's not really about so-called justice and equality. It's really about power. You are considered on the right side, even if you are a rich white male who sent his kids to private school, just as Terry McCalliff did, you are more black and more equitable than the black daughter of immigrants. or the black immigrant who is a Republican. It's really about power. And that's why people say what critical race theory comes down to is the same thing that queer theory comes down to.

It's the same thing that feminism comes down to. It's not actually about for women, just like feminists really don't give a flying flip about what I do or don't do or whether I'm oppressed or not. They only care about people on their side of the political aisle. What it always comes down to is a form of communism, whether it's, It's not, you know, class bourgeois versus proletariat anymore. Critical race theory is white versus black. And then queer theory is cis heteronormative versus not feminist theory, male versus

female. But what it really comes down to is power. What it really comes down to is politics, right? You're absolutely right. And there's so many interesting aspects of the Marxism into critical race theory dynamic. I used to not believe it. I used to think that it was just some silly. racial performative nonsense that it had always been. And I honestly used to think the Marxism aspect

of it was like a kind of a deeper Republican conspiracy theory until I sat through the racial equity training. And they told us that they wouldn't even use the term white privilege anymore in that certain racial equity institute because it disparaged the underpaid, oppressed, poor white people in areas like Appalachia. And they imposed through the entire segment of trainings that we had to go through and have our camera on and we had to be active and paying attention because they were open that they were watching us, that the American system of capitalism is what perpetuated slavery. And American capitalism is what perpetuated Jim Crowism, even though that's not true. It was obviously state laws that kept black individuals from eating inside white areas of restaurants,

et cetera. And it's amazing how they've shaped this narrative, as you talked about Howard Zen, into this very strange socialist dynamic. They're trying to pass off as just the way it's always been, the way it always was. Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you said that they won't use white privilege because it disparages poor white people. That actually shows to me something that actually makes more logical sense because I do think white privilege is offensive for that reason. There are black and brown people who have not been oppressed in this country. There are white people who have been oppressed or I don't even know about oppressed being the right word, but they've had particular

hardship. I think that what you see, what you're seeing with that is what you always see with intersectionality is that they end up tripping over themselves because you're constantly finding these like little intersections of how someone is oppressed and you can't ever get fully woken off to like fully acknowledge all intersections of oppression until you finally realize, oh, so people are just individuals with individuals. experiences, individual hardship, individual talents and strengths, and if we treat people as individuals and hold people to a high standard, give them the tools to reach that high standard, rather than lowering everything to the most common denominator of our perception of the kind of person who is

oppressed, then maybe we can actually move forward, but people don't seem to be able to get that. I don't know. This is where the history revisionism comes in, because if you start looking at people as individuals and their character and their choices, you can build a much broader society that's colorblind, that works to help each other, that actually encourages the goodwill towards all men. And you can't have that in the intersectional dynamic that Kimberly Crenshaw puts out. That's why Nicole Hannah-Jones works so hard to reshape the narrative of American history in the 1619 project. It's why Howard Zind is his entire thing.

It's why we're doing it in Indianapolis and claiming that Indianapolis is one of the last cities to embrace civil rights, which is a complete sham. And in Thomas Sol's book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the very first line actually shows from Indianapolis history that the upper class white people in Indianapolis were not upset about black individuals emigrating north from the south. They were mad about poor white people emigrating north from the south. And he points that out very quickly and says, it's more about individualism and more about being concerned about character than it is about being concerned about what skin color is moving into your neighborhood. it's a lot of crazy fear-mongering nonsense when you start treating everyone as part of this weird social, victimized group.

Yep. And he also says in that same book, making a similar point about different kinds of black people, how northern black Americans didn't like southern black Americans moving to the north. There was a different culture. There was a different type of behavior. There were different expectations for the family, for employment and things like that. and he talks about the rift between black Americans. And that is one problem with critical race theory viewing, you know, white, bad, black good is that the world is way more complicated than that. The reality is that every person of every different kind of ethnicity has oppression somewhere in their lineage. Virtually every civilization has had enslavement, has had some kind of discrimination,

prejudice. Thankfully, in the United States, because of our founding, documents, what Frederick Douglass called anti-slavery documents, essentially, we've been able to look back at those founding ideals and say, oh, right, slavery is wrong, excluding women from the voting process or black people from the voting process was wrong. Jim Crow was wrong. Without those foundational documents that critical race theorists and radicals like Ebermax-Kendi and Nicole Hannah-Jones think are bad, like critical race theory actually thinks due process and free speech and freedom of religion are all tools of oppression that should be eradicated. Without those things,

we would not have the equality and the liberty and the justice that we have today. And so it's not only historically wrong, it's morally wrong. And what I want to hear you talk about also, I know you're a Christian. From a biblical perspective, why do you take an issue with some of the things we're talking about? In the very latter parts of Scripture, it's cited that every tribe and tongue and nation will bow to the name of Jesus Christ. and Christ came to save the sins of the world. Christ never looked at an individual and asked them about their family history, about what history of oppressive sins.

