 All right, enough of all that. Critical Race Theory. So we've talked about Critical Race Theory many times. I don't want to have to repeat myself. I think Action Jackson was putting up a Critical Race Theory playlist of all the stuff I've done. Whoa, Shazba, I still owe you a review and you're already jumping in with one. Are you, who else do I owe a review to? I think I only owe Shazba the review of the Star Trek episode. But movie Paul Blatt. OK, I will check this out. I'll check this out. I'm not sure. I know this. All right, but yes, you can have me review a movie. Shazba is getting a discount because he does so many of these. Typically, it's $500, but I see he's only put $400. But that's OK because he does so many of these. He's earned a discount for movie reviews. So I will be doing that. But thank you. That'll get us to the $600 very, very quickly. I think we should, given what Shazba just did, why is that doing that? I think we should raise the goal to $1,000 just because of the $400 that Shazba just dropped on the movie review. So sorry, guys, $1,000 is the new goal. All right, I've done a lot of Critical Race Theory. We're going to create a playlist of all the stuff on anti-racism and Critical Race Theory. They'll all go into one playlist. You'll be able to get it all there. I don't want to have to repeat all the stuff that I've done, although I'm sure I will repeat it. But an article by Ayan Hossie Ali caught my eye. And it's another excuse to talk about this. And I know there's nothing you guys like more than bashing the left and going after Critical Race Theory, although there seems to be a bunch of people doing a really, really good job of this. I'm not sure you need that much more from me on this. But I thought Ayan Hossie Ali's article was interesting. Oh, he was kidding. Oh, all right. So we've got three different movies now that he wants me to review. One of these three I get to choose. All right, I've got them all down. I will look at it and get back to you. But I do remember that I owe you the Star Trek. Anybody else there that I owe a movie review to remind me and I'll do it? I do owe you guys two shows. I owe John a show and I own Troy a show, Troy from Australia show. And I will get to them. I apologize. But probably next weekend I'll get to those two shows. All right. So Ayan Hossie Ali wrote an article. Ayan Hossie Ali is, of course, the heroic Somalian woman who escaped Somalia, escaped her Muslim parents trying to arrange a marriage for her, escaped Islam, escaped to the Netherlands, became a real powerhouse in the Netherlands, a real intellectual, a real voice against Islam, particularly Jihadi Islam, the way they treat women. And just more generally, her life was threatened to collaborate on a project about Islam was murdered. And she was refused security by the Netherlands a parliament, even though she at the time, I mean, this is the young girl who escaped Somalia with nothing. She became a member of parliament in the Netherlands. And then she was not given any security. Not given any security in spite of the fact that her life was being threatened. And one of her collaborators had just been murdered and they still ignored her request for security. As a consequence, she landed up coming to the United States. She today lives in the United States. I think she's a fellow or senior fellow. What is she? Research fellow at Stanford University. She landed up marrying one of the leading conservative intellectuals in the United States, a Brit by the name of, somebody will remind me his name because I forgot. Anyway, she is a powerhouse. I have an enormous amount of respect for her. I don't always agree with her. I don't always agree with her. And I think she has the wrong view of history. I think she's way too conservative. She doesn't have enough respect for Iran. But she is on the right side of history. And she wrote this article about the fact that the left is trying to rebrand the CRT. That critical race theories become toxic. It's criticized by everybody. Nobody wants to touch it. So they're trying to say, oh, no, no, we don't stand for critical race theory. That's a whole academic theory. We're not interested in that academic abstract stuff. We're interested in concrete application and reality. And what really we're interested in, they say, is this what is now being abbreviated as DEI? Diversity, equity, and inclusion. We're not about critical race theory. We're really interested about diversity, equity, and inclusion. And please don't mix us up with what I don't know, the academic world that Derek Bell and Kibbley Crenshaw and other CRT architects do. We do diversity training. We have Ibrahim Kendi, who I did a whole show about a while back, and Robin D'Angelo, who I did a whole show about a while back, and did a whole show on Ibrahim, Ibrahim, and did a whole show on Robin. So I'm not going to repeat them, but we're about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We're not about critical race theory. That's just academic stuff. And what we want, what we want fundamentally is to bring equity to American life, equity. Now, what does equity mean? Well, equity means, they tell us, equity means justice. Well, but in this context, what do you mean by justice? Well, what we mean is equality. What we mean is non-discrimination. What we mean is diversity. We just want, we're told, inclusion. We just want diversity. We just want justice. How do you know if you've achieved justice or not? Well, I mean, one major criteria of that is if there is inequality of outcome between populations. Well, there's obviously an issue of justice. There is obviously some discrimination. There's obviously some systemic racism. What we need is equality of outcomes. And