Should a person be judged by the content of their character, or the color of their skin? Our country was founded in the belief that all men are created equal, but there are new(ish) ideologies that threaten this belief and seek to have be judged solely on their ethnicity.

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• What Is Critical Race Theory?

Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi Connor.

Connor: Hey, Brittany.

Brittany: So on the last episode, we talked about Martin Luther King Jr. And the role he played in, you know, not only the Civil rights movement and even individualism, but also, you know, equality under the law. This belief that nobody should be treated, especially by the government. Actually, that’s what the 14th Amendment does. It bars the government from judging anybody on the color of their skin, on their gender. You know, it’s supposed to be blind, you know, kind like blind judgment. You’re not looking at somebody based on what group they belong to. but there is this really scary trend, and I actually wouldn’t even call it a trend. I’d call it a movement that’s been infiltrating our education system, and not just colleges. I’m talking elementary schools and even the broader culture. And it’s something I’m very passionate, I was gonna say passionate about, but more passionate against. And I believe it goes against everything Martin Luther King Jr. Preach. I think it goes against everything that our country was founded on, and even, you know, individual liberty and equal treatment. So this word or this term is called critical race theory. And we’ll link to some stuff in the show notes. Cause I know it’s kind of a big term and a heavy term, but I think it’s important that we talk about it. So this is a belief system, and it’s basically trying to change the way we talk about race in this country and what I mean by that is it’s trying to make everything about race. So instead of treating people like individuals, it judges everyone by the color of their skin and where they come from. And, you know, while this claims to be kind of like the new civil rights movement, and you can’t see that I’m doing the air quotes when I say that it has nothing to do with equality. It has everything to do with something called equity. And I will put a definition in the show notes about this because I wanna make sure that we understand that equality and equity are not the same thing. There’s a great meme, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, Connor, that it’s like a group of family. It’s a dad and two sons, and they’re like trying to watch a baseball game. And it says like, equality is, and it shows like they’re standing on different, what do they call it? Soap boxes on, what would you call it?

Connor: Crate? like, yeah, crates.

Brittany: Like, yeah, crates, right? And it has like equality where they’re all sitting under, I’m gonna do this wrong, where they’re all sitting under like the, it basically, it’s saying like, equality is where you give people the same opportunity, right? So these people have the same opportunity to see over the fence into this baseball game. Now, equity is something different. Equity is where each of their crates are a different size because they’re being treated based on their race. They’re being treated differently. This is not equal treatment. And I’ll put the meme in the show now so that you’re not wondering what I’m ranting about.

Connor: What is this?

Brittany: Right? I know you’re not really that short.

Connor: Like the short kids have multiple crates act on one another.

Brittany: Thank you.

Connor: So that they can see over the fence into the baseball game.

Brittany: Which they should be paying for the game. But that’s another story. So, we won’t talk about capitalism here. So this is, I mean, this is collectivism at its finest and it’s honestly a real bad distortion of everything this country stands for.

Connor: You know, it’s being taught in many of the schools, which is a concern that many parents have. This is something that I think has dangerous consequences for the future of equality before the law, which is what we talked about in the last episode. And, you know, this idea has been around certainly for a while, but critical race theory began to go mainstream, I’d say in the last few years as this cancel culture, started happening. And it became common for people to discredit others who have, shall we say, unpopular views. You know, last summer when George Floyd was killed by a police officer without due process of the law occurring, in other words, he didn’t have an opportunity to be sentenced and face his accusers and hear evidence and things like that. He was just killed on the side of the road. And of course, that sparked all kinds of protests and other, issues. And so last summer when that happened, you know, people were angry that one government employee could act, you know, both as, judge and jury, even executioner. But then comes the Black Lives Matter movement. And no matter how well-intentioned it may be, this circumstance was really hijacked. It was turned into something terrible, that they used it to elevate this belief that our country is racist. They call it systemic. In other words, the system is broken. that the only way we can correct this problem is through critical race theory. I think of the Patriot Act, right? I’m a patriot. all Patriots should support the Patriot Act. Well, wait a minute. The Patriot Act is about like spying on people and, and depriving them of their due process, locking people away who the government says is a terrorists without, you know, due process, without the opportunity to challenge it. Enemy combatants, all these things. And it’s like, well, wait a minute. They call it the Patriot Act. Like that’s yeah, totally confusing. Black Lives Matter, absolutely Black Lives Matter. But then here comes this organization with that name doing all kinds of crazy, you know, big government things. And, but then it’s hard for a lot of people to oppose it cuz it’s like, well, I don’t wanna be seen as thinking that Black lives don’t matter. It’s like, well, just because that’s the name of the organization doesn’t mean that they can like, get away with whatever they want. And now what, do they want? They want to promote critical race theory. They wanna say that you know, the founding fathers were white supremacists. That we have systemic racism. And as a result, because the system is racist, we need to dismantle it. They say we need to tear down capitalism. We need to tear down these institutions because they’re all broken. They are all, racist at their core. And of course, really this is a Marxist approach to trying to tear down the free enterprise system, trying to tear down the republic system, the Constitution, and replace it with, these very leftist socialist type of ideas that pursue quote unquote equality as we talked about in the last episode. But do it in a way that has nothing to do with equality.

