The Culture War #25 - Indoctrination or Education, Critical Race And Gender Theory In Schools
TCW Ep. 25 w/ Desmond Fambrini and Kelly Schenkoske
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Today on The Culture War, we're going to be discussing education or indoctrination in schools.
Is what's happening right now the appropriate degree of information being given to children, or is it inappropriate subject matter that parents should have more control of?
This has been a big topic that's been happening for quite a bit.
And actually, as of right now, as we're producing this show, gender studies is trending because there's news out of Florida where a university has removed the gender studies program Now, a lot of people on the left would say it's not indoctrination, it's appropriate education.
People on the right would call it indoctrination, but I think it's fair to point out that even on our shows, we've mentioned that whatever ideology you're bringing to your children is some form of indoctrination.
You either want them to have your values, or you don't want them to have someone else's values.
So, this is what we're going to be talking about today, and probably a whole lot more.
So I gotta say, so I kind of, I like to do my background research and I'm like, oh, Tim Poole, there's a little bit of homeschooling here.
I heard that word.
And it may surprise people that I actually was homeschooled from Sixth grade to eighth grade and definitely attribute there was six other kids that were kind of in that homeschool program And I think I attribute I'd say most of my academic success because I was able to get that small intensive kind of environment Um, but it doesn't seem to work for absolutely everyone and then on the other hand it works for a lot of people so I want to know your experience and your experience and what the benefits are and then also what the drawbacks are and if you ever worry about things like Socialization and things like that.
So, uh, I have a rather strange and unique educational background.
My mom started homeschooling me and my siblings the moment, like, I don't even know if it's fair to say from one, I think zero is probably... To a certain degree, every parent is teaching their kids something, but my mom actually started having us do math and reading, and I was playing chess when I was like three.
That doesn't mean a whole lot for a three-year-old, but it means they were showing me the chessboard, explaining the moves, and having me try and tell me what was right and what was wrong.
By the time I started kindergarten, I already knew multiplication and division and a bunch of basic math stuff, negatives.
Always understood the concept of negatives and, you know, very simple, you know, grade school stuff, but for, you know, a five-year-old entering kindergarten, leaps and bounds above the kids around me.
And we used to play this game in first grade called Around the World.
You get it from your desk, you stand behind the person next to you, and then the teacher pulls up a flashcard.
And whoever says the answer first advances.
If the person standing loses, they take that seat and that person stands up, and if you make it all the way around the world, you get a ticket.
Just never lost, and eventually got to the point where they asked us to stop playing.
So, I went to Catholic school from kindergarten until fifth grade, went to public school from sixth grade to eighth grade, spent, I think, three months in public high school, and that's where my grades went from very good to complete and total failure, straight Fs, except for music class, which didn't really have a grading curve anyway.
And then that's when I stopped and did a correspondence school, and that was the end of it.
So, it's a mix of homeschooling and public schooling, and there's a big, one of the big issues that everyone's talking about right now, and one thing we advocate for is more homeschooling and podschooling, because I think the public schools are failing in a million different ways.
So just a little bit about me is that actually, so one thing that I do is actually somewhat of a pod program.
So I, you know, went to Dartmouth, was a double major in gender studies and government, but went on to get my master's of science from Johns Hopkins, and then moved on to start kind of my own education clinic.
And one of our services is that we have like a pod.
So as in, we take students that have learning differences, learning disabilities, whatever you would want to call it, but it's a small pod, you know, two other learning specialists, and we kind of rotate those kids.
There's like three or four of them.
And you'd be amazed at what these kids that were three or four years behind could be caught up fairly quickly if they're given the right environment and the right kind of focus on academic achievement.
I think pod learning is probably the way to go, and I'll just give you my opinion right away.
I despise the education system in this country.
I'm not sure if that means anything, like it's probably the same in most countries, but it's industrialized, it's mechanized, the bell ringing, it doesn't help the average kid.
I grew up witnessing kids of tremendous talent be left behind, kids who needed that extra push not getting it.
And I just said this one-size-fits-all mechanization in schools is a failure.
And they go, okay, well, you assess the kids, and I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
You see who's the low group, got it.
You see who the high group is, and you see the medium group.
And I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
And they go, okay, so the low group gets seen five times a week, medium group gets seen three times, high group gets seen twice.
And I'm like, wait, That doesn't, but then the high group isn't going to get better.
And they're like, but that, but they're like, but it's about making everyone the same.
And I'm like, but that is extremely counterintuitive.
This was the first day, the first day of being a kindergarten teacher.
And I have nothing to say poorly against my first school that I taught at.
Love you very much, even though I don't even exist anymore.
But there was something inherently wrong, which is why I couldn't stay in the public system.
Because I'm like, you're telling me to do something that is designed to make everyone average.
And I guarantee you, even the low kids, there's something not average about them.
But you're literally giving me a reading instruction schedule that says by the end of the year, you want everyone at a level D. Some kids are a level D already, and some kids aren't even a level double A, and you want everyone to be the same.
When I was in grade school, I think it was 8th grade, they did this new program where half the class was 8th grade, half the class was 7th grade, the teacher taught the 7th graders and the 8th graders were left to their own devices.
There is an inherent issue with that idea of school being inherently thought of as bad, as opposed to something that could be thought of as good, right?
Now the question, of course, remains is that, does homeschooling really fix the problem?
Or is that simply like a band-aid on the situation, right?
Because it's simply, or it's not even, band-aid would be the wrong word, right?
It's simply not partaking in the system that we know to be broken, right?
Because, you know, I was talking to different people, whether it be even on your team, right?
And it's an idea of, oh, well, you know, my kid is, like, having trouble in, like, math and da-da-da-da.
Kids are not cupcakes.
They're not 24 done at the same time.
They're not, right?
Like, I always say that, right?
Also, I like to make cupcakes.
But it's like, but it's just simply pulling them out of the oven and kind of doing it, you know, easy-bake oven status, doing it single, one-on-one.
Is that really, like, do you worry about socialization at all?
I'm curious, because we've got to find something to disagree with, because otherwise, you can't just disagree.
Be when I when I first started this journey, I was starting to see serious concerns with the public school system our children were in that I had grown up in.
And after that, I was also seeing more homeschooling families flourishing and doing really, really well.
Our kids were noticing that, and I was noticing these homeschool groups were getting to go on more field trips, be exposed to more experiences, and our kids were actually asking me to homeschool, and I was the resistant one in the family.
Because my perspective before was a very narrow perspective of what homeschooling was, and I've learned, you know, it's, there's, I think, There's a great way to do homeschooling.
And I think the perspective out there in society is one, and it's narrow.
And so for our experience, you know, we started homeschooling the fall of 2019, then COVID came.
And so that impacted a lot of You know not just public school but homeschoolers we were socializing so much before that and I think afterwards we watched some people move out of state a lot of people actually and then we eventually what I did is I started a community group with a friend and we worked to build this group of kind of a non co-op co-op and So that we would have all those additional social experiences added in.
So we've planned all kinds of field trips and activities and working on lectures with various leaders talking to the kids.
And so anyways, I think like anything, it's an investment.
It's what you make of it.
And that goes for whether, you know, any type of education with our kids.
There were a few circumstances, and this had a lot to do with critical race theory and gender theory, gender ideology and gender theory.
This was a component in what we saw happen in Loudoun County, which I think you guys are familiar.
That's actually just across the street.
We heard, yeah.
You get in the car, you drive for 30 seconds, you're in Loudoun County.
You drive to the school, that's like 20 minutes.
But this resulted in parents getting really, really angry.
Now, the Loudoun County situation was actually an assault, which sparked a huge bit of controversy.
The parents saying, what's going on in our schools?
What are our kids being taught?
And then you end up with these teachers showing up to these school board meetings saying, what is this book that is Teaching kids to separate based on race, or to adopt these racial ideologies, or gender-based ideologies, and they got labeled terrorists by the FBI.
So this is what was a large catalyst for what we saw in Florida with the Parental Rights and Education Bill, as it was formerly named, and what we see now with the major push for pod learning and homeschooling.
That there is something going on in these schools that is presenting children with inappropriate material or outright indoctrination into non-traditional ideologies.
I'll be very light with it.
Now, the position I typically take, you know, a lot of people say, no indoctrination in schools.
And I say, no, no, no, we want indoctrination in schools.
We just want American indoctrination.
We want the Constitution.
We want traditional values.
Not overtly, I'm saying, more like innocent until proven guilty, free speech, these things.
And now we have this clash of two different moral frameworks, two different worldviews, where you end up with books like, we have a couple books in front of us, This Book is Gay, as well as Genderqueer, and these find their ways into middle schools.
Recently, there was a teacher who was giving This Book is Gay to 10 and 12 year olds, which resulted in the police being called.
So, I'll kick it off there, and I don't know if one of you wants to start with your views on what's happening with these books being brought in these schools, and the ideologies being presented to children.
I didn't buy it, which is actually very interesting because here's this whole indoctrination, that idea of like, oh, you know, like LGBT, we're going to come for the kids and we're going to make them gay.
I never bought this.
A company, which I can't say which company, saw my TikToks and are like, we love what you're doing.
We want to send you some books that your students would love.
And they sent me this one.
And I read this.
My students, most of them, cannot read this yet.
They cannot.
Absolutely not.
I think the book is great.
I think it's absolutely spectacular that we get a queer perspective that we usually don't get, especially in kind of the mandated sex education, what do we call it, life skills now.
But there is some graphic content in here that I could not, as a teacher, give to a student.
Real talk, actually, my students go from kindergarten all the way to twelfth because I have my master's in education, special education focused, so I can actually teach kind of anywhere on that spectrum.
Most of them kind of fall into late middle school or middle school.
And I can't give this.
