The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Critical Race Theory has no place in the classroom

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

Seemingly out of nowhere Critical Race Theory has become a highly contentious front in a culture war raging in schools across North America, pitting parents against teachers and progressives against conservatives. Proponents describe it as an important theoretical concept that explains how racism is perpetuated within the power structures of historically white societies. Students, they argue, must be taught that racism is not an individual bias, nor is it a thing of the past; rather, racism is embedded into the country's institutions and supports the perpetuation of white supremacy in society. In sum, race consciousness, on the part of all groups, is essential to our ability to achieve equality for all. Critics of CRT see it as non-empirical, highly specious academic doctrine that promotes discrimination and division in contemporary society. They maintain that analyzing everything through a racial lens impedes racial progress for all groups including the most disadvantaged. For its opponents, CRT is an illiberal and anti-enlightenment ideology that runs counter to ideals of progress, self-determination and equality built on people's shared humanity. Arguing for the motion is John McWhorter, Linguist and Associate Professor of English at Columbia University. Arguing against the motion is Gloria Ladson-Billings, critical race theory scholar and Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. QUOTES: JOHN MCWHORTER “What worries me is that it's not race that is being taught in schools, but an idea that racism is everything and that battling power differentials must be the focus of all of our moral, intellectual and artistic endeavors.” GLORIA LADSON-BILLINGS “The fight about critical race theory is not an academic one, it's a political one. And when politicians cannot win points on policy, they resort to inciting a culture war.” Sources: Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, The Hill The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail]. To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Critical race theory has no place in the classroom. Critical race theory movement in the headlines, as Florida becomes the latest state to ban schools from teaching about systemic racism. Critical race theory says every white person is a racist. Critical race theory says America is fundamentally racist. and irredeemably racist. Critical race theory seeks to turn us against each other, and if someone has a

different color skin seeks to make us hate that person. I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, of being, quote, woke or something else, because we're studying some theories. Hi, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. Well, seemingly out of nowhere, critical race theory has become one of today's defining issues in the culture war, pitting students against parents, school boards against progressives, conservatives against liberals. Proponents of critical race theory argue that it is not the bogey man that its critics make it out to be. Critical race theory just inherits the beliefs and the hopes of Frederick Douglass of Martin

Luther King who basically want the law to do for the freed people what the law did for enslavers. That's Kimberly Crenshaw. founders of critical race theory. She argues that CRT is an important theoretical concept that explains how racism is perpetuated within the power structure of historically white societies. Others see critical race theory as a non-empirical, specious academic doctrine that promotes discrimination and division within contemporary society. What we see in classrooms and school districts is very alarming because schools are trying to indoctrinate young children, sometimes all the way down to

kindergarten that America is a hateful, fundamentally flawed, irredeemable country. That's Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a vocal critic of critical race theory. On this installment of the Monk debates, we challenge the essence of these two arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, critical race theory has no place in the classrooms of the nation. Arguing for the motion is John McWhorter, linguist and associate professor of English Columbia University. Arguing against the motion is Gloria Ladson Billings. She's a critical race theory scholar and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. John, Gloria, welcome to the Monk Debates. Thank you. Thank you. Very much looking forward to today's

conversation and debate. This issue of critical race theory, its role in education systems across the United States, North America, is a debate. It's a debate. It's a debate that's happening in real time in society right now. So the opportunity to engage with both of you on this topic, people who've thought deeply about this issue for a civil and substantive debate really is a privilege and a pleasure indeed. So thank you again both for being part of this conversation. Our motion today, simple to the point, be it resolved. Critical race theory has no place in the classroom. John, you're arguing in favor the motion. I'm going to put two minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you?

