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Conversations with Coleman
From the bottom up with Kmele Foster [S2 Ep.33]
01:14:22
My guest today is Kmele Foster. Kmele will be known to many of you as the co-host of The Fifth Column Podcast which is one of my favorite podcasts. He's also the co-founder of a media company called Freethink, and a former co-host of The Independents on Fox Business Network. This episode was sort of a post mortem on two other recent episodes, the one with Christopher Ruffo, and the one with David Hogg. Kmele was one of the co-authors of a New York Times op-ed, critical of the anti CRT laws that Ruffo had a hand in writing. And it seemed to me that that piece had misrepresented the content of those laws. So we spend the majority of the conversation talking about anti CRT laws in general, that op-ed in particular, and the wider conversation about indoctrination in K–12 education. Towards the end of the podcast, we make a hard pivot and discuss gun control, because Kmele is a proud gun owner. Many of you didn't like the podcast with David Hogg because he's not a gun violence expert. A...
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Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. If you're hearing this, then you're on the public feed, which means you'll get episodes a week after they come out and you'll hear advertisements. You can gain access to the subscriber feed by going to ColemanHughes.org and becoming a supporter. This means you'll have access to episodes a week early, you'll never hear ads, and you'll get access to bonus Q and A episodes. You can also support me by liking and subscribing on YouTube and sharing the show with friends and family. As always, thank you so much for your support. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Camille Foster. Camille will be known to many of you as the co host of the Fifth Column podcast, along with Matt Welch and Michael Moynihan, which is one of my favorite podcasts. He's also the co founder of a media company called Freethink and a former co host of the Independence on Fox Business Network. This episode was sort of a postmortem on two other recent episodes, the one with Christopher Ruffo and the one with David Hogg. Camille was one of the co authors of a New York Times op ed critical of the anti CRT laws that Ruffo had a hand in writing, and it seemed to me that that piece had misrepresented the content of the those laws. So we spend the majority of the conversation talking about anti CRT laws in general, that op ed in particular, and the wider conversation about indoctrination in K12 education. Camille worries that these laws, regardless of their intent, will be interpreted to ban the teaching of anything that makes kids feel uncomfortable on account of their race, which would include many parts of American history that kids should learn about. Whereas I assumed that people would interpret the laws strictly how they're written, which would ban a much narrower set of ideas and would be compatible with teaching all the ugly parts of our history. So as it happens, right after we recorded this podcast, some news came out that completely vindicated Camille's side of that argument. CNN reports that a group called Moms for Liberty, led by a woman from Tennessee, has filed an official complaint against the state Department of Education for including four particular books in that curriculum, three of which are about the history of the civil rights movement. And they take issue with the fact that these books portray really just basic images of Jim Crow, including things as basic as segregated water fountains and black people being sprayed with hoses. And because of this anti CRT law, it's actually very possible that some of these books will be banned. So this is precisely the kind of thing that I was skeptical would happen. And it's therefore precisely the kind of evidence that changes my mind about these laws from agnosticism to being against them. So keep that in mind as you listen to me and Camille disagree about what these laws are likely to do. Had I seen this news before the episode, I would have sounded very different. So towards the end of the podcast, we make a hard pivot and discuss gun control, because Camille is a proud gun owner. Many of you didn't like the podcast with David Hogg because he's not a gun violence expert. And that's true, of course, but I just want to make clear that this podcast is not reserved for experts. If you have 1.1 million Twitter followers due to your activism on some topic, that's reason enough for me to have a conversation with you. And Camille is also not a gun expert by any means. So if you're upset by that, you can consider this your trigger warning. So, without further ado, Camille Foster. All right, Camille Foster, thanks so much for coming on the show.
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Coleman, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure to talk with you.
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Yeah, so a few people have, fans of my podcast have come up to me and they sometimes have the assumption that I'm friends with every guest that I get on the show, that there's like a big hangout happening all the time with conversations with Coleman guests. This is of course not true, but this is one of the situations where I actually am friends with my guest today.
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Yes, I'd like to think so, yes.
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And actually, I think I've told you this before, but the first time I encountered you was on Josh Zepp's podcast. And at that time I was probably freshman or sophomore at Columbia, alienated by the culture of extreme anti racist fear mongering, and starved to hear anybody speak to what I felt was a situation of people just lying en masse about what is true about the level of racial prejudice and racism as an obstacle in the local situation of an Ivy League campus. And I heard you on Zepps and I got goosebumps listening to you. I'll never forget. I was walking down Broadway. I got goosebumps. I had just eaten a burger from five guys and I heard you give an impassioned speech about the fact that we've really, we have to plant the flag that we won the battle against legalized white supremacy. And just that acknowledgement. There's a lot of sort of evading that acknowledgement. In the service of trying to paint a narrative about how racism is everywhere. And there's a real need for a reality check in this conversation. And so that's the first time I heard the name Camille Foster. And then a couple years later, I was happy to finally meet you and hang out with you and so forth.
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Well, I love that story because one, it just. It gives me hope that this stuff that we do, talking about ideas in public, is consequential and meaningful to people. And it's important to get those reminders occasionally, like the notes that we get from people who listen to the show who sort of share stories that are kind of like, that is phenomenal, but also just really heartened because I've just been so impressed and thrilled and one just delighted to know you personally, but to just watch your kind of intellectual progression and development. And I distinctly remember our first meeting when we were having lunch or breakfast, I think, near my office in Union Square, I think, at the time. And I remember going into that lunch thinking, man, I'm just this kid. I'm going to bring him under my wing. And I just. I cannot wait to help nurture him. And I left that first meeting thinking to myself, oh, oh, wow. Like, we, like, we're partners. There are things that I can learn from him. And it was no more this kind of desire to engage in this kind of tutelage, but to genuinely have this kind of relationship where it's kind of iron sharpening iron. And I'm delighted to know that you regard me as a friend. I certainly regard you in much the same way. And I'm always enthusiastic to have thoughtful conversations with you about the stuff that we violently agree on, about the places where we kind of sort of disagree, and even the places where we have some passionate disagreements, although we don't have nearly as many of those conversations as we should. So maybe we'll mix it up today and get into some of that. Yeah.
