Charlie Kirk (2:45)

So let's get specific. A couple weeks ago or maybe a week and a half ago, you came out with the Arizona babies are racist story. Arizona Department of Education. Walk us through that one.

Interviewer/Host (2:57)

Yeah.

Christopher Rufo (2:57)

The Arizona Department of Education put out a equity toolkit to teachers and school administrators, including a lot of outrageous stuff. But I think the one that was most disturbing and troubling was they put out this graphic, this resource, that suggested that babies show the first signs of racism by three months old, and by the age of four or five, babies become full blown racists who have absorbed their racist culture. And they actually made one even distinction there. That was kind of an extraordinary thing. They said, well, actually, babies of color at 4 and 5 years old are not racist. Only the white babies at 4 and 5 years old are racist. And Charlie, this is amazing. Not only because it's absurd. We've seen so many absurd things the last few years, but because Arizona has a Republican governor and a Republican state legislature. And even with political power being in the hands of conservatives who I think would denounce this, it still makes its way into the bureaucracy.

Charlie Kirk (3:53)

So let's take a step back. I should have asked you this first. And we talk about this quite a lot in our program, but we have listeners that come in and out, and this episode is gonna do very well. What is critical race theory? Where is it from? Where did it originate? We've talked about Jacques Derrida, we've talked about Marcuse, we've talked about kind of the postmodern ideas that have spread. But let's just get as basic as we can. What is critical theory? And then why is it all of a sudden so unbelievably popular?

Christopher Rufo (4:22)

Yeah, Critical race theory takes those ideas that you're talking about from Marcuse and others from the 1960s and updates them in the 1990s. It first started at law schools as critical legal theory, then became critical race theory as it applied to other disciplines. But the basic idea is that all human interactions and societies and social power can be reduced to racial conflict. So they take the old Marxist idea that the world can be divided into oppressor and oppressed based on social class. They update it and say, well, the world can be divided into oppressor and oppressed, but really it's on the basis of race. And the United States preaches the values of equality and freedom, but if you deconstruct those institutions and look under the surface of things like the Constitution, the Declaration, even the Civil Rights act, the United States is a fundamentally racist country that maintains a white supremacist hierarchy. And critical race theorists basically say, we're the people that are uncovering the real truth about racial power in the United States. And we're offering this solution on how to turn kind of critical consciousness, turn on critical consciousness among people, academics, even students, and then subvert that system of kind of racist authority in the United States.

Charlie Kirk (5:36)

So there's a lot there I want to unpack. And so before I ask you a question, let me play devil's advocate. So, Christopher, let's say that I'm a campus activist with no wisdom, of course, and I'm asking you and screaming at you saying, basically, don't you see how racist America is? Whites do better than blacks. We are founded on colonialism. We are founded on the oppression of black people and black spot black bodies. And racism never went away. It just manifested itself differently. What is the factual, reasonable response to that?

Christopher Rufo (6:05)

Well, I think the most important thing is to separate the premise from the conclusion. And this is really important when you think about critical race theory, because they always make their argument on historical injustice, which is a fact. I mean, there was historical injustice in every society in the world, including the United States, obviously. But what you have to say is, look, I acknowledge historical injustice. I acknowledge the existence of racism in present day United States. But your conclusions that you're drawing from critical race theory, that all forms of racial disparity are de facto forms of racism, the idea that every institution in the United States is plagued in the current day with systemic racism, and that every kind of narrative in the media, like the death of George Floyd, for example, is indicative of massive patterns of society. And you can say, I accept the premise, but I reject your conclusion. So what you don't want to do is let them bully you by saying, well, if you don't accept our ideas, that means you support slavery. I mean, that's like the kind of most basic argument that you hear in popular culture. And you could say, no, I reject and acknowledge historical injustice, but I also reject the conclusions that you draw about society today.

