What Is The “Intersectionality” Theory Being Taught In Schools? – With Mark Hillman: Have you heard the poison the Left is teaching in our schools, entertainment and children’s literature? Do you know what “intersectionality” means? Are our schools going to teach HATE of country instead of E Pluribus Unum and LOVE of country? Tune in to hear former Colorado Congressman Mark Hillman talk about these urgent important issues and more.

Air Date: 07/14/2020

Guest: Mark Hillman

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

Rick:

You find your way to the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us today on WallBuilders Live. My name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s constitution coach. And I’m here with David Barton, he’s America’s premier historian and our founder of WallBuilders. Tim Barton is with us, he’s a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders.

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Alright, David, Tim, Mark Hillman will be with us, former Senate Majority Leader of Colorado. He’ll be with us later in the program when we come back from the break. But we’ve been seeing all of these different group thing kind of separate everybody into groups and if you’re part of a certain group, you get certain rights or you’ve been aggrieved or whatever it might be.

E Pluribus Unum

And David, you’ve said for a long time, that is the opposite of our national motto, E Pluribus Unum “Out of many, one”. And there really is a desire to separate us. Take us back to the beginning of the country being founded. Where did our founders get this idea of we could come from all these different walks of life, but that we would be seen as one under the law?

David:

Well, Rick, before I even take us back to the beginning, I want to just comment that this past week, I was at a great church in Tampa, really large church. And they are multiracial, they’re not a majority white church. And so, I was looking at what’s happening across the nation, statues that are being torn down, specific statues. And so, one of the things that’s been targeted has been images of Jesus and they’re arguing some of these images make him look white or whatever.

You know, if you recognize, Jesus is not white, he is Jewish. That makes him a half-brother with Muslims and that’s not a white race. So, while he came in a human body, it wasn’t a white body. But that wasn’t the purpose anyway. Jesus came so that we could know God and so Jesus lives inside us.

Tim:

Let me clarify too. I’m not sure that anybody knows exactly what shade or tone Jesus was. Because I haven’t seen that Polaroid picture, right? I haven’t seen that image, digital or otherwise, that was taken. And we know, I mean, we’ve spent many, many weeks, months over in the Middle East and in Israel and we’ve seen all kinds of shades of Jewish people, Muslim people. And you mentioned that Jews and Muslims are half-brothers, I mean, somewhere down the line that’s true.

When you go back to the descendants of Abraham, you had Ishmael, who’s the father of largely at least these Muslim nations in the Middle East; you had Isaac, who’s the father of the Jews, the Hebrews. And so, track back their lineage, they are half-brothers. And in the midst of Jews and Muslims, you do see all different kinds of shades, some that are much lighter, some that are much darker.

But yeah, I mean the point you’re making, that’s not the significant thing about Jesus. If you spent your time focusing on what color his skin is or what color the bronze or marble or whatever statue is, you’ve missed the point of Jesus. It’s not about what color his skin is. It’s about who he was, the son of God coming to earth, what he did, living in our lives, transforming us, we’re new creation, old things pass away, all things become new, etc, etc, etc. The point is not the color of his skin.

He Became One of Us

And so, to get caught up on that and I understand why there might be some arguments saying, well, you depict him to look like you. I’m pretty sure that every culture in the world depicts Jesus to look similar to them, because that’s how they relate to him: He’s one of us. And I could see that might be offensive on some level.

But you know, we’ve been there, I mean, Rick, we’ve spoken a lot of churches and we’ve spoken in different mixed ethnicity churches, where Jesus didn’t look like a white person at all, but it wasn’t offensive to me because the point of Jesus is not what shade his skin was or what his eyes or mouth or nose or ears or how big his arms were like, that’s not the point of who Jesus was.

The point is, he was the son of God and what he came to earth to do. And so, the fact, dad as you’re pointing out, there’s so many people posing these depictions of Jesus or maybe who Jesus was as individual or getting angry at somebody who makes Jesus look more like one nationality than another. It really is kind of a really silly argument.

