BUCK: CRT, critical race theory. It’s starting to look more and more like the pushback against CRT is a full-scale national movement — and maybe even a counterrevolution — against the cultural Marxists in our society. You can tell that we have struck a nerve. You can tell the parents who are showing up at PTA meetings and school boards and talking about how they don’t want their kids to be taught about white privilege and white supremacy and how awful this country is and how “equity” should replace “equality.”
At first the left pretended this wasn’t happening. That was in recent weeks as they saw the surge. They saw the greater degree of involvement from people — parents, mostly — but then it became more clear because of the work of folks like Chris Rufo that this had spread into classrooms across America and, in fact, into the corporate boardroom.
They said it wasn’t happening, and now they’re realizing the left can’t get away with that lie anymore. It’s not quite feasible. So what are they doing? They’re playing games. They say, “Well, what you’re talking about isn’t really critical race theory. It’s something else.” They start playing word games about definitions.
They say that certainly people that are cited as CRT scholars are just, I don’t know, cultural Marxists or racial Marxists. But, ultimately, you can tell that we’ve struck at the power of the Democrat left apparatus because the biggest teachers union in America has put out there that they want CRT in the classroom. The NEA, they want CRT in the classroom.
And they will defend any teacher, legally, who violates state laws that are passed in almost two dozen states against CRT. This is all intended to divide us. This is the way the left does indoctrination, to create people who will not think for themselves as they grow older. That’s why they want to get to them as young as possible.
And then, Clay, Christopher Rufo — I mentioned him before and he’s at the Manhattan Institute and done incredible work on this. You often see him on Fox. He broke down that Raytheon– we’ll get into some of the details here. Raytheon, the second largest defense contractor in America, is teaching straight up CRT, mandating it for its employees. Is it fair to say, Clay, that if a company that makes missiles and bombs and drones is making people sit through white privilege training, that this is happening in most of major corporate America today?
CLAY: Yes. And it’s fundamentally racist. And it buys into the big lie here. People like to talk about big lies. The big lie is that America has never evolved. Buck, we talked about this on July 5th when we did our show coming back from July 4th, and the usual suspects were spreading the propaganda that July 4th is an awful holiday and America’s a fundamentally racist and horrible place.
And what all of that fails to recognize is this country has evolved in a way so that it has lived up to the ideals of the July 4th statement in the Declaration of Independence, and what’s so frustrating, I think, to many of us — Buck, what year were you born?
BUCK: 1981.
CLAY: 1981. I was born in 1979. So you are the youngest possible Millennial. I am basically the oldest possible member of Generation X, according to usual standards of when you become a member of a generation. The idea that anybody born around 1980 is somehow responsible for racist acts that happened before we were born — long before we were born — is the biggest lie that is going on and the biggest scam that is going on in America right now this side of covid. And that is what critical race theory essentially represents.
BUCK: And that’s also important to focus in on right now as the center of this cultural fight, right, that there’s lies being told to children in school because what they’ve been saying up to this point is, “Oh, no. We’re just teaching history.” No, they’re not just teaching history, and we know it — and when I say we know it, we have the training materials, the teaching materials.
Parents, because of covid, have had more exposure — because of Zoom teaching and all the emails back and forth — to what their kids are actually being taught. And what was a few weeks ago a right-wing conspiracy or exaggerated in Fox News (that’s what they were saying on the left) now you have the biggest teachers unions in the country saying, “Oh, no, we’re all in on CRT.
“We want to teach your kid to be ashamed if he is white, because he is an oppressor,” and then claim that that’s history? Randi Weingarten, who is also responsible for masking up your kids in school and preventing them from being in school for over a year, because the teachers unions acted like just authoritarian thugs during the covid pandemic. Here’s Randi Weingarten saying that she’ll defend those teachers who want to teach CRT.
BUCK: Distorting history, Clay? This is glorified left-wing lunatic sociology being forced upon 9-year-olds. It’s crazy.
CLAY: Yeah, and there’s a big difference here between teaching history and discussing what history should be taught (laughing) and also teaching that America is a fundamentally awful place. We talked about this yesterday — and I think it ties in in a big way, Buck — 18-to-24-year-olds are the only age-group of adults in America that have a horrible view of the United States.
I want to hit you with this data again from yesterday, because I think this goes directly to the impact of CRT. When you look at the age of 18-to-24, only 36% are very or extremely proud of the United States. Just think about how crazy that is. These are kids that, by and large, were born around the year 2000. Things have been pretty good in America from 2000 on in the grand scheme of things, in terms of wealth, in terms of safety.
And if you compare that with people who are 65 and over, pride in America is at 86% for those who are 65 and over. It’s at 36% for those 18-to-24. How does that divergence happen? Buck, it’s directly related to critical race theory and the idea that America — far from being a beacon of liberty and hope for people around the world — is actually a fundamentally racist and awful place.
Now, there’s a difference. You and I would agree, and I think a lot of people out there would agree, that doesn’t mean that every aspect of American history is joyous our deserving of praise. Slavery was a stain on our country. So were concentration camps, effectively, for Asians during World War II. There are all sorts of errors that we have made in our course of time as a country.
BUCK: Rights, but we all know that.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Do we have to always clear our throats about this all the time? It’s like, “Oh, of course there are errors in our history.” You know this, I know this, everyone listen knows this. I almost feel like, Clay, we’re forced to be on defense here all the time by saying, “Well, I — I just want to establish that of course there’s problems in our past.” Yeah! I mean, it’s the most obvious thing in the world. We know that.
CLAY: That’s what Randi Weingarten is trying to say, Buck. What’s happening is the CRT people are saying, “Oh, they’re trying to stop us from teaching about slavery.”
