Pushing Back On The Critical Race Theory – With Jonathan Richie- What is critical race theory? What are the victories that have been won on this front? Tune in to hear this and more with Jonathan Richie.

Air Date: 05/10/2021

Guest: Jonathan Richie

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.

 

Rick:

You find your way to the intersection of faith and the culture. Thanks for joining us on WallBuilders Live. Find out more at our website wallbuilderslive.com. This is a place where we look at all the issues of the day from a biblical, historical, and constitutional perspective.

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 here at WallBuilders, Tim Barton’s, a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders. And some guy has snuck his way into the studio. I don’t know how this happened. We’re going to get a little review with our security team. Actually, from our team here at WallBuilders, Jonathan Richie, once in a while we get him here on WallBuilders Live. Jonathan, thanks for joining us today, man.

Jonathan:

It’s a pleasure to be here.

Rick:

Well, these guys drafted you in for a really special topic. Are you ready to be grilled by the Bartons’?

Jonathan:

I’ve been training every day for it.

Rick:

Well, I tell you what, folks, that want to know more, go to wallbuilderslive.com. By the way, you can get previous programs, now you got to go back a few months. But Jonathan spent almost a week with us on the program. I think it was January, when did Jonathan?

Jonathan:

Sounds right to me, I can’t remember.

Rick:

Something like that, it will be adventure, they can search, right? Anyway, that’s all on the website there. And also, that’s the place to make a contribution. So not only for great programs like this, where we’re going to answer a lot of the 1619 project questions, but also our guests throughout the week, our Foundations of Freedom Thursday programs, Good News Friday, all of that happens because of your donations. So thanks to all of you out there that have come alongside us, and made that one-time, or monthly contribution. If you’ve been listening and enjoying the program, it’s a great way to pay it forward, it’s a great way to get this program in the hands of more people. So please consider doing that at wallbuilderslive.com today.

Alright, guys, so a lot of great victories across Texas and maybe across other states. I haven’t looked close in the school board elections, pushing back on this critical race theory that has been infiltrating our schools. So we’ve got some good news to celebrate. But Jonathan, you’ve been really looking into this and how dangerous it is for the country. So we’re going to talk about this throughout the day. Where do you guys want to start?

David:

Well, let’s start with the election, Rick. You mentioned the election, I want to pull one out that actually made national news. And it came out of Fort Worth Dallas area and a little town, well, I can’t see little town, it used to be a little town called South Lake. And South Lake is an area that

Rick:

That used to be small enough, David, that they beat my hometown team in Wiley 55:0 on my senior homecoming. So I don’t want any good news from South Lake. I’m still bitter all these years later.

David:

Well, I’m going to back up a little bit and say I have memories of South Lake back when they were a 1A school and I played basketball for 1A school, and I made 10 out of 10 free throws in a game against Southlake. So they stick with me, man..

Jonathan:

Alright, we get it, you all are old.

Rick:

They went from 1A in David’s day to 3A in my day to now they’re like, I don’t know, one of the largest schools in the state.

David:

Yeah, they’re big. And so they’re very conservative town, and they just haven’t been real involved in their town’s politics. They’ve just kind of let it flow and go as it wants to. And over the last couple of elections, there’s been some fairly unusual people that have kind of stepped in and started doing really things in the schools that they don’t go along with. And part of has been critical race theory. And so this is not a school where there’s been a lot of racial tension or racial problems going on. But they introduced this critical race theory stuff.

Tim:

Yeah, and actually, let us also point out, one of the reports that came out recently, maybe over the last couple of weeks, was regarding South Lake school districts how in their end of year testing, one of the things that has been more unique is because they do have a lot of diversity in the town. The white students and the black students are students of whatever kind of minority ethnicity you want to throw in there, but generally, the white students and black students is how it was phrased in the report, tested the same with end of year testing. And that’s very unusual on a lot of levels. when you compare school districts that you don’t always see the same level of performance. Which is why oftentimes people come in and said that maybe certain schools are racist, or the testing isn’t good and then we need to reevaluate testing.

South Lake has shown wait a second, no, no, we treat every student the same and every student has excelled because we’ve treated every student the same. But then dad, as you mentioned, there are people that came in and said, we need to change this whole system. Even though it’s working, even though students are performing very well, we need to come in and change the whole system and introduce things like critical race theory, which we’re going to now have oppressors and the oppressed and we’re going to make victims in and the victimizers; and this whole culture, we’re going to have to change everything we do even though what they were doing was making them one of the most successful schools in the nation with academic achievement and performance. So it didn’t make any sense at all.