David:

It is a silly argument from a biblical standpoint especially. Because God himself says, I don’t look at the outside, I look at the inside. Jesus came to reconcile us to God. It was a spiritual reconciliation. It was after not physical reconciliation. So, the spiritual side is important.

And that’s why in Acts 17:26, we’re told that we are all descendants of one man, we all go back to Adam and Eve. And so, as I stood there in a church that was not a white majority church, I said, you know what, here I am white. But guess what, if you’re black, I’m your 150th cousin. We all descended from the same set of parents. So, it’s really not about what’s on the outside, it’s about what’s on the inside.

And so, when you look at the message of the Bible, the message of the Bible is that outside, external differences are not what matters. And that’s what we see in the gospels where it said there’s neither Jew nor Greek: race doesn’t matter. There’s neither slave or free: your physical condition of freedom or slavery, that’s not the issue. There’s neither male and female. Yes, there is male nor female. Yeah, but that’s not what matters. That’s not the issue. And so, that’s the thing that we see throughout the Bible.

What You Focus On…

And this thing of focusing on the outside rather than on the inside, the more you focus on anything, the more you are aware of it. And so, the more you focus on differences, the more you’ll find differences. The more you focus on what makes us alike, the more you focus on commonality and unity, the more unified we will be. And so that’s just the way it is. I mean, the more you focus on anything, the more you see to support your position.

So, if you have the wrong view and the view is that we all need to be divided, there’s nothing similar to any of us. We’re all unique, distinct, separate. Yeah, technically, but we’re all much more alike than we are separate. And if you focus on what makes us alike more than what makes us separate, there’s less division and there’s more unity. And that’s really key for any nation, any people, any group. If you split yourself up, you’re going to have a real problem trying to exist into the future.

And that’s really what’s going now with what’s called intersectionality. intersectionality is the new word. It’s not a new movement. It’s a movement that goes back into Bible days. But never in America’s intersectionality taken on the force and leverage that it has now. It is a theme for every university we know of in America, including Christian universities and it’s the politically correct thing to do is have this intersectionality.

So, since it’s a new word to a lot of people, a lot of people don’t understand it, we have a state legislator from Colorado, Senator Mark Hillman who is dealing with this, not only in the legislature, but he’s on the school board as well and showing how it’s coming into schools and what it’s doing there. This is something we all need to be aware of.

Rick:

Stay with us folks, Former Senator Mark Hillman of Colorado will be with us when we return on WallBuilders Live.

 Patriot Academy

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Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Senator Mark Hillman, former senator from Colorado is with us. Mark, tThanks for some time today, man.

Mark:

Great to be with you, Rick. Thank you.

Rick:

Hey, I got to tell you, this article you did several weeks ago on Colorado pushing for teaching, “Intersectionality Poisoning America’s Future” was the best summary I’ve seen of the poison of the left that has been taught to the education system. I just got to congratulate you for being able to summarize it in one article like that. Now, I’m going to challenge you to do it in just a few minutes with me here on the air. But tell us what is intersectionality?

Mark:

Well, intersectionality is actually the exact opposite of America’s moto: E Pluribus Unum. The idea that we can all come from different backgrounds, cultures and countries, but in America, we all become Americans and we pull together for the common good.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality actually says that all of our differences are more important than what brings us together or race or sexuality or religion. All of those things are essentially checkmarks for grievances that we should all keep track of and the more grievances you have, the more claims you have for some sort of preferential treatment on the part of everyone else.

And you know, as a father, I’ve got two young boys, I’m also a school board member. The idea that this is going to be mandated by our State to be taught in our public schools really riles me, because our schools are supposed to teach to all those countries and cultivate unity and cooperation. And this does exactly the opposite.

Rick:

Well, and it sounds like it’s literally taking the poison that’s been taught on our university campuses for the last several decades that is now spilling over into the streets, I think that’s why we have what we have right now in the country. But it sounds like it’s taken what’s been taught at the university level and moving in into the elementary education?