Well, I just hope that in having this debate, two things are understood. One of them is that the debate shouldn't be about whether we want school children to be taught about slavery and racism and its effects. If there is any significant body of people who are influentially arguing in a large number of states that issues of race and racism shouldn't be taught in schools. I'm unaware of it. And then the second point is that I hope that what we're talking about is not whether critical race theory, as it was originated by brilliant legal scholars 40 years ago, is being given

to school children because I think we all know that it isn't. But I worry about an implication that seems to be floating around that if you haven't read you're Kimberly Crenshaw and your Richard Delgado and your Regina Austin, then you have no standing in this discussion and that if you had read those people, you'd find that that's not what's being taught and that therefore CRT is being mis depicted. And what's really going on is that a bunch of cigar-chomping white plutocrats don't want race and racism taught in classrooms. The issue is what developments of CRT are actually being taught in classrooms and how we feel about those things that really are happening in classrooms to an extent that is dwarfing anything that was happening before.

So I don't think the issue is whether Kimberly Crenshaw's work is being taught in classrooms. It's a straw man. Of course, it isn't. But a kind of educational philosophy that's a development from that, as the people who teach it, will tell you, is something that is infecting classrooms across the nation. And the question is, and it's a genuine question, is that kind of specifically anti-racist teaching? And not just teaching about racism, but the new variety of vulcanizing anti-racism that's all about teaching white people that they're wrong. Does that belong in classrooms?

I'm here to debate that. Thank you, John. Gloria, we're going to turn the program over to you. Same opportunity, a couple minutes on the clock, to preview your opening arguments in this conversation. Thank you. So in 1894, University of Wisconsin President Charles Kendall Adams and the Board of Regents wrote a report defending economics professor Richard T. Ely from censure by the state education superintendent Oliver Elwyn Wells for his writing and ideas about socialism. The final phrase of that report is enshrined in a plaque that is affixed to the door outside of basketball hall on the university campus, and it reads, whatever may be the limitations would tramble inquiry elsewhere. We believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.

And this is one of the reasons that I agree to leave California come to Wisconsin, because the concept of academic freedom is essential to my work and the work of every scholar. It also means that even ideas that one might find objectionable have a right to be entered into the marketplace of ideas. Critical race theory aims to speak to one of the nation's most intractable issues. How do we explain racial disparities? Now, many began in the 1600s deciding that disparities were, quote, natural. And up until the mid-20th century, we held onto that notion through arguments about biological and intellectual inferiority found in the eugenics movement. When the notion was debunked, we saw the rise of what

one might call an equal opportunity argument that suggests that the disparities reside in the fact that blacks lack opportunities. But each time these opportunities were presented, whether it was reconstruction or the Brown decision or affirmative action or the civil rights bill, the voting rights bill, those same opportunities were rolled back. Plus, a small group of legal scholars began to argue the systemic nature of these disparities and the normality of racism in the society. The idea that we should not allow students to argue the merits of a theory

to present warrants and weigh evidence is antithetical to scholarly inquiry. Now, to be clear, I want to argue for the teaching of critical race theory that I'm talking about students in higher education, preferably graduate school. So just as I would not explain, to teach engineering statics or discourse analysis in K-12, I would not dare insert CRT at that level.

For me, the debate is whether we want to engage in censorship reminiscent of totalitarian regimes, or if we are brave enough to engage in ideas, no matter how unpopular, to determine how we might best solve problems. And I was encouraged by the recent comments of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who said the other day, I've read Moussainton. I've read Lenin and I've read Marx that doesn't make me a communist. Interesting. I first read the Communist Manifesto in 12th grade in my government class in high school in Philadelphia. I don't think that Mr. McLeod, one of the few African-American teachers at my school, was trying to indoctrinate me and my classmates. And if he were, he failed miserably. I find the debate about the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 schools to be a red herring. is not about the theory, it's not about the scholarship.

I think it's about the 2022 and 2024 U.S. elections. And when one cannot win on policy issues, the retreat is to jenning up a culture war. Race is always a hot button issue in United States. But to paraphrase a quote I've heard, there are two ways to go about dealing with racial disparity, imperfectly or not at all. Thank you, Gloria. Another great opening statement. Now an opportunity for rebuttals. This is the chance that both of you have to react to each other's initial engagement with this debate. John, I'm going to pass the program back to you, two minutes on the clock. Give us your reaction to Gloria's opening. I think that critical race theory itself should be part of an education because it's a legitimate perspective, which, as Professor Ladson-Billen says, is open to interpretation and debate, but it's an important one. I am all in favor of voices from the hard left being part of what we

think of as an education. That is perfectly fine. I also agree that you wouldn't want to expose fifth graders to these kinds of ideas, but the problem is that in the name of critical race theory, people who are openly saying that they are affected by it and people whose ideas are clearly traceable to the foundational texts are doing things such as teaching young children, not graduate students, not even undergraduates, but young children, young white children, that their job is to feel guilty about the actions of the white people who came before them and possibly their own, that they're to feel guilty about their white privilege in the sense that a Catholic person might feel guilty about original sin.