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B
Feelings mutual. And surely most of my podcast listeners will know you from the fifth column. I assume there's a lot of overlap in our audience.
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A
I would hope so. Yeah.
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B
Yeah. So that that's on the off chance that you're listening to this, but don't know that Camille has one of the most engaging and interesting podcasts out there right now that you know. Like this. This is a podcast. My podcast is one. Hopefully people find it valuable. Yours is one that people will find it valuable on all the same topics you're going to find here. But it also just feels like you're hanging out and drinking with your friends, which is an added bonus to me. And it's an interesting thing where sometimes I feel like I hang out with you more than you hang out with me, because I listen to the Fifth Column, so I'll not have texted you in weeks, but in my mind, just be like, yeah, me and Camille hang out all the time.
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A
It's one of the odd things about doing this thing that we do. Like, we have relationships with people.
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B
And like you said, that relatively. Tony Soprano talks about the mob.
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This thing of ass. This thing of ass. But it is rather odd. Like, I have relationships with people who I know in real life. In some cases, I've read them for years, and I'm a big fan. Like, Eli Lake is a friend, and I love to agree and disagree with him. And it always makes me really happy when an episode gets published, and a couple hours later, I get a text from Eli, and he's like, hey, that was great. Here's what I disagree with you about. It's great to have those relationships. It also kind of weird you out when you meet someone for the first time, and the relationship is very intimate in one direction because they've heard you talk about things and in some cases, share very personal things and you don't know them yet. But again, it's one of those things where you're able to build these communities, and I think that's pretty phenomenal. It's actually the really wonderful thing about the moment that we find ourselves in, where we've all got these weird studio setups in our homes or offices with lights and all kinds of other stuff, and we get to have these conversations with people around the world and hopefully expand the scope, the discourse and enrich it in some way on occasion, and occasionally fall on our faces and make mistakes in public. But try not to do too many of that. Yeah, too much of that. Anyways. See, there it is.
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B
There you go. All right. So I've been wanting to get you on for a long time, and because I've known that I can. I think I've just. I've just sort of delayed it because I know I can do it whenever.
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But don't presume I will leave right now. I will just pull the plug on this whole thing.
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B
I know you only fly first class. Your time is very valuable. So even for a friend, I'm lucky to get your time. But I mean, the occasion, the immediate proximate cause of me getting you on and now at this moment, is that I had Christopher Ruffo on A few weeks ago to discuss critical race theory bans. And so there's this problem that I think a lot of my listeners care about and that I care about, which is an ideology of racial essentialism. Just talking about people as collectives, judging by skin color as opposed to individual character. That is very much what we have bonded over and gotten to know each other over both being, you might say, black presenting people. I don't know how you describe yourself, but that go against the presumption, the sort of presumed belief system one is supposed to have as a good thinking black person, namely America is fundamentally racist. It's just the gas that fills up the space of the country and that anything billed in the name of fighting anti racism should basically not elicit skepticism and should pretty much you should support as a way of saying that you are a person committed to racial progress and that that's and definitely a skepticism of any sort of any style of anti racism that presents humanity first over skin color and that really emphasizes the fact that race is skin deep and that concepts like whiteness and blackness are actually fictions. That style of anti racism is not in vogue. And so there's a problem where parents at certain schools, I have no idea how widespread it is. I think it's no doubt exaggerated by many people and under exaggerated by others of teachers who are compelled by the Kendi d' Angelo style of anti racism, teaching it essentially as fact. Again, I have no idea how widespread this is and it's very difficult to. I asked Christopher Rufo about this and he has anecdote after anecdote which unfortunately doesn't tell you anything about how wide this could be a problem that less than 1% of people are experiencing and it could be a problem that 10, 20% of parents are experiencing. And I genuinely wouldn't know. I don't have a strong intuition about how widespread it is. But there's a problem of just how you meet that challenge in a context where any individual parent is, especially parents that don't have the melanin force field to steal your term would be afraid to speak out or to file a lawsuit and become the face of, of this fight. So you wrote an op ed about this and maybe you could just go back to square one and talk about how you think about this problem in general and ways of combating it, including these laws that have cropped up.
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Yeah, well, I think obviously there's a lot of terrain to cover as your setup there indicates. I mean to begin, my own views on this stuff are that I'M deeply concerned about race essentialism because I believe in the dignity of the individual. And I believe that in general, when it comes to matters of public policy, when it comes to our ability to understand complex societal phenomena, the very best thing that we can do for ourselves is ensure that we are regarding people as individuals and contemplating the sort of complexity and nuance of the world around us. And one of the worst things that we can do for ourselves is allow race to distract us, to obscure the truth, to not recognize it for the abstraction that it is and the various ways that it can kind of distort our perception. And over the course of the past year and a half or so, I mean, unless you've been living under a rock, the primacy of race in our political discourse is something that has become self evident and inescapable. We experience it every place. We see it in our public health policy in the midst of a pandemic. We see it in the context of conversations about criminal justice and virtually everything else. And it's no surprise that we also see it in K12 education. And its manifestation in K through 12 education, I think, has created a lot of appropriate concern. And it's interesting, I think, to kind of juxtapose the way that that appropriate concern has manifested itself with the things that give me pause when I think about race essentialism. Like, the reality is, I will routinely hear things like there's a genocide against black Americans in America, that police are killing black people every day. These things are overstatements, they're not true, they're fundamentally untrue. And there's a sense in which, to the extent you care about police involved shootings, having your perspective and your goals and the policy prescriptions moored in facts more than the truth is really, really important. And in much the same respect, when I read people who talk about these things, I will frequently encounter things like public schools. And just. I'll quote Chris Ruffo here, because Chris and I now, this has become kind of this personal disagreement in some respects. But public schools, which have the power of compulsion, are pushing toxic racial theories onto children, teaching them that they should be judged on the basis of race and must atone for historical crimes committed by members of their racial group. Full stop. Now, what percentage of schools are doing that? Is it every school? Is it 50% of schools? Is it 20% of schools? Is it 10% of schools? The facts matter here. And I think Chris will acknowledge that we don't know. And as you've already acknowledged, but I will also acknowledge That I get reports of this kind of stuff. You, I'm sure, get reports of this kind of stuff. And Chris has obviously reported on a lot of this. The question becomes, what do you do about this? And I think if you're having a conversation where you presume it is everywhere at all times. And it must be confronted everywhere, what.