David:

And so what happened is parents said, no, no, this is not the way we want to go. I mean, things have been real good and you’re trying to stir stuff up. And so the parents formed a group and that group kind of represented a lot of the community of South Lake. I think I heard that 50 churches got involved. They were able to bring 50 churches to able to say this is not what we want our kids being raised with. We like what it’s been and our city council is pretty much kind of going crazy, and we don’t like where things are headed.

So they ran a slate of five candidates: they had mayor, I think two city council and two school board, and what they did is they let people know, hey, these are folks that have this conservative viewpoint that don’t want to stir stuff up. They want to fix stuff. They want good solutions. Like the results we’re getting, we want to get good results. We don’t want to go in this new radical kind of critical race theory stuff.

And so in that election, local election, it turned out that there were three times more than previous elections. So people really showed up, and those five candidates represented the conservative viewpoint, they won by a 70:30 margin. I mean, just absolutely cleaned the clock on the other side. And so of course, that made national news and because they were going after critical race theory, CNN and others pop out and say, well, it was racism displayed in South Lake. There was all these racist voters. No, it wasn’t. It was voters who didn’t want to see racism get started by sending one group against another.

And so it did make national news, Rick. But yeah, there were school board elections and there were a lot of good results across Texas, not every state has school board elections same time. But in Texas, we can really say that in certain areas, parents really are pushing back against this kind of 1619 and critical race theory kind of philosophy they’re starting to move forward.

Rick:

And guys, here in my own hometown of Dripping Springs, we had three slots, open nine candidates. I interviewed the candidates, send them surveys, ask them about critical race theory, masks on kids, all that kind of stuff. I had five good candidates to choose from. I’ve never had that problem. I don’t know about you all. I had to narrow down from good candidates. I didn’t have to pick the least bad, I had to narrow down from the good ones. That was a really nice problem to have. And the number one vote getter was our top choice.

So I mean, that speaks volumes in terms of good news in the areas that we typically can’t get anybody to pay attention. And now all of a sudden, they are really paying attention to these very important areas, so really, really good stuff to hear.

Alright, guys, we’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, we’ll get deeper into this critical race theory thing. I think people are hearing that phrase more and more, but we’ll talk a little bit more about what it is, where it came from, and how to combat it in your community. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

AMERICA’S HISTORY

This is David Barton with another moment from America’s history. Although education has remained an emphasis in America for nearly 200 years, what has changed the most over that period of time is the philosophy of education. For example, while religion finds no place of refuge in our schools today, such was not the case at the time of our Founding Fathers. In fact, when the Delaware Indian chiefs brought their youths to be trained in America schools on June the 12th 1779, George Washington told them, “You do well to wish to learn our art and our way of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.”

According to George Washington, what students learned, above all in American education at the time of the Founding Fathers was the religion of Jesus Christ. For more information on God’s hand in American history, contact WallBuilders at 1808REBUILD.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. We got Jonathan Richie in studio with us. We’re talking about 1619 project, critical race theory. Jonathan, people are hearing these terms more and more and more. So let’s kind of break it down, what that means where it came from, and how we defeated?

Jonathan:

Sure. Well, critical race theory is kind of the new academic trend where, like Tim was saying, it really does try to set people and groups against each other, right: white versus black, victim versus oppressor, etc, etc. And for people who maybe have studied Marxism and things, it’s kind of this dialectic ism of right progress is gotten through groups fighting against each other, and then whoever survives is going to be this greater synthesis. And so this is the idea.

But really, it goes back to the 1619 project, right? I mean, I’m sure we’ve talked about it a lot on air and other places. But the 6019 project was done by the New York Times as this historical initiative to replace the curriculum in the classrooms with this new vision of America which says America started not in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, the idea that all men are created equal, but rather America started in 1619 when the first African slaves according to them, even that’s wrong, but where they say the first African slaves are brought to American shores.

And so it really tries to reframe the entire story of America, the entire identity of America, not behind the ideas of the Declaration, but behind the idea and the story of slavery. And so that’s really kind of the legs underneath this critical race theory idea. But it’s totally a historical and just Robinhood, it’s really just bad history, wrong history. And it’s not the truth.

David:

Well, you know, even what you said, Jonathan, they didn’t even get the year right on their title, you know.