And they are teaching young black people that their job is to think of their primary identity, not their only, but primary, and that's bad enough, as oppressed by white kids. And they're taught that they should be wary of white kids because of what white people are, quote, unquote, capable of. That really is something that's being taught in an increasing number of schools. And that, to me, is not about academic. integrity and being open to all ideas and whether or not a teacher is a Marxist. That to me is a perversion of what education is supposed to be, because what it really is, and I can understand why somebody would think this was a good thing, but I, as we say, contest this, the idea is that

the soul of an education, and you can see this in practically every education school in this country, the soul of an education is to teach children to be leftist radicals. And by radicals, I don't mean throwing a bomb, but the idea is that hard left, left, politics are truth. That is what many of these people think. I don't think that that's what children should be taught when they're in fourth and fifth grade. I know I'm not alone. And I worry that I am going to be called, if many people in the public hear me saying this, I'm just a racist, or in my case, I guess I'm a reverse racist. I don't think I am. Thank you. Let's go to Gloria now for your opportunity to react to John's opening statement or

what you've just heard now. Well, I want to be clear. that one of the tenets of critical race theory is intersectionality. And I'm sure that Professor McForder knows it as a colleague of Dr. Krenshaw. And intersectionality is that race is but one aspect of one's identity. So there are issues of gender. There are issues of class and ability as well as sexuality. All enter into who we are. I've just finished doing a huge analysis for the Gates Foundation. looking at what is being taught in teacher education. And I'm sorry, but I can't find this notion that we are teaching everybody to be hard left in teacher education programs. There is, I would argue, probably a bias towards something called social justice, but I would also say that it tends to be

very weak. It tends not to really understand some of the sort of macro issues that drive the way the society operates, that most teacher education programs are preoccupied with courses in methods. They probably have one or two courses on something called diversity, and that kind of goes all over the board. So again, I just want the warrants for the fact that this is being taught. I have spent this pandemic year in three school districts remotely combing through their curricula. I have. I used to be a social studies teacher, and that tends to be the place where a lot of this stuff is supposed to reside. I'm just not seeing it.

So without the evidence, without the warrants, not that I think this is happening or I've heard this is happening, I have a hard time standing by the notion that we are turning our children into the sort of radical leftist, self-hating, guilt-filled individuals. Thank you, Gloria. My opportunity now to kind of join the debate here and try to channel some of the questions and ideas of our audience listening to these excellent openings to this conversation. John, let me come to you first. I mean, many people would probably hear the phrase critical race theory and kind of think, well, you know, is this just an extension of critical thinking? You know, in other words, a kind of trying to get children to develop a mental habit of change. challenging, you know, an existing way of conceiving of ideas and responding to the world with a critical orientation, not passively, but using their intellect to dissect, in this case, power relations between different races and groups or institutions. So why isn't critical race theory just a natural and healthy extension of critical thinking skills? Well, it may have been when it was originated by people like Kimberly Crenshaw, but things develop.