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B
Does that sound like?
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You're going to have one perspective on this. But if you have a more nuanced perspective. And you recognize that this is a problem that is broadly true of sort of society. And it is a cultural phenomena that is impacting virtually every area where we live our lives. And that the manifestation in K through 12 in that respect is an extension of the broader cultural thing that's happening, then I think that ought to inform your strategy for confronting this. And the New York Times editorial is sort of born out of that sensibility. You've got four people who disagree profoundly on a number of things. Despite suggestions to the contrary that there is not much difference ideologically between us. And what we shared, however, was not so much a belief that these bans on critical race theory in public schools were a violation of free speech. Or that public schools are a marketplace of ideas. These are not claims that have been made, but more so that there is a particular purpose for an education in a liberal free society. And I'm using liberal in the broadest kind of classic liberal sense of the word. And that purpose is incompatible with indoctrination. But it also demands something of us. And much of what concerns all of us is that the bands are a blunt instrument to try and achieve this cultural goal. And in being a blunt instrument, are likely to have a lot of unintended consequences. And that a better goal for addressing genuine concerns that people have. And the piece does not suggests that there aren't genuine concerns. It suggests that we have a difference of perspective on what these concerns might be. It says, appeal to the courts where the most egregious things are happening. But also you have to do the very hard work of actually developing curriculums that aren't trying to sort of de Indoctrinate kids. Or protect them from being indoctrinated altogether by getting rid of particular bad ideas. But develop curriculums that really teach kids to have critical thinking skills. To be full and complete people, individuals. And to make our schools the personification of our ideals. Places where kids are getting those critical thinking skills. Where they're learning to navigate the universe of differences of perspectives that we have. Which means that teaching the 1619 Project in school at Any grade level as the definitive history of the United States is wrong and unacceptable. Bringing in Ibram Kendi and insisting that children take pledges that suggest that their whiteness or their blackness fundamentally defines who they are. Again, also unacceptable. But in a similar way, trying to create a circumstance where it becomes impossible to discuss these ideas at all, to ask questions about them and probe them, is something that is also antithetical to our values, and we ought to be striving for something more. There is no simple, easy answer to this problem that I think, Chris and you and I agree exist. That there are people engaged in kind of excess and hysteria when it comes to race essentialism in schools, that they're pushing race essentialism in school. But I don't want to pursue a solution that is impractical, that is imprudent, and quite frankly, that is not up to the task. It's inadequate to the task of actually fomenting the kind of cultural change that I want to see. A world where we prioritize the dignity of the individual over this nonsense idea of race essentialism, and where we prioritize making schools that actually function in a way to make kids critical thinkers, to ensure that they are critical thinkers, and to respond to the diversity of circumstances they find themselves in. I mean, these laws broadly ban K through 12, these things in K through 12. But of course, kids in kindergarten and first grade have very different needs than kids in, say, 9th through 12th grade. How can you have a civics class where it becomes impossible to talk about, of white supremacy as a broader concept or systemic racism as a broader concept, when in fact, these are realities of our political discourse? You have to talk about this. I think it is virtually, it's criminal. I can't even imagine a circumstance where you can't engage with the ideas of Nikola Hannah Jones in your high school civics class or TA, Nehisi Coates, or for that matter, James Baldwin or mlk, who have had very harsh things to say about the United States and in some cases have said things that probably run afoul of some of these laws.
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B
One of the struggles is that there are many different laws, and even within one law, there are different clauses that point in pretty different directions. So pretty much all of the laws we're talking about have a clause that says something like, you can't teach that one race is inherently superior to another. That's fairly uncontroversial as a sentiment. Again, whether you want it in law is, I guess, a separate question. Not. It's not the center of the Controversy here. Right. Then other of the laws specifically ban using the 1619 project as class material, which is again a very different kind of clause. My opinions on those two, my feelings towards those two kind of clauses are totally different. And the fact that they're in the same law confuses my feeling about the law. And then there's other bans that within these laws that don't ban ideas so much as practices such as segregating students by race. And then there's others that ban ideas that just seem pretty ridiculous to ban. So like for instance, the idea that ameritocracy is racist or oppressive is. It's not my belief system. I don't think meritocracy is inherently racist or oppressive. But the notion that you couldn't teach that or couldn't explore that as one of many options seems. That seems in particular vague to an extent that would rule out a lot of, you know, vaguely left wing ideas that aren't crazy. Right. And aren't, more importantly aren't directed at individual students. Like the parts of these laws that I really, I can totally see how they would be useful are things that prohibit a teacher from telling students specifically that they are less than. Whether that is morally inferior or, you know, you ought to feel guilty, Timothy, because you are a white man or a white boy. You know, it could even be that a teacher doing those kinds of things it seems, you know, whether or not it actually is the best way of fighting this ideology, I can certainly see the rationale for it as a way of banning a certain kind of teacher behavior that is, you know, belligerent and harmful to students. Right. Like if the races were reversed, you wouldn't, I wouldn't want a teacher telling black kids that they're less than because they're black. Of course, you wouldn't even need to legislate that because probably in this day and age, just the culture would come down on them so hard and people would feel no compunction filming their teacher and putting it on. You know. But in a context where a rogue teacher is doing something like that to white kids and the parents don't want this to become their life, don't want to become known on social media for this, it seems helpful to have laws that proscribe that kind of behavior. But then mixed in with that is a ban On Certain Texts, 1619 Project A Ban on certain ideas such as that the US is systemically racist. Again, something I disagree with. So I guess there's one conversation about the laws, the so called anti CRT laws as they're written in various states. And then there's another conversation about the space of possible laws or actions that could make sense.
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A
Right.
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B
And I think the laws as they're written have serious flaws and some that I've, I think just mentioned. But the. I, I'm not actually sure that I'm against a well written law here. So like, like, is it, is it actually true that anything that could be written would either be too vague, so vague that it would prohibit a lot of good kinds of or healthy kinds of speech, or too narrow that it wouldn't do anything?
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A
I think in many respects that is true. I think the thing to keep in mind from my standpoint, is the milieu that the push to pass these laws is coming out of and the reality that what is being generated here is a hodgepodge of things, some of which are unconstitutional, many of which are in fact constitutional. Because as we acknowledge in the New York Times piece, and as I've said on numerous occasions, the state has broad authority in the domain of K through 12 education. It is legal to pass these laws in many instances. That isn't the question from my standpoint. There are things that I do think are already prohibited by federal civil rights law. It is, I think, and we already have challenges that are pending in the courts and that are working their way through different institutions with respect to segregating students by race. It is already, for example, prohibited to suggest that people are inferior on account of their race. We have certainly seen cases where white people have won discrimination suits, federal discrimination suits, and we've got legions of institutions that exist explicitly for the purpose of helping parents, families file these lawsuits and get them adjudicated. And we have precedent because of the success of organizations like FIRE in terms of pursuing reform and change socially through the courts in order to get remedies for people like, we've actually seen that work. So I think those are all. It's prudent to think about the specific ways that these laws are being enacted. And it's also prudent to think about the societal consequence and the consequence for a political movement that begins to focus on these laws, these bans and restrictions, as the principal vehicle for pushing back against what is a broadly occurring cultural phenomenon where people are embracing race essentialism all over the place and imagining that merely by passing these laws, they can arrest race, this cultural trend. And quite frankly, not only is that not true, I worry that people will feel a sense of relief after having passed these laws. I worry that places like Texas, for example, which is the reddest of the red states. And it's important to acknowledge that in most states in the country, it would be impossible to pass these laws because, generally speaking, you need a red legislature and probably red governor in order to really get these things through. Despite the unpopularity of critical race theory, these laws are not broadly popular either. So that's one impractical dimension of this. But you also have places like Texas where in recent months they've passed a critical race theory ban, and it's not obvious how much of a problem that is. In Texas, they've also passed some sweeping restrictions on abortion that are pretty controversial and in my estimation, are probably unlikely to stand. And the one thing that they don't have is say, like school choice reform, that is statewide, that actually gives parents meaningful authority to make decisions about where tax dollars are being directed. And I think that latter thing, that school choice thing, is actually a genuinely meaningful stick, a cudgel that parents can use to direct resources and support and to make a choice for themselves when they find that they're encountering things in their local school system that just are not working for them. And it might be critical race theory, it might also be that the schools are just not very good where they are, and they want to be able to go to a charter school or go to a private school, or just choose another school in a different district. I think it's very revealing that at a time when so many schools are profoundly underserving students, the conversation that we're having isn't about how to make schools better overall, how to make certain that teachers unions and school boards are focused on delivering high quality results to students. It's a particular narrow kind of culture war issue and an argument that almost seems to implicitly suggest that the status quo was fine before this all became a thing. And I think that's very much not the case. And again, I'd say that the New York Times editorial, properly understood and read, if you just read the introduction and concluding paragraphs, is not about fundamentally just free speech in schools. It is about a call to action, an actual assertion that what we need is a better approach to education, one that is in line with our values as a free society and one that respects the dignity of individual students and understands that they're being entrusted with the stewardship of our society eventually, and we ought to act accordingly. We ought to give them the education that they deserve. And I think a lot of the very unfortunate, quite frankly, personal feuding that's erupted out of this, I think the Very narrow conversation about critical race theory. You're either for bands or you're for critical race theory. I think it's absurd. I think it's a false dichotomy and it evades a lot of the really important challenges that have been brought up with respect to how likely these bills are to succeed and with respect to the numerous alternatives to banning ideas or trying to abandon ideas that are on offer for people who are genuinely concerned about this stuff.
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B
Yeah. So one thing I've thought about relevant to this is the. In this case, it's the constitutional separation of church and state, which the court has multiple times ruled that you can't teach creationism as science, although you can teach it in other contexts. And I imagine, what if the Constitution just didn't have that clause and we had to reinvent it as state law? I think it would probably be easier because in the context of biology, it's easier to. I would imagine it's easier to write laws banning specific concepts just because history and sociology are messy and less precise than biology and physics. It would probably be even easier because it's as hard a science as it gets.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But nevertheless, I'm trying to look at this from the perspective of someone who understands that these laws are not going to win the culture war, but also feels that they actually can't do very much to help win the culture war because they have the sort of typical level of bravery, which is to say not that much. They don't particularly want to become, you know, they don't. They're not like me and you. They don't have platforms and sort of don't want to be known for spearheading a criticism of, even a well considered criticism of critical race theory. And they understand that the laws are not, you know, may not do all that much, may have only a small effect, but nevertheless support well written laws with the intent of keeping indoctrination out. Of keeping a specific kind of indoctrination out of. Out of public schools. In the same way that I think I'm pretty happy that you can't teach intelligent design. Is there a more limited case? And your point about that this is a part of the culture is well taken. And it's a point that I made to Rufos.
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A
This is.
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B
You cannot legislate away a. What is essentially a war of ideas in the culture that's been percolating and, and for decades and exploding in recent years. Right. You can't. It just doesn't work like that. And I even made the analogy of, you know, even with religion and atheism, I think, I wonder if you would agree with this that during the era of the, the new Atheists and the explosion, during really the Bush and early Obama years, the explosion of online material and debates with Hitch and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins and all the bestselling books, what actually did more to push the culture towards secularism broadly? Probably all of that stuff and the millions of views that people just silently changing their mind, watching content on YouTube, having conversations with their friends, in addition to the south park and Family Guy, all of these shows that are kind of irreverent towards religion, all of that stuff in the culture, I would argue had a broader impact than the fact that you didn't get indoctrinated in public school. Nonetheless, can't you make an argument that even though it's not going to win the culture war on this particular issue, like a well written version of it, I'm not going to be against a narrow plan B just because it wouldn't make a good plan A. We can also have a conversation about how to in general approve American education and all of the totally very valuable and important, more important things that you were just talking about.