they don't talk about equality of outcomes vis-a-vis individuals as much, although some of them do. And so largely, ultimately, it reverberates down to the individual level. So largely, because they're interested in equality between groups, between people of different skin color, between different people of different ethnic background, between people of different educational backgrounds. So outcomes should be the same. I mean, there's no difference they tell us, supposedly, between blacks and whites. So if they are not succeeding to the same extent, then there must be something unjust about the system, about the system. The one thing that CRT and DEI try to avoid doing, and when you listen to Candy and DeAngelo, you'll see this, is they try to avoid or they try to avoid individual cases, the individual, unless it's the guilty individual into a particular position, unless it's to shame an individual into a particular position. But most of their analysis is about groups. Inequality is a sign of systemic problems. In their mind, usually systemic racism, if the differences between the groups are defined by race, systemic racism. And how do we know it's systemic? Because we know that we can't find any particular individual who's a racist. We can't find any particular action that's a racist. It must be in the system. We cannot, of course, argue that maybe there are cultural differences between the groups that might cause these differences. They might be longstanding problems, again, cultural or otherwise, that are causing these problems. They might be historic, but they're not systemic. That is not acceptable. The very fact that there are differences, the very fact that the outcome is different, warrants the conclusion in their mind that there's something systemic, something sneaky, something evil, something bad going on. The whole CRT, the whole DI apparatus is built around shifting away from the idea of justice in the sense of getting what you deserve, merit, achievement, grades, raises based on productivity, getting away from the idea of merit, the idea of dessert based on merit in favor of an equality of outcome methodology. If some students are getting A's and other students are getting C's, something's wrong with the system. Everybody should be the same. There are no inherent differences between people. There are no inherent differences between cultures. All there is is racism and obstruction and systemic discrimination. So what we need, of course, is to create equality. Now, the problem with all of this is, or the reason that says that the critical race theory in DI have any credibility out there of anybody stopping and listening to it. Is the history of racism in the United States? The fact that for decades, not that long ago, there was indeed systemic racism in the United States. There was systemic racism in some places. There was systemic anti-Semitism. There was clearly an attempt to segregate, to penalize, and to differentiate between people based on color skin, between people based on ethnic background. And indeed, the black community in America has had so much racism in the past that it's starting point is behind many other communities. Because they haven't built up the capital, whether that capital is financial capital or they haven't built up education. They certainly haven't built up a culture of achievement, whether educational achievement or other forms of achievement. The culture is not there. And part of that is a consequence of the fact that of slavery and a consequence of Jim Crow laws. But Jim Crow laws are long gone. It's been over 50 years. It's almost 60 years. And civil rights bill, unfortunately, made a huge mistake. And the mistake was to approve of state-forced lack of discrimination. That is, make it so, make it so that even private citizens in their own businesses couldn't discriminate. That was a huge mistake. The state now took over the responsibility of telling us what was fair, what was just, what you could and couldn't do on your property, which I think created resentment. And then, of course, and I did a whole show about this, the state created a whole idea of affirmative action and all the consequences that affirmative action have had. Now, in spite of the fact there were over 50 years since Jim Crow laws are gone and the Civil Rights Act and affirmative action, it's still true that fewer blacks get bachelor's degrees, 10% lower than the national average, 26% of blacks get bachelor's degrees, which is 10% lower than the national average. More than half of black households earn less than $50,000 annually. And the labor force participation rate for black men is 3.3% lower than for white men. And it's actually shrunk by 11.6% since the early 1970s. Only four CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are black. So you look at that and you say, why is that? Why are blacks doing so poorly in America? And if you're not allowed to question affirmative action, because affirmative action should be helping them, if you're not allowed to question the welfare state, which I think is a major cause of that has helped back black families, black culture, then what people are left with is racism. But there's no proof of the racism. These people never provide the proof of racism other than these outcomes. But I would argue that black poverty rates were declining much faster before the welfare state than after the welfare state. That maybe the welfare state has something to do with this. Maybe the incentivization to have single family homes. Maybe there are other structural issues within the black community, for example, the distrust today among black students of successful students. There's a culture of calling them white because they study