Jonathan:

Yeah, they’re almost 100 years wrong, actually, which is fascinating, but…

Tim:

100 years wrong, in what sense? Let’s unfold this for a second.

Jonathan:

So basically, 6019 project, their whole name comes from the idea that the first time black slaves were brought to America was in the year 1619. That’s actually not true. African slaves were brought to what is now the Continental mainland United States as early as 1526…

David:

By whom?

Jonathan:

By the Spanish. So the Spanish brought them and it actually, they were early expedition. Their colony is now lost because it didn’t last very long. And then there was another colony in Florida, but the 1526 one was in the somewhere along the lines of North and South Carolina. So this is mainland, actually not too far away from where Jamestown, and they landed in 1619. And then the Spanish made another colony, again, bringing black slaves prior to 1619 in the 1560s in Florida. So you have to Spanish colonies with the introduction of African slaves prior to 1619, that the New York Times in their great historical wisdom just completely ignored because it doesn’t fit their narrative.

David:

Yeah, even if you want to go for when what would call chattel slavery got started in America, they got to go 1653, is not even 1619. So what’s interesting is, this is a curriculum, if you will, and by the way, this is now in use in all 50 states. So it’s a free curriculum, a lot of teachers take it, use it, they teach it. So it is so historically flawed, but that’s not their point anymore. They don’t even care whether the history is right. It’s all about narrative. And I think that’s part of what they said when they introduced this, wasn’t it?

Jonathan:

Yeah, the whole idea was to reframe and really transform history. And you can see that in their curriculum and in the kind of projects that they have kids do. One of the things that they instruct children to do, is instead of learning your own history, you’re supposed to imagine alternate timeline, or imagine a new family genealogy they say, right? Don’t worry about studying what actually happened, just make it up yourself.

David:

Which one of the things that really shocked me, you showed me what they called an [inaudible 12:45] point, and they took an actual federal law. And this federal law, I’m going to say art, if you were doing typing on a sheet of paper, the federal law was about…

Tim:

Wait a second, typing on a sheet of paper. What does that mean?

David:

Oh, I’m sorry , you guys don’t know what typing is. My goodness!

Tim:

Was this back in the 1A days or the 3A days?

Jonathan:

What is paper?

Rick:

Back to the 1A days.

David:

Man, you know, and I was going to make the comment that when you type, there’s 66 lines on a piece of paper. And so you guys [crosstalk 13:16]. Well, I’ll tell you, it took two-thirds of the paper and that’s about 44 lines, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you either.

Tim:

No.

David:

Oh, man. Oh, my gosh, you guys, man, you need…

Tim:

So if I’m looking at my computer screen, how much of my screen would be filled and how much that?

Rick:

I just want to go on the record saying I got an A in typing in high school. Okay, I just want to make sure that’s out there.

David:

Good job.

Jonathan:

You had a class? I didn’t think you’re that old, Rick.

David:

So if it’s were a Word document, the law would take up about two thirds of one page. And Jonathan showed this to me and it was an actual federal law. And for the exercise for kids the page they gave them, they took what we just consider a black marker and just went through line after line after line, and they would leave a few words here and there. So let’s say there were 1,000 words in that law, they left maybe what, 25 words in that law?

Jonathan:

Yeah, maybe and that might be generous.

David:

Maybe point five. And they’re telling the kids this is what the law is, now rewrite it the way you want it to be.

Jonathan:

And here’s the way they actually describe it in the curriculum. They say “erase your” poems can be a way of reclaiming and reshaping historical documents. They can lay bare the real purpose or transform it into something totally new. But what’s fascinating is in the actual magazine, they don’t give you the option to even see what the real law is.

David:

Yeah, you don’t even get to see if the law is that they wiped out with that marker. You don’t even know what they changed.

Jonathan:

They don’t give you an opportunity to see what the truth actually. It’s same thing with the alternate timeline type of thing. It’s don’t even worry about what actually happened, just come up with something else.

Tim:

Well, and this is one of the things too that becomes then very important, is one of the reasons that we would encourage people that you need to study history, so you learn the lessons from history, because maybe, right maybe these are erase your poems. They’re saying, well, hey, this was a bad law, and these things should have been in there. Okay. Like, maybe we would agree that was a bad law and there were some bad things in there. But how do you know if it’s a bad law if you haven’t actually read what the law is, right?