There are always more things in mission creep. And what's going on in way too many classrooms today is something quite different from that. Only, frankly, a narrow-minded anti-intellectual bigot would have any real problem with what you just said, Rudyard. But for example, and I hate reading things out during debates, but in this case, it would challenge my memory to recite this word for word. And so I have something written out. This is going on at the Dalton School. in New York. And what's important is that this is representative. It isn't just one school. It isn't just six. It isn't just 12. I hear about something like this going on at some school at least once a day,

and I kid you not. This is just from Dalton. This is a letter that concerned parents wrote, and they described this, and it's tragically typical. Quote, every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity, racist cop reenactments in science, decentering whiteness in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality, in health class, in place of a joyful progressive education, students are exposed to an excessive focus on skin color and sexuality before they even understand what sex is. Children are bewildered or bored after hours of discussing these topics in the new, long format classes. Why would anyone voluntarily send their children to be taught that they are guilty regardless of their decency and kindness, a school where they're constantly

reminded of the color of their skin, not the content of their character? What black parent wants the other children to feel sorry for their kid and look at them differently. And I'll just leave it there. But the important thing is I did not just read some scary thing from one school. This is something that my aspiring partner, Glenn Lowry and I hear about literally daily, including on the weekends. Organizations such as fair are flooded with parents, not to mention students and teachers who are worried about this happening in their schools nationwide.

Now, what happens to be on the syllabus of many courses taught in education? schools is one thing, but I'm sure Professor Ladson Billings knows that there's often a slip between what's on a syllabus and what's actually taught in classrooms. And I would say, with all due respect for Professor Labs and Billings' experience and expertise, that the idea that education schools are not deeply biased towards a hard leftist view, often at the expense of teaching pedagogical technique, is fact. It's something that I have learned from countless people who've been through the educational mill from over the past at least 25 years, not to mention having studied the subject myself. It's simply fact. And the main point is it's affecting today, especially after

our racial reckoning, what's being taught in classrooms, which is the sort of thing that I just mentioned here. And frankly, if any student fell for all of that, they would never touch the New York Times again. I don't think that that sort of thing is an education. Thank you, John. So, Gloria, a chance for a rebuttal. John's painting a picture here that many people subscribe to, which is that long before this last year in the Black Lives Matter movement and an important reckoning on race, there was a growing institutional leftist bias within education, within the schools of education and universities that were churning out teachers every year. And now we have a conjunction of these forces, this broader social awakening with a kind of pre-installed left bias, left-leaning

that are combining together to create this kind of, in John's view, a kind of toxic conversation around race. Let's hear your response to that. Well, I will note that Professor McWhorter did choose a Dalton school, which is a private school, so people are paying their money. They can vote with their pocketbooks on that one. I deal primarily with public schools. And I will tell you that the overwhelming time spent in public schools is devoted to preparing kids for standardized testing. What I cope with as a university professor are young white people who are upset and angry because of what they did not know. I prepare students to teach in the social studies. I never uttered the term critical race theory, but I do have students ask questions. How do you explain certain things? What would be your explanation? What's your warrant for that explanation? So the point is my job, and I actually say to them both on the syllabus and allow, my job is not to convince you to think like I think. My job is to convince you to think.

my job is to convince you to think. So I am focused on students' ability to engage in civic debate, to engage in civic discourse, not to make anybody feel bad. And since we are into this issue of the feelings, there have been a lot of things as a person growing up in the 50s or 60s that I felt bad about in the classroom, but I didn't have a choice. I had to read Robinson Crusoe. It didn't make me feel good.

I just had to read it. So at some point, I think we are trying to make an argument that suggests that people can't look at the history of the nation, what's and all. And yes, there are some huge mistakes that we as a society have made. And it's not about whether or not you did it, whether your mother did it, whether your grandparents did it. It was done. And how do we explain it to make sure that we don't ever do it again? One of my first challenges as a social studies supervisor in a school district of Philadelphia was to write a Holocaust curriculum. And it was a difficult sell because people, we don't want to talk about that.

We don't want to make people feel bad about that. The truth of the matter is it happened. And in fact, the theme of Holocaust survivors is, never forget. And I'm happy to take up that theme as an African American. So, John, an important point that glory is making here. You know, this is about balance. Society changes. Guess what?

It's time for groups, primarily white students, to start digesting the history of people who don't look like them. That's what fairness is. That's what a pluralistic society demands. What's wrong with that? Nothing, but that's not what we're here debating. We're not debating whether schools. children should be taught about racism and things that happened in the history of this country that are unpleasant.