- [37:13]
A
Right? Right, yeah. This is the challenge. I mean, there's in an ideal world, absolutely, this narrow specific provision where you just pass essentially a state law that outlaws say, the practice of splitting children up by race in their classrooms, which I think again kind of mirrors the federal statute. But that's fine. You focus on that. Is it actually possible to have this broader focus on the universe of other things that are also important, on the more fundamental, in my estimation, goal of improving the quality of education and recentering the individual in that process and making certain that we're focusing on developing and implementing curriculums and pedagogies that are consistent with our values and ideals. Is it actually likely that we're going to do both of those things? I don't know that it's likely. It might be possible, but at the moment what's happening is there is a culture war and it is a culture war that in some cases you have people who describe themselves as conservatives talking about themselves, you know, defending particular values, but talking about this in like very like apocalyptic terms and placing at the center of their efforts this sensibility that we have to fight fire with fire. I saw something yesterday that was making the rounds with a teacher in Iowa who was explaining that she has created a circumstance where she understands that the law prohibits her from teaching certain concepts but one thing she'll do with her students, and I'm not sure what age they are, is sort of present to them this law that is on the books now and review it with them and make clear to them that, you know, she can't talk about these things. But, you know, the students themselves are allowed to ask questions, and they do ask questions, and they do have conversations about this. And the response to this was, you know, outrage. She's circumventing the law. She is doing something that is completely unacceptable. But it seems to me that there's something very obviously acceptable here, like students in a public school setting, like, having a conversation about the law that exists in their state and asking questions about that law and having a discussion. The question becomes, like, how to do that in a way that is productive and that is consistent with our values, where there is some complexity and sophistication to that conversation. Not so much that there's equal time for all ideas, but that kids have the ability to turn those ideas over and engage with them in a meaningful way. That has to be the goal. But instead, the disposition now from some people who have advocated for these bans is this teacher needs to be investigated, and if she's found in violation of the law, terminated. It's the uncertainty and hostility that is inculcated into the system by bans as a methodology for trying to improve and safeguard kids in this way, broadly speaking, that's the principal instrument here that I think is actually a huge part of the problem. And at a time when our political disagreements and sort of sensitivities are very, very heightened and at a serious peak, I think it's worthwhile to have people that are insisting that perhaps at the margins, that we try harder to do the very difficult work. And I don't pretend that it's easy, but the difficult work of forging new curriculums that actually meet our goals, of forging avenues for us to have serious conversations about these real issues that aren't going away, as opposed to imagining that we can bludgeon our opponents to death, that we can beat them out of the system, that we can just close them out altogether, and that we can purify the temple that is. I mean, there's just a zealotry and kind of a reactionary. A reactionary nature to that. That is anathema to traditional conservative values, which were all about a healthy skepticism of state power and depends instead on prohibitions to safeguard us. And I think the analogy to evolution in public schools and creationism in public schools is A good one. But it's worth remembering that those debates began not with people trying to prohibit creationism in public schools, but with people trying to outlaw evolution in public schools. And it's worth keeping in mind that that's where this began. And the reason that we don't do this is because evolution is a fundamental scientific concept that has particular implications for a broad cross section of the sciences. Critical race theory, on the other hand, is, is a bizarre kind of daunting patchwork of ideas. It's a spectrum of things and not any one thing. And prohibiting it is very daunting for that reason and quite frankly, just cannot be done successfully in my estimation. And maybe closing point, it's funny, I've had conversations. The New York Times editorial does not take aim at anyone in particular. The New York Times editorial does not denigrate the concerns of parents who are finding themselves facing these really contentious issues in K through 12 settings. It acknowledges that these issues exist, and it lays out, I think, a meaningful game plan for trying to get things done here. And while we've been castigated in a number of ways, and it's been asserted that we've misrepresented the. The legislation and that's been inserted forcefully, I actually heard it was asserted here on this podcast. I think the reality is what we tried to do there. And I think my good friend David French, on a recent episode of the Fifth Column, which folks can go back and listen to in their entirety, and they should, if they're genuinely interested in what the other side of this conversation or argument is. David has acknowledged that the piece probably should have included particular phrase that made it clear that what we were talking about wasn't the specific letter of the law, but the actual implications of the law. That the reality is that even when you are saying that the law that parents or I'm sorry, that teachers should not be instructing students that they should feel shame as a consequence of their race, or that particular concepts shouldn't be introduced in the classroom setting that make them feel shame as a consequence of their race, the reality is that this should, as a function of the way the law is necessarily going to be interpreted and the way that parents will interact with it becomes a may or a could, because there are going to be differences of perspectives here. There's going to be uncertainty and ambiguity in the implementation and the execution and the prosecution of these cases.
- [44:22]
B
Yeah, I'm curious about that, because that was the main source of confusion for me. Reading the op ed and then reading the law is the difference between you can't teach something that could lead, say, a white kid to feel guilty because he's white, and saying that you can't teach that white children should feel guilty.
- [44:45]
A
Right?
- [44:46]
B
Like that's the difference. From reading the op ed, I understood that the law said the first thing, and from reading the law, I understood that the law said the second thing. And the difference between those seemed cleaner to me than I think it does to you in French, because maybe I'm.
- [45:05]
A
More to David because I'm not a lawyer, right?
- [45:08]
B
But to me, and I'm not a lawyer either, and I know he's dealing with the practical consequences of vaguely written laws, which is at some level why lawyers exist and get paid so much, is because there is a constant fight over anything where there's any sort of wiggle room or interpretation. And I've signed enough contracts to understand just how persnickety you should be with language. And maybe that's really the best case against that kind of law or that kind of wording. But it does seem to me that there's like just teaching the facts of slavery is enough to make a lot of white people feel guilty. For instance, teaching the facts of the Holocaust is enough to make a lot of Germans feel guilty. Just the neutral, basic bullet point facts of it. But actually the way it was phrased, I really understood from that op ed that anything that could lead to that was being banned, it could lead to feelings of guilt.
