Hey, it's Roy Wood Jr. Beyond the Scenes is taking a break this week, so we're taking a minute to revisit one of our favorite episodes. In this episode, I sit down with Daily Show producer C. J. Hunt and leading scholar Kimberly Crenshaw and we discussed critical race theory. We talk about why Fox News keeps bringing it up even though they don't know what it means, and also why teaching CRT is important and why ignoring the criticism could hurt future generations. Heaven listen, welcome to Beyond the Scenes. And I see people always ask me, They say, Roy, what do you mean when you say the Daily Show? Beyond the scenes? All Right? So, like you ever had Thanksgiving dinner? That's the Daily Show? But then you know them a little scraps and a little turkey and a little bit of dressing, and you take all that and you just make a sandwich. You ever had like one of them sandwiches three days after Thanksgiving with it's just layers of stuff you had all weekend. That's what this podcast is. This is the turkey and dressing, macaroni, greens, spinach and corn bread sandwich that gives you a deeper look into what we do here on the show and how those segments are made, and where we are now on those issues. Today we're going to be you know, we were normally pretty heavy on beyond the scenes, but this time this week, we're going with something a little lighter, something easier, something easier to digest. Critical race theory. There's growing back last tonight against what critics call the indoctrination of public school students in an anti white curriculum. It has to do with the teaching of what is called critical race theory. Critical race theory teaches people and our children to judge one another not based on the content of their character, but solely on the color of their skin. It would have our children growing up hating this country and hating one another. That teaches more or less than America is inherently racist, stating more or less that that if you're born white, you are necessarily racist. Essentially, every white person should apologize for being white and what happened to plus two years ago. Yes, because I do not want critical race theory taught to my children in school does not mean that I have a racist damn it, Bravo. Tearing up is like a white woman's go to move from getting out of any sticky situation. Well, if it got me out of a speeding ticket, let's see if it works on a historical recommend MHM. To help me understand exactly what the hell critical race theory is. But first we're gonna have the bet track to a limit of the outrage. But to help me do that, we brought in some of the big guns. This brother, you've heard them on the show before. What time is this on the show for you? C J? Is this second second? But I appreciate being called a big gun. I need it feels like the fifth time you've been on the show. That is the voice of Daily Show producer c J. Hunt. And that very very kind laugh that you heard. This is this is a woman that she's gonna break a lot of stuff down to us. And first we're gonna have to hold her accountable for a couple of things. C J. I'm gonna I'm gonna say one thing and then you say slash Okay, lawyer slash civil rights advocate, slash philosopher, slash professor, leading scholar and the name of Critical Race Theory. Co founder and executive director of the African American Policy Form. It's Kimberly Crinshaw. How are you doing. I am just delighted, thank you for having me on. Before we get into any of this, the first thing we need to do is really talk about the reactions that have come out with regards to this discussion around critical race theory. Now, I don't know how often you are able to watch the Daily Show because you know you have about I think, what did I count c J seven slashes exactly? Anybody with more than three jobs, you ain't really got time to BUSSI and still on the because you're out there in the fight. I don't know. I'll be honest, I don't know any activists that has a favorite TV show, So I know you're out there. I know you're busy. We have a digital series that's called Unsolved Mysteries MAGA Edition where okay, so then you already know where I'm trying to uncover all the mysteries of MAGA, and we did one on CRT. Maybe we should roll that clip first. Let's producer Alan give us that give us that Unsolved Mysteries first. In the nineteen seventies, legal scholars begin to examine the influence of institutional racism on the nation's laws. They called this movement critical race theory or CRT. Who's down with CRT? Like the go op? And yet the more conservatives talk about CRC, the more you start to one does anyone even wikipedia this thing? Critical race theory is a religion of secularism and guilt. Critical race theory is the denial of critical thinking. Critical race theory is a device designed to capture white guilt. It is about working to change and overthrow infrastructure in ideology that threatens to overturn the advances of human civilization over the last five years. As conservatives what CRT is, and they'll say, it's a theory of religion, of device and an ideology. Those thing's got more necessary features jammed into it, the Microsoft word, so Professor Crenshaw. Republicans are saying that critical race theory is Marxists, it's racist. It's also somehow related to the infrastructure of this country. What the hell if you created there's gackds. But I'm go in and see it. C J. You've got these white people, mostly white people. You've got a lot of people theorious curious over this theory slash religion slash device you've invented? Who so upset? So upset that now they're going and getting the little bit of history that was in the textbooks for black people. They're like, no, we gott you know what, Dr King don't need to be in the number the doctor, you know. But the plan was a group of boy Scouts who just did a little bonfire from time to time. Civil rights movement was just a dispute about water fountains. Yeah, it was black people power walking for their health. Everybody knows that's what the sale of the Montgomery March was all about. C J. People know that it's about self care. Really, just walk us through the elements of what you created and why you think those are the things that people are so scared about. Lock been on with regards to critical race theory, and so appreciate this on ramp into critical theory because so many times the question starts with what is it about y'all? What did y'all do to make everybody so mad? Right, so you have to answer as though it was it's a legitimate question, rather than what is it and how is it that this fringe complaint, this this grievance has come from the far right, to the middle of American politics, like what happened? How? How did this happen? And should we be afraid? So I want to start with saying the real question is why is it that the functional equivalent of book burning, like pushing Tanahishi coats Um out of the curriculum? Ruby Bridges, who is who wrote an autobiography about the segregating school Brian Stevenson, You know Brian Stevenson's book, you know, being the object of so much complaining. I want people to come into the conversation thinking, how in the hell