>> A critical look at critical race theory, this week on "Firing Line."

>> Just because I do not want critical race theory taught to my children in school does not mean that I'm a racist, damn it!

>> It's an academic theory born decades ago.

>> Racism is more than a group of bad white folks, you see.

It is built into the society.

>> Why is critical race theory at the center of a new national debate?

>> The crusade against American history is toxic propaganda.

>> John McWhorter is a best-selling author.

He's a professor of linguistics, a contrarian, and a commentator on race in America.

>> "Yes, we can't" has never been the slogan for Black America, and it's not now.

>> Someone who has long followed critical race theory, he criticizes both what it's become and how it's used as a political punching bag.

>> They're not trying to educate.

They're trying to indoctrinate.

>> What does John McWhorter say now?

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... and by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> John McWhorter, welcome to "Firing Line."

>> Thank you for having me, Margaret.

>> Look, before we launch into critical race theory, which I'd love to talk to you about, I want to give our viewers a sense of your background and perspective.

You are a prolific author, a podcaster, a professor of linguistics at Columbia University.

You've described yourself as a contrarian race commentator and a liberal Democrat.

But there are others who have called you a right winger.

So, where do you put yourself on the political spectrum?

>> I am a liberal Democrat who only seems like a right winger to some people because my opinions on race are ones that are liberal and Democratic rather than radical left.

And somewhere around 1966, an idea settled in that typical good-thinking politics on race are radical left, and if you're anywhere rightward of that, you're "a conservative."

So I've been confusing people for 20 years on that, but I know what I am, which is somebody who would never have been mistaken as a right winger in, say, 1960.

It's only now that a certain crowd think of me as Republican and conservative, and that, in their eyes, is not good because of views I have that really are very ordinary and, I think, are shared by most black people beyond the spotlights that we're used to walking around in.

>> I'd like to dive into critical race theory.

What is critical race theory, according to the academics who introduced it and developed it?

>> Oh, well, it starts 40 years ago as some, frankly, rather obscure legal articles that are arguing that we need to reconsider our sense of what justice is and consider that there are certain people who are permanently in power and certain people who are permanently or at least deeply disempowered and that that ought to color our sense of what we think of as morality, what we think of as important.

And so that's how that started.

And they were interesting papers that I think anybody could read and learn a little something from.

However, those had nothing to do with the schoolroom.

Those had nothing to do with the sorts of things we're seeing today that have happened in their wake.

>> Do you think it was an honest attempt to contribute to the the story of increasing equality in this country?

>> I genuinely think that the people who came up with these kinds of ideas were frustrated that things weren't as different as they would have hoped.

And those hopes were completely understandable.

And their idea was that maybe we really do need a complete rethink.

The problem is what that kind of perspective has led to in terms of our intellectual culture now.

>> What, to your way of thinking, John, is, you know, an example of some of the more pernicious examples of structural racism today?

>> Well, it's such an ambiguous term, because what many people mean by structural racism is whenever white people are ahead, it must be because either white people don't like black people or, in some way, things are set up in a way that's unfair, and the system needs to be changed because black people are not able to show what they're made of.

I find that hopelessly oversimplified.

But if you want to give people the most generous reading of how this sort of thing works, then, certainly, the fact that there are more black people in prison -- now, is that simply a matter of the fact that more black men misbehave and that there's no other explanation?

Well, no.

The reason that more black men are in prison is partly because of racist policies in, say, the 1960s and the 1970s.

You could say that it's partly about racism because many black teenagers are disinclined from school out of a sense that school is a white thing.

They didn't get that from nowhere.

They got that from racist schoolteachers after desegregation in the 1960s.

So this stuff is all -- It's all kind of mousetrap.

But you can say that racism is the reason.

The question is whether eliminating racism is the solution to the problem now.

That's where we end up running into these debates and into CRT, critical race theory, being wielded in a kind of reign of terror where you're just dared to disagree, because, you know, to call -- Systemic racism is a highly oversimplifying and misleading term.

>> Have your views about systemic racism changed over time?

>> No.

I grew up with the term and I do understand that if you see that black people are behind in some way, the reason is almost never -- Well, actually, I would say the reason is never that black people are just incapable.

There's just something wrong with black people, and there you go.

That is what a great many people are very, very, very worried about people thinking.

Nevertheless, for the other explanation to always be that white people did this and the only way it's going to change is if white people become gooder people, no.

And for people listening, yes, I know gooder is not a word.

I'm using that for rhetorical purpose.

But, yeah, that is oversimplified, too.

Unfortunately, you know, as with anything that's interesting, it's a very complex reality.

>> I just want to challenge you.

I feel that I have sensed an evolution in how you approach some of these issues, just maybe subtly around the edges.