This is part of where you learn from history. And we acknowledge there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly in history, but you can learn from all of it and to now go back and say, well, we’re going to reimagine what history was or should have been, well, you can’t even really reimagine it if you don’t know what it was in the first place: you have to learn the truth. And then if you want to reimagine it, that’s something you would do.

But to not know the truth, and then to make up your own timeline to make your own construct out of whatever this writing of this law, this letter, whenever this torque document you’re looking at might be, what we are saying is that we should disregard all of history. And this is why it allows people to buy into the narrative of things that are so historically inaccurate, because they don’t know what the truth is. And that’s not really the point of what these projects are. It’s not to help kids learn the truth of history. It’s to help them reshape and redirect things based on how they feel what they want, etc.

But again, if you don’t know historically what happened, then you don’t know how to even solve the problems going forward. How can you point back and say, well, here’s what we did wrong, here’s where it started, here’s where the fundamental change was, so here’s how we fix it. How do you know how to fix problems if you can’t even properly identify what the problem was? And this is the challenge when you remove so much history, which is what this 1619 project largely does.

David:

You know, is also a manifestation of stuff we talked about over recent three or four years where we’ve seen the polling saying that two-thirds of Americans don’t believe there’s absolute truth. They make their own truth. They can create their own truth. And so now, it doesn’t matter what history is, because that’s not truth, even if it actually happened. I reject that. Because here’s how I want it to be, here’s how I imagined it to be heard, it’s just this is the whole thing of truth also.

Tim:

Yeah, and this is not hyperbole, as we’re having this conversation, because we’ve literally talked with college professors, and showed them original historic documents where they said, well, I don’t agree with that. And we’re going wait a second, do you acknowledge this is an original document? Yes, it looks original. Okay, do you acknowledge this what it says? Yes, that’s what it says, but I don’t like it. I don’t agree with it.

And this is where like, literally, college professors are rejecting something that should be, granted like, non-debatable true, objectively true situation that yes, that’s the original document. It’s what it says, so that’s what it means, right? That’s what it says. It’s right there in front of you. And we’ve literally had professors say, well, I just don’t believe that. And these are the people that are teaching the rising generation. We are teaching that it’s more of how you feel, it’s more of what you want. The truth is subjective. It’s relativistic. There’s so much that unfolds in this.

But again, this is where the challenge is, even with things like the 1619 project and these curriculums is that we’re not teaching kids what is true and we’re not encouraging them to learn lessons from historical accuracy. We’re saying just make it be what you want it to be, and just how you feel, what you think, what you desire. That’s all that really matters.

David:

You know, Jonathan, you showed me a letter that we had from someone that send, and that really kind of drove this home for me because it was so impactful. I want you share what that listener sent to us.

Jonathan:

Yeah. So this listener, she wrote, and she had actually talked to some of the folks on the phone and ordered some products. Because what she was doing is she decided to actually go back and investigate her family history. So right, totally disregarding the 1619 appeal to not study history at all, she started to go back and investigate her own family history. And she’s a African American woman and wanted to discover where did my family come from? And she did amazing work. She actually sent in a little booklet that breaks it down. I mean, it’s awesome.

I read through her story, her family story, she traced it back six generations. So really did just some impressive historical primary source research. So she comes from a family that today, all of them are Democrats. But as she start studying the past, lo and behold, she discovers wait a second, back in after emancipation, the late 1800s, when the Republican Party was around, all of my ancestors were a part of the Republican Party. Why was it? And so she just dives into it.

You know, I think she picked up some of our resources about black history and America, learned a lot from there, has been sharing it. But she goes and she tells the story, and her ancestors helped start churches and things of that nature were leaders in education at the community level, just like the story that we kind of started out with. And so just a really fascinating story.

But she started sharing this information with all of her family, and they were just shocked, you know, they couldn’t believe that; wait a second, you know, we used to be Republicans. And so it was a real kind of historical awakening. But it came from studying the truth, right, going back to the primary sources, doing that responsibility. And sometimes it’s really tricky. But nowadays, it’s easier than ever with the internet, and all the great tools that are available, but it’s really encouraging story, really cool to get to hear from her.

And it’s something I’d encourage everybody, if you don’t know your family history, start digging into it. I mean, it is fascinating some of the things that you can find and discover and maybe you’ll have a story similar to her, maybe you’ll have something totally different. But it’s so cool to get to know the people that you came from a certain point of view,

Rick:

Loving truth, seeking truth, defending and speaking that truth, that’s what WallBuilders is all about. We’ll be right back. Stay with us, folks, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

AMERICAN STORY

Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called The American Story. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today.