Side note, I'm not saying not any middle schooler could ever see this, but I'm saying it would be out of the scope of my educational job.
To hand this to a student without consulting parents and kind of taking into consideration individuality and where the student is.
Now, do I think that a police officer needs to be called?
Is the teacher committing malpractice?
Not for me to decide.
I'm not the judicial branch of government, right?
I'm saying I wouldn't partake in it.
But I would love to hear your thoughts and how maybe one of your students may never actually run into a book like this ever and if you're okay with that.
Well, Comprehensive Sexuality Education itself has a framework to this, but then in addition to that, there's supplemental curricula that they were using first.
To abide by in 2018 the California Healthy Youth Act law, which it became law in 2016.
And the content does in a way relate to the literature.
Just because of the fact that it brought in an update to the health framework in California.
And so through the health framework, there was a variety of books being introduced to align with CSE.
And some of those books are what I started looking into.
And I'm going through and parents are sharing things on social media.
And I had never seen some of these books.
So looking through them, Then I had to go for myself to the library to see these books for myself, read through the health framework.
But one of the most, I would say, explicit books that I saw was called SEX, The All-You-Need-To-Know Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties by Heather Carina.
And so I remember a parent posting about this and thinking, this can't be real.
Because it was recommended originally in the Health Framework draft as a school-wide read for grades 9 through 12.
Now the Health Framework, it's important, that is not required, but teachers can, you know, use that material to their discretion, usually with accordance to their curriculum director at school.
So in any rate, that book started discussing topics like blood play or fisting or deeper manual sex and these various topics.
And then it said, what is it?
And then how do I do it?
And there was a long description.
Sometimes it referenced the slang terms of the sex act.
And then at the very bottom, there was a small section that said the risks, but it was so small.
I mean I just didn't some of these these books and the graphic visuals I just well I personally don't think it's my view on all this I pulled it up SEX second education it says on Amazon reading age 12 years and up grade level 7 and up and the first component to this is whether or not parents have the right to decide what their children are being exposed to and when and there's been an interesting amount of pushback from traditional liberals and more left ideological individuals saying
No, they're our children, and we're the experts, so we decide.
And one of the principal components of the Parental Rights and Education Bill in Florida was specifically that parents must be informed about what's going on with their kid, what their children are learning, and then the political debate turned into, don't say gay, despite the fact the bill bars people from talking about straight and heterosexual couples as well.
Well, and I think to that, for my part, it never was about LGBTQ.
It was just about the explicit content because And I actually think that a lot of people, whatever their belief is, I think they do agree that there's pornographic content.
We have the Supreme Court case that... What happens then is NBC News shows a picture of her holding a different book, which is about more ideological issues, and then says that she was trying to support gay rights, when the reality was parents were concerned that she was teaching 10-year-olds how to use a grinder.
I think personally that, I mean, with this, we've seen a shift from sex ed to comprehensive sexuality education.
So for me, it took me time to understand, well, what is CSE?
Comprehensive Sexuality Education.
Where did it come from?
What's the belief system behind it?
What's driving these ideas?
And for me, being able to see where it was implemented in other countries prior to the US, being able to look into the original framework was helpful.
To understand where it's coming from, because, for example, in the document it references sexual citizenship, which was new to me, and pleasure was a focus.
And the goal is to teach this to grades K through 12.
Even some of the groups aligned for the National Sexuality Education Standards did a presentation where they were talking about This this concept of you know sexuality education, and they really want to reach kids in the early elementary grades Um, and so I think it's, it's an important analysis that we pause.
And for me, it was, how do I learn everything I can about this, which I'm still continuing to research and figure it out.
But those frameworks, particularly whether it's from, you know, Planned Parenthood or the World Health Organization with their definitions of terms, The idea that it has gone from more of a biological safety prevention, it's different from what I had in California, and then into a completely separate thing.
For me, schools don't exist to teach sexual technique.
And glory hole in this book, in its glossary of terms, it refers to Grindr as a social network app for gay and bi men.
And so, you know, the interesting thing is, There seems to be, uh, dildo, a tribal left or right division where you end up with people seeing this book and saying, yo, that should not be given to 10 year olds and 12 year olds.
Because then you also have the other side of the situation, right?
Where that idea of if I ask, like, pronouns, or it's like, oh, like, what are your pronouns?
You're then automatically associated with supporting, like, giving this to a seven-year-old, which is not necessarily the case, right?
So it's that idea of, like you said, there's tribalism.
But that, to me, is an issue.
And I feel like there's also this kind of false comparison that's happening, because we see an uptick of LGBTQIA awareness.
And we also see an uptick of literature like this, right?
So it's like, oh gosh, are we equating the two?
When really, it's just we need to kind of redraw the boundaries on what is kind of permitted for teachers to teach, what is not permitted, what our job is, where it falls outside of the bounds.
Because I see it and I understand the concern, right?
I mean, don't get it twisted.
Like, I watched the show.
I saw, like, there was, like, the graph.
Oh, like, left-handedness.
It was a really interesting point, right?
Now, with that said, is it entirely Would I make entirely the same argument?
Well, I'll give you a completely different argument, which you may have not heard, which actually gets everyone to hate me.
And being someone who's somewhat... People call me centralist, and I don't know if that's actually a thing.
If I am, I just try to think of each thing individually.
But Here's kind of how I see it, is that there is kind of an inherent LGBTQIA population.
That population will never go away, no matter what, in my opinion.
And yeah, I do think that kind of you look at the research, the gender studies research, that scientifically we could delineate things like, yeah, there may be a little bit more of a bisexual population than people care to admit.
Possibly.
Possibly.
Right?
Kinsey scale.
People may be a little bit more bi than we think.
Now people are coming out, and then more people are coming out because they're more comfortable, and then it trended a little bit.
And yeah, it trended a little bit.
Now, for hundreds, if not thousands of years, straight was trending, and people were lying about being straight for a very long time.
Is it that bad that in the past two decades, a couple people may not be lying, but experimenting with different titles, different sexualities, even before they understand it?
kind of like playing the how big is your problem game with my kids.
I don't know if it's a huge issue that some kid is like, oh, I'm, you know, genderqueer at the age of like 11.
It's like, do you even know what that means?
And if you do, great.
And if not, okay.
But you're not hurting anyone.
You're not hurting yourself.
Like what would you, what do you think? - I would, go ahead.
- No, go ahead. - I was gonna say they are hurting themselves. - Yeah, tell them out. - So one of the bigger issues with pronouns and stuff and all those things is for one, there's no logical consistency to teach.
You end up with these viral videos of this young woman on TikTok with, you know, hundreds of thousands of views saying frog and frog self.
And it seems to just be... And the people on the left will argue that, well, it's people exploring their self-expression, and it's just like, well, there's no logic.
There's a flag for everything.
All you're basically telling kids is nothing.
You're telling them chaos, static noise.
No definitive understanding of what's going on.
Perhaps an adult could understand enough about reality to explore various ideas around how do you categorize.
But to go to a child and say an infinite number of categories, every day they're learning something that was just made up yesterday, they're gonna have no framework for what's going on.
Well, sorry, just to address the harming themselves, with the laws being passed in California, Washington, and a bunch of these other states that protect third parties who would bring a child for gender reassignment or medical intervention, we're now entering the territory where a 10-year-old kid who has no understanding of what's going on is told by an adult, and this has happened to personal friends of mine twice, and that seems like a heck of a lot for me,
Two people that I know had their daughters come home with the teachers telling them that they were trans or lesbian, and they were not.
They were ten.
And when the parents explained to them, okay, let me ask you, you think you're this, Do you know what this means?
And the kids go, what?
No, no, no!
Now what happens if you're in California and the parents are more susceptible to whatever you say, honey?
Next thing you know, these kids who have no idea what Lupron is or what it means to get puberty blockers is on a fast track for this, which has resulted in 50,000 people on Reddit joining the D-trans community and an endless slew of posts of people threatening suicide.
What I see in the data, and so if you look at the desistance rates, What is it?
The number, I believe, is like 68 to 95% of children who identify as transgender will desist.
That doesn't mean detransition.
It means that if left to go through their natural puberty, they end up identifying with their biological sex.
Typically, they end up being either autistic or gay.
What happens now is they will just affirm whatever it is the kid is saying, despite the fact the majority of these kids would self-identify if they're allowed to go through puberty.
My concern here is, you bring in young kids who don't understand what they're hearing, you layer on books and ideas and things that are more confusing to a child than anything, you layer on the social factor of Instagram likes, views, etc., and you end up with all of these stories of these prominent, now famous, detransitioners saying, I didn't understand.
More horrifyingly, you end up with these stories on D-Trans Reddit, where we read one last night where a 17-year-old was threatening suicide because she felt manipulated into getting a double mastectomy, testosterone, and it ruined her life, and now she feels like she can't lead a normal life.
You have these laws being passed that would protect a third party.
A third party can take someone's child to the state, Dramatically alter their life, cause irreversible changes and or harm, and be legally protected, because these kids are not equipped to understand what they're signing up for.
My last point on this is, if desistance rates truly are between 60 and 95%, and suicide rates are around 40 to 50%, The smartest and most logical thing we can do, considering the majority of these kids will identify with their biological sex, not be trans, and thus experience lower rates of suicide, is not to intervene at all in any medical way for a child who is experiencing gender dysphoria until after puberty.
If we're looking at it from a simple probabilistic standpoint, let's just say it's the lowest number, 60%.
You have a greater than chance probability your child will just self-identify with their biological sex and thus not experience a 50-50 suicide rate.
It seems like the math is fairly obvious.
You transition your kid, you are boosting their suicide rate to 47%.
Well, and I was going to say, I mean, for my part, I mean, I have two friends who they had CPS called on them.
If you didn't seem like you were immediately celebrating, affirming, yeah, CPS was called on them.