Charlie Kirk (7:15)

Well, but it's also important to talk about how there's a lot more nuance to the idea that America was founded on slavery. Where Thomas Jefferson, in the original draft of the Declaration, denounced slavery and actually blamed King George for it, how he banned the import of new slaves into the US that we abolished slavery year after declaration, there's a lot more there than just this idea that the founding Fathers were flagged waiving slave owners.

Interviewer/Host (7:40)

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's exactly right. And the way I look at it is really this. It's very easy for us to look back at historical injustice and say, oh, those people were really bad. I would have done it totally differently. But I think that the real test is, let's say the Founding Fathers, did they leave the world better off? Did they move the entire planet and the entire history of the world towards freedom and equality or away from it? And any rational look at history would say actually they made a massive leap forward. And even, even Abraham Lincoln, who I think was the most anti racist president in American history, said that Jefferson created the kind of silver frame and we were going for that golden apple or kind of metaphor along those lines, and they moved the world forward. Were they perfect? No. Did they eliminate all injustice?

Christopher Rufo (8:27)

No. But I think that there's a good

Interviewer/Host (8:30)

argument to be made that the Founding Fathers and then Lincoln and then the civil rights movement in the 1960s all were part of this fundamental American story of moving the world towards freedom and towards equality. And we should celebrate progress, not just dismiss it as an illusion.

Charlie Kirk (8:46)

And it used to be an unquestioned truth that you could say in the American public school system, which is a question I want to talk to you about. Regression. Why does it feel as if we're actually moving backwards, that there are deliberate attempts now to make us resegregate ourselves to care more about skin color? Is it because we've actually reached a place where generally we have a meritocracy, where good choices, where good choices are rewarded and the people that desire to have power, they have no other strategy or tactic left to go back? Or is it something more? Is it something more complicated than that? Why does it feel as if now we're all of a sudden going backwards to how things once were?

Interviewer/Host (9:23)

There's a couple of reasons. I think one of them is that the left and is became deeply disillusioned with the civil rights movement. And you see this in the literature of the critical race theorists. They say civil rights guarantees a colorblind society, guarantees equal protection under the law, guarantees anti discrimination in the workplace and in college admissions, et cetera. But they haven't got the results that they had hoped for. And they become disillusioned, they become pessimistic, and they've reverted to a kind of older, more radical ideology. They said, well, the Great Society, for example, was Lyndon Johnson's program to eradicate poverty that didn't work either. So they're searching in their own intellectual history for even more radical solutions because they're very impatient with the pace of progress.

Christopher Rufo (10:06)

And they said, well, you know what?

Interviewer/Host (10:07)

The Martin Luther King vision of treating people equally, whatever their skin color, didn't work. So we need to go back and revive the kind of Malcolm X tradition, which is radical, which is the Angela Davis tradition, which is the Communist Party USA tradition that was discredited in the 1960s, but now we find is being resurrected in our left, left politics.

Charlie Kirk (10:30)

So let me again play devil's advocate for the sake of our listeners, something that the critical race theorists will commonly say is you, Christopher Ruffo, being a white Anglo Saxon Protestant male, I don't know if you are those things, but they generalize by definition. Let's just say Hugh, Charlie, Kirk, okay, I'm all of those things. I'm white, I'm Anglo Saxon, I'm Protestant, I'm a male. All those things. You are not even allowed to contribute thoughts to the conversation because of how you look. Don't you understand that? It's time for you to sit down and shut up and allow black people the opportunity to talk, to dominate, to have power. Why is this wrong?

Christopher Rufo (11:09)

Well, there's two things, you know, one is I think that if you look at history, I think that I subscribe

Interviewer/Host (11:16)

to the idea that we're all created equal and that we all should have a voice in the debate. It's very simple. I acknowledge you not as a white person or a black person or an Asian person, but as a human being and as an American. And we have a kind of a robust democracy that requires everyone to have a voice. But I also think that if you, if you ask them very seriously this question, okay, well, what about black voices like Coleman Hughes or John McWhorter or

Christopher Rufo (11:40)

Glen Lurie or others?