What we're talking about is whether schools should be transformed into anti-racism academies. And that is not a matter of just schools over the past several decades. We're talking about a new development, i.e. of the kind that would stimulate Monk to have a debate about it right now. And if I hear Professor Ladson Billings correctly, her idea is that this development, of critical race theory that has become this sort of anti-racist academy kind of cultural revolution struggle session way of teaching just doesn't exist and that what's going on in our schools is just children being taught to pass tests. I understand that discussion and I would have been lustily part of it in say 2008, 2012, but I think there's something more going on it. The idea is that there isn't a new way of teaching kids, not just about race, but teaching white children that their complicitness is the soul of their existence, teaching black kids that being victims is the soul of their existence, teaching South Asian kids that they should be very confused, I suppose.

And also teaching a general idea, not that America has been an imperfect and sometimes brutal experiment, but that America is just all wrong from the very beginning, that it begins with when Africans were brought to these shores, because that was its original sin, and that really everything that's happened in history has had as a fulcrum, the oppression of black people, when that is not just something that a white person might not want to think about, although I contest that white people in our moment are so close to it. But also, it's oversimplified. That alone is dumb, dumb history. And I mean that, and I would spell it, D-U-M, D-U-M. It's dumb-d-d-d-m. It's not how human societies develop. It's teaching people to be

dumb, D-U-M. I question this. Now, if, you know, the outcome of this debate is that I'm making up that that sort of thing has had a major uptick in the significance of how children are being taught in public schools since 2020 in particular and had been increasing since 2015, well, and I guess we're kind of done, but unfortunately, I think most people would understand what's being taught to school kids today is not only how to pass a test. There's a whole debate that we can have about that. But what's being taught to the kids is not also just that racism exists. The whole idea of framing all of this as people should be taught that the country is imperfect, and if you don't think they should, then you're in denial, like some parent who didn't want the Holocaust taught in some

schools some decades ago. No, no, that's not what this is. Something extreme is happening. It's our job as intelligent people trying to engage the direction that our society goes to assess whether this new way of teaching is what we want. And my last point is, of course, nobody walks around saying, our job as educational scholars is to teach people to be leftist radicals. Nobody's going to say that sentence. However, if you look at what is being taught, for example, the word empathy is often used. We must teach empathy.

Behind that empathy is really we much teach students' leftist radical politics. It's the effects, not necessarily the language that we have to look at. Hi, Monk podcast listeners. Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator. A big thank you to all of our listeners. We've achieved an important milestone. One million downloads in 18 short months since we started the Monk Debates podcast. That's a testament to you, our listeners, appetite for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. Please write a review about the Monk Debates podcast in your podcast store. Like us on social media, spread the word about civil and substantive debate via this pod. Thanks again for all your support and for helping us achieve this important milestone, a million downloads in 18 months. Now, back to our program. So, Gloria, I mean, you're someone who has studied, you know, curriculum and educational movements deeply. And building on John's kind of theory of the case here, would you acknowledge that in the past,

we have had fads in education. We have experienced moments where both the educational establishment but also teachers grip on to a new idea, a new theory. It certainly feels like to many people that we're living in one of those moments right now. Why isn't that the case in your view? Well, let me just say that having been a student of history of education in this country is amazing to me how remarkably traditional education remains. There was a time in which if you said John Dewey, then you were considered a communist.

Clearly, if you said Harold Rugg, you were a communist because these people were promoting, quote, progressive ideas. So I want us to be clear as an educator, I'm all for teaching a variety and a range of ideas from all sides and perspectives that we can gather, but we often have to be sure that we're not in this role of indoctrination or insisting that there's only one way to think about these things. That's what upsets me most when I looked at the Florida legislation.

I looked at the Texas legislation. It's not merely that we don't want to teach, quote, critical race theory. There's a whole list of things on there that have nothing to do. do with critical race theory. And where does anti-racism belong, Gloria? Because, you know, I think there's also a parallel debate here or a debate within a debate that, you know, it's not enough to be simply conscious of race. You have to have an anti-racism kind of way of thinking and approaching issues.