In fact, early on in Old Testament scripture, the Israelites were told very specifically not to whine about the things their parents had done, you know, children on these sour grapes that their teeth had been sharpened for, meaning that you are not responsible for the crazy things that your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents did. And I'm not going to hold you to those things either. So that's one issue. Before that, of course, was the fact that all peoples are created by God equally.

And he didn't create people to be part of certain cultural groups, certain different cultures popping up on different sides of the earth kind of evolving alongside each other. He created one people that were descendant from. And within that, we're all related. It's actually why I became a science educator is because I am just astounded by the beauty of creation and the intricacy of its design. and really seeing that day-to-day interaction, it makes me cringe at the idea that someone could view the soul of an individual reduced down to its skin color. That bothers me. I don't like equating culture to color. It's never been done in scripture.

You'll notice that the Bible never actually talks about the color of an individual's skin in the entire book. It talks about the culture. It talks about where they come from. It talks about what they think. But you never have, you know, in the latter writings of Paul going, now, be careful about these Ethiopian. down here, be careful about these Greeks over here being white people, he never does that. He addresses specific cultural issues within the church that they're dealing with, and that culture, the character, and the decisions are what are addressed in scripture.

Yep. It's an anti-biblical view of sin, of human nature. It says that instead of original sin being sin, as we know it to be, original sin is actually racism for white people and people who are not white are somehow absolved of the guiltiness of sin and you nailed it when we are you know when people are before the judgment throne of god there's not going to be a bunch of woke math tabulating if that person was oppressed enough to absolve them from the words that they said from the thoughts that they thought from the things that they did that's not how it works we are all

held to the same standard. The fact of the matter is is that every human being is held to a standard of perfection, of perfection. In order to be reconciled to God, in order to have a relationship with God, you have to be perfect. You have to keep the law perfectly. Bad news is absolutely no one can do that. White, black, does not matter. Doesn't matter what your dad did. Doesn't matter what your great, great, grandparents did for good or for evil. Can't reach it. There is one who did. And the color of his skin, unlike what critical race theories say, actually doesn't matter. What matters is that Jesus Christ became our reconciliation. He reached that standard on our behalf because no one could do it. And all of us who are in Christ or made one, all of us who are outside of Christ are dead and sin, those are

the categories biblically, ultimately that matter. And when we divide people along other lines, pit people against one another, try to try to have people reach different standards, based on some convoluted, newfangled idea of equity that is actually completely inequitable and unjust, suffering will happen. People will suffer, right? Every time. And realistically, this is one of the reasons I get such a kick out of every couple of months. Some collection of institutes, you know, some group of anthropologists will come out with a new picture of this is what we believe Jesus looked like. And then you see all the people from the left and all of the hyper-progressives who aren't Christians and really have nothing, want to do nothing with Christianity.

They'll say, ha, see, look, he was a Middle Eastern Jew. He wouldn't even be allowed in white churches today. And everyone on the area of Christianity is basically like, so. He was a Middle Eastern Jew. Yeah, and we knew that. Right. We knew that. Like, that's literally what Matthew carefully outlines.

Have you had the opportunity to watch The Chosen? You know, a lot of people have told me to watch it, and I started watching it. And then I just did not for any reason not because I didn't like it. I just haven't watched it all the way through. I love how they. outline how particular Matthew is inciting Christ's genealogy and where he comes from. Again, not from a, here's what color he was, but because you actually get to see all of the individual prophecies that are fulfilled by his calculating writings. And again, I just, I really get a kick

out of someone, you know, telling me, well, you know, Jesus was Jewish. What do you have to say to that? Well, yeah, awesome. That's what I've known my whole life. Yeah. And, you know, it just gets this, these racialized ideologies get everything exactly backwards. Like we are made in God's image. I don't have to make my God in my image. Like I don't, I don't have to try to make Jesus in my image in order to worship him. And actually, if you love Jesus anymore, any less, if you relate to Jesus anymore, any less because of the color of his skin, then I'm afraid that you're actually worshiping a political ideology. You're actually worshiping race rather than worshiping our Savior. And actually the Bible goes, the Bible doesn't even tell us, like you said, anything about what he says, but in Isaiah, the one description that we do have of him is that he was really nothing to look at.

Like his appearance wasn't anything that you looked upon and you said, wow, like that is the king of kings right there. And so it's almost like God is going out of his way to say, look, the appearance, it really doesn't matter. When you put stock in that, you end up idolizing something that you're not supposed to idolize. you end up breaking a commandment that you are supposed to put no other gods before the Lord your God. When you elevate skin color to the place that a lot of racial ideologues have in this country, that's what you're doing. You're making an idol, right?