Interviewer/Host (11:41)

They say, well, those people are not what we mean. And I think that they use race in many cases, as a kind of weapon to silence people. But they actually aren't consistent about it because black conservative voices, like the great Thomas Sowell is not included, like Clarence Thomas is not included. So I think it's a hypocrisy that is used as a weapon and as a tool to silence people. And I just ignore it because it's like, I have my voice, you have your voice. We're all entitled to the freedom to speak, and people are entitled to listen or not.

Christopher Rufo (12:12)

That's also their freedom, and that's our system.

Interviewer/Host (12:15)

And I think that silencing people on the basis of race is just so out of control. And, you know, we're all, you know, all of us. I don't know your history and my history. You know, my great grandparents were feudal serfs. My grandfather dropped out of school in fifth grade. My father came to the United States as he lived in a one room shack with no running water, no electricity, came to the United States with nothing and built a life for himself. And I have privileges, of course, and I acknowledge them, but the idea that I have privilege just because of my skin color, it's maybe a little bit, yes, but it's much more complex than they would have you believe.

Charlie Kirk (12:48)

My history is different. I could trace the Kirks coming back to America in 1620. Our specific bloodline served in every American war, including the Revolutionary War and the Civil War on the Union side. And so we are on the right side of history. People would say, but you know what? That doesn't make me a better person. I get no sort of intergenerational, strange, paganistic, moral high ground because of something that my ancestors did in 1850 or 60. It doesn't make me a better person. I have to act on my own agency and my own character. Why does it feel like Christopher, and maybe this is an obvious question, and I mean this completely seriously, like we've all lost our minds. Why does it seem as if that the bearings of Aristotelian logic and reason and common sense, as if. Is it because that we've actually we gotten to a place where things were just so stable that we now are bored and we have to blow it up and reconsider our notions? Or is it that there is an intelligence behind the critical race theorist? Or is it so foolish, said by smart people that people believe it?

Christopher Rufo (13:50)

Yeah, I think it's a kind of contagious idea. And even though it's at odds with reality as most people live it, it's really kind of actually astonishing. Their success in taking these ideas from obscure academic journals in the 90s to now being the dominant ideology across essentially all major American institutions, especially the public institutions, is really to their credit. And I think part of it is that Americans are not really kind of capable of resisting this ideology because what they do is they construct it like a mousetrap. They basically say, if you don't agree with us, that is evidence of your fragility, evidence of your internalized white supremacy, evidence of your internalized racism. And then these kind of words are enormously powerful because I think most Americans are good people. They're not Racist. They want to do everything in their power to help others. And just the accusation has such power that it silences people who would otherwise disagree. And you see, therefore, that they've used this rhetoric as a battering ram into the institutions, and then once they gain a foothold, they really just take them over. And I think that this is a kind of mutation of the thought of the left that draws on and has sought out all of these weak points in American culture and has exploited them masterfully to the point where we have now large institutions that are repeating their slogans even though you know, that they don't believe in it. But they found. They found really no way to resist it, no way to voice opposition, no way to push back, even in institutions that have been kind of middle of the road, rational and logical places historically.

Charlie Kirk (15:34)

So I want to zero in on that. How is it that they've been so successful? You said they deserve credit for it. I'm stunned at how successful they have been at the lack of courage and the lack of clarity from our leaders, the willingness of our corporations to embrace this, the willingness of the Pentagon to embrace this. And I could attribute to a couple different things the lack of courage. But also, one of my guiding hypotheses on what's happening in America is basically the entire American political system is being driven of being called a racist. Basically, the number one reason someone votes Democrat is because they're afraid of being called the R word. How have they been so successful around such garbage ideas?