Brittany: No, I think you’re right. And it’s not even that our government is racist for these people. They’re called critical race theorists. but it’s also that every single one of us is racist, even if we don’t know that we’re racist. And that’s what, this is where it gets me because it’s like there’s no one, no one wins in this discussion, and especially last summer, but even now, today, there were all these articles written about how all white people are inherently racist, even though white is such an overarching term, white isn’t a, you know what I mean? There’s so many different things that could mean, but it’s still so that you know, all white.

Connor:

It’s African, right? Like.

Brittany: Yeah, it’s baffling. But so the all-white people are racist that if you say you aren’t racist, then that’s proof that you’re actually very racist. This lady wrote this book, this lady is like the epitome of Karen. You know, that char stereotype of the Karen, white fragility was what it was called. And it was basically, it became very popular and it got, it basically just says that no matter what we do as white people, we’re never going to be able to make amends or apologize for our quote-unquote privilege. And that privilege makes us racist. And I want you to think about this for a second because if you believe in individual liberty and you believe in personal responsibility, this means that you are responsible only for your actions. Only what you do. Connor is only responsible for what Connor does. Britney’s only responsible for what I do. But this is not what this is. This is telling you that you’re responsible for the actions of not just people who lived long before you did, but your entire race, a race you didn’t choose to be a part of. You know, if your great, great, great grandparents own slaves, that doesn’t mean you personally did anything wrong. But critical race theorists believe that that makes you guilty by association.

Connor: It also places your entire worth on your race. I mean, this is collectivism and it’s worst. It’s racist. You know, equality under the law means that we’re treated as individuals, right? critical race theory wants the exact opposite. People who believe in this theory, or I’d call it even a movement, you know, they don’t want you to be judged by your values, or your abilities, your character. they want your race, your ethnicity, the color of your skin to determine, you know, whether you’re privileged or not, whether you earned what and should be able to keep what you have or not, whether you know you are part of the problem or part of the solution. This basically demonizes everyone who isn’t a minority and tells people that they’re victims just because of their race. You know, one theme throughout all of our courageous hero stories, again, we got that Tuttle twin’s guidebook, the Guide to Courageous Heroes, these stories, you know, none of these amazing people let victimhood get the best of them. Yeah. You know, they worked extra hard for what they had. They were not willing to, you know, shift the blame to other people. And oh, I’m, you know, I mean, we featured some amazing black people in those stories. They didn’t just sit around and blame white people for all their problems. And, you know, what was me like? No. They’re like, look, there have been problems in the past, but guess what? There have been problems throughout all the world history. Am I gonna let those problems determine my future? Am I gonna let the past and the problems that other people have dealt with control what I do today and what I do in the future? No, that’s their problem, right? These people pull themselves up, work hard and make a better future. And it’s amazing. Those are the stories that we wanna celebrate. But today, the exact opposite is happening. We have this victimhood spreading everywhere, where people are blaming their problems on other people rather than work hard. They want to be entitled. They want other people to pay for them, whether they call that reparations or equity or whatever they, you know, want socialism. And they see evil everywhere. I mean, you know, white people just can’t do anything, right? you know, and like imagine Martin Luther King Jr coming today and seeing all these black people being racist to white people, right? Back then it was white people being racist to black people and they were in the minority. And now black people are still in the minority in terms of.