Mark:

I think so. The left is very good at coopting the media and the education establishment. And I agree. This is the step to begin to indoctrinate our kids in a much earlier age so that instead of learning a love of country, all they see are the problems and the flaws in our country. And certainly, our country has made many mistakes, but what country hasn’t?

Yet I think, we present a much more positive picture than any other country, because we have what we’ve always referred to as the American dream: that if you work hard, do an honest day’s work, study hard in school, you can be successful and yet for progressivism, the doctrine of intersectionality, they believe the American dream is a fool’s errand.

Rick:

Yeah, and you know, you’re right. I mean, obviously, we had our mistakes as well. And the beauty of our system is the ability as the preamble says, to become a more perfect union as we’ve done, for sure. But you point to something that I had not thought of. Because you know, as I hear a lot of the things that are out there, I keep saying, well, yeah, but we want blind justice, we want equality under the law. And you point out to progressives that buy into this ideology, that for them equality under the law is unfair. Because you say, “neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

Supreme Court Justice in Colorado

Mark:

Yeah, that’s actually a quote from a leftist author who one of our Supreme Court Justices in Colorado used to have that posted on her Facebook page before she became a Supreme Court Justice, which I thought that was rather odd for somebody whose job is going to be to apply the law. But the more I looked into it, I discovered that this particular author, the person who’s responsible for the statement, “that neutrality helps the oppressor never the victim”, that’s somebody that I see quoted in public school literature books are very frequently. So, they’re already working this in so that our kids are hearing this, you know, in sort of a harmless, non- indoctrination approach in literature rather than in social studies or political science.

Rick:

Yeah, they have been masterful at using entertainment and literature to sneak in this. I can’t help but use the word, poison, because we’re seeing how toxic it has become. And that was another thing you pointed out in the article that even the idea of social justice became toxic when it went from fighting for the American dream to determining that the American dream was actually unattainable. And I would even add, they make it sound like the American dream is non-existent or that it’s evil.

Mark:

It’s exactly. And as I understand the roots of intersectionality. It actually came as a rebuke to feminism, because the founders of intersectionality thought that women’s rights and feminism was too white. And so, that’s why they wanted to convince people in the women’s rights movement but that’s not enough. But here’s why you should be allied with all of these other causes.

The more grievances that a person can claim, whether it’s gender, race, class, orientation, disability, whatever, then the more preferential treatment supposedly, you deserve and it’s usually at the expense of the oppressors. Because as we heard, even back when Barack Obama was first running for president, one of his worldviews was essentially that the world is divided between the oppressed and the oppressor. And the objective of so much of his policy and so much of progressive policy is, how do we advantage the so-called oppressed against the so-called oppressors?

A Dangerous Philosophy

Rick:

It is a dangerous, dangerous philosophy and it’s not just an idea in some classroom somewhere, it’s literally been inculcated into really maybe even two generations now at this point. You also point out in the article, I thought something that was really important that Both Frederick Douglass who grew up a slave and MLK, you know, they acknowledged a debt of gratitude to our founding fathers, is just the way you put it in the article.

Not because the nation is perfect, but because they set up a system for us that allowed us to become more perfect. And they set up a system where we all have the rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. That seems to be very much under attack now. It’s no longer okay to say anything good about the founders or even the founding documents.

Mark:

Yeah, they’re very selective in the ways that they quote Martin Luther King. If you go back and read what Reverend King said, he was excellent at taking the views of our founding fathers and confronting the American conscience with the fact that we hadn’t lived up to the views of the founding fathers. Which is a much more productive way to have a dialogue: find things that we have in common and talk about how we can make the country better.

And he was also one in view of what’s going on in the country today, who spoke up against violence. At times, he might have been perhaps excuse violence as it informs their communication, but he never advocated. In fact, he spoke out against people who were also fighting for civil rights to tell him that violence is not the way to accomplish civil rights for all Americans.