Christopher Rufo (16:16)

Well, it's power, right? It's an extraordinarily powerful language. And they've figured out the soft spots and they exploit them, as I said. And I think that if you look at kind of the intellectual, kind of intellectual framework of critical race theory, I think most people would read it and say, you know, this isn't great, but I think there's something else that's happening, is that the left has had really the same political goal and economic goal for many years, since the kind of 1840s, 1850s, and they shifted to this racial rhetoric because they found it much more successful, much more kind of salient within our society. If you just said, hey, we want to have the poor Americans seize control of the factories and produce buses for the great proletariat, people would look at you like you're nuts. But if you say, hey, this is a racial disparity that reflects systemic racism and you need to do it, it's a kind of emotional argument that actually hooks into many points in American culture. And I think the right has also needs to take some responsibility for this because you have conservatives since really the Reagan era who have fought on economic issues almost exclusively, and they've ceded control over our cultural institutions because they say, hey, we're going to get our tax cuts, we're going to get our deregulation. That's the kind of reason for our movement. We're good. And that's turned out to be a big mistake. And we're fighting at a huge deficit. And I think a lot of the people, especially in kind of the larger, more establishment conservative institutions, especially policymakers that are elected officials, are just absolutely bewildered by these fights. They don't know how to orient themselves. They want to ignore it. They're unwilling to get out there and take the heat. And therefore, we've ceded control of the culture. And when you see the cultural institutions that are weaponizing these ideas in universities, in teacher training schools, In K through 12 curricula, in, you know, in Hollywood, in the New York Times, they take the narrative and they're just absolutely bombarding people's senses and overwhelming them until they submit.

Charlie Kirk (18:28)

And so how then, do you believe is the best way to counter this? We've had James Lindsay on the program, Peter Boghossian. We've talked about a lot, the problem a lot. And I have not got a good answer yet. The only answer I have is courage and clarity. Those are the only two things. And I wrote this ridiculous piece. It's actually a phenomenal piece, but it's ridiculous in the sense of. From Barry Weiss. I don't know if you saw this thing or not in the City Journal. I said two hours. Yeah, I did two hours of radio on it. And I thought the title was not perfect based on just what it's really about, because it's really. It's a crisis of courage amongst America's parents. It's really the essence of the story, right? You have a bunch of overly very successful, somewhat entitled kids and successful parents in these communities in West Hollywood and New York that are anonymously complaining about how their kids are learning that they're racist, terrible. They're not learning US History, they're relearning physics, all this. And yet the essence is, well, I want my kid to go to Harvard. So I don't really. There's really not much I can do. And so it's kind of a social status thing, plus a lack of courage. So to go back to my question, what is the roadmap? You're in charge. You have resources at your disposal. What do you do? Like what, what, what are the specific things we need to do? Is it, is it a purely defensive strategy or a simultaneous defense and offensive strategy? People are looking for what to do.

Christopher Rufo (19:49)

Yeah, I think there's. I think courage is the key virtue. I think that's absolutely true. And I think there's three strategies or tactics that we can use to actually move the ball forward. First, I think investigative reporting is really important. I know that I've been putting out these stories and they just explode because people want the facts, they want the information. They need to understand what is the reality. Because the critical race theorists use a lot of very nice sounding words. Equity, diversity, inclusion. And if you stop there, it's really hard to resist. Well, those are all good things. Let's do it. But if you actually say, well, this is what happens in particular, this is the curriculum, this is what's happening in our institutions, you change the narrative from abstraction to concrete. You give people a place where they can fight back. Second, we need to file lawsuits. I'm working with a coalition now of attorneys and legal foundations. We filed three lawsuits on these things where a lot of these training programs, if they traffic in racial stereotypes, if they degrade people, demean people, stereotype people on the basis of race, if they tell people that they're collectively guilty because of their skin color, and then if they compel speech that violates people's conscience, that's a violation of the constitutional rights of people. It's also a violation of Title six and seven, depending on the institution of the Civil Rights act of 1964. I think we're going to win these cases eventually. We'll get them up to the Supreme Court and knock out a lot of these programs for American institutions. And then third, what needs to happen is that there needs to be a grassroots movement of parents and citizens and employees standing up in their local institutions. And they're going to have to be courageous enough to put their name out there. They're going to have to be courageous enough to fight through the smears, and they're going to have to have the tenacity to actually get things done. And I'll share one last thing with you that I think is a huge bright spot. There's one community in the United States of America that has successfully pushed back against institutional wokeness in a huge way that's totally underreported. It's the Chinese American community. They've pushed back in schools in the Bay Area, they've shut down these curricula, they've pushed back through ballot measures in Washington and California, eliminating some of these affirmative action programs that decimate Asian American admissions into colleges. And they are fearlessly fighting this fight. It's very hard to call them white supremacists because they're Chinese, but also they've lived through the Cultural Revolution in many cases in their home country of China. They see the same signs and signifiers today in our country and they're just absolutely, just unstoppable when they get organized.