Is that a valid outcome, pedagogical outcome for the K-12 system? I think that what's being promoted is anti-racism is an attempt to be more proactive towards things that we are seeing. So if I'm in a school and I look at your suspension rates and they are wildly skewed

towards African-American students or if I look at your assignment to special education, then I want to ask a question about that. The Office of Civil Rights found that, you know, black children were just overwhelmingly more likely to be suspended. And then when you actually look at what the suspensions are based on, they are things like having a look or what we call non-contact

violations, wearing a hat in the building, rolling one's eyes. I think those are questions that the adults in the building have a responsibility to speak to. As far as teaching our students, would we want our kids to be, quote, anti-sexist? I would hope so. I would hope we would want to be more proactive towards the way in which certain youngsters are treated just because of how they look, just because of their gender,

because of their ability. I think we're trying to create a place where there is, you know, as I like to say, grace and space for everyone to be there. But as someone who was a taxpayer, What I want to see in public education is, again, our students being able to realize that everyone actually belongs here. We had a history where we said we didn't say that all the time. We sent nine little kids to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they were surrounded by vicious people.

They required the National Guard to assist them. We did the same thing with Ruby Bridges in New Orleans. And so we have a history of not making the school a place for everyone. And I would argue that any kind of, quote, anti-racist approach that doesn't make a place for everyone in the classroom is not truly an anti-racist approach. Well, I think that everything that Professor Ladson Billings is saying is valid, but I think we're extending the definition of anti-racism somewhat beyond what a certain current understanding has been. And I'm happy to hear that Professor Ladsden Billings and I agree. She agrees with my position in this debate, because if she believes, and I believe that she believes, that students should be taught how to think and not what to think,

then it means that the question as to whether CRT should be used in classrooms is easily resolvable. The answer is no, because whether we're talking about CRT as exemplified in a 40-year-old article by a brilliant law professor, or CRT in terms of the quote-unquote anti-racist struggle session training that's being used in an increasing number of schools across the country, those, whatever you have to say about them, you know, wherever your politics are, whatever your educational philosophy is, those are not about presenting both sides or many sides of a question. Both of those approaches are predicated upon an idea that they are truth. And that is particularly the way what is now called. called CRT is being used in classrooms. What we're having this debate about is that students are not being taught how to think. They're not being presented with ideas as just some on the table. They're being presented with something put forth as truth that students are forbidden from dissenting from, that teachers, if they dissent from it, end up having to resign or getting fired. So, should CRT under that definition? And we have to understand that there are conventionalizations

and how we refer to things. If I say, does somebody drink, we know that I don't mean lemonade. It means alcohol, nobody has to be told. In the same way, when I say CRT in schools, we know that I don't mean our fifth graders presented with an excerpt from Kimberly Crenshaw, and then they're given an excerpt from something written by Pat Buchanan and they're asked to decide whether or not one of them is right. That's not what's going on. CRT, when it's presented in schools, is presented as truth. many people are happy about that. They think that CRT, unlike Plato or Kant or Fanon, has found truth. They think that we finally hit it. These are very modern people. They think we're at the end. It must be a great feeling. I wish that I could join them in that feeling. But CRT is not truth. It is one of many ways of looking at things in the way it's taught in classrooms today in particular. And I think that I'm glad to see that we agree. If we're both interested in people being taught how to think and being presented with both sides, then we agree. that CRT, as we conventionally understand that the way we understand that does she drink means, does she drink alcohol, not does she drink lemonade? It means, and the she is not Professor

Latson Billings, please understand. I think the Professor Ladsden Billings and I are in agreement, and I'm glad to have found that out in this debate. Let's move in our remaining moments towards solutions, or where both of you think this debate goes from here. So, Gloria, first to you, I mean, there are these, as you know, statewide initiatives that are going on. You've mentioned earlier in this debate of how this looks to become an issue that could shape the 2022 midterm elections. I mean, how would you like to see society arrive at some kind of consensus around this debate? Is that even possible? Is there an exit to this?