And then this is what I'm noticing just overall, is that the California legislature and other places, in my opinion, are chipping away at parental responsibilities.
Traditional parental responsibilities, and this area is one.
But I mean, in the midst of this, we do have a growing number, little by little here, of young people who are detransitioning.
But the thing I'm concerned about is that there is this messaging of celebrate, celebrate, celebrate towards those who are making these decisions.
But the detransitioners are often Humiliated, silenced, and shamed.
And to me, that is indicative of part, and I don't think everybody believes that.
I think there's a lot of people that don't, but I think the way in which I have seen detransitioners treated, it's It's so sad.
However, I do 100% understand where you're coming from, and I see that logic, and I understand your mathematical model, and statistically, I understand your point of view, and I get that.
However, I'm going to make a comparison, and again, because I just love getting people to hate me.
That's just my job, right?
Do you remember kind of like pre 2020 where like the classic news was black individuals are targeted by the police and it never makes it on the news?
And that was the news story.
Like, the news story itself was black people are never on the news.
That, to me, is the same situation, where it's like, the current news story is detransitioners are never on the news, which inherently puts them on the news, right?
And then that other side note, though, of that idea of like, well, it's always like celebrate, celebrate, celebrate.
Just an idea.
Just an idea.
That idea of, yes, parents, you guys, you know, you know your kids and you know them extremely well, right?
However, however, if you don't celebrate a kid's exploration into different topics, they sometimes start pushing back without even knowing what they're pushing back against.
And that's actually what I'm more worried about.
That idea of, and of course I can't speak on specific clients, right?
But I can say I've had multiple instances where a parent has come to me and being like, oh, well, she wants to be called he now, right?
What do I do?
And I gotta say, I say the exact opposite thing of kind of what you're going for as I say, like, go with it.
Because when you start pushing against it, they start pushing back on the parent without even knowing what they're pushing back on.
And I've had plenty of students, plenty of students, and this is nothing Nothing against the trans community, because I'm such, like, obviously, right?
But I've had plenty of students who, yeah, they are genderqueer and whatever, and their pronouns say whatever, and I've also had plenty of students where they said, oh yeah, I'm definitely trans, and we were like, oh cool, okay, they, them, he, him, she, her, whatever, and you went with it for a couple months, and then they realized after just leaving it, just going with it, they're like, actually, that wasn't, that's not a thing.
With books like Genderqueer and This Book is Gay being in schools, and there's a substantially, it's more than just these two books we have in front of us.
And then of course critical race theory was the big debate a couple years ago, because it seems like critical theory in general was being brought into schools in a variety of ways.
So, it is indoctrination.
My response to most people is like, we want indoctrination.
We just don't want that indoctrination.
We want to teach the positive values of our moral frameworks, innocent until proven guilty, etc.
Those are big components of the rights of the individual, meritocracy, and now we have children being taught an inversion of this, and we have in many circumstances the severing of the The family unit, in terms of, don't tell your parents.
The response from liberals is, they're trying to force schools to out the children to their parents.
Well, it's not your, you have no right.
If a child is experiencing anything, be it bulimia or some kind of gender confusion, it is not the state's obligation nor right to intervene in that regard.
Well, and I want to say something to that because for a couple things with regards to schools, I mean, we had a situation where a volunteer at a school had threatened our oldest when he was young.
And I noticed some change in him after school.
And I was never told about this.
So I actually approached the school staff and then that's when I learned of the situation.
There was another situation with our youngest in school where there were threats from other students.
And so I actually, one of the times I went to the school board meeting is our youngest had had multiple threats from a student, really descriptive graphic threats.
And what happened was I had been getting those notices about, you know, your child's been exposed to lice, your child's been exposed to strep throat.
But I was never notified when our littlest had these very scary experiences at school.
But nonetheless, a false, but a false, they're not, they're not the same thing, right?
Like that idea of like, this is what I'm constantly trying to get on, which is that idea of like, they're not the same thing.
Like your child being threatened, you need to tell the parent.
Your child is injured.
You need to fill out an accident report.
That actually is usually mandated.
But it's like different if it's like, oh, so-and-so said they want to go by they them.
Would I tell the parent?
A thousand percent, right?
But is it like, like, is it mandated?
Like, is it?
Hear me out.
OK, and this is like very tricky.
If a student ever comes to me and they're like, I go by they them, but my mom doesn't know or my dad doesn't know.
My first thought is there's something that needs to be repaired within family communication.
It's not I got to hide this kid's gender identity from the parent.
It's the idea of we need to create some type of environment where this conversation needs to happen.
Because if I immediately, and I'm not saying this is even the case, right?
But if a teacher immediately, like you said, like outs a kid, right?
That could create a problematic situation.
In fact, it could be creating a situation where it's indoctrination to be Straight and cisgendered, right?
Which is actually much more indoctrinating.
It's usually that way, right?
Like, on average, most Disney movies, despite like new recent developments, most Disney movies kind of perpetuate that kind of what we consider the fancy word is like heteronormative, right?
Heteronormative cisgendered ideologies.
And we need to kind of perpetuate that as the norm.
I love that idea of like, you know, we want to indoctrinate innocent until proven guilty.
But does that translate to straight until proven gay?
Like those are two very different things, in my opinion.
So I can give us, we have an example here from the Daily Mail.
This is from February.
New York teacher manipulated fifth grade student into changing gender without parents' consent, which drove her to consider suicide lawsuit claims.
The response you typically get from people on the left is, it's an anecdote, it's one story, to which my response is, then why not just when Ben Shapiro comes out and says this is bad, you go, you are so right, Ben Shapiro, I'm so sorry this happened.
Instead, the response you get is dismissal, saying, no, you're wrong, no, this doesn't matter, which then, you basically have overt support from the political left in this country of things like this when they dismiss or defend it.
You are correct, but now you're seeing the blur and the blend where we actually had a debate between two drag queens and one of the drag queens says that they are trans.
I'll call you whatever the heck you want, but that's not a pronoun.
So that's where I draw the line as an educator, right?
Pronouns are he, him, they, them, it, it.
It's like all of that stuff, right?
And those should be valued, but I don't think we should also be like, well, I'm not going to call you cat.
It's like, oh, what if they want to be called cat?
Now to the idea of like race, right?
Such a good question.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, right?
Now, here is where I differentiate the two.
Being a gender studies major, right, which people have different ideas of, one of my biggest fascinations, both having my master's of science and bachelor's in gender studies is where is the line between a biological difference and a social difference between men and women?
But then the issue, we've talked about this quite a bit, one of the arguments being made by gender ideologues is that we used to have racial segregation in this country.
And what was the argument for having black bathrooms and white bathrooms?
There was a bit of a just moralistic I went a non-scientific view of what was supposed to be.
But then there were also arguments presented by people who are trying to justify why we had racial segregation saying things like the danger, you know, black people are different in this way and that there's risks.
But the reality is you get a black man from Somalia and a black man from Haiti and they're very, very, very different.
And then the only discernible characteristic is the color of their skin, which doesn't seem to actually help identify anything.
Which is why, inherently, if you find biological differences between men and women, but on the circumstances where you have somebody that is assigned male at birth that identifies more with female traits, or a female assigned at birth individual that kind of identifies more with male traits, we have a biological category, not utter chaos, that we can kind of make a distinction from.
Oh, you are biologically this, but tend to have these characteristics, therefore trans, therefore non-binary.
Well, yeah, and I was gonna ask, actually, with regards to, like, sports and stuff.
If there's this known biological difference, which I believe there is, you know, having sports competitions be changed or, you know, the prison system and all of these different things.
Well that's like but again oh gosh where do I even want to go with that but like that idea of like the trans athlete in sport I gotta say like I'm so like sick of that one right because it's like such a niche issue that like no one should really care about and yet everyone cares about it so much.
That's valid that's valid but it's such like a specific It's so specific to the point where it's like, oh, it's so constantly being blown out of proportion when I feel like there are larger issues.
But that idea of like, why surgery?
Right.
And it's very interesting to kind of look at the different kind of LGBTQIA perspectives, that idea of to be trans, you don't need affirming surgery.
But that same idea of it should be accessible and it should be.
But what are the processes that we need to go through to make sure gender affirming care is beneficial?
What guardrails do we need to put in play?
I don't think banning it outright is a good situation.
I don't think declaring, oh, and again, this kind of goes into kind of reverse of your opinion, that idea of like, wait for them to go through puberty entirely.
That could be really, really kind of mentally draining for somebody who's trans, right?
And a thousand percent I could say the left and the right, and I know it sounds crazy because of the way I look and the way I talk, but I don't even say if I'm on the left or right technically, because I'm a teacher and I don't think I should bring my political opinion into the classroom, and since I'm a media figure, I don't think I should disseminate that information.
But with that said, right, like that idea of like, okay, well, it's tricky.
And that's actually, and yeah, really good question that we can go into there, because then a lot of people are like, well, they indoctrinated you.
No, they didn't.
But like here's the deal that idea of Hear me out one actually had to shave for me because I was so against I was so against shaving and did I get laser hair removal on my face at the age of like 15 16 a thousand percent and did that make high school and college a lot easier for me a thousand percent and And that's a medical intervention that I did at a very young age, but it worked for me.
And actually, in a way, it supports both of our arguments.
Part of it is, but at the same time, not to the extremity.
And I will respect that actual analysis that you just gave, right?
But that idea of like, but it's crazy, right?
It's crazy to me, like to kind of go back off that, like, oh, you had two moms, right?
That idea of like, oh, people think that I was somehow indoctrinated by LGBTQ, that I was indoctrinated by, you know, my moms, but I was indoctrinated by the Bay Area.
It's not the case.
If anything, if you talk to any queer or trans person other than the people that desist, you got to remember those people.
