Transcript

American Family Association panel discusses critical race theory in education ahead of November 2020 election

Walker Wildmon: Well, welcome to AFA at Home, brought to you by the American Family Association. This is our third episode of AFA at Home. We started out just about two years ago, talking about the upcoming election. That was the November 2020 election. Then after that we did a episode, two on spiritual warfare. And we had Tony Perkins and others in on that. Now we have a great panel where we're going to discuss critical race theory in education and just how the entire left, and really the pagans, are using education and the education system, to completely hijack the country. So we'll talk with our panel about that. We have with us Patty, Hidalgo Menders from Virginia. We also have Sheev, Vanliere Fleet there at the end, also from Virginia, who originated from China. And then we have Jameson Taylor from, the great state of Mississippi, where I'm from, all on the panel today. So we'll discuss, all these issues with this panel today. jumping right into this.

Loudoun County school board was not transparent during COVID lockdown

Patty, tell us a little bit about yourself, your story, and how you decided to get so involved.

Patty: Sure. So I'm a first generation Cuban immigrant's daughter. My parents escaped, excuse me, from Havana, Cuba. When the Bay of Pigs fiasco happened, mom and dad had no chance to survive there. They shut down universities, churches, and they realized they need to leave. So they came here, they raised us six kids. And I've always been given this sense of patriotism for the United States, our faith, our freedoms. that's what guided me in our family. And fast forward. I now have six sons and Loudoun County, Virginia has shown a lot of difference. I've lived there for 23 years and as a mom, I wanted my child to get back to in person learning during the COVID lockdown. And this school board was not transparent. They did not let us know what was going on. being the president of the largest Republican women's club, I received screenshots and videos from other members showing me what teachers were. Some teachers were teaching. And it was very alarming. And so we organized. We parents went to school board meetings, we asked for transparency, we asked for a town hall. And I got involved that way. So if it wasn't for the foundation of my parents helping me appreciate the freedoms we have here, I don't think I would have gotten involved.

Walker Wildmon: And you sure have helped to bring Loudoun county to the national attention and, all for good, by the way.

Dr. Jameson Taylor is a state legislator working on education and other issues

Jamison, tell us a little bit about your background as far as state legislative affairs and kind of where you've come from in the last decade, or so.

Dr. Jameson Taylor: So I've been working here in Mississippi for a number of years, working on pro life legislation, religious liberty legislation, but also education reform, working on many, bills to help low income kids get better access to a high quality education. I can tell you, as far as CRT goes, when I first started to look at it as an academic, I have a PhD in political theory. I didn't think much about it. And my kind of thought was this is this kind of niche crazy theory. Why is this so important? And I think being an academic is one reason that I underestimated it, underestimated the power of it. And as I think about CRT and the work that I do in state legislatures, when we can talk about kind of what's the most effective way to address that in your state legislatures. But as they start to think about CRT and like, what is it? The best analogy I could come up with was Hitler's Mein Kampf. Now that was actually not a best seller when that book first came out. It's horribly written. It's a horrible book. As the NewSong York Times put it, when they reviewed the book in 1943, they said that this is moronic evil. Moronic evil. And as they think about, as someone who does public policy, as someone with an academic background, I think about crt. And that's what it is, moronic evil. But even worse, it's a virus to spread moronic evil. And we can talk more about some of those details, how it's spreading, you know, in schools around the country. Your schools basically are becoming the incubator to spread this moronic evil.

Xi grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution

Walker Wildmon: Xi, you have your family's from China, you immigrated from China. Tell us a little about your story, how you ended up in the United States, became a citizen, so on and so forth.

Xi Vanliere Fleet: Yeah, I grew up in China. And I was six, turning seven when the Cultural Revolution started. So I spent my entire school years in Cultural Revolution. After graduating from high school, I was sent to the countryside like millions of other urban youth to work in the fields to be re educated by peasants. And I stayed there for three years doing very hard primitive work. fortunately, after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping the reformer took over China and I was able to took the examination to go to college. During the Cultural Revolution, there's no examination. Students, were selected by the party leaders based on their behavior. And so I was fortunate enough to go to college by my own ability by taking the examination and passed it. And that's when Deng Xiaoping restored meritocracy. And after that I was able to get assistantship, to come to study in Western Kentucky University and for my graduate degree in English. I, love this country. This is such a great country, I feel like, and here you can do whatever and just based on your ability. But I have to say I was not politically active. I was not even politically aware of a lot of things. so I just want to work hard and achieve my American dream. Get a good job and buy a house, start a family. That's my focus. Until I would say, probably, 15 years ago, I started to notice a lot of things happening here and remind me of Cultural Revolution. Believe it or not, my earliest memory is trained lot because he was he said something or did something. I can't even remember the detail. And he was called a racist and he has to resign. I said, that kind of reminds me of Cultural Revolution. You're accused of something, saying something wrong, sometimes just slip of tear, doomed. You're counter revolutionary, you're ruined. and after that I did not really give much thought to that incident. But more and more then I noticed that just really bothersome and political correctness getting worse and worse. And at work I see people fearful of seeing things. That is not it's different from the dominant narrative of the left. And that's exactly what happened in Cultural Revolution. People are silenced, people are fearful. But it was 2020 when I saw American cities being burned and see the rioter, just terrorize our community. And that's just a vivid memory coming back of what the Red Guards did to China. I said I have to do something. I really have to step up. And that's when I joined the local Republican organization and get involved. I went to the school board. That's my story.