Absolutely. And it's heartbreaking to see people really, and this is my issue quite honestly, with many of the hyper-evolutionist views of history. And being a science educator, this isn't usually something I talk about, but at least, not since I've been out of the classroom, but I have a serious issue with the hyper-evolutionist view of history because it makes human zoological. It puts us in the same class as animals that are to treat each other in this violent, horrid way, without value, without a soul. And it takes away the individual value that isn't the outside of your skin, that isn't the amount of melanin,

you know, the shape of your nose, how high your cheekbones are, the shape of your eyes, etc. it does put the human value at the consciousness, at the soul, and that thing that we all have and share, that animals do not have and never will have. And realistically, what I'm considering science and my science instruction, I do try to impress upon my students, or I did when I was in the classroom, how valuable a human life is and how that is to be protected and sanctified. And that actually explains why humans do what we do regards to the environment, in regards to our genetic experiments on things like food.

food in regards to how we study and analyze history via science. And it really impacts your entire view as a human once you realize the value that a soul has, not a color, but a soul. Absolutely. All right. How can people follow you, support you? That's my first question. My second part of the question is, for people who want to know what's going on in their school district, what do they do? So two-part question there. Absolutely. So about a year ago, my colleague Daniel Buck, who is a teacher up in Wisconsin, also a political writer, noticed that there were no places that if you weren't on the hyper-left, not the moderate left, obviously not center-right, if you weren't in that camp,

then you were not allowed to write for organizations like Ed Week, Chalk, Beat, university publications, et cetera. And so he suggested to me that we should start a publication that would give a window into education and so parents could see what all teachers are saying, regardless of political affiliation, left-righter center. I told him no. I didn't want to be a part of it. I had to like another failed publication. No thanks.

I'd made it through my early 20s without having a podcast. I'm good. And he worked me over on it a little bit. He asked me that if I'd pray about it, I'd pitch it to a few people. Well, long story short, we launched chalkboard review in late November. It's at chalkboard rev on Twitter, www. thechalkboardreview.com. And now we're at 18,000 readers monthly.

That is awesome. It's been incredible. The amount of teachers and community members, professors that are written for us from the left, right, and center. We have articles that call me very bad and ugly names. We still publish them because parents and teachers and community members should be deciding whether the article's any good or not, not me. So that's something that we've really enjoyed doing. We've had a lot of great guests on our cast, on Teachers Lounge, which is I ended up being forced to start a podcast. And we've had some phenomenal people just telling their stories of

things that they're doing in their communities. And it's been wonderful. You can follow me on Twitter at the Tonus, T-O-N-U-S. Some okay tweets there. I appreciate it for sure, but make sure you're checking out the chalkboard review. This is where our work is. If you're a parent and you want to know more about what's going on in your classroom, you want to see you're a little nervous about the curriculum. You're not sure what your kids are learning. The first thing that I would do is actually check your kid's phone. Most of the nasty stuff that they're running into is on the first swiped news page on Snapchat. Seriously, that is where all of the front line growth stuff is, that's thing number one. Check your kids' phones. People don't like that I say that. Too bad.

The next thing you should do is talk to your teacher. I had great relationships with my parents. I would tell them things I did like, things I didn't like. I would ask them what they were doing at home so I could support it in the classroom. And that is a vast majority of teachers. The biggest lie in education from the left that I've seen is that all teachers are voting on the left. That's not true. Surveys have shown that that's not true. It's really only about one-third, which means two out of the three are moderates, conservatives, independents, who most likely just want to go teach. Talk to your teachers.

Now, if you see stuff in your kids' work and you should be checking your kids' work that you don't like, that you think is wrong, you should go to the teacher about it. The teacher's uncooperative. Go to the principal about it. If the principal's not willing to hold his teachers accountable, you go to the superintendent because now you have a principal that's not doing their job.

And if the superintendent does nothing about it, they brush you off, etc., then you go to the school board. and you elect a better school board that's going to hold your district accountable. That's what you should do. And a lot of people did that. We saw last week during the election that there were a lot of school boards, some successful in a conservative takeover of the school board, some unsuccessful. But parents are certainly waking up and they're doing exactly what you're talking about.

Also, parents, you don't have to do this alone. I guarantee you there are a lot of parents who feel the same way you do, left right and center, who would be willing to. talk to the teacher, the principal, superintendent, and school board with you. There's power and numbers. I heard someone say, you know, fear is contagious,

silence is contagious, but so is courage. Courage is contagious too. You don't have to be a political expert. You don't have to have had, you know, an education degree. You don't have to be a teacher

to be an expert in the kind of education, the kind of learning that you want your child to have. Parents, you have the greatest vested interest in the holistic success and well-being. of your child. Don't let anyone belittle you into thinking that you don't have the primary role and responsibility there because you absolutely do. So thank you so much, Tony. Thanks for being a teacher that involves parents. Thanks for raising awareness about this. I know people are going to be

so excited to follow you and especially chalkboard review, support you, and just thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on and talk to us. Really appreciate what you guys are doing. Seriously, go out and look at some parent groups. I wrote an article for the Daily caller on I Met the Domestic Terrorists. And every single parent group that I talked to was full of well-reasoned, kind individuals who will link you up with all kinds of local news and resources. Amen. Well, thank you so much, Tony. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we

believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.