But A majority of us, we fought against feeling this way and acting this way for a very long time.
We didn't just go like, oh, you know what would be kind of fun?
I think, I mean, I think, I mean, for me, Could he wear the eyeshadow?
No, no.
I really think with regards to these topics, with regards to all of this, we have a situation where I do think there's a variety of conflicting worldviews, but I don't think that comparing, I mean, for my part, I don't think there's any comparison of facial hair removal to, I mean, I had only learned really probably maybe not even a year ago
That the medications that are referred to as puberty blockers are oftentimes prostate cancer drugs.
So the surgeries like a double mastectomy or some of these various surgeries have serious, serious consequences.
And I think that, you know, obviously the drugs do as well.
These are things that are highly, highly Concerning in regards to all of the side effects and you know, I think medicine It really makes me wonder why why would they be doing it?
But also, you know just the overall health factor, you know, there was a whole movement that probably still exists where where people were saying that people shouldn't have the right to have their child their male child circumcised and And that was because, again, it was a medical intervention.
And now today, we're in this other place where, you know, a double mastectomy could be given to a 15-year-old or a young child.
But you understand the issue is when someone sees one photo of a teenage girl getting a double mastectomy, and we say, hey, maybe we shouldn't do that, the immediate response on the left is, oh, it doesn't matter at all.
Well, and I want to say too, I mean, there's been real issues in the US of medical malpractice.
Every job field has corruption.
Every job field has compromise.
And I think too, it can be easy for people.
unidentified
We're not not getting into different politics, but it can be easy for people to follow either what they're told to do or what their money coming in is telling them they have to do. - But medical malpractice against minority populations that are at risk for being discriminated against, not in favor of, but it can be easy for people to follow either what Right?
That idea of if you look at the medical malpractices that have been perpetuated by big pharma and multiple situations, they're always against minority populations.
It's always against the black communities or the queer communities.
Okay, so, and that is, I think, the thing that we're missing that, like, I think is, like, the most nuanced thing about this conversation, is in the end, even though there's, like, opposing views, we actually- everyone in this room cares about those 4,231 people.
Right?
We just care about them in different ways and we think that, um, we think that we know what's best for them.
And that's tricky, right?
Because who really knows best for those 282 double mastectomy kind of individuals?
Who really knows best for those 4,200 can't-see-that-last-number?
Because it's actually damaging in the long run. - Mastectomies are damaging in the long run. - And like you said, and then I could see how you kind of trace that, right?
'Cause you go, we intervene because of anorexia, and then we trace that.
You intervene because being trans leads to a higher suicide rate, so we need to intervene to stop it from happening.
But in my opinion, you don't stop a trans individual from being trans.
They're just trans.
Like, you can't just stop someone from being trans.
No, but how is there any response to if we went with the higher number of 95% you are effectively condemning children to high rates of suicide by affirming something they don't understand if they have a 90 plus percent chance of just identifying with their biological sex by age 14 or 15?
Well, again, I'm chatty so I want to know your opinion, but then I know I'll add to it too if the response is Oh, it's only a few thousand people who are going home with therapy.
It's only a couple hundred girls per year who are getting double mastectomies.
You also have these D-Trans stories.
50,000 members on the D-Trans Reddit.
And the posts are saddening and horrifying.
The post we read last night was from a 17-year-old who said that her mother didn't protect her.
So hear me out, and this is a question that I actually want to post to you guys, right?
And, like, really consider it.
I feel like your concerns are valid and I think that they come from good places and I think that basically what I've read about this and also what I've kind of heard about you, I feel like there's like a misconception.
We care.
We care in this room.
Do you think we're making a certain person or group of people in this situation the bad guy?
Right?
Because it's always framed, in my opinion, it's always framed in the same way.
Just like how it was always, it's the black people that are going to come after the white people, so we need to separate the bathrooms.
And I hear the same, they're coming after the girls.
Right?
That's always, right?
And always these trans conversations.
It's always that idea of they're going to try to take the girls and make them guys, and they're going to regret it.
The guys are going to try to go into the women's bathroom.
And it always turns like the girls into this like, No, I don't think it's true for you at all, but I think the general population is.
I don't see that in any of the arguments.
You don't see that?
Okay.
No, it's male and female.
the women and the girls from the gays because they're trying to go after them.
Well, and I also want to add that as far as erosion of parental rights and responsibilities, You know, in Washington State, we've seen where 12-year-olds can make these decisions to start these therapies without the barrier of parental permission.
And California is moving really in that direction.
And then with the application of these school-based health centers through the WISC model, the whole school, whole community, whole child, to implement school health clinics on school campuses where that can, I mean, there's already at least one school.
There was a story, I think, in Fox News, perhaps, but that was recent where they were talking about, I think it was Nova High School, where this was already being administered.
And so the idea of automatic assumption, almost, that parents are not to be trusted.
I mean a lot of CSC material you can review it and there's a small segment that does say talk to your parents sometimes there's even a You know, a section that has them go home and discuss things with their parents.
But by and large, the message is talk to a trusted adult, talk to a librarian.
And it really does.
The majority of the conversation is this message of don't trust the parents.
And so if we, yeah, if we get to a place in California and if that spreads nationwide, as California goes, so goes the nation, then we will have an erosion of parental involvement in the decisions of health care needs of children.
She has taken the child to California where she is now given gender-affirming sanctuary.
What if he's wrong?
What if this woman is suffering Munchausen's by proxy?
What if the father is right?
The obvious answer is non-intervention for the safety of the child.
However, what's happening is the courts are going the other direction.
If desistance rates are 60-95% and the mother has taken the child to California and the child does undergo transition, there is a greater than chance percentage that child will suffer because of it.
I choose to wear makeup because this is how I'm comfortable and I don't choose any other type of visual kind of stimuli because this is the look that kind of represents who I am.
I would say typically you find deviations around 20 percent in most things.
It's funny.
It works with electrons.
It works with people.
And so a child may take all of these different ideas that he's seen, she's seen, and then create an amalgam of a perception of the world, and then from that create something unique and creative, saying, I want to dress up in a jester's cap because it's a unique and strange thing.
You get, you know, punk rock, people with mohawks trying to be shocking.
But typically children are just seeking to imitate.
Right.
So when you go to a group of children as an adult man wearing makeup, you are going to be giving these kids the concept of adults wear makeup, men wear makeup, and they'll adopt those social behaviors more likely than create a new one.
So my position is not that... If you want to wear makeup, I really, really don't care.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to wear makeup around children.
Women do it too.
A male child may identify with a female child.
My position is simply, there are things that have no positive benefit and only a net detriment that children will adopt, be it drinking or doing anything else.
I don't believe wearing makeup is nearly as bad as drinking.
Well, and I was gonna say with regards to social mimicry, I agree with that.
Input often equates in a way to output.
Kids do observe, they're very observant and curious.
And I think, What you feed tends to grow even as we are adults.
I think this is why marketing is so successful and that's why people have huge marketing budgets because you can convince somebody to eat that burger and get that vaccine.
You can convince somebody.
unidentified
That was an unintentional eye roll.
I apologize.
That was very judgmental of me and it probably was on camera.
And I think even education, marketing is tremendously involved in education.
And I believe we're often getting a bait and switch.
I was recently at a conference in Philadelphia.
I got there a few days early.
There was a big education conference going on.
Most of what was being discussed, I got to visit with some of these wonderful people who were there, but they did say one of the primary things that they're working on is marketing to the schools, then marketing to the staff and the parents, and then that's the whole focus.
So I think we need to be analytical of the marketing coming in.
But when you're a child, with your developmental ages and stages that you're going through, The input received, I think that's, and I actually think we agree with regards to this because, you know, there are teachers that do want to promote, they do want to encourage exploration.
I, you know, this happened to a friend of mine.
We heard of Abigail Shrier's leaked audio story from a training that occurred.
And that audio was shared on the Megyn Kelly Show.
And I think there are some that do indeed want to promote this.
There was a Teachers Union YouTube video where they did this video discussing A variety of topics, but one teacher said, teaching is completely political in all aspects and realms.
Everything I do is political, from the books I choose and everything that I center in class.
And so, do we have an epidemic of that growing in education?
I do think that's what parents are noticing, which goes back to curriculum choices and all kinds of things.
But there's so many more teachers that are... See, like, We are like, oh, there's this group of people that are like, there's a whole bunch of teachers that are trying to make your kids trans.
There's so many more teachers that are against it.
I do think there's a lot of great school staff and teachers that are not doing this.
And I think that we need those voices, but from the school staff that I know, especially because the teachers unions are so loud with some of this, I think they're intimidated to speak up and we need those voices to say, hey, I'm seeing something saying something.
The only thing I would say though is that you know who else is super loud is, and I don't even like using this word because I feel like it's so out of context, like the word bigoted really bugs me now because now it's like you say anything and it's like bigoted, right?
But like the actual dictionary definition of the word bigoted, bigoted people are also very, very loud.
And they're like, well, whatever you do for pride lessons.
And I'm like, well, this is the closest thing I do to pride lessons.
And it's literally having a student draw something on the front of their binder.
And it could be who they are, it could be how they feel, it could be what they like to do, and that's pretty much as close to a pride lesson as I give.
Or where I have a student draw their family, and then a student draw another family that looks different.
But people are calling me an- oh, you're indoctrinating kids.
I'll get there because I have to answer your question honestly.
And I know people that work for San Francisco Pride and I have gone Every single year.
In fact, my moms used to take me when I was a kid.
Oh my God, indoctrinating.
It is different now.
It is very, very different.
And in my opinion, San Francisco Pride needs to have different sections.
And if you actually went to San Francisco Pride, you would be fascinated by one of the organizations that you would actually type in, which is Gays Against Grooming, which is that idea of if Pride events are Pride events for kids, they need to have a certain level of appropriateness to them.
