Tipsheet

LISTEN: Heated Debate with Juan Williams Over His Claim That 'Parental Rights' Is Racist Code

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 05, 2021 10:25 AM

Many progressives have decided that they know the real lesson of Tuesday's elections, especially the Republican sweep in the blue state of Virginia: Voters are racist and/or stupid.  That's not an exaggeration.  Furious lefties have swarmed onto social media to accuse voters of being either instruments of white supremacy, or bamboozled by racist 'dog-whistle' politics.  Parental objections about racialized curricula, 'Critical Race Theory,' and other school-related concerns are rooted in lies and "misinformation" cooked up by right-wingers, they insist, repeating the smears that literally just helped serve Terry McAuliffe and the entire Democratic ticket a stinging defeat.  Our moral betters are not taking their losses well:


I especially enjoyed the brilliant piece of analysis that Virginia voters were afraid of 'black and brown people' running the country, having just elected both a black and brown person to statewide office.  But they're Republicans, so that doesn't really count.  This arrogant, dismissive, race-obsessed, gaslighting mindset is also on display at the New York Times, and at the Biden White House:


On and on it goes.  They are insisting that the things parents are seeing happening in schools are in fact figments of their imagination, conjured up by manipulative Republicans who are tricking voters into worshipping at the altar of whiteness, or whatever.  In the process of denying the existence of poisonous woke insanity like CRT, they are aggressively spouting CRT-style poison, which severely undermines their denials.  How dare you suggest that students are being indoctrinated by our ideological brethren in the teachers unions, using the very racialized attacks I am currently and loudly embracing?  Writing at The Hill, Juan Williams lent his voice to this chorus:

Virginia Republicans are back with a new and improved "Culture Wars" campaign for 2021. The closing argument is once again full of racial division — but this time it is dressed up as a defense of little children. The rallying cry is "Parents’ Rights." It is a campaign to stop classroom discussion of Black Lives Matter protests or slavery because it could upset some children, especially white children who might feel guilt. And this time, the Trump-imitating Republicans think they have struck political gold...There is a long history behind the latest racist political appeals...“Youngkin’s closing message of book banning and silencing esteemed Black authors is a racist dog whistle designed to gin up support from the most extreme elements of his party — mainly his top endorser and surrogate, Donald Trump,” McAuliffe said in a statement.

One commercial features a white Virginia mother complaining that McAuliffe opposed a law to allow parents to have their children opt out from studying unnamed books. The mom, Laura Murphy, does not mention that she is talking about “Beloved.” Nor does she mention that she is a conservative activist whose son went on to intern in the Trump White House...The attack on “Beloved” is a direct attack on all great writing about race in America — especially from the Black point of view. It is disgraceful. It should disqualify Youngkin and every other GOP smear merchant trafficking in it. The obscene attack on great writing is gaining strength by being paired with another GOP racial tactic aimed at scaring parents — that Virginia school children might be exposed to arguments about ongoing, systemic racism from the teaching of “critical race theory." Critical race theory — broadly, a focus on racial disparities as a fact of American life — is not explicitly taught in Virginia’s public schools or anywhere in American public schools.

I had Juan on my radio show to discuss his column, which I found to be inaccurate and demagogic.  We had a heated, though respectful, debate.  Before you listen to it, I'd like to supply you with links to some of my cited sources during the conversation.  The failed 'book banning' argument against Youngkin was false, and was fact-checked as such by the Washington Post.  The legislation under discussion was bipartisan and supported by more than a dozen Democratic members of the Black Caucus in Virginia.  The Beloved controversy was not about teaching slavery, which Youngkin explicitly endorsed on the campaign trail; it was about a sexually-explicit scene -- and other sexually-explicit materials unrelated to Beloved.  None of this had anything to do with race.  And again, there was no proposed "ban."  And yes, Critical Race Theory is specifically and positively mentioned on the Virginia Department of Education website, CRT and related "equity" and "anti-racism" precepts have infected Virginia schools (developments like this and this fall under the CRT/schools umbrella, too), and it's not just white parents who are offended by it.  It's inaccurate and insulting to pretend otherwise.  With those pieces of information entered into evidence, here is the exchange with Juan (which starts around the 59 minute mark here):

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I'll leave it to you be the judge of who won this debate, and who marshaled factual information to make a better case.  Relatedly, here's a school administration exposing the rhetorical game leftists play (including lying to parents) in order to deny that CRT is being taught in schools -- along with a reminder that Republicans are on very solid ground in soundly and aggressively rejecting the hard Left's toxic racial agenda:


They shout and attack because they know they can't win a fair argument on this front.  Here are two more instances of "whiteness" on the march:


I'll leave you with my monologue on the Left's endless racial demagoguery, from the same show in which I confronted Juan Williams: