Friday morning on Always Right with Bob Frantz, weekday mornings on AM 1420 The Answer, host Frantz welcomed Dr. Carol M. Swain and author of Black Eye for America on the show to describe how Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Theory are being used with K-12 public and independent school students.
(Joy Behar clip plays)
Frantz: They don’t want to admit that they did something wrong. Well, I’m looking at people today, and I’m not finding anybody here that did anything wrong when it comes to the horrific scourge of slavery in the United States. And you know what else?
I don’t think there’s anybody alive today who was ever enslaved either. But that’s not what Critical Race Theory is all about. It’s what they want it to be about.
But Critical Race Theory is about so much more than going back and assigning blame in the past. Critical Race Theory is about changing the attitudes of the present and the future.
One of the leading drivers of Critical Race Theory and antiracism Ibram Kendi said that the only answer for past discrimination is present discrimination. And the only answer for present discrimination is future discrimination, all based on what you look like. Simply astounding.
And that’s why Critical Race Theory is such an important issue for us to discuss. And joining us now is one of the most knowledgeable people on this issue working in America today. Dr. Carol Swain is the co-author of Black Eye for America: How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House.
She is also an award-winning political scientist and former tenured professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt. Dr. Swain, good to have you back on the program here in Cleveland. How are you this morning?
Swain: I’m doing great.
Frantz: I read your latest article in The Epoch Times about Critical Race Theory, and I’m so glad that you addressed this aspect of it. What those who seek to promote and to teach and to indoctrinate with critical race theory argue is that it’s not being taught in our elementary schools and then our middle schools and in our high schools.
It’s only a college-level course anyway. So anybody who tells you it’s being taught below that is lying to you. You did a terrific job of deconstructing that lie because it doesn’t have to be a course called Critical Race Theoryfor it to be implemented into our public schools, does it?
Swain: (Laughs) No. And that is like a Democrat talking point. But there are some progressive activists who not only admit that it is being taught, but they want it to be taught openly. And so there’s some division there.
But Critical Race Theory can be a course, but it’s also a view. And that’s rooted in Marxism and postmodernism. And postmodernism is the theory where we get that everything is relative. There’s no absolute truth and conflict theory.
Conflict theory is a part of Marxism. And what it does, the goal is to divide. With Critical Race Theory, whites and blacks are divided into oppressors and the oppressed. And according to the theory, all white people are privileged because of their skin color, and only whites can be guilty of racism.
Whites are the only group that has an obligation to become actively antiracists, and minorities are victims who have to be liberated by whites who engaged in the permanent work of seeking redemption for their skin color and their race, and how they were born.
Frantz: Doctor Swain, you write in your article for The Epoch Times about this, the enormous influence that Critical Race Theory has in our day to day lives without the words Critical Race Theory is used.
But other buzzwords such as culturally competent learning, social justice, anti-racism, which you just mentioned, restorative justice, equity, and implicit bias. Those things are everywhere.
Do you think that people understand when they hear those words being advanced in schools, when they hear them being advanced, perhaps in their places of business, in corporate offices, that what they are really being taught and what is being pushed on them is Critical Race Theory?
Swain: No, I don’t think so. The left always uses euphemisms to substitute for what they’re actually saying and doing. And socially emotional learning, SEL, that’s in independent schools as well as public schools.
And that very much is how they are indoctrinating the children because it’s social-emotional learning. It’s not an academic subject. But teachers get to evaluate your child on how empathetic they are, and they’ve decided how our children should feel about certain things, how they should think.
And if they’re not thinking properly, then they are evaluated as lesser. They could be downgraded because they’re not scoring high enough on social-emotional learning, which is about empathy and about your feelings and about that soft mushy stuff.
Frantz: Dr. Swain, how closely aligned in the agenda of the progressives and those who control academia are Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Theory.
Swain: They’re very much aligned, as is critical queer theory. And many parents are focused on Critical Race Theory as they should be. But there are these other theories that have taken place that has also sunk down into the classroom and so how they manifest themselves in the classroom.
For some time now, they have had K12 sex education that talked about homosexuality, introducing children to those concepts, introducing them to masturbation, and telling them it feels good when your body parts are touched.
That has been going on for a while. I wrote about that in a book called Abduction: How Liberalism Steals Have Children’s Hearts and Minds.
And Critical Race Theory has been in the school system, I would say, since 2010, and 2011. And it is often disseminated through books, videos, and teaching materials.
Frantz: That’s really important to hear because first of all, it’s 2022. Most people really started hearing in earnest and learning in earnest about Critical Race Theory in the last two years, maybe the last three years, not the last twelve years.
You talk about these teaching tools in these books. You reference in The Epoch Times article, the youngest marcher, which depicts white people as mean and evil. These things have been around not just for the last two or three years, but, as you say, for at least a decade.
Swain: There’s a video that I would encourage people to look at. I believe it’s called the Unequal Opportunity Race and it’s animated and was produced in 2011.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, the woman who came up with the concept of intersectionality, which is also one of the buzzwords of CRT that pretty much argues that there are some people the more boxes you can check as being a disadvantaged minority, the greater weight you should have when it comes to your moral authority because of your lived experience.
(Frantz chuckles) But if you go and watch that video, which is very graphic and I know it’s been shown in some public middle schools and high schools that were produced in 2011. And so this stuff has been around for a while and there are teaching materials that go along with it.
Listen to the interview:
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