Rick:

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, the King family was phenomenal on that. We had Alveda King on one of our TV shows one time and she told the story of her dad, whenever which was A.D. King, the brother of MLK, they were known as the Sons of Thunder, of course. And when their home was bombed and afterwards, people started rioting in response to it. He stood up on the car and said, if you’re going to hurt somebody, hurt me. But you cannot respond in violence. That mindset was so important. I think that’s why they were able to change the world because of being truly peaceful protesters, not what we see today.

Are We Winning or Losing?

Mark:

It didn’t happen instantly. But I don’t think that what we see happening today well, it might have some immediate gratification. I think all it’s doing is pouring gas on the fire. And there’s somebody much wiser than me once said, “The problem with fighting fire with fire is pretty soon everything is burn up.”

Rick:

Wow. Yeah, it’s so true. Alright, Mark so this bill that’s making its way through the Colorado legislature, that’s of course, happening all over the country as well. Are we winning or losing, you think in most of these legislative battles on this? Is the momentum to move more towards this toxic philosophy?

Mark:

In Colorado, which is becoming liberal California, unfortunately, we’re not winning many of these battles. The good thing is we do still have local control of education and so, we have some flexibility with local school boards of how they implement these things. But Colorado is an uphill battle for all those who believe that our country is a place which we should all look toward how we make our country better and not look back at everything that’s been wrong in the past.

Rick:

Yeah. Well, man, we wish you the best in that fight. And again, we’ve been saying for a while, people need to run for school board and local offices and especially school board. And so, we’re encouraging people of faith to do that across the country, get educated, get into one of our constitution classes and then go run. We need more people there. Thanks for serving, man. Thanks for continuing to fight the fight. Look forward to having you back again soon.

Mark:

I appreciate it. Thank you, Rick.

Rick:

Stay with us, folks, we’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Proverbs 22:3

Hey friends, Rick Green here. I know there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in America right now, but we know God is sovereign. We also know that “duty is ours, results are God’s”. And that means we do our duty. You know, Proverbs 22:3 says “A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions, the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.”

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Rick:

We’re back on WallBuilders Live, thanks to Senator Mark Hillman for joining us today and we’ll have a link to his article as well. Back with David and Tim. And guys, I mean, the article really does sum this up better than anything I’ve read out there and sums up what we’re up against. And then great to know he’s on a school board. We need to really encourage people to run for school boards, to fight this stuff at the local level as well as at the legislative level.

David:

I don’t want to sound melodramatic here, but I think the future of America depends on our ability or our effectiveness in combating intersectionality. And let me just throw a few things out there. When you look at Jesus, he says, and by the way, there’s not many teachings of Jesus that appear in three or four gospels. There’s a lot that appear in one gospel. But when you get one that appears in three gospels, that’s a pretty strong teaching. And one of those teachings that Jesus gives in three gospels is the house divided, it cannot stand.

Amos 3:3

And so, what we’re actually doing here is we keep pointing out what makes us different. And the more we emphasize that, that’s a real problem. Amos 3:3 says, two can’t walk together unless they agree with each other. And if I’m looking at all the things that makes us different, I’m not looking at what causes us to agree.

Proverbs 23:7 says the way you think in your heart, that’s what you become. And so, the more you think about division, the more you think about differences, the more different you’ll become. The more distinctive you become, the more you’ll divide from everything else.

Philippians 4:8 says, Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, think about these things.” We’re not doing that. We’re thinking about all the differences. And so literally, we are at the point that Abraham Lincoln talked about that Jesus said a house divided, it cannot stand.

And we can’t have a nation that’s going to be half slave and half free, is what Lincoln said. We’re going to have to make the decision where we’re going. We can’t have a nation that’s divided into the 35 different groups here that becomes like genders, that weren’t as many genders as you can think of how are you define yourself. There has to be something common and unified.