Or are we, in your view, on the verge here of another thing? phase, another chapter, another salvo in a culture war? Unfortunately, I'm somewhat pessimistic towards a resolution around this. What is striking to me is the degree to which this legislation is being proposed in those states that are also proposing legislation that could be easily considered voter suppression. They seem to be going hand in hand. Now, that, you know, anybody who studies statistics knows that correlation doesn't mean causation. But I do find it remarkably, remarkably interesting.

Let me use that term. I think it's very interesting that in the very same place in what you are saying, you don't want groups of people to vote. You don't want to hand out any water to people. You don't want to extend the time in which people can vote. You want to change what you think about absentee voting. that we're also talking about critical race theory in school. I said it earlier, I will say it again, that I actually think that critical race theory is the red herring.

I spend way too much time in K-12 schools and with K-12 teachers and K-12 leaders to see it as the wave that people are suggesting. It is almost a mini-McCarthianism. And somebody from Wisconsin, trust me, those kinds of things frighten me to death. And finally, let me just say, if I wanted students to engage in CRT in the K-12 classroom, I couldn't ask for a better moment, having raised four adolescents and five adolescent grandchildren,

trust me, when I want them to not do something, that's exactly when they do it. So I imagine that there are children across the country adolescents furiously, searching on Google for CRT. Thanks, Gloria. Before we go to closing statements, John, similar question to you. Where does this debate go from here? I mean, is what we're seeing a kind of pendulum swing here back towards the center? Do you think that there's still

a lot of momentum and cultural energy around the CRT movement that still has to play out? Give us a sense of where you think this debate's going to go. Well, where it's going is that a certain kind of person says that students must be indoctrinated to be either if white, guilty, and if black, to think of oppression as the primary facet of their identity. If you disagree with this kind of person, they call you a racist on Twitter, and that scares a great many people, both white and black, down to their socks. And so there's kind of a reign of terror, and I think it was increased in intensity by the fact that everything was happening on Zoom and online after spring of last year. And I think

that what we need is to get the proponents of this particular leftist radical view, and there's nothing wrong with leftist radical, and I don't mean that in the sense of the Seinfeld, well, there's nothing wrong with that, Jerry. There's nothing wrong with it. People like that need to just sit back down. At this point, they stand up and call you a racist on Twitter if you disagree with them. That won't do because they aren't at the end of time to the extent that they think they are. And so I think that that's happening. Someone like me is speaking out against this, not just because I enjoy making people angry or I don't understand what racism in its history is. but because I think that the educational pathway of a great many kids is being perverted.

Now, also, the people who are writing this kind of legislation against CRT in the classroom, they're not educators, they're not historians, and a lot of their manifestos are sloppily worded. The manifestos often make it look like they don't want anybody to learn about slave ships, they don't want anybody to learn about Selma, they don't want anybody to learn that the United States has involved a great deal of unparonable injustice against other people. I would challenge many people who seem to think that the people who write those are descendants of Senator Vardaman and Senator Bilbo. I challenge them to ask them, find the people who really do not want any of, quote, unquote, that stuff taught in schools at all. Will you find some? Sure. But are they people who are going to play a

major part in our national conversation or in any kind of legislation? In the same ways Professor Ladsden Billings says that she's unaware that CRT is being taught to any degree in schools. I would say that I am unaware of even the most southern of legislatures actually not wanting race issues to be taught in schools at all. So what worries me is that it's not race that's being taught, but an idea that racism is everything and that battling power differentials must be the focus of all of our moral, intellectual, and artistic endeavor. I believe that that prescription is anti-intellectual. It is anti-humanistic. And it's just plain dumb. I want people who have that particular kind of view to just sit back down and be one of many participants at our ideological table,

where we always need views from the hard left, but like views from any other extreme, these are views that need to tempered, that's where I hope that this debate will go. Thanks, John. It's been a great debate. We're going to move to closing statements now on our resolution, be it resolved. CRT, critical race theory, has no place in the classrooms of our nation. Here we go. Gloria, you're going to get two minutes on the clock now to leave this audience with the key points that you'd like to come in out of this conversation with John. Well, you know, most people will remember that right after 9-11, people like Edward Said and Susan Sontag and even Aaron Magruder were considered persona non grata. Like Jane Fonda, a generation earlier, they are people with big enough public footprints and resources that they could withstand the attacks.