Walker Wildmon: Amen. Well, you know, a lot of people don't know the history of America. First off, a lot of people don't know the history of how America was founded. A lot of our founding documents, founding ideals, who founded our country, why they founded our country. but public education is not a new thing. It's been around for some time. And our founding fathers even invested in public education. And one of the first universities in the country, the key textbook was the Bible. So Scripture was studied every day. but one of our founding fathers. I'm going to read a quote here, probably a Founding Father, you haven't heard of, this is from James Wilson, when he wrote Lectures of law in 1791. But listen to this quote as it relates to public education and the role of parents in education. He says it is the duty of parents to maintain their children decently and according to their circumstances, to protect them according to the dictates of prudence, and to educate them according to the suggestions of a judicious and zealous regard for their usefulness and their respectability and their happiness. that's from James Wilson talking about the role of parents in the education and the discipleship of their children.

Jameson: How aware were you of what was being taught in Loudoun County

Patty, before, Covid and the lockdowns and the remote learning where you mentioned as a highlight in your involvement, how aware were you of what was being taught to students in Loudoun County?

Patty: Not a lot.

Walker Wildmon: Parents.

Patty: I've always been an involved parent. I was a stay at home mom and then I was a single mom and now we're a blended family. So I've been through the stages of motherhood. But I've always had a good relationship with the teachers. I've always, you know, expected my children to put in the effort. I've always encouraged them to do academic, vigorous classes. and Loudoun county hasn't had an excellent school system. I moved from Sydney, Australia in 99, 1999, specifically because of the school system in Loudoun county for my oldest son. And I had heard such great reputation. And for the most part it was a great school system and parents were part of the solution. If a kid had a problem, parents were okay, what can my son do to improve? But I saw this gradual. Every kid deserves a trophy mentality. you know, parents, ah, being mad at teachers for, their son not learning, not taking any personal accountability. You know, I teach my children, you put into it what you get out of it. And I saw this gradual slip. And I've always trained my children. I'm not going to be on top of you for homework. You've got to figure this out on your own. And my youngest was a high schooler, so I never thought I had to, you know, make sure he. I could tell by his classwork assignments. And you go into the parent view and you can check on stuff. But I had a trust with my child. And it wasn't until COVID lockdown where I realized, oh my gosh, I need to get much more involved.

Walker Wildmon: Was critical race theory. Have you guys seen, I know you mentioned it earlier. Have you seen critical race theory and the whole guilt trip, saga Going on in Loudoun County.

Patty: Have I seen critical race theory? Yes, but they don't like that word. They continue to say critical race theory is not being taught in our schools. In fact, they mock us. They mock the parents when we bring it up. they use other words like equity, diversity, inclusion, culturally responsive training, social, emotional, learning. Everything but academic. They don't use basic academic talking points anymore. Everything has a little slant. very fruitful appearance.

Walker Wildmon: It sounds good. Yes, until you start looking into it.

Xi Vanliere Fleet: Yeah.

Patty: I'm sorry.

Walker Wildmon: No, Jameson, the, As it relates to critical race theory, what is the overarching goal here? Because, you know, the left claims that they want unity. They want. They want unity. They want everybody to get along, but they themselves are the ones pushing policies that are m. The most divisive policies. Everybody's divided by skin color. Everybody's divided by what sex you are. Everybody's divided on all kind of different lines. You've got seven different checkboxes when you fill out an application so they can break you down into some kind of subcategory. What is the overarching goal of divisive ideologies such as critical race theory?