Charlie Kirk (22:14)

I'm pleased to hear that. And I believe the Hispanic community is equally as able to have that sort of success against the critical race theorists because none of the studies or polls or political results most recently show that Latino or Hispanic communities have any sort of open mindedness or willingness towards critical race theory. It really is a strange coalition of upper middle class, spoiled brat white liberals in suburban communities and black voters. It's basically those two and it's mostly white. And I might say there's less of a grassroots bottom up black push for this than a top down white academic push for this. Would you agree?

Christopher Rufo (22:54)

Yeah, oh yeah, I would agree. I think it's a multiracial coalition of American elites. You know, I spent actually three years directing a documentary for PBS where I, I kind of lived and worked near a housing project in South Memphis. It's 100% black neighborhood people at the lowest level of the income scale. And I really got to understand their concerns and viewpoints and did a thousand interviews, talked to a lot of people. And what people in that community and communities like it again across all racial groups want has nothing to do with the ideas that the critical race theorists are proposing. I think in many cases it's a kind of, again, multiracial elite coalition in our institutions that is speaking on behalf of, let's say, black voters or people in the black community. But I think if you actually talk to people and say, hey, do you think X, Y and Z, do you agree or not? They would disagree. They say, no, that doesn't reflect my views, that doesn't reflect my values. So I think this idea that they're using vulnerable communities as kind of symbolic weapons, but I think it's, I would contest very strongly the idea that it truly is a kind of multiracial coalition or even a kind of multi class coalition at heart.

Charlie Kirk (24:07)

So I want to zero in on something you said that I get a lot of questions about and we have done entire episodes on this. But can you help explain in your own words the difference between equity and equality?

Christopher Rufo (24:20)

Equal. Yeah, Equity, inequality. Right. Those are like homonyms, right? Almost homonyms, so they sound the same. And that's exactly the technique. Because what they want to do is use a word that has a resonance that people will accept easily. Well, equity. Yeah, it's like equality, but better updated. But equity and equality are actually very different. Equality is the idea of the 14th Amendment that everyone is treated equally under the law. Equality is the idea on colorblindness that, you know, in admissions or hiring or promotions, you should be treated on the basis of your accomplishments, not the basis of your inborn characteristics. It's also the idea that was really finally fleshed out into law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It was the idea behind the civil rights movement. The kind of cliche of, you should be treated according to your character, not the color of your skin. That's equality. And you could see it from the very first beginning in the Declaration, where they put out this big new idea. They kind of ripped open world history by saying, we are founding a nation on the idea of equality. It was fought over and won with the blood of many Americans in the Civil War, and then was finally enshrined and codified into the statutory law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Equity is very different. Equity is that you're saying the people who believe in equity reject the idea of individual rights. They reject the idea of unlimited right to private property in many cases. Like Ibram Kendi rejects in some cases the right to free speech, basically saying that free speech, private property, individual rights, equal protection are all merely equality, but they produce disparate outcomes. So what we need to have is equity. We need to have a regime that is based not on equal protection, but on equal results. And if you look at the literature, what does it mean in practice? If you look at Cheryl Harris, a critical race theorist, a pioneering critical race theorist at Harvard and UCLA law schools in the 1990s, or Ibram Kendi interview he did in Politico. They say we should suspend private property rights and then redistribute on the basis of race. So basically seize land and wealth and power and redistribute it for equal group outcomes. South African model and South African model. And then Ibram Kendi said, we need a department of anti racist that can. Or anti racism that can invalidate, veto or nullify any law at any level of government that doesn't produce the results that we think are anti racist. And we need to have the power to control, to limit free speech, to limit federalism, so limit the ability of states and localities to determine laws and have a single source of bureaucrats that are unaccountable to voters or the executive. A fourth branch of government that can mandate outcomes based on the philosophy of equity. If you can't tell the difference between those two things, I really hope that you do the homework because it is a homonym that sounds the same but couldn't be more different.