has this happened that all of these projects, these important pieces of American history are now being framed as the beginning of the end of Western civilization. I want people just to be like asking that question, as I say, what critical theory is so critical? Ece theory is simply um classically legal investigation into why, after two decades of civil rights laws, we still have so many yawning inequalities across health, wealth, how the police interact with us, what schools due to us? All of these are still markers of racial inequality, and so critical race theorists we're simply asking questions about how racial inequality is embedded in law. Even though we might have formal commitments to color blindness, color blindness is not enough, And in some ways, color blindness masked how racial inequality continues to function on our society. That's all critical race theory really is. So here's here's the thing. And c J and I we went to Boston to explore, you know, this idea of racism and who's aware of it and who isn't Like c J, how much of this do you believe is blind ignorance versus racist just digging in their heels, going absolutely not. We will not look into the systemic issues over the last blah blah blah decades, y'all tripping. We gave you a couple rights. You ain't a slave no more. Why you're so mad? Versus the people we met in Boston who were just like, No, I just live around white people. I got a white school book, and I just never I just never thought about what you all were going through. I think it can be both. I don't remember who said this, but there's a there's a point at which ignorance is not malicious itself, but if held onto in the face of facts, becomes malicious. Right, So like, what I think is so funny and wild is critical race theories, Like, yo, let's look at the connections between race history and the law. And right now you have folks on front street being like, do not look at the connections. Do not teach my kid connections. So I think it is a it's this moment where we're seeing whiteness in a different way, right, Like we're used to talking about white supremacy is like a privilege to not get pulled over by the police, but it is literally the privilege to be dumber to say out loud, please pass laws to make my kids books smaller, Like that's that's a crazy amount of privilege to to ask lawmakers to teach your kids less. So we saw it in Boston of folks being like, you know, there were some folks who are like, I guess I just haven't thought about it. But the fundamental thing we saw first Roy in Boston was people being like, that's racist that you're even asking m M. The question was is racism a problem here? And people are like, how dare you profile us with that question? And that's the that's the heart of the pushback against c RT. How dare you bring up that there is even connections that's racist. Yeah, yeah, I think that The thing that's interesting, Professor Crenshaw is that, you know, people tend to become enraged by stuff based on what they see on social media, and they try to act like CRT is some sort of new thing like they they've tried to even they've tried to take what you push and make it part of some sort of quote unquote woke movement. But what y'all have been doing has been going on since the Sister Afro, Like even before the Jerry Curl, y'all was out there doing the right thing. It's like I've been like, what is this new hairstyle? Styles in our school would be like what it's been here? What what made you and others during that seventies era? Yeah? What made you all sit and look and go? You know what? Things aren't moving fast enough? There needs to be a different way of looking because to a degree, what you're trying to do is measure like, like there's data points that you have to start finding for something that's a little blobulus, which is bigotry. It's hard to like always because you can hide it. So what made you all start down this journey in the seventies with CR two. Yeah. Well, I'd like to tell it as a story of the kids who are watching the civil rights movement at home, wanting to get involved in it, waiting for our turn. And when we finally, you know, got past the baton um, the game had changed, but it happened. So I went to Harvard Law School as a graduate from Africana Studies with an intention to run the next leg of the race. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to learn the special words that that you could you know, throw out and the doors to equal opportunity would open. And so, like many students in my generation, we went to Harvard to study with with with Derek Bell, who was like the godfather of race, racism and American law. His book was a book that a lot of us read. It had a picture in the inside of Tommy Smith and John Carlos with that you know, black power salute, which we wanted, right. We wanted to run the race. We want to learn how to be excellent lawyers, but we were not going to leave our people behind. The whole point of doing it is to draw attention to the unfinished word of the Civil rights movement. But when we got there, he was gone, and so was the sense that there was still work that needed to be done that the law school was willing to do. So the law school basically told us, no, we we're not gonna teach you race racism in American law. No we're not gonna hire scholars of color because the pool is really shallow. Basically, there are no qualified people here. And yes, we are an equal opportunity institution. And so they dumped this on us precisely at a time when the law more broadly was pulling back from the forward momentum. The law was basically saying, you know what, if you can't find, you know, a racist in the woodpile, then there is no racial problem. There is no discrimination. They had no ability to think about structural racism, no ability to think about how history had placed us in these moments where we were in institutions where there were virtually no scholars of color in them, and they were telling us that this was race neutral. So it prompted us to ask questions about, well, what is behind this race neutral stuff? What do you have to be to be a law professor at Harvard? Well, you kind of have to have had gone Harvard or ye help, you had to have been interested in a time during segregation, in any other issue but segregation, right, So being a civil rights lawyer apparently didn't qualify you to be professor at Harvard Law School. So it just allowed us to see what the second layer of exclusion was. It allowed us to think that the lunch counters in the eighties are now these elite institutions that are keeping people like us out, but are saying that they're doing it simply because we're not qualified. So that prompted us to ask what is qualification? Prompted us to ask what is structural uh inequality? It prompted us to ask, how is the law not keeping up with the way that race continues to function? And that's how we eventually became critical race theorious. We created our own course, we taught out of Derek Bell's book. We had people flying in from across the country who with the so called non qualified people, and eventually this group of students, this group of law