And maybe I'm wrong, but have your views about how racism should be addressed changed?

>> Interesting.

I've always felt that, one, racism exists, but, two, that its impact is vastly exaggerated.

That, I think, has been my position since I was a teenager.

But what I think you're seeing is that, especially lately, I am bending over backwards to try to understand the people who don't think like me, the people who are -- you know, who I call the elect in my book coming up, "Woke Racism," who are wielding this cudgel.

You know, the idea is that "If you don't agree with us, we're going to call you a racist on Twitter, and we know that scares you to your socks.

And so we get what we want, and we think that's okay because we have arrived at the final answer.

And if you don't understand that, you're just a racist, and we have to sweep you behind in the tides of history."

That's how these people think.

And I find that so chilling and, in some ways, so stupid.

And I am so disappointed in how craven many people are in the face of it, that the last thing I want to do is imitate them by dehumanizing them, by making fun of the work that they think of as important.

So I'm trying to be as tolerant as possible, trying to understand where these people are coming from, partly so I can be equipped to counter them.

>> When you look around America in 2021, do you see examples of structural racism that could be addressed in the law?

>> Yes, I do.

There is a major problem with the life trajectory of a great many black men.

It starts in their teens and their 20s.

Too many black men are in prison.

Too many black men are out of prison, but semi-employable for the rest of their lives.

And you can look at that imbalance, and I say that is a terrible thing.

But the way you eliminate it is not to teach white people not to be racist.

That's not going to solve the problem.

Nor do I think that going into the criminal-justice system and trying to find examples of how sentencing bias is a racist endeavor and to reverse the racism of judges and prosecutors and all the other people involved -- I don't think that's going to work.

But I do believe that an awful lot of what we see is stimulated and kept going by the war on drugs.

If there's a possibility to have money in your pocket on the basis of selling drugs on the black market, not getting rich, but having money in your pocket, naturally, a critical mass of people are going to drift into selling drugs for a living.

I firmly believe that if that black market did not exist, then the very same black men would be more likely to stay in school.

They would be more likely to get legal jobs.

And I think that black inner-city communities would be much better places.

They wouldn't be paradise, but they wouldn't be what they've become since the late '60s.

As far as I'm concerned, if eliminating the war on drugs would make millions and millions of black people happier and more successful people, that's more important than teaching white people to like them more.

>> So, we've talked about critical race theory in its initial incarnation, as a legal theory in the past.

In September of 2020, after a summer of protests fueled in part by George Floyd's murder, critical race theory emerges outside of academia and gains mainstream attention.

Watch this.

>> Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us -- "Don't judge us by the color of our skin."

And now they're embracing it, right?

They're going backwards.

>> American students deserve a rock-solid civics education grounded in actual facts, not divisive propaganda that tells them they're little more than a product of their racial background.

>> Young children set off to school with eyes full of hope and hearts full of pride in their country, only to be taught that white privilege defines the nation.

>> Critical race theory says every white person is a racist.

Critical race theory is bigoted, it is a lie, and it is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.

[ Cheers and applause ] >> How did critical race theory go from being an esoteric legal theory in the '70s and '80s to its mainstreaming as a sort of political -- as a political tool?

>> Yeah, and it's a complicated thing, because we're having a really ding-dong debate about this these days, where people will watch those clips and they will think that what all those people meant is that children shouldn't learn anything about slavery and racism.

And I doubt if any of the people we just saw, including Mitch McConnell, meant that.

That's not what it means.

The issue is that kind of ideology becoming a central feature of pedagogy month after month and year after year.

That's what people are talking about.

>> So, help us understand -- what are they rallying against?

What are they teaching that is objectionable?

>> Here's the issue.

And I wish all of them would be more specific.

There are two things.

One is practically lining all the kids up against the wall and teaching that white people are oppressors, black people are oppressed, and that the white kids need to know it and the black kids need to know it.

And however you present it, that is some strong stuff to be giving to 8-year-olds to teach that whiteness is potentially evil and that blackness means that you have to constantly be on guard against it.

Then the second thing is a basic idea that battling power differentials and specifically racism, often, is supposed to be not just one of many things, not just one of many things in the meal, but the center, the fulcrum of all intellectual, artistic, and moral endeavor.

That's what is being taught at many schools.

It's not just whether or not you teach people that there was slavery, that there was redlining, and that racism can be subtle.

It's making all of these schools anti-racist boot camps.

That's the problem these days.

After last summer, there was this educational opportunity many of these people saw where you could start saying that you needed to do this within this racial reckoning, and if you don't do it, you're a racist.

Now, if anybody had tried to pull that, say, 15 years ago, it wouldn't have worked, but now we have Twitter.

So if you go against them, you get called a racist in the public square.