Charlie Kirk (27:13)

So that was very helpful. Thank you. And a lot of our listeners need to hear that and re listen to it. So rewind it, everybody. If you didn't get that. There was more wisdom in those four minutes than the entire university at Yale, the whole university. There was more wisdom in those four minutes. I want to ask you about the definition of racism. We've talked about this on our program as well. The way I was raised, and I believe this is correct, is racism is if I discriminate against another person based on their skin color or have a prejudice against them, that is racism. An individual against another individual. Now, racism can collectivize itself, but it's very rare in today's America. Let me say, and it's almost widely rejected, the new definition of racism seems to be not that John might discriminate against Larry and that a white person can be racist against a black person or a black person against a white person. Instead, it seems they have carefully, quickly, and with a lot of people noticing, substituted the definition of racism to be a power struggle. Can you talk about how racism does not mean what people thinks it means?

Christopher Rufo (28:27)

Yeah. How we define words is incredibly important. And I think that they've sought to expand the definition of racism to cover everything. I mean, all the news stories are kind of funny, but it's true. It's like square dancing and logic and objectivity and comfort and showing up on time are all elements of white supremacist culture. So they're trying to basically extend the territory to cover anything that's convenient. But they reduce kind of imbalances of racial power as the fundamental dynamic, and they want to basically shift those hierarchies of power. That's what is at the kind of root of their analysis. But I think there's a more nuanced take that either. Some conservatives say there's no racism in the United States. We're post racism society. Some critical race theorists say, no, no, we're just as racist now as we were in 1812. But in the middle, there's something that I think is a nuanced take that is probably more accurate. We have had historical racism that's a Fact, I think we still have residual racism. Like I said, I spent three years on a Memphis housing project. The legacy of racism and the damage of policies, even kind of well meaning and well intentioned policies from the 1960s that were thought of as anti racist have done enormous damage to those communities. It has a lasting impact. It has a lasting legacy. It has a residual effect. I don't think that the people running the show today are racist or having racist policies. I think our laws, our kind of formal laws are not racist. They've actually been changed to reflect this sense of equality. So I think we have to be open hearted to say, you know what, I recognize that there is historical injustice. I recognize that there's residual effects. What can we do to come together as Americans to help people that are disadvantaged, of any racial background, especially those who have historically suffered injustice? That's a, I think, should be a universal position. But they're not saying that. They're actually saying we need to weaponize historical injustice to achieve a kind of far left and in some cases Marxist political agenda. Again, I reject that conclusion even if I accept some part of the premise.

Charlie Kirk (30:37)

So I would be remiss if I did not spend part of our time together talking about a phenomenal piece that you wrote, Revenge of the Gods. California's proposed ethnic studies curriculum urges students to chant the Aztec deity of human sacrifice. So some, I get up somewhat early and I start reading the news before our show. And when I'm a little bit groggy, I can't tell if some of my friends have sent me onion pieces or the Babylon bee pieces. And so when I read this morning that California was saying that children should. Let me make sure I get my terminology right, of the pagan gods chant to the God Tezcocked Kalapoca, or whatever it is, I'm sure you could pronounce it, I couldn't tell. And then I said, oh, wow, this is by Christopher Rufo. This, he doesn't do satire that I know of. Walk us through this, Christopher.

