Michele talks with Leonydus Johnson, author of the new book, “Raising Victims: The Pernicious Rise of Critical Race Theory”.
Transcript:
(00:00) welcome to another edition of sideline sanity with me Michelle Tafoya sponsored by Legacy precious metals there has never been a better time to invest in Precious Metals go to Legacy pminvestments.com Legacy pminvestments.com find out how precious metals can protect your wealth and your retirement coming up there’s a book that’s coming out this very day February 7 2023 it’s called raising victims the pernicious rise of critical race Theory the pernicious rise of critical race Theory the gentleman who wrote this as Leonidas
(00:36) Johnson he is a podcaster an author a thinker and um he’s really smart and he’s really well educated and he’s Fearless but he knows what critical race theory is doing to this country and I know there are I have friends I have family members who are intrigued by critical racer they want their kids taught this they’re interested in it but I don’t think they know exactly what it is and why someone like Leonidas can call it pernicious it is that it is divisive but don’t listen to me listen to Leonidas Johnson
(01:20) he is a black and he points this out podcaster and writer who is going against this grain and very effectively so and we get a preview of his book next for nearly three decades she’s reported the action from the sidelines she started very young she’s covered the NBA NFL Olympics and the college football and basketball national championships and now during these insane times in our world Michelle Tafoya thinks we need a serious dose of sanity this is sideline sanity with your host one of the sanest people on planet Earth Michelle Tafoya
(02:06) foreign itas it is great to have you here I’m always perplexed and maybe I’m naive and that’s fine whatever how people of color can call other people of color Uncle Tom’s or whatever for their beliefs explain this to me I mean why are people calling you a traitor to your race so I get that pretty often it’s a pretty common tactic and there’s a there’s a couple aspects to it I think there’s there’s one aspect where if you don’t tow a particular ideological line then you’re considered a traitor and you’re
(02:46) considered uh an outcast and so there’s that aspect where this bullying aspect and trying to pull you back into the fold and then there is the other aspect where there is a a certain ideological commitment that if you don’t believe these things then you’re not actually black you’re not actually uh part of this group and you know people like Nicole Hannah Jones have expressed this explicitly and that there is a difference between being physically black and being uh politically black which is just nonsensical it makes no
(03:24) sense but this is how they justify the ideology and it’s like listen if you don’t go along with progressivism and if you don’t adhere to these actual ideas then you can’t be part of our club and we’re going to bully you and call you names and and treat you like an outcast but you know it’s just one of those things it comes with the territory well it reminds me of when Joe Biden was campaigning and said uh if you don’t vote for me you ain’t black I mean it it doesn’t make sense to me because you’ve
(03:52) got whites you’ve got Jews you’ve got Asians you’ve got Latinas Latinos who are all over the map politically so why people of one particular persuasion color in this case skin color for God’s sakes expect everyone to think the same way they do is is strange to me how do you internally when this first started happening to you and and trust me I can I can guess how how it must feel but how did you get past it how do you have the fortitude to get to to deal with it and let those things sort of slide off of you
(04:31) so it wasn’t always that way when I when I was growing up I was very susceptible to it and you know you want to be part of the in-group and you want to be accepted that’s just human nature and part of being accepted is buying into those narratives of uh victimhood and oppression and those sort of things and I bought into that when I was growing up it wasn’t until I started to embrace concepts of individuality and individualism and move away from Collective identity and really come into an idea of who I
(05:01) was as a as a person and who I was as an individual in Christ uh and place my identity there rather than in my race that I started to see the deception and see how ridiculous such a such a prospect would be to say that just because I have a certain skin color I have to identify a certain way and I have to carry this particular ideology so it’s a for me it’s a difference between having a sense of individualism and seeing people as Unique Individuals versus having a collective ideology and seeing people as group collectives and
(05:37) believing that because they have a certain race racial makeup or certain ancestry or certain skin color or whatever it may be that that puts them in this sort of collective identity and because of that that elevates them to this uh this certain group level rather than an individual level and so I think that’s what it I mean the other aspect too I would say too is is that it’s a tool of manipulation so yeah people have this sort of collective uh identity that they that they push on people they know that they can control people through
(06:11) emotional manipulation and that desire to be included so you know nobody wants to be accused of racism nobody wants to be accused of being that Uncle Tom or being a race Trader or whatever uh so if you can get into their emotions you can control them that way and I think that’s what Joe Biden was doing when he said if you don’t vote for me you’re not black he knew that it was a tool for manipulation and that people would respond that way I I hope more people saw right through it I don’t know what