hard, they get good grades. It can't help. That can't help create a culture of success within the educational establishment if you put down your best students. Harrison, Harrison says, hang in there. I can be one of your whales soon. Looking forward, Harrison, looking forward to it. Instead of looking at the leadership the black communities had, leadership that since Martin Luther King died, I think has betrayed them over and over and over again. All those old civil rights leaders, I mean, good for them for fighting the good fight during the civil rights era. But since then, what have you done? I would argue, betrayed your communities by creating a grievance culture, which is what CRT and DEI are. We're not succeeding because of you. We're great. We're doing everything right. We have a wonderful culture. To the extent that we don't, it's your fault. Who is you? Oh, whites. Yes, it's true that white people, hundreds of years ago and slave blacks, it's true that some white people's grandparents, responsible for Jim Crow laws in the South. But the fact is that nobody white today alive today own slaves. And 99.999% of people who happen to have white skin alive today rejects slavery, thinks slavery is an abomination. And yet, the grievance is, it's your fault. You white students over there. Why? By what standard? Why not take responsibility? Why not focus on ways to lift up black students, to find the things that are holding them back by giving them not a victim complex, not a grievance, not it's everybody else's fault, but giving them agency, treating them as adults, treating them as responsible adults, adults with ability and choices. Why not teach them and encourage them to believe in a system that they can shape through their choices, through their ability, through their hard work? Students are being taught to know they have no agency. To the extent that they succeed, it's the system. To the extent that they fail, it's the system. Not their effort, not their ability, not them taking responsibility, not their agency. They're being taught that they are nothing, that they are automatons, that they don't matter, that the system is all systemic racism or systemic privilege. And it's those other people who happen to be white, who have all the power, they control everything. And it's them who will determine your fate, which is BS. I mean, we're seeing today in American schools, we're seeing them thinkable just a few years ago, literally physical segregation, segregated sessions, where whites only, blacks only, classes, where all the blacks are funneled into particular classes so that the other classes are all white. All done supposedly in the name of addressing systemic racism. All done, right? This promotion of racism in the name of curing us from racism. So what we're heading is what I in history already refers to as neo-segregation. And we're seeing this all over American schools right now, you're seeing our parents object to the teaching of CRT and then people going out, oh, we don't teach CRT, we teach, we're just interested in equity. But that's exactly what equity means. Systemic racism causes inequality and what we need to do is engaged in massive racism in order to solve it. Whether you want to call it critical race theory or not, who cares? It's the same grievance attitude. It's the same attitude that views individuals, not as individuals, but views them as member of races, that views them as having a sense of responsibility, as having no agency over their own life, no real free will, they're determined by their race, and therefore they're not responsible. It's somebody else's fault if they fail and whatever success anybody gets is a consequence of, it's a consequence of the system, it's a consequence of what they call it, privilege, privilege. Nobody ever achieves anything by themselves for themselves. That's so old fashioned. Believing in you can build it. So what we're doing today in classrooms all over America is demonizing white students, resegregating black students, and all that's gonna do is divide us more, increase the hatred, increase the resentment, increase racism, in a Virginia Department of Education webinar on equity, there's no mention, there's no talk of empowering or helping individual black children, Iron Hosea Lee writes. The conversations revolved around called personal reflection and doing the work with a little explanation of what this means in real life. What we know what it means, personal reflection is identifying your guilt, identifying your, what do you call it, your privilege. There was no mention of tutoring, mentoring, or guiding struggling students, or holding up to high standards, challenging them, maybe improving the school system so it actually challenges kids more broadly, critical race theory in all its guises, anti-racism in all its modern guises. And I consider myself the ultimate anti-racist, but anti-racism as, what's his name, Ibrahim Kendi would have it, is racism as is Bob and D'Angelo. These are the modern racists, they are the neo-racist, neo-segregationist, neo, well not so neo, just plain old collectivist. The solution to whatever racism still exists out there. And the solution to struggling students, whatever skin color they might have, has always been the same. It's individualism, treating kids as individuals, treating the individual as circumstances, and as a school trying to help them overcome those circumstances, teaching them content, but also teaching them, in a sense, a set of models that entail taking personal responsibility, studying, allowing kids to fail, because failure is how you learn. Even in school, failure is a good thing. I certainly failed in 11th grade, in advanced math, I was in advanced math section. I