Christopher Rufo (31:29)

Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, right? So the new kind of euphemism for critical race theory in school curricula is called ethnic studies. Ethnic studies was a movement in the 1960s that was orchestrated by a group called the Third World Liberation Front with a major assist from the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area. They said we need to decolonize the curriculum. We need to have anti racist education. And now this kind of, what was once a radical idea has become codified into law in the state of California in The state of Oregon, pretty soon, in the state of Washington, in the state of Illinois, it's becoming a kind of part of the state sanctioned curriculum. And then they go through this process of designing the specifics. And that's what I'm looking at in this piece. I actually went through and read 600 pages of curriculum documents. I read the footnotes, I read the original sources. I had kind of did a deep dive on this stuff. And it, it's really kind of amazing. They're basically saying all those same things we've heard before. The United States is fundamentally racist. We need to organize education on the Marxist pedagogy of the oppressed to liberate students from patriarchy and white supremacy. Education should become, in essence, political activism. And in the appendix they had this amazing thing. They said, we need to also teach California public school students, 6 million kids in 10,000 schools, these chants to the Aztec gods that are actually rats. They're rhyming chants. And they say we need to worship these gods and ask them. Chant to them for the power to become warriors for social justice. Literally chanting to the Aztec God of human sacrifice and cannibalism. And cannibalism that actually led to the. Inspired the human sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of people in the Aztec society. Chant to them to be given the power for liberation, for decolonization, for. For social justice, for becoming warriors for social justice. And this is state sanctioned religion. You can't have Christian prayers in school. That's a kind of Supreme Court precedent. But they're going to have students of California chant to the Aztec God of human sacrifice. It's something that like, I kind of, you know, I had my assistant, I had my editor at City Journal, I was like, guys, read this again and again and again. Make sure I'm getting this right. Because it's so crazy, it almost is impossible, but it's actually quite real. And the whole curriculum, that's one kind of example, but the whole curriculum is designed around this ideology of decolonizing from white society, kind of rejecting things. And the author of the co chair of this program, the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum in California, in his supporting documentation that's referenced throughout the materials, even says, you know, the solution, among other things, is counter genocide against white Christians. It's like, oh, stop the presses here. Counter genocide is an extremely strong and extremely dangerous word. What the hell is going on? What is happening with our education that it's being hijacked by the most extreme political radicals and then being force fed to 6 million school children in California.

Charlie Kirk (34:33)

So I want to ask you the obvious question which a lot of people are asking. We already did the what can you do about it? And I thought your answers were great, great. And if anyone listening right now is being actively discriminated against based on the skin color, especially in a school system and you're white, you're black, you're Hispanic, whatever, get involved in the law fair, please. It's what the left does so well. And we need to get involved in lawfare. And I'm not even trying to overly politicize this conversation because I'm going to. A lot of people send this to people in the middle and it's not even right versus left thing. This is just basically civilization and chaos. It's really that simple. But here's the question I have. It says here in your own piece that children are going to be chanting pancha be, Pancha be. Or to the God of Zipe, totec. All this stuff. They want counter genocide. What is their motivation here? Why are they doing this? Christopher, People are. This is the one thing that our ba. This is actually what stops a lot of people from action because they go to a default position of good intentions. They say, oh well, it can't be as bad as Christopher is saying it. I'm sure it might be there, we'll get it ironed out. But they're probably mean. Well, why are they doing this?

Interviewer/Host (35:43)

Well, I think, you know, the person who developed the curriculum, the chant is a kind of very far left activist.

Christopher Rufo (35:53)

And they even called it like in

Interviewer/Host (35:55)

some of the attached literature they said it's a rasa struggle, raza, the Spanish word for race. And I mean they're saying it in their books, in their literature. This is a race struggle. And the idea that underlies his theory. This guy told who developed this curriculum in part was part of the committee. He's very clear. He says that the United States is a racist, sexist, patriarchal, heteropatriarchal kind of genocidal society that has committed and anthro,

Charlie Kirk (36:24)

center, anthropological, centric, whatever.