- [46:20]
A
Right. And I'd say that that's probably a bit of not even so much overstatement, but a lack of clarity on our part. And the reality, I think, is that when you have four people trying to write something together, and in some cases like very different backgrounds and levels of expertise, the kind of precision of language around that was something that I don't even know that we had a lengthy conversation about it. I think we had a corporately and understanding that what we're talking about here are the implications of the law as they're put into place. And quite frankly, I was probably more concerned with the framing of the argument, like the presentation of two laws. I think we only get into two specific laws, but in the same piece we say these laws are meaningfully different from one another and in general are probably legal. The fundamental thing that the piece was about wasn't those laws wasn't even the kind of individual inadequacy of any one of those laws. It was more on what kind of educational system do we want to have. And to the extent that's the conversation we're having. It's frustrating to me that the principal issue that's been disputed here is whether or not we misrepresented the law. I think that is going to be a function of what actually ends up happening as things play out. And I think as they have played out with teachers finding themselves under investigation or even fired for doing things as. And it's hard to say what happens in a lot of these cases. Cause it's a local school board.
- [47:57]
B
That is what I blame, that I wanted to talk about. So I'm fascinated by this case of the teacher. I want to talk about what it would look like for things to go right, because I totally agree. We want teachers to feel like they are allowed and to even want to say words like white supremacy, systemic racism. We want responsible teachers to raise these topics with kids young enough that they are cognitively able to understand them. I actually don't. I haven't thought about what age that would be.
- [48:34]
A
Right.
- [48:34]
B
But we want teachers to raise this and we want kids to think about them. And to the extent that any part of the laws are making teachers feel they can't do that, then I'm. I'm very much against that. But it's interesting because the laws. And this again gets back to the problem of vagueness in legal language. The laws, as I understand them, may not be the laws as every teacher understands them. This teacher in Iowa understood the language of her law to mean that she could not raise the concept of systemic racism, but she could present the law to her class. And if a curious student says, oh, what's systemic racism? Is America systemically racist? Then she was allowed to give an answer to just like answer to her heart's content in a way where she's saying things sort of as truth is that the situation that was.
- [49:37]
A
That's just it. Even in the video, it isn't clear that her goal. It's clear. It seems rather clear to me, given the context, that she believes that, you know, systemic racism is a serious problem and that it's not just that kids need to be exposed to the idea. They need to understand why it's a serious problem. But even in the way she explained it in the video, she seems to suggest that kids would have a discussion about this.
- [49:59]
B
Right.
- [50:00]
A
And that is precisely what I want. You know, I want it to be a nuanced discussion. I can't be there to sort of shepherd all of these things. But I think your point is well taken. You know, what is a good. What does a good circumstance look like probably teachers and parents getting together and working through these kind of difficult, touchy circumstances, like at the local level, is it really helpful for there to be kind of this blunt instrument of statewide law that doesn't respect the conditions on the ground in a particular school district, that in a particular school and the relationship between parents and a particular teacher? Or is it possible that navigating these things kind of one to one in some respects, and having a real discourse between parents and teachers about kind of what's being taught in class and how it's being taught, where teachers, parents, can feel like they can raise their voice about these things and be heard, is that not a better way to proceed here? And the reality is that public education, it's hard. It's something that is very difficult to get right. And I would say that across most of the country, we don't get it right in profound respects and systematically don't get it right. But to the extent there's a good version of it, I think it demands the engagement of parents in that way, and it demands a lot of local autonomy and control and probably demands that every single local issue between a teacher and a school board and parents doesn't become the next front in a national culture war where we just don't actually have the facts and can't meaningfully adjudicate whether or not what happened here is right or wrong. And I say that, and I would say precisely the same thing about police involved shootings. I don't think having the national conversation about police involved shootings in the context of, say, Jacob Blake's shooting is healthy. I think it necessarily distorts the conversations in ways that are deeply unserious. It makes people kind of rally to their sides and interpret things in a very motivated way. And as a result, we just end up not making progress. You know, we're minting new saints or minting new demons for conservatives to hate. And in many instances, we just. The critical issue of how should policing work in America, what does accountability look like for policing? And what's the best way to build trust between communities and law enforcement. That's a hard conversation. It demands nuance. It demands serious attention. And in much the same way, I don't think education is any easier. I think it's harder. We have a long track record of getting it wrong, and it's just gonna demand a kind of rigorousness and seriousness that a hot culture war, us versus them. We'll use power and destroy them and bludgeon them and ensure that they can't have their evil ideas win. I don't think that that's a serious approach to these things either. And I'm doing this hard work. People like Chloe Valdari are doing this hard work. A friend of ours developing this curriculum. I've been consulting with a Montessori school network and trying to have conversations about how you do this, how you develop pedagogy that respects the individual identity of students and navigates these difficult, complicated questions. And I think that's what we have to do, in addition to finding the worst versions of this stuff and prosecuting it. If someone is doing things to your child, and it's not just white kids, I bristle at the notion that someone will tell my daughter that she's disadvantaged as a consequence of her appearance. It's obscene that the entirety of her society, of the country that she's a citizen of, is arrayed against her and fundamentally racist in a way that's immutable and inescapable. It makes me angry, viscerally angry, to imagine anyone trying to do that. I think that's.
- [54:02]
B
So what would you do if your daughter came home from school and just got the full package, that whole message? What would you do at a public school?
- [54:15]
A
Assuming I would do what my mom did. And I suspect at some point your parents probably had to do something like this, too, despite the fact that you were almost certainly a brilliant student who never did anything wrong. You go to the school and you have a conversation with the school, you get involved, you raise hell, you ensure that you get answers about what happened, what transpired, and how to make this better. The bottom line is there are no shortcuts. And I get it. I'm in the unenviable position of saying that the person who is promising you to change the world by banning the bad thing is giving you a promise that they can't actually fulfill. And my alternative is the hard, difficult work of getting your hands dirty and being thoroughly engaged and being brave enough to defend your values in your school board meetings and to your teachers and inculcating those values in your children so that when they go to school and when they encounter a teacher or a fellow student who has particular ideas, they have the ability to navigate those things and to cultivate beliefs of their own. And hopefully, I hope that my daughter will buy my arguments about the centrality of the individual. But to the extent that she doesn't, I desperately hope that she has a serious argument for why she disagrees with Daddy and is prepared to level one and not merely buy into Some kind of fundamentalist belief that she can't substantiate.