For 9 out of 10 people, that's enough to make them follow along, because most of us are buying groceries and raising our kids.

But the result of this has been truly dangerous.

>> So, you just introduced a new term into this conversation -- anti-racism.

And your next book is entitled "Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America."

Explain -- what is the relationship between anti-racism and critical race theory?

>> Well, anti-racism is a fashionable word these days.

But what it means in practice -- You know, who knows what its definition in the dictionary is, but what it means in practice is that if there is some kind of imbalance between white and black people, the reason is something called racism, either bigotry or some raw deal that black people have been done as the result of it and probably a mixture of the two, and that, therefore, what we're going to do is, we're going to battle that racism.

That's what anti-racism means in our current context.

And the problem with it is that, often, what we're seeing as "racist" isn't.

So the common idea that you get nowadays, black kids tend not to do as well on standardized tests.

Well, instead of saying, "How do we get black kids to do better on them?

", which is something that has happened in the past, the new idea is that you say, "Let's just get rid of the test because the test must be racist."

You don't have to specify how, but if the black kids don't do as well on it, the test is a racist practice.

That's a real leap.

That is a hyper-radical way of looking at things that I think most people, if presented with the mechanics of the argument, would think of as rather cruel, frankly, to black kids.

That's not the way to run a society, most of us would think.

Some people might be able to make a case for it, but most of us wouldn't agree with that.

But, instead, we're being taught that if you're not an anti-racist, you're bad, and we're going to embarrass you on Twitter.

And, as a result, many people end up pretending to agree with ideas like this.

>> There are local school-board meetings across the country getting national attention with parents using the word indoctrination about anti-racism curriculum.

You say that you've been contacted by parents and teachers and principals from all over the country on a daily basis.

What are people who reach out to you telling you?

>> What people who reach out to me are telling me is that they are extremely disappointed and/or angry that this is suddenly happening in their school.

And the regular theme is that they understand what racism is, but they don't want their kids being taught what to think, as opposed to how to think.

And then, also, they're scared.

They are so deeply afraid of being tarred as racists in public.

And these people just -- They want their children to be taught not that there's no racism.

They don't want their children to be taught Beaver Cleaver's America, but they don't want their children to be going to anti-racist academies.

The idea that that represents a progress that nobody should stand athwart is one of the most sclerotic ideas I have ever seen becoming mainstream in my entire existence.

>> Okay, so, the flip side of this is that 26 states have actually taken some degree of legislative action to restrict certain anti-racism curriculum.

Now, not every legislative effort is the same, but is legislating and banning anti-racist curriculum the right solution?

>> You know, to tell you the truth, I don't think that that's the way to go, because there are so many different ways that these bans could be interpreted.

So, the way most of these bills are worded justifiably makes it look like these people, almost all of whom I assume are innocent on this particular thing, think that kids should be taught that America is a wonderful thing and that slavery and racism were something that were way in the background and don't really matter.

I don't think that's what any of these people mean.

They're worried about what we've been talking about.

>> So, how then, John, should we think about teaching a more inclusive version of American history that perhaps more wholly accounts for the Black American experience while rejecting some of the more extreme ideologies associated with anti-racist curriculum or critical race theory?

>> Margaret, I'm going to give you a very honest answer that is going to expose me to possibly a great deal of correction and perhaps even ridicule.

I'm not sure that we were in such a bad place about this before about 10 minutes ago.

I was not aware that it was a default problem in the United States that kids are not taught about slavery, kids are not taught what has happened to black people throughout history, that you become an 18-year-old person and you've never heard of Martin Luther King.

You don't know that the slaves were emancipated.

Now, we have a great many terrible schools.

If you're a terrible school, among the thousands of other things that you didn't learn, you might not be learning about that.

That's different.

But in terms of a school that's basically functioning, I'm not sure that there's a problem that needs to be addressed in terms of America being -- >> Wait.

Hold on.

Let me push back on that.

What about Confederate statues?

>> Mm-hmm.

>> Do you not think that there has been sort of an awakening or an awareness that the way we teach our history before 10 minutes ago could be even better and more inclusive of the Black American history?

>> If kids are taught about the Civil War and if most of them are taught that slavery had a little something to do with it, as far as I'm concerned for that to be the default awareness is enough.

So, yeah, if now kids are taught about the statues, too, I think that's fine, but I'm not sure that I saw that one particular issue as a yawning gap in kids's educations before last summer.

>> The original "Firing Line" that was hosted by William F. Buckley Jr. held a debate in 1993 entitled "Resolved: That Political Correctness is a Menace and a Bore."

Listen to Bard College President Leon Botstein talk about the state of discourse on campus then.

>> There is prejudice of all kinds, and what I would recommend is that we create a climate quite opposite what we have now, where this stuff is encouraged, but then responded to.