Brittany: Numbers?

Connor: Numbers of black people versus white people in America. However, they’re kind of with this whole weird critical race theory. They’re becoming in the, I’ll say vocal minority, at least. I don’t think this idea, this critical race theory is a majority thing yet, and hopefully never will be. Yeah. But there’s larger numbers of people. They’re very vocal. You get all these black people who, you know, once were victims of racism, and now they are the perpetrators of racism. They are the racists, you know, accusing, an oppressing, white people. It’s just totally backwards for those who claim to want equality under the law. but I feel like ultimately the problem is a lot of these Black Lives Matter, Marxist socialist-type people, they don’t actually want equality under the law. They want to weaponize the law to benefit them and their buddies.

Brittany: I think weaponize that. That’s a really good way to put it. And another major problem with the critical race series is that there’s no winners in a PragerU video, which I’ll, link in the show notes. Somebody who I actually got to interview last week, James Lindsay, he’s kind of the expert on, on fighting back against critical race theory, and he does a four-minute video that’s really great. But he gives an example of something that I think just kind of draws the point home as he says. So no matter what you do in this critical race theory world, you’re a racist. And he gives you the analogy of, let’s say you’re a store owner and you have a black customer and a white customer come into your store at the same time. Now if you help the white customer first, you’re automatically racist, right? You think the black person must be a second-class citizen. How dare you help the white customer first? Now let’s say you helped the black customer first, then the critical race theorists would say, oh, you don’t trust the black person to be in your store alone. Why are you such a racist? And then you kinda sit there like, wait, what? what just happened? Like, what is it going on here? So, it’s a really good video. I’ll post it down. but it’s baffling to me, and that’s why this is, I’m so passionate about this is because it scares me because I believe in equality before the law so much. And there was an instance a couple of years ago with a professor named Brett Weinstein where he, so there was a school, it’s called Evergreen, it’s in Seattle. It’s very like hippie school. And there was a movement to make a day of, what was it called? Day of something. But basically, it meant that nobody white could come on campus. So the group of students that wanted to demand a day where it was only minorities on campus and no white people were allowed. And this professor who’s an evolutionary biologist was like, wait a second. How is this not racist? I’m just trying to teach my classes. Why am I not allowed to come on campus? And this ended up creating such a stir, this email he wrote that he ended up, not only getting death threats, but the police had to tell him he was not safe to go back to campus. Wow. And there are videos on YouTube that are terrifying. the student body ended up locking all the administration, the staff in the school demanding they sign a letter denouncing him. It was very, very frightening. So this isn’t just something that’s, you know, a theory or an ideology. This is a movement because these are activists actually being violent and creating a lot of problems. And he ended up having to leave the school. Then he sued the school and got some money from it, but not a lot. So this is Bazaro world, you know, we live in a country, we’re supposed to believe that everyone is treated equally. And now, like you said, it’s kind of been flipped on its head where’re now, I don’t even know how we got here. You know.

Connor: it’s hard to keep track certainly of how we got here, but how we get out?

Brittany: How we get out. Yeah.

Connor: And really, you know, combating all these falsehoods with truth pointing out that, you know, you can’t fight racism with more racism. you know critical race theory is it’s one of those things like common core, you know? Yes. About years ago for the parents out there, and pretty soon, like every problem that parents didn’t like in school, oh, that’s common core. It’s like, well, no, not everything is common core. And so critical race theory is a specific thing, you know, but there’s a lot of other problems that aren’t quite critical race theory. but, you know, I think what we need to do, I mean, going back to last episode, just calling out Dr. King’s message of equality and just saying, look, we have a dream of the same equality that Martin Luther King jr. was fighting for. And this is not it.

Brittany: it’s not it.

Connor: It is something we need to be on guard for, especially those who send their kids to public schools. And making sure that this nonsense doesn’t seep into curriculum and textbooks and materials like that. So something to be on guard for, be watchful and mindful of because it is spreading like crazy. so thanks as always, Brittany, for the conversation. And until next time, we’ll talk to you later.

Brittany: Talk to you later.