(06:40) what was it in your life that spurred this change from buying into this collectivism this um you know this sense of I am a victim automatically because of this color of my skin to a sense of individual individuality yeah I don’t think it was any big event um it was something that happened gradually over time as I as I grew closer to God and I started to get more ingrained in my Christian identity uh if I had to point to one thing when I really started to get interested in politics and interested in uh different
(07:13) ideologies and things like that was around the time that Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson and I noticed that racial narratives around that were all false and they were manipulative and intentionally so and you know it may have even started before that with the Trayvon Martin stuff when I really started to uh recognize that something was wrong but it was definitely the Michael Brown incident in Ferguson where I really started to pay attention to what was going on and you know the media is coming out saying you know he had his
(07:46) hands up and uh this this white police officer just killed him just because he was black and then all of these racial narratives disintentional racial divisiveness that was going on in our country and then you you have uh you have President Obama coming out and and supporting these narratives and I’m just saying what what is happening like this none of this is true and so that that made me question everything that I had thought before that I that I thought was true about race and about racial outcomes and
(08:17) about police and everything else and once you start looking into those things and start looking into the statistics one of my friends put me on the Thomas soul and I started reading his his uh exposes on on race and things like that and and I it really was eye-opening and I I hesitate to use the term wake but that’s what happened it was like I I became awake and so not woke but I became awake has this been a a lonely well you said a friend turned you on to Thomas Soul which I I I’m a huge fan of Thomas Soul
(08:57) um and not not not because of the color of her skin but because of what he says what he writes is so meaningful um and he’s so honest but has this been a a lonely Journey or one that you’ve found people want to join you in I think I think it’s both um there’s a lot of animosity and a lot of pushback and that’s to be expected you know when when you speak truth uh people find it offensive and they don’t want to hear it but I’ve also found that there are a lot of people who feel the same way and
(09:33) they’re just not sure how to speak out or they’re afraid you know and sometimes that’s for very good reason because you know people have lost their jobs for saying the wrong things and they’ve had mobs attack them for saying the wrong things so it’s legitimate in a lot of cases but I’ve had so many people send me private messages and say listen I I agree with you 100 but I just can’t say the things that you say because I don’t want to lose my job or I don’t want people to attack me and so there’s those
(10:02) very real fears so it it it’s been a little bit of both uh but again that that speaks to the manipulation you talked about when because I found that I found the same thing a lot of women who I connect with they they don’t want to repost what I post because they’re afraid that that again is that manipulation you spoke of earlier that we can be manipulated by fear of losing our job of being canceled of being thrown out of the social groups we we perhaps appreciate and I I wonder if you see an end to that like this cancel culture
(10:39) is this is America you’re supposed to be able to say whatever you want and and no and you know I realize it’s just the government and in the Constitution that cannot slap back at you but this is this is this has gone too far well I mean yeah when you talk about free speech and ideas of Liberty yeah it’s it’s the government that’s you know that’s supposed to be restricted to but it it’s supposed to be the foundation of our country the foundation ideals of our country yeah and so you would hope that
(11:08) everybody would operate by those ideals even though it’s not explicit but yeah still um there’s this sense in our culture that if you don’t go along with Progressive Dogma then you’re not compassionate or you’re not empathetic and you need to be canceled and that’s widespread and it’s unfortunate now whether I think that’s changing I I do I I am optimistic about it I think that more and more people are becoming aware of what’s actually happening um and they’re starting to push back on
(11:42) that and I think with the critical race Theory stuff I think explicitly you you see all these parents at school board meetings pushing back against it and you start to see more and more people uh standing up and speaking out against these things once they recognize what’s actually happening now it’s difficult I’m not going to say it’s an easy thing because these people have so deeply infiltrated our culture in every aspect of our culture every aspect of our society that it’s going to be difficult
(12:09) to get around it because they control so many of the levers of power at this point and uh so much of our culture so and and they’re the loudest that’s the other thing too they’re very loud and obnoxious even if they’re a smaller percentage so it makes them seem like they have they have way more uh yeah power control than they do exactly that their volume kind of belies their size but you mentioned those three letters CRT critical race Theory there are some that I’ve spoken to who don’t believe
(12:39) that it’s in our school systems I know you believe otherwise we’re going to discuss that with Leonidas Johnson whose pronouns by the way are leave me alone I love those pronouns uh he’s got the book it’s coming out today this is February 7 2023 you can pre-order it it is called raising victims um Leonidas stick with us we’re going to talk CRT right after this all right I’m going to say something here that has been quoted to me I’m not making this up here’s the quote a food shortage could be coming