And I agree with that.
I agree with that because there are certain things that occur.
Yep, right there, right there.
Like, there are certain things at Pride events that are not age-appropriate for kids.
- This is what's fascinating to me is like, and I also wanna get your opinion on this too, is like there's this weird false equivalence that is not real.
Like this to me, nope, I would not show my kids that.
My mother would not let me, my mom, would not let me go outside of our family.
We had a coffee shop in North Halsted.
She told me to stay inside.
I wasn't allowed to go outside during Pride.
I was 10 years old.
Because there were naked men and women.
They were performing overt sex acts and simulated sex acts.
And my whole life, that has always been the case.
So when that is the case for, in my life, basically three decades, that every pride I have ever been to is sexually explicit, when you then go to children and say, let's talk about pride, you can't have three decades of sexually explicit in public, overtly illegal, and then tell children, let's bring you into this.
It's not about whether it's in my mind inherently correlated, it's that if you say, let's have you talk about pride, and let me teach you about pride, and pride is...
What is effectively happening is, whatever your intention may be, you are going to a child and saying, I would like to open this door to a world of inappropriate behaviors to you by introducing you to this concept.
The two paths in terms of quote-unquote modeling is the deviant of trying to trick a child or groom them into prostitution or just being on the cover of a magazine.
The most pronounced experience of pride is For 37 years I've been alive.
From the 27 years since I have witnessed these, they are overtly sexual.
North Halsted, Chicago.
I'm told my whole life, love is love.
I'm a little kid.
My family's liberal, Democrat.
And they said, we agree with gay marriage, we agree with all of this.
Because people are allowed to love whoever they want.
And then I said, how come the mannequins are giving each other blowjobs?
In full view of the public.
What does that have to do with love?
I'm like 10 years old, and I'm like... They have penis and vagina, macaroni and cheese.
It's not about love.
So when you go to a child and say, I want you to entertain pride, and the public-facing, prominent community is overtly sexual, that's why people are calling it grooming.
And here's where And this I was so looking forward to like talking to you about because I've heard some of like, and I wouldn't call them accusations, but like some statements made by you, right?
Where that idea of like, if you do this, then therefore like you're a pedophile or you're against, you know, da da da da.
But it's like, they're not.
They're gay.
They're gay.
There is unfortunately a misunderstanding, though, of what's appropriate to do around kids and what is not.
And hear me out, like love to both of my moms, right?
There was parts of Pride that I was not allowed to go to, right, as a kid, right?
Because they were not appropriate.
And I think there are parts of Pride that are appropriate for kids and parts of Pride that are not appropriate for kids, right?
There was a Pride event and you're going to literally, like, destroy me on this one because you're going to be mad.
You're going to be mad too.
There was a school district Pride event that we had, and I was like the person for it.
I was like the spokesperson for it.
And like, hear me out, it was a great event.
It was a really great event.
We had different booths, and the entire Pride event was be who you are.
There was nothing sexual about it.
We had an individual.
I don't even know if I could say her name, if that's a good idea to say her name.
We had an individual.
She came.
She told her story about what it was like to transition, and I had to coach her a little bit, even though she was older than me and much more successful, about You know what?
You actually can't say that you were considering suicide in front of kids.
You know what?
You can't actually go through the medical procedure in front of kids.
There is totally a way to make pride child-appropriate, and I respect your understanding that there are certain things that children should not see, and I understand your concern.
If the only thing that existed in modeling was prostitution, that the supermodels we all know about were all prostitutes, then you don't let your child model, right?
And look, I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm just saying I've never seen one because I'm sure there are some where they just march down the street and they have flags and things like that.
I want to know something, and oh gosh, I was actually told by the district to not actually make it a big deal because they don't want too much media attention, especially in hiring me, but I want to know something.
This was a really big topic of conversation at the Pride event, but because we were sponsored by a library, right?
We have fans and friends of the show who are trans.
And the big issue is there are certain things that are not appropriate for children.
So if you come out and you're like, you know, you believe in pride and all this stuff, we're mostly like, okay, just, you know, we want to keep certain things away from kids.
I agree with you.
If parents believe that this is appropriate for their children, parents have the final say.
To a certain extent, I don't know, there's a moral line.
You don't want parents being like, hustler is appropriate for kids.
No, no, no.
We intervene there and be like, you clearly crossed the line.
What I always say about this book, Genderqueer, there are a lot of conservatives.
There are a lot of, you know, people critical of gender ideology.
And whenever I say, have you ever read it?
They go, no.
And I'm like, look, you know, it's not, it takes 20 minutes.
This is a book about a female who was was mercilessly abused by her parents, neglected, psychologically tormented, and now is suffering from developmental disorders that are being affirmed by modern society to the point where they think it's good children learn and believe these ideas are correct.
But you have a young woman who is pissing in her backyard, who was never taught to read, who wore for three days in a row, dried pads, crusted with menstrual blood to the point where she smelled so bad.
This is in the book that she was made fun of by her classmates and then internalized all of that and said, the real problem is that being a girl sucks.
The real problem was your mother and your father abused you emotionally, and not with direct physical violence, but it was physical abuse.
Having your child urinate in the yard, Having them wear crusted menstrual pads for days?
This is something where Child Protective Service is supposed to intervene and save this child.
In this book, she talks about how when the other girls made fun of her for not shaving her legs, for smelling like feces, she then said, if only I was a boy.
But they create this idea of it is better to be an other, an assumption of the feelings I have, and they want to appropriate that from me without actually understanding it in any way.
This woman explains later in the book that she's actually a fetishist.
She's what's called an auto-androphile.
She has sexually aroused the thought of being a man.
You then come to, I think, what you see here is, she's a teacher, going to children, asking these children to fulfill her sexual fantasy.
Whether that's the core reason why she does it isn't the issue.
She does.
She explicitly says she has sexually aroused the thought of being a man, and then asks children to entertain that thought.
That is completely inappropriate.
What we have here is someone who has suffered psychological trauma, who is now pushing that onto children.
But, like, that idea of, like, the classic idea of, like, oh, people are trans, people are gay because of trauma, right?
And, like, now there's this movement, apologies, like, just to clarify, but now we sometimes hear people that are non-binary going under the trans umbrella, so I just say, like, trans for everyone, just wanted to clarify that.
But with that said, even though I very much disagree with a lot of that perspective where it's like, oh, it was because of trauma and you're pushing it on kids and this is that and the other, what I do agree with is there is a conversation that needs to be had that being non-binary and being gay isn't for fun.
It's actually freaking hard, right?
And it can be.
And I don't necessarily do this.
In fact, I don't do this for fun.
I wake up and I do this to myself and I feel like this way and I talk like this and I act like this because this is what feels right for me.
And I do think there's a problem in social media, the mimicry idea that you make gay look fun and trendy and then kids hop on that bandwagon without understanding that there is discrimination that you are going to go through and that there's problems that you're going to go through.
But people are born the way they are, in my opinion.
So I feel like there's this gray area that is never explored, which is, yes, sometimes people accidentally equate being queer to being different and trendy, but on the other side, there are people that are just queer, and we shouldn't just banish, like, we shouldn't just say, oh, all gay people are just, you know, traumatized.
I think the principal reason, my view is probably plastic endocrine disruptors.
A lot of people talk about why it is where it sinks to a massive explosion of trans youth and transgender, transgenderism.
Well, we're like the second generation of plastic.
We are the second generation born of plastic products.
I went to an antique store.
Soda cans were hard metal.
Knee-high orange soda was a hard metal can when you, like, crack open.
I was like, wow, from the 50s.
And then the advent of plastics and plastic products are to emerge probably around the late the mid in the 60s and mostly in the 70s.
And then you end up with the boomer generation who are now in their late teens and 20s into the 70s consuming products all wrapped and coated in plastic, PCBs, phthalates, endocrine disruptors that we know to be endocrine disruptors as well as other pesticides and chemicals.
You then end up with the boomer generation consuming the majority of these chemicals while they have babies in utero, and then we're surprised to see that millennials and Gen Z have a higher rate of transgenderism.
That's the only reason.
But I think we've known for some time about phthalates in PCBs, for instance, and the effect on babies and the endocrine system.
Yet, for some reason, there are many people who are associated with the right who would say, there are no trans kids.
There's no, and I'm like, well, If you go back to Alex Jones yelling they're turning the freaking frogs gay, it's been 10 years of people on the right saying that there are chemicals that cause endocrine disruption in life and animals and it's going to impact us.
So the question is then, if someone was trans and they're experiencing gender dysphoria, Because of endocrine disruption due to the chemicals in our food and an environment, how do we adequately accommodate these individuals who through no fault of their own are experiencing this?
And that's a great question that I think is like so important to have with parents, with medical staffs, with teachers, and for everyone to be included.
But there are trans kids, there are non-binary kids, but that idea of like...
People are turning them trans on purpose.
It just it really it hurts me a little bit, right?
Because like and it probably just because it like it hurt, you know when like, um, like just for an example for you, right?
That idea of like, oh my god, I can't believe you didn't tell me something happened to my kid.
It's your literal job to protect them.
You care about the most and it's like kind of a slap in the face, right?
At least that's the perspective that I would think that you have, right?
Like someone insults your kid or your kid is It says that they're a girl or a boy or whatever and you don't tell me I'm their freaking parent!
What do you mean you're not telling me?
And I get that perspective, but I have the same perspective as a teacher, right?
A teacher that wears makeup that's non-binary.
That idea of like, I make myself a public figure.
I'm live scanned by the state of California.
Every move that I do is watched, right?
And I, what, make a video?
I put on some eyeshadow and you're like, you are indoctrinating my kid.