professors, other people who were asking the same questions, Hey, why our housing pattern is still so segregated? Why are police still able to pull us over simply because we're driving. Well, black people were asking these questions, and we all came together and recognized there was still there there, and people weren't talking about that they're there, and so we called that need to talk about it critical race theory. What's wild to me is I grew up in the eighties and nineties in you know, and and came into adulthood during Obama's presidency. So all I've ever known is the post racial sort of myth about over over it. Uh. And now you know, out of all of a sudden, like folks learned what structural racism is. But what's wild Hearing you talk about that is like, yeah, if you were in law school in the seventies, you are literally making the concept of structural racism for a country that only understands racism as like dogs and fire hoses. Yeah. It also on top of that, you're making this construct and then you're trying to present it to people who don't even agree that there is a problem. You are trying to help investigate something that a lot of people do. It may as well be bigfoot theory. Why is bigfoot in the forest and not an urban They we just go, there's no bigfoot get out of here, and and and and some of the people who didn't want to hear it actually our allies right. What the great unspoken in this is that critical race theory, of course has been around for now three decades, but we're only talking about it right now because the far right has politicized it. We could have been talking about critical race theory for the last thirty years. We could have had an understanding of structural racism long before George Floyd lost his life to it. We could have had these conversations, but we didn't, partly because kind of everybody agrees that racism should be thought about solely in terms of a bad actor or bad apples or bad people. So when people hear the term racism, they think, oh, you're saying something's bad about me or something I harbor evil in my heart, when in fact, although there are a lot of people who who do, what we're talking about is how our systems consistently reproduced that which is embedded in it, and anti black racism has been embedded in policing, in housing, and education, in medicine almost every arena. There is a history of African Americans in particular, and also other people of color being pushed out or being marginalized, and that stuff now becomes just a natural feature of the world. So it's not just the conservatives who eventually who initially didn't want to hear it. It was some of our colleagues and critical legal studies. It was some of our liberal friends, you know, who really thought that, um, this whole thing would work itself out if we just stopped paying attention to race. So now we see what's happened to that argument. Now in the language of the folks who are coming after critical race theory, it is paying attention to race. That's the problem. Anti racism is the new racism, not the old racism that we've had for centuries. Did you did you even think when you I know, in the seventies, you didn't think in a million years that Trump would be president, but that you think when you all first started on this journey that you would sit in the crosshairs of the federal administration. Like Trump straight up banded. He was like, nah, don't teach about anything. Yeah, he said, don't do it. Fox News followed suit, and you know, anything Trump says, Fox News gonna pare it. For three or four months, they mentioned critical race theory over fourteen hundred times on their channel, like, did you think that it would the grounds because you know, like for a while, it feels like little engine that could he carry this curriculum. No, come on, y'all, let's just keep going and keep trying, and one day and then the next thing you know, it's people going, yeah, you're anti racist. This was I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he had written the article. Um. I think he'd written an article up in Milwaukee or something, but it was he'd written an article commenting on the City of Seattle's anti racism training, of which a lot of it was. The spine of it was CRT curriculum, and the whole country was like, oh, did you think you were picking your afro when you were rubbing afro sheen in your hair and with that black afro pick, that black afro fist pick. Did you think did you think you will be going toe to toe with the whole government? No? I didn't, But I guess the question might also be roy should I should I have anticipated it? And when we look at this historically, um, there are all kinds of reasons to suggest that this framework talking about you know, racism was eventually going to be politicized as the new races because we've seen it happen before. If we go all the way back to you know, the year that the chains came off of African Americans, right um eighteen uh sixty six, there was a log that was created to provide equal opportunity and contracting and property rights. The president vetoed equal opportunity just black people should happen, say rights, it's white people have to make a contract. I v told it and said, no, Um, to give y'all rights is to take something away from white people, right, So I mean that's like when you know, we still had the marks on our hands. So if you could do that a year after, we're free to say that doing anything that's anti racist is racist against white people. You could do it. Then you could do it throughout history. And it turns out they have right. They took away our right to vote because that took away from white people's right to rule. They took away right to integration because as they said, you know, forcing you to serve us or forcing us to go to school with you is discrimination against us. And I'll take it even to the last moment when I should have seen it coming. For critical ace theory, y'all, I don't think you're too young to remember it. Maybe when o J gott to quit, it a lot of white for Hella Man, I mean, really really angry, and they were looking for someone to blame. So guess who they blamed for it Critical ace theory. Like all twelve of us, we basically, you know, put on our ninja outfits and and ran into the jury's rooms and whispered sweet nothings in their ears at night, basically our treatises on race, and that's what forced them to acquit o ja. So they tried it in in in the early nineties. Didn't work because there wasn't Fox News. There wasn't a president sitting in the White House listen to everything Fox News had with a pen that he could use to censor all of this stuff. So it didn't work then. But these are the conditions around which is working now. You could just summarize the whole history of white backlash with They tried it and kept trying it and kept trying it now to be fair, but that o J trial, it was a lot of black people going he did it, but y'all lock us up for nothing. We want able to get free for nothing. Finally, Ray o J was the moment c J where it felt like racism worked in our favor. You're gonna pretend that I didn't remember when o J happened. No, I'm asking you if that was the