- [55:42]
B
I'm just now remembering that when my sister was in school, she had a history teacher. I think it was maybe late middle school or early high school. And they were talking about slavery. And her teacher was white. And I can't remember what she said, but he kind of got angry and he said something like, well, if not for my ancestors, then your ancestors would still be picking cotton. She said he went on a rant, sort of in this way of asking her to feel gratitude almost for him. And I'm imagining that sort of scenario. And what my parents did is they did exactly what you just described. They just went in, raised hell, asked for boundaries that were agreed to. And, you know, this teacher, you know, probably had some other problems as well. It's not the first complaint, you know, it rarely is. But I do. I do understand that, why a parent might be hesitant to do that if they're white and their kid is white. And let's say the teacher's black. And listen, nine times out of 10, it's probably not a problem. You're not going to end up on Twitter or in a news article. And you should understand that the fears of being canceled are exaggerated in. And I've talked about this before on this show, how prominent examples of people that get canceled, that get circulated in the news. The effect of that is to create the impression that it happens with a much higher rate than it actually does.
- [57:37]
A
Right.
- [57:38]
B
And that's how. Yeah, that's actually how it works. That's the purpose of it. Just like the. You know, it's like hanging. Like the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean, I always say, when they hang, like three pirates for all to see. The point of that isn't that we're gonna catch you. We're probably not. The point is. So you see it every time and fear that we're going to catch you because it's actually a substitute for widespread enforcement. So I would tell.
- [58:03]
A
We should tell those success stories, too.
- [58:06]
B
Absolutely.
- [58:06]
A
It's a pity that they don't get as much traction. The Coinbase story, the Shopify story, the Chick Fil A story like, these are all companies that still exist and are thriving despite the fact they've had to deal with some of these cultural headwinds within their institutions. And, yeah, bravery and courage are important, and calling attention to people who are doing bad things systematically is really important, too. Should castigate those people. Should, again, pursue lawsuits where it's appropriate. But we should also be prepared to do the hard work, the heavy lifting of getting involved and making a difference at our local level, because it's what's necessary here. If these values matter to you, if they really matter to you, then you have an obligation, in my estimation, to stand up for them and confidently proclaim them and defend them. And I think one problem now is folks are anti woke or anti racist and they don't know what they're in favor of. They do not know how to articulate the affirmative values that they have. And that is, I think, a very dangerous circumstance to find yourself in.
- [59:15]
B
All right, so I guess we can. We can leave this topic for now. Another, another topic, actually, I wanted to get your commentary on, related to another recent guest that I've had is gun control. I know this is something that you have thoughts on. I'm not even sure we've actually ever talked about this. Never, never am I outing you as a gun owner. Do you talk about that ever?
- [59:45]
A
I talk about it, yes.
- [59:46]
B
You do talk about it.
- [59:47]
A
Okay. And I've talked about it. I've talked about it in very. In fact, I can remember during the early days of the pandemic, when I retreated to Virginia, there is an episode of the Fifth Column where I'm like, cocking my gun into the microphone for comedic effect, but also because you should know, I got it on me. I want you to know. I want you to know if you show up to try and raid my fridge, my food stuffs. Yeah, we got those things. So, yeah. No, I'm a proud proponent of the Second Amendment. And I do believe in the right to bear arms. And I defend that principle. I'm not the biggest gun nut in the world. I don't have an AR15 yet, but I would buy one and I would defend the right of an individual to own one. And I appreciate all that comes with that, both for good and for ill. Yeah.
- [60:38]
B
So do you feel that it makes.
- [60:41]
A
You safer, that gun ownership makes you safer in general? Yeah, I think so, yes. But it's a question of kind of what kind of threats we're trying to safeguard ourselves against. In that context, there's the state having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, but does that mean that they should also have a monopoly on the legitimate ownership of firearms? And to the extent that's true, what are the limitations there? Should an individual be able to have a nuclear reactor or a nuclear weapon or a tank or an AR15 or a handgun? And there are, I think, practical conversations to be had about a lot of that. And then there's also just the reality that we find ourselves in. Whereas we live in a country where there are lots and lots of guns in circulation and there's a culture associated with firearms in this country and a history associated with how we think about guns and our rights as individuals. And it is very hard for me to imagine a circumstance where anyone were to sort of abolish the Second Amendment, get rid of the surplus of guns that are actually out there in the world as a practical limitation on what we might do from here, and actually achieve a world where people are by and large much safer. In many places, gun ownership is already illegal and criminals find ways to get guns. And the gun laws, the prohibitions on gun ownership serve to disempower law abiding citizens and kind of give like this unilateral ability to use the threat of violence to criminals. And I think that that's probably not a circumstance that is by and large beneficial.
- [62:32]
B
Yeah. So I had David Hogg on maybe two months ago or so, and who's an activist, gun violence activist, and first became known as being one of the survivors of the Parkland shooting. And we talked about all of these things, and this is obviously a huge flashpoint in the culture. But one point I made is exactly the point you just made, which is just it's impossible in America to roll back the clock. We have a unique circumstance in this country that makes solutions in other countries unworkable. Here, for instance, the Australian gun buyback program seem to do pretty good things there, although it's unclear whether the decline in mass shootings was a direct result of that policy or not. There's papers on each side of that subject. But the idea that a mass gun buyback could work in America because it worked in Australia, doesn't seem to follow. There just are different circumstances with how many guns we have on the ground. And just like the network of black market gun sales that's been entrenched forever. Yeah, but at the same time, possibility.
- [63:56]
A
Of printing firearms being an increasingly real possibility.