However, the teacher in the classroom in Iowa or Alabama or Florida is now being intimidated regarding any critical analysis regarding the teaching of race and diversity. And speaking of Florida, the state's governor has forbidden the teaching of history as a social construct and inserts that the students must be taught, quote, the facts. But what facts? Are the facts the Genoan sailor was a heroic explorer to be credited with discovering America? Or can teachers consult La Casa's diary that says that Columbus was exceptionally cruel, demanding gold quotas and severing the hands of indigenous people who failed to meet those quotas. Can teachers examine the critical perspectives of W.E.B. Du Bois or Carter G. Woodson, Ida B. Wells, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali, because all were discredited in their day.

In the case of Dr. King, the FBI declared him to be a communist. And even today, some are quite selective about which of Dr. King's words they endorse. Our K-12 students rarely read his position on the war in Vietnam or his concern about the growing income disparities. Even that speech that everyone now loves the quote is often truncated because people love the sermonic riffs known as I have a dream, but they ignore his demand that the nation make good on its promissory note to its black citizens. perhaps that sounds too much like a call for reparation.

This particular battle over critical race theory is reminiscent of a similar battle we fought in the 1960s and early 70s over ethnic studies. The standard line is that studying any of these groups, African American, Latin X, Asian American, indigenous is divisive. If I can paraphrase Nobel laureate Tony Morrison, critical race theory legislative bans are far more harmful to the body politic than critical. critical race theory scholarship ever was. The entire boo-haha reminds me of novelist Vietnam win when he said contradictions are the body odor of humanity. The fight about critical race theory is not an academic one. It's a political one. And when politicians cannot win points on policy, they resort to inciting a culture war. Critical race theory is not, as I previously said, part of the K-12 curriculum.

It's a theory for graduate students to examine the same way that they examine positive dysfunctionalism or interpretivist or conflict or critical or post-structuralist or cultural theories. To tell young scholars they cannot have access to these ideas is an assault on academic freedom and it borders on totalitarianism. It's not what democracies do and it's not what America is about. Thank you, Gloria. A powerful closing statement.

We're going to give you the last word in today's debate. You've been arguing in favor of our motion, be it resolved. Critical race theory has no place in the classroom. Wrap up this debate for us. Edward Saeed, Susan Sontag, and Aaron Magruder had a perfect right to say the things that they said. Because we are American, because of what America is, we needed them to say what they said. However, I think few of us would agree that there should be a classroom setting where the take on those matters that Saeed and Sontag and Aaron Magruder had is given as the truth. It's the only one given and it's made very clear that to dissent from the kind of view they had is to make you an immoral person who isn't welcome in the classroom community.

That is how, quote-unquote, CRT is being taught in a grievous number of classrooms and schools today. We're not talking about college. We're talking about K through 12. That is a simple truth. And as I said at the beginning, the issue here is not whether we should teach about racism, not whether the left should be taught in schools. I was lucky enough to go to private schools where the hard left was taught alongside other things, not conservatism, frankly, but middle of the road, but hard left. was part of what we heard all the time because these were Quaker schools in the 1970s just past the Vietnam War. I don't think that that was warping students' minds, but there's something

different going on now. And I'm just going to wrap it up here because, as I said before, if both Professor Ladson Billings and I are committed to students being taught a diversity of views in the classroom, how to think and not what to think, then both of us revile what's actually going on to a particular degree right now in a great number of schools of which Dalton is now just a drop in the ocean. I'm glad we agree. Thank you, John. And thank you, Gloria. You know, this debate in society that's going on right now over critical race theory has been, we say that's politely febrile, incoherent. You two instead, I think have shown great civilities, sophistication, a willingness to engage with each other's arguments.

I think we've moved this conversation forward in some important ways of the last 45 minutes together. So thank you so much on behalf of the Monk Debates community for being part of today's debate. Thank you. Thank you. My pleasure. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, John and Gloria. They certainly give us a lot to think about.

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