Interviewer/Host (36:26)

This word is propocentric, meaning that it privileges human beings over trees and fish and other animals.

Christopher Rufo (36:32)

Yes, that is exactly right. I'm going to go ahead and I

Interviewer/Host (36:35)

am an anthropocentrist, by the way.

Charlie Kirk (36:37)

I said yesterday I was a human supremacist and I got hate for it.

Christopher Rufo (36:41)

Yeah, I'm sure he did. But you know, the ideology that he

Interviewer/Host (36:45)

lays out in his book, which I unfortunately had to read, was basically that white Christian settlers, they came, they overthrew indigenous societies. They committed theocide against indigenous gods, and that we need to use this public education system in California to come up with a counter revolution against the United States, against the Constitution, against kind of white settler colonial values, and then reinstate a kind of revenge of the gods, reinstate indigeneity, reinstate Xipe, Totec and Quetzalcoatl and all these other Aztec gods and raise them up in essence, to kind of have, you know, a counter revolution, a counter hegemony or counter genocide, in his words. And this is a radical revolutionary product. It's based in this kind of very interesting fusion between a kind of race pride, a kind of rasa struggle, race struggle mixed with a Marxist pedagogy of the oppressed pressed, mixed with the kind of Marxist analysis of economics. And you have a kind of. A kind of very explicit race supremacism mixed with a kind of Marxist political ideology. When you get those two things together and you put them in a state curriculum, the outcomes are not going to be good. I can guarantee you that.

Charlie Kirk (38:05)

Gavin Newsom should have to answer for the potential curriculum of the Taz Katlopoka God. He's gonna go through a recall, I think, very soon. So.

Christopher Rufo (38:17)

And we're in this weird place in our. In our moment in our society where, I mean, this should be a national scandal, right? This should be a thing that everyone obviously rejects and, and, and they're gonna vote on this final curriculum next week.

Interviewer/Host (38:29)

We'll.

Christopher Rufo (38:30)

We'll see if they. If they have to strip any of this stuff out. But my hunch is that, you know, this might get taken out maybe, but the broad idea of the curriculum is going to pass, and that's the state of affairs in this country and our institutions. I think the thing that I really like to say that the big point. What can you do? The tactical solutions that I offered are important in the short term, but in the long term, we need to radically decentralize our public institutions. So in California, I think by some measurements, they're spending roughly $15,000 a year per child on public education. Get that money out of the public bureaucracy, out of the public kind of system. Give it directly to families and students. Let parents control their destiny. Let there be a thousand flowers blooming, a thousand different pedagogies, a thousand different school models, a thousand different venture startups to provide education that matches people's values. And again, take money away from these corrupt public institutions and give them directly to families and kids so they can have a chance for a good education that reflects their values.

Charlie Kirk (39:32)

I agree completely. It's Christopher Rufo. Christopher, what would you like your audience to make us? What would you like to make the audience aware of? Book website, what do you got?

Christopher Rufo (39:41)

Yeah, if you want to see my reporting, I'm going to be continuing to do this series on critical race here in education. You can join my website or follow my website@christopherrufo.com that's Christopher Rufo.com I also have a kind of a Patreon style thing for people who want to support it further.

Charlie Kirk (39:58)

Very good. All right. Well Christopher, thank you so much. Keep up the great work. Hope to have you on again. Talk to you soon.

Interviewer/Host (40:04)

All right.

Christopher Rufo (40:04)

Thank you.

Charlie Kirk (40:05)

Thanks. Thanks so much for listening everybody. Email us your questions freedomarliekirk.com if you want to support us, go to charliekirk.com support and thanks so much for all of you that got involved with Turning Point USA. TPUSA.com thank you. Talk to to you soon.

Interviewer/Host (40:25)

For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.

Christopher Rufo (40:29)

Com.