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(15:16) is there I don’t know if you saw the the in the last 24 48 Hours Disney has um a cartoon an animated show called The Proud Family and they put out a rap song about how they are owed reparations and Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves and on and on and on and up and I I I wonder what your reaction is to this very loud uh very one-sided very angry rap song by for kids um being promoted by Disney yeah it’s awful and that’s one of the reasons I wrote the book because of those things permeating our culture and permeating
(16:02) our society and how it not only affects adults but how it’s affecting children you look at you look at that a cartoon like that and what is the objective the objective has to be to infuse a sense of victimhood and anger and resentment and Grievous in children and that’s what you’re in so you’re building these sort of negative emotions and these negative aspects in the children and teaching them that those are virtuous that these are heroic things to do so everybody like at the end of it everybody’s
(16:34) cheering for those those kids after they do their little thing and they’re they’re validated and it’s reinforced and so kids are learning like oh like this is virtuous this is how I should behave uh and it’s just it’s so toxic it’s so so toxic but this this idea that that critical race Theory is not in in schools or it’s not you know or that we don’t know what it is that’s that’s the primary argument it’s like you just don’t know what it is you don’t know
(17:01) understand critical race Theory you’re not enlightened enough right you have no idea but I mean like if you look at the founders and you read their actual uh their actual essays and their books and things that they say they say that critical race theory is an academic discipline uh that sees basically sees racism in all of our institutions and imbibed in our entire Society so white supremacy is at the foundation of our society and in everything that we do and then they say that there’s also an activist aspect of critical race Theory
(17:35) so they train activists that’s the whole point of it so critical race Theory they teach them that racism is endemic and it’s interwoven into our society and then they send activists out into society to do something about it to deconstruct institutions where racism is and basically them from the ground up now you’ll also hear that oh it’s only it’s only in law schools like no like again the founders also say that it’s expanded into all other academic disciplines including drumroll education
(18:06) and so teachers future teachers anyway are being trained in critical race Theory and they if you go to a university website you can find that you can find evidence that they are teaching teachers critical race Theory that’s part of the training regimen so we’re supposed to believe that somehow these future teachers are not being trained in critical rate or are being trained in critical race Theory excuse me but somehow they’re not taking it to the K-12 classrooms after they graduate it’s just right it makes no sense it’s
(18:38) nonsense so clearly it’s happening but and one more thing I’ll just say real quick is that yeah the difference is they they do technicalities it’s all manipulation everything about critical race theory is manipulation and trying to deflect right so they say you don’t understand it or whatever but they’re technically correct that these teachers are not teaching it in public schools that little Proud Family Disney thing was not teaching critical race theory that is technically correct that’s not
(19:06) teaching it’s application it’s Praxis it’s they’re applying the theory they’re treating the presuppositions as if they’re correct and then they’re applying it in order to deconstruct the institutions and as as Mao said during the Chinese Cultural Revolution to wipe the old site clean so that a new site can be can be rebuilt so that’s what it’s I’m a little bit terrified because I don’t know I mean I hope and pray there are enough people who see this for what it is and want to push back I mean we’re
(19:40) experiencing this in the freest country on planet Earth and and I I I the other three letters that concern me are diversity equity and inclusion they sound really nice they sound oh diversity that’s beautiful inclusion who wouldn’t want inclusion you don’t want exclusion do you and equity which is somehow replaced equality meaning we are going to force equal outcomes no matter what well the only way to do that as you well know is to hold everyone to a really low standard because that’s the only way it can you can guarantee
(20:16) equality is if everyone comes down to the lowest standard and I can’t I this is mind-boggling to me I was raised in a Latino family where we were urged to reach EX for excellence to raise ourselves to the highest standards I I I I guess I’m just wondering are there enough voices on the other side who see through this and who say these words sound really nice they sound empathetic and God forbid your call if you if you push back at all you are called as you said a white supremacist a racist a bigot the
(20:54) things you never want to be called right the worst things in the world although the word racist is seemingly losing its value because it’s being applied to everything like if you don’t agree with me you’re just a racist this is racism Harry Styles one album of the year it’s racism you know even though Beyonce has won more Grammys than any person on God’s green earth Harry Styles winning that one was racist I mean I I I don’t know how anyone can say these things with a straight face anymore Lena I just
(21:22) so at educate me it’s it’s tough because I liken it to arguing with somebody who believes the Earth is flat and there’s no amount of evidence you can provide that will change their mind that they will just dismiss everything you know you show them evidence and they’ll say no that’s that’s fake that’s fabric those are fake pictures it’s fabricated uh you know it’s part of the conspiracy right the fact that you prove me wrong just proves me right and you see that all the time