That's such a slap in the face to me in my community.
Like, I went to school For frickin' 25 years!
I went to grad school to make sure that I could teach your kid to read the best that they could ever read.
I went to school to make sure that your kid has an individualized education program that no one else has, because I do custom products for each kid.
And you're saying I'm grooming them because I'm wearing lipstick?
You know what I do find really funny is the guests we've had on the show who are not LGBT, but are affluent white liberals, tend to adamantly defend books like this, tend to adamantly defend this book is gay being given to children, say it shouldn't be censored.
And then whenever we have actual LGBT people, they say, I agree, this stuff's inappropriate.
And so it's very interesting that when it comes to issues of race and gender, it tends to be affluent white liberals who are not members of this community.
There's like an eight-year-old girl who just goes in there, right?
And I'm like, and I want to be polite.
I'm like, oh, no, the bathroom for adults.
And they're like, oh, that one's on the other side of the...
"Campus, you could just use that one." And I got where they were coming from because they were like, "Oh, she probably identifies as a woman "and she wants to be included." First of all, I think the bathroom topic is just nonsense.
I just think that there should be separate adult and children bathrooms in the first place and that would solve the problem.
But that idea of people are trying their best to accommodate but sometimes you try to accommodate a little bit too much and not everyone has-- - That's what they do.
Yeah, no, I'm not.
Sometimes you try to accommodate too much.
And some people like me are.
I have to be on my guard all the time.
Right.
So I'm like, I'll go to the one across the entire school.
But like they're trying to help.
They are trying to help, but it's accidentally misinterpreted.
And then what if I said yes?
And there was a picture taken.
Oh, my gosh.
unidentified
You know, trans teacher goes into a child's bathroom with an eight year old.
And I think, yeah, I think that's an important component as well, obviously, because what we find is there's this really hilarious study a few years ago.
Two of them, actually, I'll cite.
One was White liberals are the only demographic with an out-group preference, so black people tend to prefer to be around black people, but it's small margins, surprisingly.
It's like 18%.
So it's like slim minority, but you see that, you know, black people prefer to be around black people, Latinos around Latinos, white conservatives prefer to be around white conservatives, Asians prefer to be around Asians, and white liberals prefer not to be around white people in general.
And I think this is, for whatever reason, I got called racist and transphobic on my TikTok page for like a full year.
that we're actually seeing in that you end up with these circumstances where white people go around calling other people racist.
You end up with white liberals calling Larry Elder, a black man, a white supremacist.
I think, and again, it's not a, you know, there's parts of the organization that I've heard that I still need to, like, some, but it seems like it's a solid organization, that idea of, like, things are appropriate for certain things and things are appropriate for not.
But that idea of, like, I want to hear your perspective because, hear me out, Critical Race Theory, of course, there's, like, maybe some issues, but I was on, you know, different shows, different podcasts, different news channels.
Do you worry about your kids maybe never seeing people that look different or act different?
Or maybe your kid hasn't seen someone who looks like me, right?
And then you're going to have an idea.
They're going to be nervous.
They're going to be worried.
And, or they might not be, or they might not be, right?
Great, okay, and so you probably do a very good job at making sure that occurs, right?
But I do get worried in some homeschooling situations, it's not even intentional, right?
We have like just geopolitics that can put, like you said, different people in different areas, but I just get worried when you get to the homeschooling idea where it's like you only have people that look a certain way, act a certain way, and it's limiting.
I mean, there were a lot of families that just chose to homeschool on their own because they thought they could provide their child a different education.
There's a lot of kids with different special needs.
There's all, I mean, all across the scope of things, I've seen, you know, a lot in homeschool.
And I would say that, I mean, for me, the homeschool experience has brought back, I mean, for example, I know this isn't talking about critical race theory, But I'd been working with our children to read prior to them starting preschool and kindergarten and all of those things.
I was working with them because I've collected books since I was little and I love books.
And so anyways, our daughter was making all of this progress prior to entering kindergarten and then she gets into kindergarten and she's doing this cueing reading where she's Having to kind of guess what the sentence is, which is making news right now.
And I mean, I think after, you know, then we get to first grade and Ivan suggested to the teacher, because she was bringing home some books that were, you know, as far as literacy, they were behind.
And I said, you know, was talking with them and stuff, but she didn't enjoy reading.
It was daunting.
She didn't enjoy school.
Our son wasn't enjoying school.
He wasn't feeling challenged enough.
And so in any rate, I didn't know how homeschooling was going to go.
I had actually told my husband in December, when I fail at this, we need a plan B. We need a plan B. And it was a, it's still a shock to me how well it's gone.
But what ended up happening is a couple months in our kids were on their own reading and they were reading all different kinds of books and chapter books.
And I remember looking to my husband and the kids were in the back of the car and I said, The kids are reading on their own.
And they just loved it.
And so, I mean, I feel like education, I mean, California's education has really gone downhill.
I think nationwide, you know, there's just been a complete shift in educational topics and different things.
But I think the thing that gets me is if kids aren't reading, if they aren't able to do math.
Math was a challenge to me when I was younger.
Even in college a little bit.
But all of these topics, I mean, I want kids to love learning.
And I can tell that from you as well.
And I want kids to be able to just develop.
And I think right now, I don't know, it's been a very, this is a completely unintended journey for me.
I never in a million years thought I'd be doing this.
You know, with regards to California's ethnic studies, for me, it was looking at that material and then trying to think through, like, who is Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, you know, some of the source documents.
It's new for parents to hear about all these different critical theories.
You know, the source documents that I looked at, You know, it mentioned queer theory, LATCRT theory, critical race theory, and all of these different things.
And then the content, you know, trying to look through some of the materials from the curriculum, they were teaching kids How to be an activist, how to develop a counter narrative to a narrative, all different kinds of things.
And I feel like, you know, for my part, I think in some ways education has lost its way.
And I kind of get the impression that we agree on quite a bit.
You know, I just think With with ethnic studies this idea of the politicized part of it You know, it's it's interesting.
I I initially heard ethnic studies and I thought fabulous Yeah, and I think we're really well and I thought we're gonna be learning about all these different Ethnicities and we're gonna learn about people's cultures and all of these things but then I saw Antonio Gramsci and I did see a reference to Karl Marx and I'm going OK, that's not what I anticipated.
And I think you bring up a really interesting point and just like, OK, here's where I think we agree and also like where we disagree is I think things like gender theory, critical race theory, you know, gender studies are all like so important because in the end, I feel critical thinking is the skill that we need to teach kids.
To be able to think critically, differentiate points, figure out things on their own, right?
I feel like that is key.
And that's why it really hurts me when people are like, we need to just ban critical race theory.
We need to ban gender studies.
No, these are the studies that are really important because you're thinking critically about societal issues.
However, where I think a little bit of the misstep, like you said, happened is we started prioritizing critical thinking before we taught the fundamentals.
Right.
And if you teach critical thinking before teaching the fundamentals of reading, math, science, you accidentally insert your own opinions into teaching critical thinking as And that's where the misstep is, in my opinion.
I think the issue mostly is critical race theory is rooted in Marxism, quite literally.
In the founding document of critical race theory, Kimberly Crenshaw explicitly said Karl Marx got critical theory right, but doesn't understand the racial component in the United States.
So what they're doing is, they're not teaching kids about understanding the history of this country.
For one, 1619 is mostly a fabrication.
Even, I can't remember the woman's name, who wrote it said it wasn't intended to be accurate history.
You end up with these...
Ideological curriculums in math and science that create a false picture of what is really going on with race relations, indoctrinating kids into the idea of oppressed versus oppressor, which creates an antagonistic society.
Those a victim of today are granted special privileges.
For instance, if you are perceived as being oppressive, you get banned from social media.
So the interesting thing is, the victim exerts this tremendous authority over everyone else to fall in line lest they be removed from society.
So those pretending to be oppressed are actually the oppressors.
You know, you have this story out of the UK of the 16-year-old girl who called a cop a lesbian.
She gets arrested for it.
Those police are the oppressors.
A 16-year-old autistic child making an off-the-cuff comment which you find offensive does not warrant the arrest of that child.
But the person, the police officer, they then claim that these officers are victims of hate crimes.
No.
They're an oppressive force who are targeting a child for saying something stupid.
What we end up seeing in these schools is, first, I think the important thing is, critical race theory, as written by Camilla Crenshaw, is Marxism.
Marxism, I think, is very, very bad in a lot of ways because it pits people against each other and creates disunity.
In the schools, you end up with these really weird circumstances.
We have a bunch of these books actually on our shelf outside that were given to us by Many of our guests.
They do things like this.
This is the issue with critical race theory.
If you're going to go to a bunch of kids in Florida and say, let's teach about the history of slavery in the North Atlantic slave trade and give you a full view of it.
For one, anybody who brings up an element of slavery that doesn't adopt the worst view of it will be attacked for bringing it up.
For instance, if you bring up that many slaves worked in shops and received money, they'll say that you are downplaying what slavery was because slavery was always the most abusive and intolerant thing.
Now, slavery was bad, but it was many different things.
If you have someone tell the story of many slaves in the South, for instance, I've been reading a lot about the Civil War.
When you ask someone, what was a slave?
Imagine a slave.
They're going to imagine a man in a field being beaten by a plantation owner.
If you then come out and say, did you know that many slaves were actually working jobs and received money for what they did?
They'll say, that's insane, you're wrong.
But this is an important conversation about, say, Frederick Douglass.
When you learn the stories of slaves who bought their freedom, they worked hard, they did receive money, but they were fully controlled in every element of their life by a slave master.
That's wrong.
But, many of these individuals were working in shops because it facilitated the business of the white slave owner, and in some instances not even white Native Americans and other black people had slaves too, not the majority, but they would be able to receive compensation, granted the person who owned the slave would receive more or receive fees.