Dr. Jameson Taylor: So I think the main thing to understand about critical race theory and to understand about, how to engage with people that are pushing critical race theory is that critical race theory is a social construct. So it comes from this philosophy that basically you can construct your own reality. Now, as Christians, we believe basically in what you would call a realist philosophy. And what realism means is that the real is real. To give a famous example, as a realist, we believe that when you flip on a light switch, the light goes on because there's a necessary connection between flipping on that light switch and the light. You know, there's electrical wires, and there's cause and effect. If you're not a realist, then you're going to say, well, that was an accident that that happened. Or maybe it's a learned behavior. It's because your entire life, whenever you've switched on a light switch, the light just happened to come on. And so that's a social construct that you have created where you think that flipping on the light switch turns on the light. But again, that's a learned behavior. And you can take that. And what Marx does is he says, well, it's really just history, you know, because what's learned behavior, it's our individual history. So history kind of feeds into creating these constructs. So what is a construct? It's a way of perceiving reality, but it's just perception. There's not anything that's real that's solid. It's just the perception of those things. So we take that critical race theory takes that philosophy, and they say, well, the social construct that we build is one of racism, that racism is inevitable. Racism always exists. Race is the most important kind of consciousness, the most important kind of awareness that you can have. And from that, they basically developed these divisive ideologies. And we can get into some of that later. But the most important thing to realize about this is that the truth of, critical race theory is absolutely irrelevant. So when you're debating someone who believes in critical race theory, they don't have the same standard of truth that you have. And I think as Christians, it's very important for us, for instance, to engage in productive dialogue about race. I mean, it's an important issue in our, country. And I think there are ways that we can talk about race. But, I mean, America has talked about race probably more than any other country in the world. We're talking about race all the time. But that dialogue can be productive, but it's not productive. And if you're debating someone who has a different standard of truth, and namely no standard of truth, m. So for them, the truth of critical race theory, the fact that it's contradictory, that it's silly. And that's why, as an academic, I didn't take it seriously at first. I'm like, this is ridiculous. Why would anyone ever believe this? Why are people getting PhDs in this? It doesn't make any sense at all. That doesn't matter. Why? Because critical race theory fundamentally is a tool to destroy American culture.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah.

Jameson: Some states are taking action to ban critical race theory

Which is why, Jameson, they're using this in the very formative years of children's lives. They're not necessarily. They are teaching this to academics and college students, but they're mainly focusing on young children who are in their very formative years, very susceptible to deception and lies. but she. When we talked about the COVID lockdowns, and that really led Patty to get really involved in Loudoun county to find out what they're teaching and go to the school board meetings. but along with that same era, a little over two years ago, we saw local governments, and big major tech platforms, allowing users to flag other users and their content as misinformation or disinformation. They keep changing the term. you even had city officials, mayors, setting up reporting hotlines for citizens who are violating Covid restrictions. That is eerily similar to last Night when you and I were talking at dinner about what happened in China and what still goes on in China as far as neighbors reporting on their neighbors to the government and any kind of dissidents get squashed.

Dr. Jameson Taylor: Yeah.

Xi Vanliere Fleet: And that is, It become, the Chinese culture because of communism. And early on and because, The, government encouraged, people to report each other. And so they. Ah. so this is why they want to use this to divide people. The whole purpose is to divide people and to make everyone watch everyone else. And, especially bad during the Cultural Revolution. And it's not just friends reporting friends. It's neighbor reporting neighbor and children reporting parents. And so we have stories of, children turning in their parents and the parents end up being executed. And some of the children participated in the beating of their parents with Red Guards just to show that they are loyal to the party. And so, that is the, essence of communism. They keep people divided, and that's how they control them. And that's what the left is doing here.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah. Jamison, this is a question we get asked very often. And, I'm still really thinking through this. And as I say on my daily radio show, I'll admit I don't know the answer to every question. Neither do I try to act like I do. but we've seen states across the country. Mississippi, recently took action. Florida has taken action. Different states have taken action to, The media calls it ban critical race theory. Limit the teaching of critical race theory, however you want to describe it. what's your overall view of that type of legislation? How are they going after this? because there are people on both sides that talk about the First Amendment, talk about, you know, how far do we want to go in regulating what teachers can and can't say. What's your overall view of those approaches?