- [64:01]
B
Yeah, but at the same time, there are some common sense gun control measures that I think most sensible people would agree with. And of course, we have this perennial problem of terrifying lone wolf mass shootings. And then we have this separate problem of just the daily hum of gun violence in high crime neighborhoods. And the rest of the world looks on at what goes on in America with astonishment and horror and thinks, what the hell is going on over there? Why don't they have their shit together? And on the one hand, I think we do have a gun culture or a big segment of the culture that is irrationally resistant to any common sense gun legislation. On the other hand, I think we have a set of challenges in this country that our peer countries don't actually face and so shouldn't congratulate themselves on their very low levels of, you know, gun violence. And, you know, a tiny country where everyone speaks the same language and looks the same and has never even tried to welcome immigrants or diversity, you know, kept their colonies abroad and then didn't let any people of different races in small, self contained, and, you know, never had a massive network of black market guns. Okay, give me that challenge any day and tell me that you're doing pretty good with gun violence and so forth, but don't pretend that's analogous to what America partly through policy and partly just through the circumstances of how we've evolved as a country. Our challenge is just totally different. But what are the things you are thinking in your head when there is a mass shooting and it's on the news? What are the ideas that Camille thinks about that need to be promoted or underrated in the culture, in the conversation?
- [66:22]
A
Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's a great question and I agree with much of your setup there. And interestingly, the reality is that when it comes to, like, gun crime, the majority of gun crime, it's between people who know one another, have some relationship with one another, and generally kind of look like one another. So even, like, unique challenges that are created by having such a diversity of people here in the country aren't really necessarily huge elements of the problem when it comes to the actual manifestation of gun crime in the country.
- [66:53]
B
Oh, right, yeah. Well, I should have been more precise there. Partly what I was referring to is police and citizen interactions.
- [66:59]
A
Right, right.
- [67:00]
B
And the paranoia on the part of citizens getting an arrest and vice versa.
- [67:07]
A
Yeah, and I think that is a very salient point. But with respect to kind of mass shootings, one of the things that really stands out to me, and I've talked about this a little bit on the podcast before, and at some point I'll probably have more to say about this because this is. This is something that is very personal for me as well, is that mental health is not something that we have very robust conversation about in this country. And oftentimes in the aftermath of a shooting, we talk about everything but that. We'll talk extensively about gun laws and prohibitions and in various instances are talking about prohibitions that probably wouldn't have prevented the particular crime from Happening, or we'll talk about, actually, the gentleman in Atlanta who recently had that mass shooting last year. Like, we talked about anti Asian bias as, like, the motivating factor for his crimes. And it was the only thing that we talked about in some respects, despite the fact that it's turned out that that really wasn't a motivating factor for him at all. And some people insisted that was the case without even having any evidence. But what is clear is that there was some severe mental anguish there, and there were some early warning signs. And there is probably a conversation to have about the relationship that he had with his church and the number of resources that are available to family members who are genuinely concerned about someone who may do something violent. And I think one of the things I'd really like to see us do in general is have a public conversation and discourse that acknowledges the challenges for families who have a family member who they fear might be a danger to themselves, might be a danger to others, and the complex range of emotions that individuals who find themselves in that circumstance have to deal with. I think what's really necessary, perhaps above all else, is an appreciation for the difficult circumstances like families find themselves in when a member of their family, whether it's in their immediate family or extended family, is potentially a danger to themselves or others. And the difficult range of emotions that you go through, the sense of guilt, the sense of disloyalty, the sense that you may be overreacting, these are profoundly difficult things for people to deal with. And we have to acknowledge that one of the places where we actually have an opportunity to interrupt a potentially horrendous situation where there could be a mass shooting is at that level. And encouraging families to have, like, healthy dialogues with one another and making certain that there are resources for people to gain help and to access mental health services, is something that I think is really important and that I would love to see us talk more about. I think it could help alleviate the risk of mass shootings in school settings, but in a number of other contexts as well. And it would also address what is another fundamental source of violence in our society, which is just domestic violence broadly. We just need to be talking about these things more and do it in a more empathetic way, as opposed to a binary political gun bans or no gun bans. And I think that's something that a lot of Americans can agree on, that could but doesn't necessarily have a lot of the same baggage around, say, restrictions on the kind of handgun you can have or restrictions on the kind of ammunition you can have or restrictions that require keeping lists of who can do things and who can't do things. But it has the real, I think, potential to have a meaningful impact on the likelihood of these things happening.
- [70:51]
B
I'm seeing the common thread in our conversation here is against brute force, national or state bans of things and in favor of localized face to face communication and problem solving at the source between people. That seems to be a common thread I'm seeing in your thinking, is that right?
- [71:20]
A
I'd say so. I out myself as a libertarian and an individualist and someone who believes that on average, like we tend to get better outcomes when we're making decisions and we actually have the people who have local knowledge making those decisions. And that oftentimes we get led astray or make errors when we try to make things too top down. And in the current moment we find ourselves in, I think we also have a proclivity to make things, you know, just horrible things get lost to politics. It becomes completely us versus them and it becomes all about the tribal warfare. And the fact that we actually want solutions is lost to all of us. The fact that what we all want at bottom is a society where people have the capacity to meet their full potential and to have something better for their children than they've had themselves. And it's rather obvious to me that we're at a moment where we need more people calling for that, where we need more people reaching across like partisan divides and having serious, sober conversations about things. And I will always, always, always be skeptical of hysteria and inclined towards people who are having constructive conversations and looking for nuance and looking for thoughtful handholds and getting my hands dirty, trying to fix problems at the local level and to explore solutions first as opposed to heaping scorn on the horrible bad people. Because I think that it's a better way to do things. I think it's more productive, I think it's healthier and it makes me feel better. I'm exhausted by the culture war, as Coleman, to tell you the honest I'm exhausted by most of these conversations about race. I, I desperately want us to get beyond this sad, rather kind of pathetic epoch that we find ourselves in where we're constantly virtue signaling, where people are sort of cowardly, cowardly being cowardly and not speaking up for and advocating for their values and believing all of the most kind of pernicious and excessively hysterical things. Just we're better than this. I think we can be. I have to believe that.
- [73:42]
B
So, yeah, I believe it, too, and it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I have to let you go, but I think that's a great sentiment to end the podcast on, and I would love to have you back again. And yeah, it's been. It's been great to chat as usual.
- [73:59]
A
Always good to talk with you, brother. All right.
- [74:01]
B
Be well later. If you appreciate the work I do, the best ways to support me are to subscribe directly through my website, ColemanHughes.org and to subscribe to my YouTube channel so you'll never miss my new content. As always, thanks for your support.