because I watched the o J trial in Birmingham, and you know how racism flows through the city through Alabama, right, It just it felt like the one the first time in a long time where wow, racism worked for us this one time. Yeah, And I think that infuriated, Like there's always a backlash any time, but I just have a theory professor. There's always a backlash from black people. Are happy? Too many black people happy? Too many black people together? Like what y'all doing over there? But what why you're all sitting together? Your joy is threatening to me. Are there any valid criticisms of c RT that you've heard from right wing media? You know, other days would be in Marxists and it being racist against white people. I know that those two are valid, But are there any others from from right wing media? No? But I mean, let's can't be surprized about that because their critiques are not of the ideas they they even say they couldn't give I can't say what they said, but they said they don't care about the ideas. It's not a debate about any of the content of critical race theory. What it is is a misinformation campaign that they have called tea party to the tent. They realize that we have unfinished business, insensitivities around race, grievances around ray race. So they take this concept they throw everything in it that has to do with anti racism, from structural racism to even implicit bias. A lot of people thought implicit bias, y'all can get with that, right, because we're not saying you're intending to do these things. It's just hardwired because we've given aciety is that okay, and we're not. We don't even want to talk about that. So if you if you recognize that it's not about what it's called, it's not about the content other than it is saying that racism is real, it shapes important ways where our society has landed. Who gets what what kind of live certain people have by race? Just to say that race is still a problem, Racism is still a problem. That's what is the huge, you know, sort of offense that they're now offended by. So their feelings about talking about racism are more important than our experiences of actually dealing with racism. I don't know what's more fragile than that. I'll give you a criticism. I think that that word race is what scared people. So maybe we just need a different maybe, like it's just a critical race theory. Like this thing every business and entity goes through logo changes, rebrand is what they call it in the marketing world. Right, So Dominos became Dominoes exactly. Duncan Donuts is now Duncan Radio Shock Donuts Radio Shock went out of business. So how about this, Why don't we Why don't we debate whether we should rebrand black people so we know anti black racism is real, so we can say, okay, here, here, here's the way we gonna deal with that. There are no more black people. We're not gonna call ourselves black. We're gonna call ourselves we're just people, and that is our rebrand. So if they can't find us, they can't discriminate against us. That wouldn't work because it's it's not that this is good. This is good. Right now, you're talking critical race theory. I'm thinking moderated melanin methodology like that. So we live there. We lived there for for about for about six months until they realize who moved in to this melanin curriculum accelerated melanated curriculum innated. You know, because I've said the same thing about defund the police. We know what that actually means. It's getting the police to do less work for the same amount of money and redirecting resources and blah blah blah blah. But the word defund, that's good. If you told if you was in a relationship, you told your girl you was gonna be fund the relationship people, So we just got to come up with new words will work on that. Matter of fact, let's let's take a quick break. What about race conscious patriotism and the patriot that's a good one. My patriotism is grounded and looking at race. These are all great ideas. We're gonna come back after the break and discuss a little bit more about CRT. This is beyond the scenes. We're talking about critical race theory. C J. I want to start with you right now, because as we've heard from the first this whole first run of what we've been discussing. This is a complicated topic. There are a lot of layers to it, and on the Daily Show generally, when we're talking about issues, that doesn't matter how simple or how complicated it is. You have four minutes. You have four minutes maybe five if Trevor's feeling generous that week, to explain that and make it funny. And we've done I think you know, four or five segments on this topic, you know as of recent Talk to me about the challenges of figuring out what to leave in and what to leave out, because the first thing you have to do is almost unpack what the same as what we did at the beginning of this program, unpack what it is whack people are mad, and then start getting the jokes in there. So talk to me a little bit about the creative process of putting these pieces together given that we only have like five minutes or four minutes, especially with the topic critical race theory, I think I think it's working in our favor. Like one of my favorite pieces is the Unsolved Mega Mystery that you do for Critical Race Theory. I just love it because you don't spend a long time defining critical race theory. You are literally just like you know, in the seventies, these scholars came up with this idea. But watching everyone gets so worked up about an obscure, graduate level theory makes me wonder does literally anyone on the I know what critical race theory is, right, Like, if you just broke down the minutes, the minutes dedicated in the four minutes, the second count to how long you spent describing what critical race theory is versus how long you show the hysteria of people being like it is a it's a device, it's a religion, it's gonna make the kids hate this country. I think that that's actually really dope. You know what I mean that that the that the time pressure of we only have this amount of time means that you don't get lost trying to play defense, you play offense and are just like this is the crazy things that people are saying critical race theory is. Professor Crenshaw, where do you think critical race theory compares to other big right wing issues? You know, if we're talking let's say abortions or gun laws or even now mask mandates, which you know seems to be all the craze to show up at a school board meeting and punch stranger. Um, do you wish that you were a s divisive of an issue as some of those or you cool with where you are or like because it's it's interesting in that how I'm trying to think. Here's here's a nicer way to ask this question. How much bigger of a fighter you prepared for critical race theory to beucum in this country? That's a that's okay, that's a great question. So I would be happy to turn this huge platform that they've put critical race theory on into a platform that advances what critical race theory is actually about. Right, So now there's name recognition to critical race theory. We couldn't have bought that much media. With all the money in the world, we