finished that year with a five out of 10, basically a failing grade. The teacher didn't want quite to fail me, so she gave me the lowest passing grade she could, which was a six, a six. Now, yeah, I mean, I'd spent a lot of time at the beach that year. I had not spent much studying that year. And I have to say, the teacher wasn't that good, I didn't think, but anyway, I always thought I was good in math, and here I was. I failed. Now in Israel, you get a, in those days at least, you got a grade from the class, and then you do a matriculation exam. And the average of those two is your final exam and your course, which is then used in your college application. And you do that in 11th grade and in 12th grade. And anyway, I went and did, so I learned from failing that I better study. I spent days, weeks studying for the final, for the exam. The exam is a standardized exam that every 11th grade in advanced math takes, right? And I aced it, I got a 10, which is very rare. So my average ended up being an eight. I ended up with an eight average. The next day I got a seven from her and a nine on the final test, and I averaged in math and eight overall. Enough to get me into civil engineering. Probably not enough to have gotten me into computer engineering at the time, computer sciences, but I wasn't that interested for whatever reason. I should have been. That should have been my career, right? Anyway, failure is important. Yeah, somebody says you fail when you work out, yeah. You wanna push those muscles to the edge and the failure represents the edge. It means you've really, really, really, really worked out. You wanna, in physical exercise, work to the edge. You want to fail. Kids need to be dealt with as individuals, as responsible individuals, as capable individuals, as in prep for adulthood, where they will be responsible for their lives. And you do that by treating them as human beings with free will, with ability. So CRT destroys that. And I wouldn't be surprised if in 10, 20 years, the situation among black Americans is worse than it is today. Not because of systemic racism, but because of what CRT is teaching. And of course, the damage that's being done is not just, it would be enough if it was done on black Americans, because it is, it's massively damaging to them. But the damage is also to white Americans. The damaging is just to kids. Kids are going to school being taught that they're either privileged, and they're set for life, whatever they do, which is nonsense. And they should feel guilty for their privilege for life, because the guilt comes with the color of the skin, not because of any action they took, because they're just kids. What action did they take? They should feel guilty before they've taken any action, because they happen to have a skin color, and by action feel victimized. Not because they are, some of them are, and there is racism out there, no question there is, but not because of actual incidents of racism, but because of their skin color. That's it, that's enough. And you're creating a whole generation that is splitting itself up between victims and guilty people. And they all know in advance, and you can identify them by the skin color, and who they are, what they are, what they've done, what they think, what they do. As individuals, doesn't matter. Now that is a sick, destructive, horrific, unimaginable world. It's much worse than socialism. This is true nihilism. This is true destruction for the sake of destruction. This is nothingness. It's destroying individual lives on both sides. It destroys the lives of the black kids who are not motivated to succeed because they've been told they can't because there's a system that stops them, and that they're old stuff, and they need to be given stuff that all these other people are privileged in are and are systemically working against them, and they need it. You create this entitlement, grievance, victimhood, mentality. That's not good for anybody. And on the other side, you create this guilt. You can never be happy because it's not like you as a dangelo, that crazy woman. I mean, like she says, it's not like there's anything you can do to stop it. You are racist whether you know it or not. You're racist whether you acknowledge it or not. You are part of the problem. Whether you want to be or not, the only way you can avoid it is by groveling, by submitting yourself to whatever, to hide taxes, and to giving up your job for somebody less qualified, to not sending your kids to Ivy League schools, to whatever you can do to destroy your own ability and your kid's ability. That's the only way you can overcome the systemic racism. And it's destructive. It makes your own happiness impossible. It makes your kid's happiness impossible. Frank says, waste of time when type of school is, time is everything you have. All you have is time. And it's limited. It's finite. It's over. You get wasted on unearned guilt, unjustified guilt. This is original sin on steroids in the modern world. And you religion. But they all have the same characteristics of religion. They all, all of them, all of them leverage altruism. They leverage the idea from Christianity that you should feel guilty for your success. You should feel guilty for your achievement. You should feel guilty for your virtues. That you owe it to society. That you owe others. That the whole point of living is to serve and to live for others. They leverage that. Without Christianity, none of this would be possible. Thank you for listening or watching The Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support. By going to Patreon, subscribe star, locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see The Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.