It's a much broader picture.
You hear stories about a teacher who would bring something like this up and then get attacked and cancelled by the left for it.
The bigger issue is, we see these books where, instead of saying, let's teach you about the history of slavery, it's a math book.
And the math book says, Jamal has been stopped by police 17 times this month, where Eric, and it shows a picture of a black man and a white man, Eric was only stopped once.
What percentage of the stops were, you know, of the young black male Jamal?
And so what they're doing is, They're creating these math problems that create a worldview that indoctrinates this oppressed versus oppressor narrative.
Which in a very much, all fascinating points as always, but it very much though I do worry about kind of an inherent issue where I remember very specifically, like really quick side note, I remember in first grade being taught about slavery and one of the key things that was always said to me in slavery units was, but you know that, you know, Africans actually were the ones that were selling other Africans, right?
And I felt, and I didn't understand it at that time, right?
And now, with my education, I understand, well, that they had a very different idea of what slavery was, when Africa, you know, the idea of trading people, we had very different, it was a very big miscommunication, right?
But in the end, you were just stealing people.
Slavery is bad.
I've really got to underline that, right?
But I do get worried if we say, oh, you know, well, they were also earning wages, and they were also, they could buy their freedom, and this is that, and the other.
I do get worried that we somewhat downplay the severity of how bad slavery was.
Now, is Critical Race Theory perfect?
No.
Is Marx actually worth studying?
Yeah, Marx is.
In my opinion.
But it's tricky to me because there should be an awareness that there is racial bias.
There should be, right?
And I think it's important, and I think it's tricky to kind of get everyone to understand that without putting it in curriculum consistently, right?
I do want my students to know that I have encountered police officers a bit more frequently, quite more frequently, than my white counterparts.
How do you know that?
That's actually a great question.
So how do I know that holistically, or how do I know that just in my personal experience?
Like, for example, I will be walking down, I don't know if you know, like, Waterworld USA, and like, right?
We would go there, and I always remember, I, like, hated going because there was always, like, security everywhere.
I would always be asked to show my frickin' receipt, and it's so funny because my mom would always be like, keep your receipts, and I never understood why, and it's because I was always the one.
Whenever I'd be walking around with, like, a bag of candy or, like, a toy or whatever, the, an officer would stop me, do you have a receipt for that?
It was weird to me how I would consistently be like, oh, well, you know, you need to prove this.
You need to prove that.
You need to prove the other.
And it didn't happen to my white friends.
And I do want my students to understand that there is a difference in kind of treatment right now how we implement that in a curriculum is very very difficult right and i think this is actually where and i'm not speaking like for you at all but like i think in looking at like this content that i've seen from yours is i think that this is where you're accidentally misinterpreted sometimes because i think you say things like i'm against the critical race theory i'm against this or that's against that and you're not against teaching the ideas of it
but you're more for the idea of the individuality and individual perspective i'm pro teaching critical race i actually didn't know that so that idea right i'm against uh um critical race uh uh praxis okay so see that and i think that's where the crap yeah that's the that's where the differentiation right that's where the differentiation takes place where i think you're sometimes taking out a context where you appear and then people are like he's trying they're lying yeah Yeah, I know they are, right?
But that idea of, like, I think people don't give the other side the time of day.
Because I think there is a way to really individually teach slavery what happened, what the implications were.
I even think, get ready, let's start a tussle, right?
Because we're getting a still along a little bit too well, right?
Like, I even think there's a way to kind of implement affirmative action to the point where it is beneficial.
But I don't think that there should be a point system.
We struck that down in a previous Supreme Court case.
I don't think that somebody Black should inherently be looked at thinking, oh, you are always going to have a struggle that is more intense in every circumstance.
There are certain circumstances, but not all, right?
And I think that's important to teach.
I think it's important to take that into consideration for college admissions.
I think having a class that is more diverse is going to be inherently more beneficial, right?
But I think it needs to be done very, very carefully.
And maybe we did a rush job at kind of doing that.
Not only did I suck at learning Japanese, even though, like, I remember my grandmother speaking Japanese.
Not only was I not allowed to, like, not only did I suck at learning Japanese, but then what I was actually good at was Italian, and I wasn't even allowed to speak that, because Italians were not very fond, and people were not very fond of Italians in San Francisco, and we were immigrants.
So, like, we were not allowed to speak Italian in the family.
The reason I ask is because I come from a mixed-race background.
Everyone knows it's a meme.
My dad's a white German-Irish guy.
My mom's a Hapa.
She's half Korean, 40% Korean, 10% Japanese.
We learned that through DNA testing.
Typically, when I tell people I'm part Korean, they go, I'm a little bit Japanese.
They go, oh.
Cause the implications historically, but the reason I bring it up is I grew up in this, uh, with these experiences of racism.
We had, uh, our house was attacked a couple of times by a white supremacist or whatever you describe it as putting, they put pamphlets on our doorstep saying race mixing was wrong.
We should be ashamed.
And you know, the kids are mongrels and things like that.
Then I have this dad who is clearly not in agreement with these ideas.
He marries a Korean woman.
And then when he goes to work, he's told that because he's white, he's privileged and not allowed to receive certain standard things, right?
He wanted to get a promotion in the fire department.
They passed him up because they wanted someone who got lower on the promotions test, but who happened to be an ethnic minority.
So my dad, who is someone who absolutely resists the racism, is punished by this system.
Then I, as a child, in a mixed-race family who is being threatened and targeted by racists, suffer because of it.
Mostly, I'm not gonna... Suffering is relative for the most part, I would say.
Growing up in a lower-middle class family, or upper-lower class, however you want to describe it, Life was life.
It was what it was.
But I know that my life would have been better had they not discriminated against my father.
And then, because they did, they basically held back.
A mixed-race family, because one family member happened to have been white.
That's affirmative action.
And I grew up with that, and that's why I firmly opposed it in the entirety.
The idea that you would say, this man's white, therefore he's privileged, therefore he can't get these benefits, and he's actually part of a mixed-race family, now that minority family suffers because of it, makes literally no sense.
And I think you also, and I would even go back to like your original point, which is that idea of like, you know, on this, like on this show, right?
You're that idea of like, well, you always have to define a word because it means two different things from like different people, right?
And one thing for me that I always seem to be running issues into on like on social media is like people that are like, well, you can only be racist to like white people can't be racist, right?
And like white people are always the oppressors and this, this, that, and the other.
And I gotta say, like, you know, I would push back on that narrative because I think that racism looks different based on the context, right?
I think there is systematic and systemic racism in America.
I think that does need to be addressed sometimes.
But can racism occur on an individual level or on a more systemed level, like, for example, a workplace environment?
Yeah, thousand percent, right?
And people are always like, well, no, black people can't be racist.
And I go, if I hung a door on my office that said no more white students, That's a black person being racist, right?
So black people can be, right?
Black people can be racist to other people.
But on average, right, we do have one kind of group that tends to oppress the others more frequently.
Now, with that said, there are nuanced situations, like you said, right?
Where somebody that is white that Like allegedly, like you said, I don't want to make any assumptions, but seemed to be more qualified that was passed up.
And I'm sorry that occurred.
Right.
But I do think there are situations where you can take somebody's race into consideration and say, oh, you definitely were more challenged because of this instance without.
Without making it a point system, without saying all white people are doing this or all black people experience this.
I don't know, you know, they had that Supreme Court ruling, Harvard now says they're still going to take race into consideration for admissions, but they're going to do it by an essay basis, like write an essay about how you were oppressed or something, so they're going to find ways to get around it.
The issue here is you can't determine whether or not someone is good, bad, smart, stupid, worthy, unworthy by their race.
You can make racially profiled arguments and all that stuff all day and night.
I'm like, yeah, well, I'm not going to give someone the benefit of the doubt to steal from me because they happen to be the other race.
That's stupid.
Then a white guy comes in and robs you.
But it goes the other way too with Harvard.
Telling, the way I always describe it is, whenever someone tells me they're for affirmative action, I say, then I want you to be the one to look that lower class Asian child in the face and tell them you will never be allowed in Harvard because you look like they look.
Right, and I think you bring up a very interesting point, and I also want to hear your perspective too, right?
But that idea of it being a touchy subject, and it's very interesting because I still remember to this day, you know, I don't want to do a story time to bore anyone, but like I remember in high school we had to actually make the arguments.
We did a moot court, right, where you had to pick a side and you had to argue.
Like, okay, you're for affirmative action against affirmative action.
And I remember specifically that I wanted to argue against it.
And the reason I wanted to argue against it is, one, I wanted to get that perspective because, you know, on average, I do think it should be taken into consideration.
But two, I thought it was so just ambiguous how affirmative action was being played out, right, to the point where it actually could be accidentally Promoting what you're trying to fight it, right?
Like accidentally doing what you're actually out to be against, right?
Unfortunately.
So I thought that these systems were awful.
And I think that I think that the point system was terrible.
And I think that assuming everyone black has a harder time is a problem.
But I do think race should be taken into consideration.
And I want to go to your point, which is so amazingly valid, which is you cannot tell if somebody is a good or bad person based on their racial background.
However, on average, on average, which I know is dangerous, you can tell how somebody has experienced Life, or you can tell the treatment someone has received throughout life based on their racial background.
And I want to hear that perspective, but I know that when, and again, um, when I have like my black friends around me, there's a current under, there's an understanding of like how kind of interactions with, let's say police officers work, right?
But it's an assumption and it's, it's an assumption and it's, it, It's an average.
I think that's absolutely insane that in this Democrat bastion of New York City, the police are targeting minority neighborhoods over whether or not they have guns.
And they say, oh, there's a lot of shootings there, so we do it.
And I'm like, well, that's a problem, right?