Dr. Jameson Taylor: Well, I think again, to kind of go back to what we were saying before, CRT has nothing to do with education. It's propaganda. And so as we kind of think about, well, how are we going to remove this virus from our schools? That's the first thing to think about. This is not a legitimate academic theory. This is not a pathway to truth. This is not going to create productive dialogue. It's only going to create division because it's based upon lies. And so then the next question is, what do we do about this? I encourage folks in the states to definitely get involved in their legislatures, to start to talk to lawmakers about what's the best way to do this. First advice I would give is don't just go on the Internet and find a law that a state has passed and say, well, and you know, bring that to your lawmaker. Some states are doing this well and some states are not. For instance, in Mississippi we recently passed a CRT ban. the CRT law that we have in place now is about a half page long and has no enforcement mechanism. It says basically that every religion, every sex, all kinds of thoughts should all be equal. Now as a Christian, I think that's actually horrible policy. I don't agree with that policy at all. because what you're saying is, well, Christianity is the same for instance as the religion of the Aztecs in which they practice human sacrifice and ate their victims. I don't think those two religions are equal. And I think teachers have an obligation in fact to teach that, that there is this kind of, there is this common truth that ah, what we teach kids in school should be based upon. And part of that is understanding, for instance, that human sacrifice, murder is wrong. So the other thing about the Mississippi law is that again it has no enforcement mechanism. It just says teachers can't teach this. So if you have a law that can't be enforced, it's not really a practical law, it's a resolution. yeah, it's basically a resolution. It's virtue signaling. So here in Mississippi our law is basically just an empty exercise of virtue signaling. Now some of the best laws that I've seen around the country, what they're trying to do is not just say critical race theory is bad. They're saying instead what should be taught. And in public schools states generally exercise authority to say this is going to be the curriculum. For instance, in American history. We're going to teach the Declaration of Independence. We're going to teach the US Constitution. I want to just as an aside, tell your listeners, if you compare the U.S. constitution to the Constitution of the Confederate States, namely the states that fought the Civil War, you'll see that when the U.S. constitution talks about non free people, they say persons, they say kind of non free persons. When the Confederate Constitution says that they, they say slaves. Now what does that mean? That means that ultimately, while the American founding certainly had its problems and its defects, with slavery and things like that, the founders, Thomas Jefferson in particular, they're looking toward a future in which everyone would be free and sharing in the American promise that fundamentally people are not slave and not slave or you know, as the Bible puts it, Greek and Jew, that fundamentally we're all persons and we have this common personhood and this equal dignity before God. That's the U.S. constitution. But the best states are going to say, what are the positive things that we can teach? And not just say, well, don't just teach crt, because as you mentioned, that's fine. As a teacher, you could tell me, don't teach the color yellow. What I'll say is, well, you have this thing here, it's the same color as corn, it's the same color as daisies. People are going to figure out a way to get around that if all you say is, you can't do this. So I'd say provide positive, content. The other thing that I would encourage for folks that want to pass legislation in their states is look for ways that parents can get more involved. And in particular, as opposed to telling teachers, you can't teach this, have, mechanisms for parents to be more involved. For instance, an automatic opt out for every student if you're going to be teaching something like crt. So in other words, not an opt in with an allowance for an opt out. So then the teacher sends home a permission slip that never gets sent back. Rather, the teacher can only teach your child this controversial material if they get a permission slip saying, yes, we're going to opt into this. And this is not just crt, this is radical sex ed. This is all the types of things that are potentially going on in your public school and unfortunately, probably even in some private schools as well. So that's what I would say is positive curriculum and ways for parents to be more involved and to have more oversight over that curriculum.

Walker Wildmon: Yeah, and one thing I'll say is that there's a theory and a discussion out there about, well, you know, we have the First Amendment and we've got to protect teachers and their ability to teach, so on and so forth.

The reality is that we already tell teachers what they can and can't teach

So there's some hesitancy in passing laws telling teachers what they that they shouldn't teach or can't teach. Critical race theory. But the reality is, is that we already tell teachers what they can and can't teach. It's called the school curriculum. School boards, state, education boards, they all pick curriculum, pay for the curriculum, teachers are given the curriculum. so this idea that teachers are just in the wild wild west and they can pick to teach whatever they want, that's just not true. Teachers are already guided and instructed as to what they can and can't teach, based on the local school board, what the principal or the school administrators are picking. So picking school curriculum, positive education, is a very, very important part of being involved in your child's local education.

Patty in Loudoun County has spearheaded efforts to combat bias in schools

Ah, Patty in Loudoun county, you guys have made some true headway, for good. And tell our audience maybe what are some tactics or some avenues that seem to have picked up traction and to have seen seem to be the most effective at bringing about change.