could not have bought it. So now the question is, since everyone as the container, everyone's heard of it, how do we use this moment to fill it with the information that people who practice critical race theory every day can say, Oh, yeah, I do that, I do that. So here's here's here's a point. Critical race theory is practice. I think every time most black people go outside, every time you see every time you see they're like, it's happening when black people go outside. I know it. You're like, okay, hands on the story wheel, pull over slowly. You have a theory about what may happen to you based on what has happened to millions of black people. You don't know for sure, you but you have a theory. When you go into the start and someone's following you, you have a theory about what they're thinking. So we practice race theory every day. I just want the opportunity for people to hear what it really is so they can say, oh, yeah, that's exactly the truth about what it means to be black in the society. I've traveled a half million road miles in my car and any time, and this is what Alabama tags. Any time I was outside the state of Alabama, I did not wear a hat in my Like just the idea of passing a speed trapping a cop seeing me in a baseball hat, just thinking oh yeah, some time, let's get them, like like we're past the seatbelt now, I'm sitting up straight and turning to look at me. Officer. Wow, that's and you're practicing, right. I don't I don't drive rental cars without a state plates. Even when I fly and I get a rental car, I need a rental car that's registered for the state that i'm driving it in. I'm no, you're not gonna know. I love that grounding it in an emotion and being like non white people know this as an emotion. Right like when we see a cop who killed an unar black man in broad daylight get off. We have a theory about why that happened. When we see, you know, white neo Nazis stormed the Capitol to kill congressmen and they nothing happens. We have a theory as to something happening in the law and race that is making that happen. And I just love that you're naming it not as an invention, but as placing a name on something that we already intuitively know works about the world. And we know why it is so important for the other side to take the name away from us, because if you can't conceptualize and experience, if you can't name an experience, you can't solve an experience. So you know, this is consistent with what they've done to us throughout history. We weren't able to read it was it was against the law to be able to read. It was against the law to testify in court against white people. It's been against the law to agitate for abolition. So whenever there is capacity to name our experience, to transform it, that's been the key objective of retrenchment, to take that away. So, yeah, we were fighting about the content of what we do. We're fighting to be able to name our experience. And of course they're fighting not only to take away our ability to name our experience, but to vote to change our experience, to protests, uh to to object to our experience. These are all things that are happening by the same people, supported by the same money, and advanced by the same politicians. We need to connect these dots so that people know. You might have not heard of critical race theory, but you know, critical race theory. It's the life that we're all living right now. I've encountered black folks who are like, well, you know critical race theory is. You know, I don't want to be dividing people. And I use an analogy I've heard you say before about asbestos. Can you can you tell our listeners that analogy? This is what I go to all the time, and people are like, oh okay, well, you know, we tell people, if you really care about a social problem, the last thing you're gonna do is try to penalize the people who have the expertise to tell you where the problem is. So let's take our institutions. For example, we built them with asbestos tucked in everywhere because that's just how we built things at the time. Well, it turns out, as best this is toxic. It kills people. So what's the solution, you know, to the fact that we have asbestos in our institution? Do we say the solution to it is not to use the word asbestos, not to look for where as berest this might be, not to use tools to try to remove asbestos. And now to even criminalize people who are teaching people where to find as best as to remove this toxic We that would be ridiculous. We would never think that makes any sense. But we think that's that exact thing about race. So the solution to racism, don't talk about race, don't see race, don't teach people how to identify racism, and penalize and criminalize those people who have that expertise. That's what we're doing when we say critical race theory, anti racism is the problem rather than it is the solution to that problem. I love that analogy because it's like, yeah, white supremacy is asbestos is built into all of the structures. Some of us have known that it has always been there, and other people have just been going about their day, and then when you're like, hey, this is built into every thing, they're like, how dare you do you not like this building? And we're like, no, the building's fine. I like living here. I just want to make sure it doesn't kill me. So basically, what you're saying is if there is a problem and it's detrimental when it comes to race, it's important to speak up and say something. But when it comes to love and relationships, just don't bring it up at all because they're turning to pass right and it'll go away. Well, yeah, I'll work that out later. Those are a lot of great solutions, but I want after the break to talk with you a little bit more about the hard legal solutions that may be in place, and whether or not they're small or moral victories that you can count between the last time you had that AFRO and seventy one and you was roller skating with a dude name Stucky to the sock cop if there. I want to talk to you about the legal victories and the moral victories that you've had between then and now with regards to critical race theory. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. We're talking critical race theory with Daily Show producer C. J. Hunt and the wonderful, wonderful professor, scholar, activists, lawyer. Uh, astronaut? Are you an astronaut yet? What else have you not done yet? Professor Kimberly Crenshaw? How are you? Oh? Great? Um, great joined being here with you guys. Okay, so no to astronaut, but not yet, but I'm sure it's coming. I'd like to mention that all of those different uh sort of identities that Roy has named, that fits into a new theory that I've developed, that one person can hold multiple identities and live at the intersection of those identities. What do you guys think of this idea that I've developed. No, no, and that's Marxist and it's wrong. When I was coming up, you had one job, you went to a career day, and you got one job. It wasn't all this slab multi hypen. What is a multi hyphen? And you're telling me you identify as a hyphen? You hate America? Now, Dr Crunchaw, you think my idea has some legs? Though? About these intersecting Every now and then when I complain about stuff, people say, you know, there's a theory that somebody came up about that explains that. What's it called intersectionality? Yes, but I can still be mad about it. So I love when Republicans are are crapping on intersectionality. In one sentence, they're like, they can't teach our kids critical race theory, privilege, intersectionality. I I'm not just a white woman, I'm a Republican. And you're like, you are naming intersectionality, and their their objection is not to intersectionality, it's to us using it. Like, give me that idea. I'm going to explain my agrievements. Yes, I hold multiple identities. I'm a mother, I'm a teacher. You're like, that's intersectionality. Before we get into and you know, as as we get ready to bring this conversation home, before we get into a lot of the pushback that you're starting to receive now at the legal level, are there any small victories that you've been able to measure with regards to your push for critical race theory, you know, over the decades, like the fact that I find it interesting and I know this isn't a victory, but it is something small and that you know, I grew up in a time where the only real information I got about the world was from school. When I got in the fifth grade, my mother ordered World Book Encyclopedias, and that was it. I would sit and read Encyclopedias like an actual, just book, the same way you read Bears Staying Bears. I would just read the letter V and that would be my book for the month. Like the access to information that younger people have now, do you feel like this conversation at minimum gives them a place to go and seek out new truths or additional data outside of the traditional school systems, which we'll give it to next. Well, you know, I think the Internet is both the being of our exixt sence and the possibility for overcoming this censorship. I mean, one of the things we know about young people is when you tell them not to do something that's basically a green light neon lights, say come over here, look at the thing. That we don't want you to know anything about. So, you know, I said earlier that one of the objectives is to take this platform that has been created by this misinformation and actually present it in a way that allows people whose lives actually are all of those dimensions of critical race theory that we've been writing about it allows them to see it and to understand it. So the reality is that desp all of the uh constern nation, uh, less than ten percent of the classrooms really talk about race at all. Now we have a new moment in which more people are talking about race, and hopefully more people will find their way um to actually having access to material that that shapes this. And and by that, I don't mean, you know, the long law review articles that we make. I mean the kind of things that you guys are doing, the short hits that really educate people and allow them to see that there is a there there that the other side is trying to erase, and they're trying to erase it with you know, the sort of authoritarian This is the story about America that we will allow, and no other story can we tolerate. I think it's great for people to see this actually happening in real time and demand the true stories that um some of these politicians are trying to deny of them. Are you finding any joy in watching these politicians not realizing that they're talking about black history more than they've ever talked about it. They're like, don't you dare teach my kid about the dread Scott decision which made the calls the massacre, you know, that destroyed Black Wall Street and made it clear that actually black people can succeed. It's just that their success makes many many white folks at the time so angry that they preferred to destroy them rather than to just let them be. These these moments of history are seeping in and it really is up to us to open the door wider, bring more people in in various ways, through humor, through short moments of going to historical sites and saying, let me tell you what happened here, and importantly, why what happened here is important today. A lot of these laws aren't saying simply we can't talk about the past. What they're saying is we can't talk about the past in a way that makes white folks feel bad and in a way that shows that the past still lives among us. So our goal is both to talk about those and make people understand that the ground on which we stand is created by these historical policies and practices. I think we're a long way away from where we were before, when people didn't talk about race at all. Talk to me, I guess. I guess the difference now between you know Tulsa and today is that a lot of what we see instead of, you know, the blatant eradication through violence, you see the eradication and attacks on the black community through policy and through laws. Uh, talk to me a little bit out some of the laws that are starting to trickle down. UM, I guess what I'm trying to ask you, in a nice way, how guilty will you feel when that first black teacher stands up in front of a classroom and attempts to teach her class about Tulsa in a school district that said, and she goes to jail? Will you put money on her books? Well, this is your faults first of all, that the consequences have already started to happen. Um, Amy Dona Frio, everybody should look her up. She she's a white school teacher in a sevent black school, teaching black young men about the historical determinants of many of the things that happened to them. Her class was so successful that they got to go to the White House, so successful that they want a competition at Harvard, so successful that the school district defunded her program and ultimately fired her. So you know the consequences are happening right now. These laws and basically said um teachers can be fired, they can be fine five thousand dollars for every infraction. School systems can lose up to ten percent of their budgets. Teachers can be de licensed. In fact, this is what's happening to Amy right now in Florida. So this is an attack on schools, public schools, it's an attack on teachers, it's an attack on anti racism, and it's an attack on people of color. So we have to recognize that the public school system is, as they call it, the incubators of democracy. We have to understand that the basic logic of Brown versus Board of Education was that this that segregated education undermined our ability to participate in democracy. Well, this is basically segregation. Two point Oh, we're gonna talk about this and we're not going to talk about that, And it turns out everything we're not going to talk about explains how we got to where we are today. So yeah, I'm not I'm not going to feel um guilty. What I'm gonna feel is we are in the fight for our lives and we are Do you feel like teachers recognize that betrayal? Do you feel like they are looking at what we are looking at and seeing that a party that has spent the last decade raging against censorship and standing up for academic freedom, so some professor can use that, Yes, some academic freedom, so some professor can use