Because the Constitution says these people have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
And you passed some law, which I view as completely invalid, telling people they can't.
Then they go and they specifically target minority neighborhoods.
That I completely understand.
But I think the bigger issue is, it's mostly about poverty.
And what happens is, there are reasons why certain neighborhoods are impoverished historically, and this includes a large proportion of African American or Latino.
And so what ends up happening is, People like Bloomberg say it's the black neighborhood.
I'm like, well, it's actually a lower income neighborhood.
And again, targeting their Second Amendment rights.
But growing up on the South Side of Chicago, what was my experience?
The cops weren't harassing black people.
They're harassing all of us.
And so there was this cultural thing about the talk.
And all of these affluent white liberals and affluent, uh, you know, we call them awfuls, affluent white female liberals, are saying, like, it's so sad that, like, these poor black people have to get the talk from their parents.
And it was a commercial where it's, like, a guy putting his hands on the wheel, putting his keys in the dash, turning the radio down, and I'm like, that was not- we all got the talk.
I- in my neighborhood, white people, Everyone's parents gave them the talk.
Here's what you do when the police come around.
Here's how you act around cops.
Don't talk to cops.
When you get pulled over, you turn the car off, you put your keys, you turn the dome light on, you put your hands on the wheel, you know, uh, don't, you know, what is it like, uh...
What is it, like 10 and 3 or whatever?
And you roll the window down, then when the cop walks up, you look over and you ask the officer, you know, what the issue is.
Then all of a sudden I see in the corporate press and among prominent liberals, this is only a phenomenon of black people, which is fundamentally false.
It's a phenomenon of anybody who lives in cities who came from a poor area who had to deal with police.
Then the narrative becomes, black people have to deal with this more than anyone else, and I'm like, you know, now you're creating racial animosity.
Because if the real factor here is when it comes to affirmative action, when it comes to income, when it comes to education is not race, but it's in fact upward mobility.
And like, look, Oprah Winfrey's family is going to have no problem getting to Harvard.
Will Smith's family is going to have no problem getting to Harvard.
Yet the locals out in Appalachia ain't going anywhere near Harvard.
Now Harvard's outright saying they're going to give a net benefit to the children of these affluent, ultra wealthy celebrities.
And the poor people of Appalachia have no access based on race.
All that does is create racial tension, hatred, and animosity.
And 1,000%, that's why I volunteer every Friday, right?
Because 1,000%, not to be like pompous, right?
But only a specific type of person can afford my services, and we need to make sure to disseminate that service to A broader group of people, right?
But with that said, it's very, very tricky because I think you bring up the point that is by far the most valid but overlooked point in affirmative action, which is money matters a lot, right?
People historically, not even just in America, but the poor population has always been mistreated throughout history.
Always.
It's just a fact, right?
And affirmative action should take that into consideration.
But hear me out.
Hear me out, right?
What if I said I was in favor of the Harvard affirmative action way that they're kind of getting around it, by making an essay?
And the reason I'm in favor of it, right?
And this is off the cusp, but I'm not 100% saying I have this opinion yet, right?
But I formulate my opinions over time.
It's not like an immediate thing, right?
But I'm saying, oh, I'm trying this opinion out.
I'm in favor of the Harvard Affirmative Action Essay because it takes into consideration somebody's individual struggle with race.
Will Smith's kids, Will Smith, shout out to you.
You're great.
You signed something for me once.
They won't have that.
Right?
But they won't have that.
They will not have, if it's an individual essay, they're, or they may, or they might, they might, right?
They may, and I'm not sure, I shouldn't make assumptions about people's family.
They may haven't had some racial issue that I was not aware of, right?
But they may not have it to the extent that some of my friends had it growing up in Oakland.
So to me, Harvard policy, it's like, OK, we're going to do a race based essay and you're going to talk about what kind of racial issues that you've grown up with.
I would love to write that essay.
I would opt to write that essay and have that considered for my Dartmouth application.
Shout out to Dartmouth.
Let's go big green.
But I would want that because I know my racial background did affect my upbringing, but in a way that was very different than my black friends.
The issue is, Will Smith's kids are still going to be able to write an essay about something they perceive... They will be able to write an essay that somebody else cannot bear.
But so, I don't think Harvard should take into consideration that if you're the child of someone worth half a billion dollars, and you once had a cop pull you over, and they're like, oh wow, you know, we gotta take this into consideration because it's a racial component.
I think the answer is fairly simple, and it actually does play into some of the ideas of Marx.
Class-based oppression.
If the idea is typically that the black community is less likely to have wealth, therefore... And that's the argument made by the left.
They say, it's not an issue of race, it's an issue of poverty.
Crime is not because of the black community, it's because of poverty, and you see that across the board.
And then it gets misattributed to their race.
I agree with that.
So then...
Based on my experience, if you have an area that is typically, it is overwhelmingly minority population, but does have white people who are poor living there as well, you then go to that neighborhood and say, we're going to give either reparations or use affirmative action to lift you out of poverty based on race.
What ends up happening is you get this neighborhood of mixed race group.
Lower income, predominantly say black, but with maybe a small percentage of white people who live there.
And now you've just elevated all of the black population based only on their race and completely ignored the poor people living around them, which results in racism, gang violence.
Now you have people saying, these people, like they're going to say these people.
If you went and said by class, we will give you admission.
There's no real argument for that.
There's no legal argument for it.
Harvard can spend the money as they want to spend, and they can require tuition as they want to require tuition.
Then you'll end up with a neighborhood of a mixed-race background, but predominantly... If the idea among the left is that black people are more likely to be impoverished because of historical racism, If you did it by class, you would be arguing to disproportionately benefit these black communities while not leaving behind any poor people of any other racial background.
And I was gonna say, I mean, with regards to all of this, I mean, again, We, I think one of the issues that I see massively in education, not just in California, is that there is this Marxian influence.
And not just, you know, like I mentioned earlier, Antonio Gramsci was mentioned in this one ethnic studies curriculum, and so was, there was a little reference to Karl Marx.
In addition to a variety of others, Paulo Freire, who is a Brazilian Marxist.
And I think the concerns I have is that I am seeing a growing number of some teachers who are indeed working towards political goals, politicizing kids into a political ideology.
I think You know, just from the stories I've heard from parents.
My son, my daughter, my children are experiencing, you know, all these political discussions in class.
And so, you know, even in California right now, we have the state seal of civic engagement program.
It is this whole push to to really get kids active and civically engaged.
But there is a component of activism.
Into this.
And then at the same time, we have parents that don't know how to go to school board meetings or feel like their, their speech is being chilled, um, by, by different things going on.
And so what I see, it just seems like, you know, the kids, kids are being taught almost in some schools, some, um, to be activists, whereas on the back burner, We have the actual academic achievement, merit, a quality education, a well-rounded education has changed.
You know, in California, they just passed the new math framework, equitable math kind of content.
And so what we're seeing is even the core subjects are transforming.
Right now, the next generation science standards are shifting a little bit.
I heard one report from Southern California where I was told that That science was shifting and some of the high school science topics were being diminished.
And in its place, the students were being encouraged to debate in class, in science class, whereas their actual academic rigor was diminished down to almost a middle school level, but activism was heightened in order for students to argue how to solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
So these are just some things that I think, you know, again, and you talked about money.
There's a lot of money in education.
There's a lot of big organizations funding different things, and their say is really making a big influence, I think, from what I've seen.
So, you know, I think kids are missing out.
They really need, they deserve a quality education.
They deserve to be able to graduate high school learning to read.
Well, I was going to say, I think you bring up a really good point, right?
But in the end, it's like that idea of like, well, even if your kid is the smartest in the world, who cares if they're not active and who cares if they're a bad person, right?
But I would just go to that idea of like, I think that there is a fundamental part of education that needs to be addressed.
And I do think that actual academic ability is very frequently not prioritized.
And just like you said, for us to Take part in activism for us to push our children to activism, right?
We need to make sure they have the fundamental skills first to make sure that they can think critically for themselves because if we push them into activism too soon, we're just going to push them into the activism that we think is important.
And that's not my job as an educator.
I want my students to go into activism they think is important, and I want their skills to kind of benefit that.
And I do think that in the long run, that is going to benefit kind of us in general.
And speaking to that affirmative action idea, I 100% see kind of that idea.
And it's so funny, I think it's like a perfect segue.
It's like it's the same issue in education, right?
That idea of like, oh gosh, you're just bringing up a certain group of people while leaving another behind.
an issue, right?
And it's so funny to have that cross comparison.
The only thing I would say is that inherently there's always gonna be a benefit from having diversity in the classroom and in the workplace.
And that's a personal opinion that I don't currently have the statistics to back up.
And you could disagree with that, right? - No, I don't think you even believe that.
- Okay, so hear me out.
Hear me out.
This is a good question, right?
I will say, fundamentally, I do think that a diverse workspace does create an environment for productivity that may not be the productivity of the greatest output, but hear me out.
I mean, with regards to DEI, which in our area is called JEDI, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, not only am I noticing the educational aspect, but then there's environmental social governance scores.
And Corporate Equality Index, I feel like there is this pressure.
Not I feel, I see it.
There is a pressure for collective conformity of one mode of thought, which is the acceptable mode of thought.
And those who are not of that, the shift from I to we are going to be on the outskirts.
I mean, we see that on social media, too.
So at any rate, I think it's important that we have That individuality, because that's freedom.
Thank you, everybody, for hanging out for this episode of The Culture War Podcast.
Next week's gonna be a lot of fun, everyone already knows.
I believe next week is Laura Loomer and Bill Mitchell.
We're gonna be talking about Trump versus DeSantis, which is, it's getting a bit difficult considering the current state of the polls and all that, but I hope you check it out, and you can support the show by becoming a member at timcast.com.