And we would say very providentially in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil, and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things, like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out the statement Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America.

Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America not as the story of a perfect nation of a perfect people. But the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out wallbuilders.com, The American Story.

Rick:

We’re back here on WallBuilders Live. Thanks for staying with us. Jonathan Richie in studio with us. And guys, as we enter our final segment here, you said it as we went to break, Jonathan, one of the things people can do is study their own history. What else can we do with regard to our attitudes towards this friction in our culture right now over race?

David:

I think one of the things we can do is look back into history again, because America is a very, very diverse people. We have a lot of people here with a lot of different backgrounds. But that’s always been the case. You know, we talked a few programs ago how that even in the American Revolution, it was a real melting pot. People don’t recognize that. But Washington had 76 Generals and 28 of them came from foreign nations. I mean, blacks serve nine times longer on average in the American Revolution than whites did, integrated units, etc. So we were melting pot, we just don’t know that.

If you look at subsequent generations, I’m struck by the space that Teddy Roosevelt gave back in his day where it said, I don’t want hyphenated Americans. That’s bad for the country to have groups. And I think it’s important that he said that because at the time, he had the most diverse cabinet in American presidency. We actually have a letter from him where it goes through and it talks about how diverse his cabinet is, how many different ethnicities he had, how many different groups, how many different backgrounds and immigrants and, etc.

And so here’s a guy who is very much into bringing communities together and saying, we can’t have hyphenated Americans. You can’t have Scottish Americans, and you can’t have Italian Americans and French Americans. We’re all Americans. It’s a set of beliefs and ideas. And I think the problem with the critical race theory and 1619 project is they want to create different kinds of Americans and different groups, they want going to break it up.

Tim:

And one of the things I think too we can be intellectually honest about is say that, look, there was times in our nation’s history, where maybe there was systemic racism, there were systems of racism, because when slavery was legal, that was a system of racism. If you go back to some of the Jim Crow laws, and before the Civil Rights laws passed, there was systemic racism. It was part of the system. But by and large, we have seen that there were good people that stood up against some of those things and said, we need to change those, we need to do something different.

And what we are seeing now is not offered solutions, but instead highlighting of problems with no solutions. My grandfather, who was engineer, helped design multiple planes that were part of the US military, actually, he was a design engineer in the F16, he was the chief design engineer on the F-111. And one of the things, and this is probably his thinking as an engineer.

But one of the things he would always tell us when we were kids, and maybe we’re staying in his house, we’d have some kind of friction and the kids were fighting and we’d come to him, we want him to solve the problems or we want to come tell him really about how somebody else had done something wrong, the response he consistently gave was, don’t come to me with a problem, come to me with a solution. Right? Don’t just come tell me what’s wrong, tell me what do we do to solve it.

And right now what we are seeing is that we are watching schools propose to student all of the problems and the solution they’re offering are things that’s going to bring more devastation, more pain, more hurt, more division. And it brings me back to one of the things that MLK used to say is that hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. One of the things that as Christians we fundamentally know is you have to walk in forgiveness, you have to walk in love. But in the midst of this, we can be honest as historians, as conservatives, and be intellectually honest and say no, there were definitely times in American history where America did some very bad things.

With that being said, bad things don’t have to define who you are today. And who we are today can be very different than what we were back then. And we need to be hearing messages of unity and coming together. And this is also why, guys, going back to where we started, even with South like, why it was so encouraging what happened in South Lake, because the parents recognize that people are trying to bring division with this critical race theory coming into the schools with the 1619 project. And so you had churches, you had parents rally together and say, no, we are grateful that our school is already in a place where our white students, our black students are performing on par with each other. We are doing good things because we’re treating all of them equal under God.

David:

And that’s one thing that everybody can do. Tim, as you mentioned, school board elections, you can look at your own school board, and if there’s critical race theory or something going to try to divide, get involved in the elections, maybe run yourself or recruit someone to run. Definitely go vote and vote for candidates who will bring unity, not division.

Rick:

And help educate people. Take this program today and share it with your friends and family. You go to wallbuilderslive.com today and get the link. Also look in the archive section back in February, there’s three days of programs where Tim Barton gives a fantastic presentation on the 1619 project in response to it, more information there. It’s all at the website. Check it out at wallbuilderslive.com. Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live.