Patty: I'd say, number one, good communication with the community and the members. organizations such as our Republican Women's Club. That is courageous to say we can go to the school board meetings together. I used to hold rallies before the school board meetings with different speakers. And we would kind of encourage, them to show up and then walk in to meet with the school boards. I would encourage, parents to talk to others at the dining room table, at their churches, wherever. As president of the Women's Club, I received a lot of screenshots and videos of this critical race theory, from the community and the teachers. And that to me gave me the proof and the facts that I needed to bring it to other people's attention. You'll recall in the media two years ago, there was a video of a teacher bullying the student to look at an image of a white girl and a black girl. And this was a teacher from Freedom High School in South Riding, Virginia, and he was bullying this student. Now, this student was smart enough, one, to videotape it and two, to get it into the hands of someone that sent it to me. We re edited so the children were safe. Their names were not a part of it, but we let the media see it. So that was another part of our organization. We used media to bring awareness to the public. So organize, keep encouraging. I was one of the ones that encouraged Shay Vanliere Fleet to come to the school board and tell her story. So. So you're going to need leaders that are going to be courageous to say we need everyone, we need teachers. I formed a coalition of teachers and I said, you are the front line of our students. You see stuff that we as parents don't get to go into the building to see. So I gave these teachers a courage, portion lawsuits. We need people to sue the school boards to stop this implementation. I was part, and it's still moving on, part of a lawsuit to remove bias reporting that was put into our school. Can you imagine children anonymously tattletailing on each other? And this is a, program implemented by the school board. And then the other program was the student equity Ambassador. So you talked about policy and legislation. Lawsuits help make that legal battle, set a precedent so that other counties in other parts of the US can follow suit. So it's important that you be courageous.

Walker Wildmon: You know, there's actually legislation being discussed now. Senator Rick Scott of Florida presented it in his 11 point plan, to take back the Senate. But in it was removing ethnicity from government forms. And people go, hm, that's interesting. Never thought of that. It's a brilliant idea. I mean the question is, and nobody can answer this with any kind of compelling argument is why are we asking people what their skin color is? Or they're sexist for that matter, when they're filling out government forms. Because are you not going to get a driver's license if you're black? Are you not going to get a driver's license if you're Caucasian? So if we're not using that to make decision making, to make decisions, then why are we asking people what their skin color is? We're all created in the image of God. We're all worthy of dignity, honor and respect. We're all protected by the Constitution. so a lot of this stuff that we're doing, is really built on division and really serves no good purpose in society.

Tell us what makes America special compared to China and other oppressive countries

She the you mentioned to me how special America is to you. You mentioned it earlier. There are a lot of people and myself at one point that didn't grasp how special this country is compared to. I mentioned to you last night, even when you travel to Mexico, just south of the border, you get inter Mexico and it's like wow, it's a completely different place and it's nothing like America and there's really nothing else like this country. tell our audience about what makes America special, especially compared to China and other very oppressive countries.

Xi Vanliere Fleet: I think one of the things a lot of Chinese would share, the same view with me is dignity. I think in a country like communist China, no one has dignity and the government can treat you whatever way they want. And when we come here we just feel like we were really treated with dignity. And one thing we notice, even the beggars in the NewSong York streets, they beg with dignity and of course freed freedom to pursue whatever dream you want. In China, most of time it's not choice. Now it's a little better. But when I grew up there's no choice. It's all given whatever was decided by the government. And we have very few choice. After I graduate from college, I was given a job. And you don't have the, freedom to choose and the freedom to pursue your dream. And, that is something so unique about this, great country. And I'm a world traveler. I traveled around the world and, India, Uzbekistan, Armenia. The last country I visited was Russia. And I talk to whoever can speak English because I want to talk to people and understand, that culture. Every time they found out that, I live in America without failing, everyone says, wow, how lucky you are, how lucky you are living in the greatest country in the world. And that's something that the young people here really need to learn, that they are so fortunate to live in this country. But that's not the case because they were brainwashed and indoctrinated to look for the imperfection everywhere. Everywhere they see, they see imperfection. And that's part of the deconstruction that I talk about. And that's their tactic to gain, ah, our young generation, our future generation, to hate America.

Walker Wildmon: Well, as we talk about in one of our documentaries, in His Image, talking about God's design for human sexuality, all men and women are created in the image of God. And that's the Christian viewpoint. And that's why that all human rights, all religious liberty is protected when Christians are in charge of why. Because we view all humans as, ah, created in the image of God. And that's a very, very important, ah, worldview point when you're talking about comparing Christianity with other worldviews. the last thing I want to end with tonight is that America is one of the last, is the last country standing, to fight against the evil that she talked about, about critical race theory and all these evil and wicked ideologies that want to divide us. so that's why it's so urgent that we continue to fight in our communities, fight in our churches, and continue building a coalition of Christians, to take back this country and to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with everyone we come in contact with. Thank you so much for joining afa, at home, and we'll see you next time.