the N word. Do you feel like these teachers are watching this party now passing laws so that kids cannot understand where the N word comes from? Oh and I so want to put a point on what you just said that we are now in a point where I can walk on a campus and perhaps be called the in word, or my students can go to classes and have to deal with another professor writing in word on the blackboard. But it might be they might not be able to take critical race theory to understand where the INN word came from. This is the huge asymmetry that we're facing along with the idea that like, students are too fragile to hear about the history, but we're sturdy enough to have experienced it. So yes, I do think that teachers, the A, f T, the n e A are fully aware that this is just another chapter of the attack on public education, the attack on equal citizenship, the attack on learning our history. In order to correct for its long term consequences, people are on the same page. The question is whether the politicians are Does this okay? So then to the point with the politicians, does this have a ripple effect into voters in voting and voting suppression? Like, what are some of the other how the tentacles of CRT, what are the issues do they reach out and touch? Yeah, well, I mean you put your finger on it. There is currently an effort to push voters like us out of the political equation. There's an effort to silence our voices. There's an effort to make sure that last summer never happens again. There's an effort to make sure that the election never happens again. And the reality is it has happened before. I remember, we used to have black senators, we used to have black lieutenant governors. We used to have a whole cohort of elected officials in the nineteenth century, like a couple of years after slavery. So when when they shut it down, they shut it down not for a season, it was for a century. These moves that are being made to day, they're out of an old playbook and and unfortunately we don't often know the plays because we haven't been taught this stuff, and they want to make sure that people are not taught this stuff. That's why the fight is for the future, not just for the playbook. Analogy is so good because it's like, yes, the very chapters of history that are now illegal in some states because of CRT bands or dumb dumb laws, right, Like, those very same chapters are things that like we need to understand what the hell is happening now. It's like, don't teach about white supremacy and reconstruction. Like, oh, so you don't want to teach about an expansion of black democracy undermined by white supremacy who then disenfranchised our voters because based on a lot of lies. Yeah, I I think that. I think that's wild. I also, can you speak to some of the language in these bills, because what I find so twilight zone is that they are they are using civil rights language to then flip it. I've seen bills that are diversity bills, their bills to support diversity in schools, that they try to tack on a CRT band inside of it, and like they're on the floor saying CRT is counter to diversity. So can you talk about the the insane language of some of these bills. And and one of the things to realize is that you know, and basically you know, occupying our space. They've taken our language, they've taken our heroes, and they've picked us out of our own community. So Martin Luther King now place for their team, right, Martin Luther King is on our side on this. Martin Luther King, doesn't you know, wasn't an advocate for racial justice. He was an advocate for color blindness. Well actually that But you know, part of what they've been able to do is yank a lot of stuff. So they say, you know, um, we don't believe in race stereotyping, we don't believe in race scapegoating. We don't believe in making people feel a shame because of who they are. Okay, so check check check. Isn't this part of what anti black racism was about. Isn't this part of what racism against other people of color are about? They're like, no, this is what racism against white people is if you think back on it. This was a move that they did right away during the sit in movements. There there's this wonderful documentary, Eyes on the Prize that that interviews people who were part of the sit in and interviews the white people who didn't want to serve them. And there's this one where a white woman said, you know, uh, they claim that they are non violent, but they're most violent. They're making me serve them. That violates my civil rights. Just liked, hang on, you can start with you know, I get to exclude you, and your demand for just integration violates your civil rights. So these bills are just again a page out of the old book. We can just take all of the things that they are saying black people other people of color are saying and turn it around and say we're the ones that are being victimized. We're the ones that are being told we're bad people. We're the ones that feel bad. So you can't talk about this stuff. What is it about what you believe America? Your work, in my opinion and my humble opinion, your work is rooted in optimism. Your work is rooted in the optimism of what we could be as a society and what we're capable of, full stop. But what is it about the choice that you've made to go down this road and fight this battle versus other black people who kind of lobby for separate but equal. Our own schools, our own system will teach our kids over here. Let's not even worry about sending them over there. What kept what has kept you from crossing over into that? Because it seems like that would be the logical leap after wall after wall after wall that you've hit. Well, you know what's so frightening about this moment? Where like, is that teaching our own children in our own schools is not a solution to this because this is a playing to our own children in our own schools. So it's not just okay, these bands don't apply to you know, Lincoln Carver School because it's basically about white feelings. No, our students are not allowed to learn this stuff. Our teachers are not allowed to teach this stuff. So This is basically undermining black education black educators in some of the same ways that you know integration did. People don't know that one of the things that happened after integration is black teachers, black principles, black administrators lost their jobs. All of those moments where we learned about who we were and we had teachers who were deeply invested in us and believed in us, A lot of that we lost. And now we're in a moment where we have school boards basically dictating two teachers who are now teaching students of color what they can reveal about the student of color own history. So there's no escape from this. This is why we have to fight it. This is not you know, integration versus separation. This is going to apply to all institutions, and importantly, not just K through twelve higher education, and not just higher education, diversity inclusion. Everywhere we're raised diversity is discussed, will ultimately come under the power and control of this effort to censor real conversation about race and racism in American