That is to say where people actually sit and listen.

I want to extract, from the other person, the prejudices they have, because then we have a fighting chance to really argue why they think those things, why they say those things, why they believe them.

To punish them is besides the point.

>> That was 1993, nearly 30 years ago.

And I know for a fact that you believe that the state of discourse on college campuses has gotten much worse since then.

>> Yeah, it's interesting.

Leon Botstein leads Bard, and Bard has its subsidiary, Simon's Rock Early College.

I went there and so I've been listening to Leon Botstein for 40 years.

And I know that he, even today, believes exactly what he said there.

And I was at a very interesting conference at Bard right before the pandemic where it was quite obvious that things have gotten even narrower and more difficult since 1993, which is why strange people like me feel a responsibility to speak against this sort of thing going on.

Because let's face it -- if I were white, then a great many people would be able to say either that I'm a racist or that I might be a racist and that it's suspect to listen to a white guy talk about it.

If I talk about it, you know, there are things you can call me, but they're not quite as powerful, and nobody really thinks I'm a racist.

And so, to an extent, I can be heard out in a way that a white version of me often can't be.

>> You're clear that there are problems on the left in terms of how critical race theory has been taken too far.

But do you think that the corollary is that, on the right, CRT has been weaponized in a way that is unproductive?

>> Yes, there's a problem.

On the left, the problem is that this sort of thing has become the cornerstone of a religion, and that religion is based on the idea that battling power differentials must be the focus of everything.

On the right, there is, frankly, a kind of ideologically driven sloppiness, where, too often, the people speaking up about these things on the right give the impression that they want us to be in denial about racism and its history.

Now, some of them, I'm sure, do, but I don't think that it's most of them.

But they don't realize that if they only speak to the right, if they only speak to the inner circle, then those watching from the outside -- and it's even easier to do that nowadays because of the nature of social media -- are encouraged in thinking that what we're battling is an America that is as viscerally opposed to black equality as it was 50 years ago.

There are an awful lot of people invested in the rather self-gratifying fantasy that that's what's going on.

Anything that encourages that makes our politics static, because you have people fighting against something that isn't real instead of engaging with the dynamic and progressive reality of our actual society.

>> John, how do we get out of this mess?

>> I'm working on that.

It takes some time.

As Leon Wieseltier once said, "It's easier to believe that change doesn't happen than to acknowledge that it happens slowly."

So it's not going to be a magic wand, but I think we're talking about a years-long pushback.

But, then again, to the extent that all of this took such a sharp uptick recently, there was a reason.

I think that we need to always remember that anything that appalled us over the past year and change happened over Zoom.

The things happening in those newsrooms, the defenestration, the firings, an awful lot happened because of this bizarre thing that we're all in our pajamas, interacting on a laptop.

I think that once we end up back in real rooms, having hallway conversations, a lot of this recreational nastiness will be less attractive to a great many people, and communal decisions to do horrible things to innocent people for symbolic reasons will seem less attractive because you're looking at them right in front of you and you can see that they are as good a person as you.

We lost that with these devices.

>> Your recent book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, "Nine Nasty Words," looks at the power and the progression of vulgar language.

So, today, the truly profane is more likely to concern words related to gender and race, such as the N-word.

Should some words, John, be completely canceled no matter what the context?

>> [ Chuckles ] I don't think that any word should be completely canceled, no matter what the context.

First of all, because it can't happen.

You can't cancel a word.

What you do when you put out the fiat is, you make the word treasured.

You make it special material to be brought out when nobody is looking.

And so, to me, I mean, call me conservative.

I'm very conservative about the N-word.

I think 1990 was great.

Back then, you didn't wield the word, but you could use the word to refer to it.

Usually, what you were about to do was criticize it, but you could say it.

And I remember countless very ordinary conversations where nobody flinched when a white person said that word.

The way it's gotten over the past 20 in particular, where you can't even utter it because it's a magic taboo word, I think that the ultimate result is that a great deal of energy is expended witch-hunting against the person who uttered the word or wrote the word that could be spent in creating real change in society.

The language policing, frankly, is fun.

A lot of people are having fun doing that.

It's as fun as "nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah!"

But there are people hurting.

We have some changes we need to make in this society.

So, for me, the N-word -- I think we now have this magic taboo word, and I can't change it, but I wouldn't have chosen that.

It ends up -- It's like a hole in a tire.

Just all that energy goes just oozing out, and so you have this air that's just hissing out and you wish that air was still in the tires so that the tire could roll and get the vehicle somewhere.

>> John McWhorter, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

Thank you for sharing your views, even when you're a contrarian, on "Firing Line."

>> [ Chuckles ] Thank you for having me.

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