BUCK: Right. That’s a lie.
CLAY: That’s a lie.
BUCK: And that’s why the training materials that we have are so important.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: That’s why the actual data and the visuals and the things that have come to light. We’ll dive into the Raytheon CRT stuff we’re gonna present in a moment here and come to their own conclusions about, “Does this have anything to do with slavery or the history of oppression in the U.S.?”
CLAY: Yeah. But that’s what they’re trying to obfuscate. That’s where they’re trying to confuse people. The Randi Weingartens of the world are trying to say, “Oh, they’re stopping us from teaching the real history.” There’s a difference between — and this is coming from a history major who studied historiography and did a thesis on the study of history and everything else. There’s a difference between historical theory and history, and that is what the distinction is here that they are trying to pretend doesn’t exist.
BUCK: But a lot of the CRT is also — and, Clay, you’re completely correct in that that is what they’re claiming now.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: Again they’re muddying up the waters. They’re hoping the parents calm down, that this goes away. It has nothing to do history. They’re teaching about… You know, they have kids who… They’ll line people up. I think actually have a clip of this we could play for folks. They’ll line you up and say, “If you are white, take a step forward. If your parents went to college, take a step forward.”
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: This is the kind of thing, and then the whole point is, “Look at your white privilege! Be ashamed of your white privilege.”
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: That has nothing to do history teacher, right? You know that, I know that, but it’s important to go to the center of their lie here because here’s what I think is happening. This is a theory, and maybe I’m a little ahead of this. I haven’t even posed it to you yet, Clay, but I wanted our friends now with us to hear this. I think that we’re at the start of a national movement here.
I think in the same way that in the early days of the Obama administration the just incredible — for the time, not incredible now — government spending and ballooning debt rallied people together. They said, “Hold on. The government is doing way too much, here. You’re spending way too much money, and that means the government too powerful, has too much say.”
You had the Tea Party. I think right now CRT is going, you know, right into the weak spot of the Democrat Death Star, so to speak. I think that this is their power structure. This is what they use to avoid other subjects. This is what they use as a distraction and as a con. Look at CNN every night.
“Oh, another thing is racist.” If we start to dismantle this and provide the actual unity that the Biden administration has utterly failed to do, they worry about whether or not they’ll be able to keep their grip on power because they are panicking about the anti-CRT movement.
CLAY: Well, not only that, I think what it ultimately is gonna represent is Trump was the great Satan that created identity politics unions. Now that Trump is not there, they’re all starting to fight internally, and this is why I said the ESPN issue with Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor and the fighting over jobs and diversity and inclusion, all those people were united in saying Donald Trump was evil and he was the Orange Man Bad and all those angles.
Without that to unite them, these identity politics structures are going to increasingly come into conflict with each other, and that’s what ultimately CRT is about, right? It’s a great victimization pyramid, and your status in American life is not predicated on success or the meritocracy or anything else. It’s based on at birth, how disadvantaged were you relative to someone else? And if you are the bigger victim, then you win every fight. That’s what the Democratic Party in 2021 represents.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
BUCK: There’s a really excellent clip of a father at a school board who is calling out critical race theory. I believe his name is Ian Rice. Play 18.
RICE: The problem of bringing it to high school and great-school level is that we don’t have the educators to properly teach these kids. Instead they’re using it as their own agenda to indoctrinate the kids to hate each other. And whether you believe that to be true or not, the reality is that’s what’s happening. Critical race theory is teaching that white people are bad. That’s not true. That would teach my daughter that her mother is evil, and who are you to educate my children — or any of our children — in life issues? That’s our job. Your job is to teach them math and science.
BUCK: Clay, we have there an African-American father who is saying that this is essentially teaching people, he says — not “essentially,” that they’re teaching kids — to hate each other. And yet the biggest teachers unions in America, the biggest — some of the biggest corporations, Raytheon’s a massive company and they’ve embraced this ideology. How can this be anything other than a central fight for the future, for the culture, and the political future of the United States?
If the answer is “no,” you’re also right. White, black, brown, yellow, whatever color you might be, there has never been a country that has existed in the history of the world that has given greater opportunity to all its people to succeed. And ultimately I think what we’re circling around here on is one of the lessons I try to teach my kids every single day.
“The only hand you can rely on is the one at the end of your sleeve,” and if you’re trying to rely on someone else; ultimately, I believe you’re gonna fail. Because this is about the individual, and if you are telling someone that they don’t have the individual ability to succeed, then you are teaching them to fail. And that’s what CRT does.
BUCK: And yet they push back against all this. They lie. They’re lying to you. That’s the first way you know there’s a major problem here, because there are lies being told about how this is about an objection to teaching history. Remember, a few weeks ago the primary line of propaganda — the talking points from the left — was that CRT isn’t even really happening.
Now the biggest teachers unions in the country are saying, “We’re all-in on this,” and it happened the blink of an eye, because it was happening away from the eyes of parents, and now because of Zoom and the covid lockdowns and people being at home and just the greater focus on this, we’re seeing it.
But also, Clay, I would argue it’s because it’s gotten more aggressive. The CRT teaching has gone beyond some of the sensitivity and inclusion, political incorrectness of the nineties to now actual division of spoils within the system speak to, equity over equality.
The origin of how Buck got Seh-kwan Barkley and George Pickles.
Watch Clay and Buck analyze how the liberal media is scrambling.
In this limited edition podcast, Clay and Buck get you ready for Thanksgiving with your…
Berenson on the RFK Jr. nomination and whether he'd sign up to join him in…
Another day, another Trump cabinet choice that's making Washington heads explode.
When and how did Democrats become the party of conspiracy crackpots?