WTH is critical race theory? How a philosophy that inspired Marxism, Nazism, and Jim Crow is making its way into our schools, and what we can do Episode #108 | June 23, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Allen Guelzo Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. Marc Thiessen: . Danielle Pletka: Welcome going on? Marc Thiessen: Well Dany, we are talking about something that is on the minds of millions of Americans today: critical race theory. This is being debated in school board debated on all of the news c is critical race theory. We know that people are pushing for having discussions know what critical race theory is. And I was listening the other day to an interview with Professor Allen Guelzo of Princeton, and he had this really fascinating Allen Guelzo: son probably thinks of critical race theory as simply an intelligent way to talk a lot about race, and it is. But critical race theory may also be the most irresponsible way to think about race in eory is a subset of critical theory, which has got long roots in Western philosophy back to Immanuel Kant in the 1790s. Kant lived at the end of a century known as the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, but he feared that experience had shown that reason was inadequate to give shape to our lives. There had to be a way of knowing things that went beyond reason, and for him that meant developing a theory of being critical of reason, hence critical theory. The problem was that critical theory got away. It instead justified ways of appealing to some very unreasonable things as explanations things like race, nationality, class and they gave us Karl Marx and Marc Thiessen: It was a response to and a rejection of the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and the principles on which our Republic was founded. And like so many dangerous ideas, the rejection of reason spawn a number of monstrous ideologies in the 20th century, like Marxism and Soviet Communism and Nazism, and dictatorships in between, that killed millions of people in the 20th century, and now in the 21st century some people are trying to apply this critical 2 theory to questions of race. This is basically an attack on the Enlightenment principles on which our Republic was founded. So, if we want to debate it I think podcast today to expound on what he just said. Danielle Pletka: The problem here is that we have an idea, a philosophy about the role of race in American history and the role of race in American society. And what it at its heart suggests is, A: that race has been central to everything in America since the founding. That it is, to use a far less elevated rhetoric, that it is baked into the cake of American institutions and American attitudes. And because it is so baked into the cake, the notion that we have embraced, lo these many, many, many decades, even centuries of equality of opportunity does not suffice because opportunity isn't enough, right? Danielle Pletka: Redistribution, equity, not equality, has to be the outcome. In other words, it's not enough that I put you both, you, a white child and you, a black child in a school and I paid your parents a hundred thousand dollars each and I gave you the same teachers. If the white child comes out with an A and the black child comes out with a B, that is an unacceptable outcome because it is in fact not rooted in performance, it is rooted in the structural systemic racism of our society that we practice every day in every way without even realizing it. Now, when you think about that, you realize there's no way out of that morass, ever. Marc Thiessen: No. Yeah. 100%. And look, what Arthur Brooks used to talk about is that the difference between equity and equality is that equality is an equal start on the starting line, equity is about the finishing line. And if you don't end up in the same place in the finishing line, then you've failed. if you go back to read Martin Luther racist, he argued that racism was un-American, right? Marc Thiessen: He appealed to the Declaration of Independence, he appealed to the Cons that I have come to cash a check that was promised me by the founding fathers in that wonderful document, the Declaration of Independence. He said, "Our founders made a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." He had come to, "Cash a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice so that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." Critical race theory rejects that. Critical race theory says that those promises were, illegitimate, that those truths are not truths and that there's no argument against that. Danielle Pletka: First of all, I am so grateful to be reminded of the eloquence of Martin Luther King, because truly the way he expressed these things I think has very little equal in American history. I think that a lot of this has become, like everything we debate in our society today, has become about politics, right? The right thinks this, the left thinks that, and that's just the way it's going to be. And that does a disservice to something that deserves genuine debate, that deserves genuine discussion. But there's a bigger problem here as well, which is that it is, for me, critical race theory and everything about it is the denial of agency to the AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 3 individual. When I look at a group of first graders, I do not think to myself, oh, now one is black and one is white and one is purple and one is Jewish and one is Catholic. Danielle Pletka: I don't think about identity politics- Marc Thiessen: They don't either. Danielle Pletka: And they don't either, but what these ideas do, even when toned down, is that they inculcate in these children a sense of otherness from each other. They are not in this game together, they are competitors. One is bad, one is good. These sorts of judgments that I associate with, I do, I associate them with eugenics, I associate them with Hitler, I associate them with Saddam Hussein. These are horrible, horrible notions that are being inculcated in our children. And I don't want to question the motives of people who genuinely feel that America must spend more time on its terrible racial crimes because I think that there's nothing wrong- Marc Thiessen: We all agree. Danielle Pletka: Right. There's nothing wrong with teaching that and seeking to regress it and making sure that such things never happen again, and ensuring that racism is erased and that opportunity is equally distributed. My biggest complaint, and I say this in our conversation with Dr. Guelzo as well, my biggest complaint is I think that this is actually educating a generation of racists, black anti-white racists, white anti-black racist, and I don't know how we get out of that nightmare. Marc Thiessen: This is why it's such a cancer in our educational system because you just described that classroom of first graders, right? They have to be taught to hate. Hate is not natural, hate is not something that they come up with on their own. And what critical race theory is doing is teaching them, one, to hate each other, and two, to hate America. That this country is corrupt. And I- Danielle Pletka: And it represents everything bad in this world. Marc Thiessen: Exactly. And so I go back again to Martin Luther King because I want people to understand, all of us want to fight discrimination, all of us want to oppose racism and this is a rejection of Dr. King's strategy of doing that. I want to quote his speech that he delivered the night before he was assassinated, when basically his argument was that it was Bull Connor that was violating the principles of American founding. He said, this is a quote, "If I lived in China or even Russia or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions, maybe I could understand the denial of basic First Amendment privileges because they hadn't committed themselves over there." He said, "But I live in America." And he said the goal of the civil rights movement was to make America what it ought to be by standing up for the best of the American dream and taking the whole nation back to the great wells of democracy, which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution." AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 4 Marc Thiessen: And the next day, he was assassinated and gave his life for the cause of equality in this country. Critical race theory- Danielle Pletka: Is a repudiation. Marc Thiessen: ... is a repudiation of that. And not only that, it is embrace of the totalitarian philosophies of China and Russia- Danielle Pletka: And Jim Crow.