And so, since this is now going in, even at the elementary level, that we are now starting, I will use the word indoctrinate, we’re now starting to indoctrinate kids with how distinct and separate and different you have to be from everybody else, then there is no longer a sense of unity, there’s no longer sense of nation, we will become tribal and we will not exist.

So, this is one of the times I say alright, guys, if you really want to make a difference, you need to get on a school board and you need to get involved in this intersectionality thing and you need to come back to the notion that we’ve had biblically and that we’ve done in history for a number of years, is that while there are differences, it’s a commonalities that are more important; is the things that we hold in unison; is the E Pluribus Unum, out of many we become one; it’s the fruit salad rather than the salad bowl. In other words, we don’t keep our distinctive differences and that’s what makes us great. We recognize we have differences, but it’s our commonalities. It’s the things that we believe in common and hold in common that make us great.

Seeds of Destructive Fruit

So, this intersectionality, people dismiss it, because it’s just a new fad, a new word. Yeah. But it represents an old philosophy that goes back to the beginning of time. And if we don’t nip this one, then the fruit that’s going to grow from these seeds will be destructive fruit and that’s just the teaching of Jesus in history.

Rick:

Well, and in fact that, you know, the seeds have been planted for decades now. And so, we’re seeing the fruit in the streets of what we’re going to get a whole lot more of if we don’t turn this around. And David, I don’t hear you say that very often, that here’s an issue that if we don’t turn it, we lose America. You just aren’t given to exaggeration in that way. And so, for you to say that means a lot. It makes me pay attention for sure and I hope our listeners as well, that that’s how important this is. We are at a pivot point where we must stop this and we must change it. We must go back to E Pluribus Unum. So, it’s that much of a challenge to our listeners out there to get engaged.

Tim:

And this is also to guys why we do things like Patriot Academy, like our leadership training program, trying to reach the next generation and equip them with the tools they need to overcome some of this nonsense. As much as there is a lot of this information that they battle with on almost a daily basis, if not certainly a daily basis on social media, there’s really good answers to why all of this is so silly.

One of the organizations that that we point to a lot even in some of what we do with our leadership training program with Patriot Academy is we will use some of PragerU videos. And Ben Shapiro has a PragerU video talking about intersectionality. There’s a lot of great voices out there help kind of dispelling some of these myths and why they don’t work, why this is a bad idea.

But most people in culture today aren’t hearing both sides of the equation, they’re not hearing why this is the problem. Again, which is why places like Patriot Academy, like our leadership training program becomes so important, because we’re equipping the next generation with the ability to have honest conversations, pursuing what is true and really promoting those principles of freedom, of the Constitution, of the Bible, what our nation really needs to survive.

And so, as much as, as we can see, if we don’t change, we will be in a lot of trouble. There is a lot of optimism knowing that every time we get have conversations with young people, we are seeing their mindset, their attitude, their behavior change. So, there is a lot of hope for the next generation. We just have to engage them and that’s why things like Patriot Academy and the leadership training program exists.

Leadership Training Program

Rick:

And folks, you can find out more about all those things at wallbuilders.com for the leadership training program. You can go to patriotacademy.com to get students signed up for our virtual Patriot Academy. We’re doing a virtual national Patriot Academy this year, first week of August. It is not too late to sign up for that, but it’s almost too late. We’re running out of time. You’ve actually got about a week right now to get signed up.

So, send folks to patriotacademy.com, get them signed up, 16 to 25 year olds. It’ll be a phenomenal week. A great chance for them to learn the truth about all of these things. And that way as truth bearers, they can be the ones that are saving our nation and preserving this freedom for future generations.

We are up against it right now, folks, the left is winning the argument all across the country and therefore we must speak up. A silent majority will not win this kind of war. We have to be vocal and we have to speak truth. Get your young people trained. Patriotacademy.com is the website and they can get signed up right now today to go with us.

What Is The “Intersectionality” Theory Being Taught In Schools? – With Mark Hillman

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Have a great one, folks. Thanks for listening today. You’ve been listening to WallBuilders Live.