(21:53) it’s just unfalsifiable so that makes it challenging now to your question is there enough people I think there are enough people who question it who aren’t sold on the ideology you have your radical ideologues because again they’re the loudest and they’re going to make the most noise and they’re going to make their numbers seem seem huge and everybody else is just kind of paralyzed and not really sure what to do or how to fight back and it’s partly because they don’t really understand and I think what
(22:24) is actually happening um why it’s happening and what these kind of what these terms mean because like you said diversity seems like a good idea uh Equity even seems like a good idea if you don’t understand it inclusion of course like why would why who doesn’t want to be inclusive but right when you look and see what they mean because again it comes down to manipulation it when you look what they see what they mean when they say diversity they don’t mean the natural occurring diversity that might occur on a sports team right
(22:53) when you have uh right different diversity like you have a quarterback wide receiver uh you know you have defensive aims whatever these people are specialized skill sets and that natural diversity helps the team succeed but the kind of diversity that they’re talking about is very superficial and arbitrary and based on Progressive ideology which in in the book I I liking it i liken it to uh signing a wide receiver based on eye color which makes no sense whatsoever because it has nothing to do with the job but that’s the kind that’s
(23:24) what they mean so when they say these terms like diversity Equity inclusion uh social emotion learning black lives matter anti-racism all they really mean is shut up and capitulate to the ideology that’s what it means and like so people need to understand that they don’t actually mean what they say they’re just trying to manipulate your value system in order to get you to Bow Down and Worship their gods and so people need to understand that and they need to stick to what they know is true and hopefully more and more people do
(23:57) that I see more and more pushback and like I said my book is uh is meant to give people more ammo so that they can fight back against that stuff and then give give them a better remedy you know let’s like talk about color blindness and and approaching things as as more of a post-racial ideology where we treat skin color as no more consequential to Identity than hair color and eye color and that’s the remedy if we start doing that instead of making everybody’s identity so ingrained with race and skin color then I think we
(24:32) can actually move forward as a country and have some uh racial Harmony in the future Leonidas for president everyone uh his book is Raising victims raising victims the pernicious rise of critical race Theory when we come back one more segment with Leonidas we want to talk about the ammo that he does give us in his book to fight back that’s next you know all those phrases like follow the money and money changes everything and all the different sayings about money they’re there for a reason because money is really important as much as you
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(26:05) can speak to an IRA expert get all your questions answered at Legacy precious metals 866-528-1903-866-528-1903 or download their free Investors Guide at legacypminvestments.com legacypminvestments.com all right so Leonidas he promised some ammo where do people start if they want if they want to push back without seeming like they’re you know um not empathetic all these things where do you start because again I I after George Floyd I live here in the Minnesota in the Minneapolis area I reached out to friends of color
(26:48) who and tried to have conversations with why are we what are we going to do now what do we need to unders to do to understand each other um you know how do we how do we talk to our kids about this I wanted substantive conversations and what I got um was some of that and some compassion and some understanding and some listening but I also got that you know you don’t know what it’s like to walk outside as a black person I’m still afraid Jim Crow 2.
(27:21) 0 Jim Crow this and this and this and of course I don’t and they don’t know what it’s like to be a brunette woman who’s five foot six on a good day with two kids and who lives in my house I mean that’s the way I look at it we’re all individuals but you know and none of us can entirely understand one another’s existence so where do we start yeah well I just real quick to your point then Bobby Basham calls that ethnic gnosticism which is this idea that minorities live this sort of esoteric existence that nobody could
(27:57) possibly understand like oh I’m black you can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be black in America because it’s so awful and horrible and very uniquely oppressive it’s just it’s it’s ridiculous because we’re all human beings and like you said we’re individuals and you know we have individual experiences but I mean we live The Human Experience and yes that’s not difficult to understand it’s it’s nonsense but yeah as far as where do we start again I’m not going to pretend like it’s
(28:28) an easy easy thing and it’s you know here’s your checklist you just go out and do it and then everything will be fine because we’re dealing with a very extreme ideology that’s rooted in Marxism that aims to Institute a cultural revolution in our society so what people need to understand is that these people believe that racism is endemic and that it’s interwoven into our the entire fabric of our society our entire country even to the point where they believe that the foundation the the ideals of our country themselves are
(29:03) white supremacists so like uh the neutral principles of constitutional law uh Enlightenment rationalism the liberalism like Liberty and consent of the government things like that Free Speech all of these things are white supremacists and perpetuate white supremacy in their eyes and therefore they believe that all of this needs to be torn down and rebuilt in this sort of uh Marxist communist Utopia so you have to understand the enemy you have to understand what you’re dealing with um and I’m not saying that everybody
(29:37) that goes along with it is is the enemy per se but the people who want to destroy the country absolutely are and you have to understand what what their ideology is and what where it comes from and what we’re actually dealing with then the other side of it is you need to understand how they manipulate people and what how they use words and language to manipulate conversations and make it seem like you’re the bad guy there’s a couple different ways that I talk about in the book there’s things like the
(30:07) Kafka trap which uh Ibrahim X Canby has said explicitly that you know if like how did he put it the denial is the heartbeat of racism so that means that you can never deny that you’re racist if you’re accused of racism because that’s right proves that you’re racist well I think I do right I think the book White fragility suggested that as well where she said you know if you say I’m I’m sorry I’m not a racist she said see you can’t handle the fact that you are a racist and so then you’re just forced to
(30:39) say okay I guess I’m a racist I mean you you you can’t win this that you have two choices you can either admit that you’re racist yeah you can deny it which is proof that you’re racist exactly but if you understand what the Kafka trap is then you can approach it and you can call it out and say that’s a Kafka trap and it’s it’s fallacious reasoning and uh you know I I I liken it to the uh like a loaded question where somebody asked you how long you’ve been beating your wife without without acknowledging that you
(31:16) you beat your wife but it’s the same kind of nonsense and then so yeah you have that aspect and then you have uh the Martin Bailey tactic where they again black lives matter is a good example of that where they push radical ideology that you don’t agree with like for instance uh pushing pushing back against the nuclear family or saying the nuclear family is not needed so if you push back against that then they’ll say oh you you think black lives don’t matter so they started in the Bailey which was a more extreme idea that was
(31:47) not very fortified and easier to attack and then they retreated to the mod where they it’s much harder to attack and it’s something that most people would agree with which is black lives matter you know everybody’s going to agree with that and then they try to conflate the two so if you understand that’s how they make their arguments and they manipulate with that kind of language they’ll use words like compassion and empathy a lot yeah it’s like oh you don’t you don’t agree that all that you don’t agree that
(32:14) all black people should get reparations you have no compassion it’s like wait a minute that’s not that’s not you’re conflating two different things here so uh those kind of aspects and I talk about multiple different things in the book and uh different ways that they manipulate language and and and what kind of tactics they use so if I think if you’re aware of them I think it helps so if you know where the ideology comes from the history if you know what they believe um and because if you’re making any
(32:42) argument this it goes well beyond critical race Theory like if if you’re making any argument at all you have to understand your opponent’s argument like probably almost at least as well as they do sometimes not even major in order to make an effective counter argument and so you need to understand what critical race theory is where it comes from and then understand the tactics that they’re using to manipulate people because this stuff operates in darkness it yeah it once you shine a light on it it’s like
(33:07) roaches it’s got me scattered they say oh no that’s not that’s not what we’re doing because they know what if you expose what you what they’re doing then people people won’t be on board with it and no push back so I you know I had I I sensed this stuff even in elections uh I had a close family member of mine tell me in 2020 well I’m voting for Biden because he’s empathetic so the the idea was there if I vote against if I don’t vote for Biden I’m not voting for empathy and I’m
(33:40) voting for something that’s contrary to empathy and I I so um I saw through it it didn’t didn’t affect me but I remember it very clearly that word empathy being used to support that vote raising victims the pernicious rise of critical race theories the book by Leonidas Johnson it comes out today February 7 2023 Before I Let You Go who are your Heroes oh man Thomas soul is the big one he’s he’s really turned around my my political ideology so I put him at the top I also very much respect Walter
(34:12) Williams and Shelby still and and their work on Race um Jordan Peterson uh I I love the work that he’s done uh those guys in pretty much anybody that pushes back against the common narratives uh uh Clarence Thomas yeah people who stand up and they’re not afraid to take the take the arrows you know they they push back on what’s popular or what’s accepted and they know what’s expected of them to say that they don’t say it and they put they say the truth even you know even though they they take
(34:45) the swings and arrows and I respect that immensely because it’s it’s tough It’s what you have to do though and I am with you and you’re now joining that group of being willing to take the slings and arrows and I commend you for that and again I can’t recommend the book enough raising victims the pernicious that’s the key word rise of critical race Theory Leonidas Johnson thank you so much with your for your time and all the best with the book and I hope you’ll join us again because this this topic is
(35:14) so deep and there are so many angles at which to approach it and I’d love to have more conversations with you absolutely I would love to thank you so much for having me on thank you this has been sideline sanity please don’t forget the two things I will always close with be brave and do good [Music]