society. How much are you thinking about reconstruction in this moment, because it's like, you know, me, I am, I have been making a movie about civil war and reconstruction, And I cannot stop thinking about it, specifically because we had integrated schools in eighteen seventies, right, and this idea that sometimes I think, like, dang, this is just a cynical strategy Republicans are using to win elections. But when I look at the language of these bills, I am like, Wow, they have figured out a way to attack black education, to to censor the very words like privilege and structural racism that folks like y'all invented to name what was happening to us. So in this moment, how much are you thinking about the setbacks of reconstruction and and the first time they to knocked our feet out from unders? I think about it, c J all the time. I was just doing a talk here in Martha's Man Your Last Night, and and and confess that I think a lot about what people like us were thinking in eighteen sixty six, in eighteen seventeen, eighteen seventy six, I wonder if they knew now, if they knew then what we know now, Like how much we would have been pushed back, how forcefully we would have been pushed out of being able to vote, how forcefully we were pushed out of the professions that so many of us were exercising. How much we would be denied education if they saw what was coming? Would they have done anything different? And can we get those messages in the bottle? Can we can we think? Now, all right, we're in the same position that our people were in in eighteen seventies six? What lessons can we learn about what happened that we can now apply at this moment? And at least one thing I know is that we need to sound the alarm. We need to allow people to see that it's not too step forward, one steps back, one step back. Sometimes it's one step forward and two steps back. Sometimes it's a decade of progress and a century of retrenchment. So if we understand that that it's not just automatic, you know, Martin Luther King said, time doesn't do anything automatically. Right, time could be the enemy of reform. It's what we do in the time that we have. So right now, what do we do now that we see the smoke coming and we see real estate that we've been occupying in and taking care of for decades burning up In a period of like six months, we've lost so much. What do we do in response to it? That seems to be the question. And I think our ancestors are telling us do more than what we did, because we lost for a century and we cannot afford to pass this batime. I don't want to pass this to to the next generation, and I want to believe that none of us want to pass this to the next generation. Out end with the final question to you, um Well, first, I saw where you know, there's a lot of states that are already banning critical race theory, amongst them Idaho, Oklahoma, Arizona, South Carolina, Texas that's to be expected, Tennessee, Iowa. And then there's one on this list that goes back to what you were talking about earlier with regards to sometimes allies. I found it interested in that New Hampshire band it or is restricting the teachings. I don't know if they're blue state CJ, but they're minimum they swing. You can't be next door to Bernie in Vermont and be full hardcore red, but as this you can be. You can be anywhere and get people to be like they're going to abolish the suburbs anywhere there's a critical mass of white folks that you can scare that black people are coming, then you these tactics work. That works in New Hampshire. Yeah. Uh. Last question, what can people do to help you? Oh in this moment, so many things. So people can go to a APF dot org and learn more information about where these laws are coming. So we have a map where they can see where they've been passed. We have information about how to find out whether this is coming to a school board near you. And we need our pa parants to become activated. We need our parents to say, wait a minute, I know that my school is barely talking about these issues and now they're trying to ban them from talking about it at all. So every time you see some parents going to school boards and acting up, that needs to be a clarion call, you know, to our parents that y'all need to get in those school boards. You all need to see what is being taught and not being taught. Y'all need to say this is absolutely vital to the future of my child, in the future of my country to learn from whence we came so we can set a path for where we want to go. So active involvement is everything, and we want to hear the stories, we think that there's much more going on that we don't know about. So has your school district said that we will not teach Ruby Bridges anymore? Has your child come home with stories about why there's inequality that don't point to the real reason and basically implicitly point the finger at your child and it's family, your child's family and our people. If we don't tell the truth, that leaves the inference that there's something wrong with us. Is that happening in your school system? So so tell us, And I think just broadly, we have to draw lines between their story and our story. We have to be, you know, willing to say when they say our country is being stolen, we have to be willing to say no, no, the country is being shared for the first time ever. When they say that, you know, white Americans are being discriminated against, we say no, they're structured overrepresentation from the White House down to the school board is inequitable and and not natural. When they say diversity is cold for replacement, we say diversity is a minimal, a sligne for inclusion, right minimal. And when they say that our children are being indoctrinated, we should say no. Misinformation is the key indoctrination. That's what this is about. So you know, I think just waking up, really seeing what's at stake, being very concerned about their being an authoritarian dictation about what can be taught in what shouldn't, Realizing that our country is sliding in a very difficult direction. And if we care about democracy, we have to care about racial justice. There's no day life between supporting our democracy and supporting racial equity and inclusion. The two are the same. When I tell you thank you for the work that you have done, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. See j Hunt, I have a much less sincere goodbye for you. That's fine, that's fine. I see you at work, dude, I'll see you. You guys, keep us laughing and keep us learning. Absolutely honor is ours. You gave us concepts that folks are using in the street, and now Republicans are trying to make illegal. So thank you for giving us these concepts. We will protect them. Thank you. Thank you all so much. In this To the listeners, I hope that we took you beyond and I hope you enjoyed that wonderful thanksgiving leftover feet sandwich we just served us. Be sure to watch The Daily Show with Trevor Noah weeknights at eleven tenth Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes on Paramount Plus. Listen to The Daily Show Beyond the Scenes on Apple Podcast, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcast