Cecelia Lewis: The Manufactured Moral Panic Around Critical Race Theory

talking about this, James. You are a sometimes teacher, sometimes educator. Yeah, that's right. And so I'm currently adjunct faculty, which means i have no job security, which is great. Uh in San Diego Community College. It's a good thing that's happening to academia, which is overall a great industry that has no issues. But yeah, yeah, so I've taught you see

San Diego. I've taught National University, UM, I like community Colley stuff, Moore, Um, that's way do you now, and to a little bit of high school and some little kids. I've done diabetes education stuff for I have to say I am also a former educator when you were talking about adjunct ing. I adjuncted all over the DC Maryland, Virginia area for many years. I taught full time at Howard University here in d C. I also I really enjoyed Community College. I thought that was I mean, I

like Coward a lot too. That's kind of my my teaching home for the longest amount of time. But community college is really great. But when I was there, I also had the I guess i'll say lack of job stability. Lack of it was a it was a It was a pretty precarious time in my life. I remember I was like driving all over d C in Virginia, and I was making like twelve dollars a semester or something.

And I remember very distinctly having at all staff faculty meeting with like full professors and like full time full time lecturers and stuff. And at the end of these meetings they would always give the adjunctors the bagels, and I wanted, I wanted to be offended, like, but then I would always be like, why I'm going to take

the bagels? Yeah, right, it's uh, I will say. In San Diego, we have a really good union, the a f T, and we get paid better than any other I junk faculty, I know, so maybe everyone should join a union and stand up to their bosses. But yeah, freeway faculty. This struggle is struggle. It's real. So as educators, I guess I would say the state of education broadly is something that I really really care a lot about,

Like it's something I think a lot about. I think it's really related to the well being of our nation and sort of like where we're going as a people. And that's kind of why it pains me to talk about what we're gonna be talking about today, which is critical race theory, or more specifically, the completely manufactured panic around critical race theory. So if you don't know what

critical race theory is, don't feel bad. I think most people, even the people who are engaged in the loudest conversations about critical race theory, probably do not know what it is and have probably not even ever encountered it. So here's a definition of critical race theory from the Legal

Defense Fund. They say, critical race theory, or CRT, is an academic and legal framework that denotes that systemic racism is part of American society, from education to housing, to employment to healthcare, which I don't know, seems like a kind of obvious statement to make in a country like America, But they go on. Critical race theory recognizes that racism is more than the result of individual bias and prejudice. It is embedded in laws, policies, and institutions that upholds

and reproduce racial inequalities. According to CRT, societal issues like Black Americans higher mortality rate outside exposure to police violence and the school to prison pipeline, denial of affordable housing, and rates of death in black women and childbirth are not unrelated anomalies. So basically, it's this academic and legal framework that posits that racism is part of our society and that it's replicated in our institutions. It's not just

individual like racist mean white people's like white meanings. It is institutional. I think it's also important to remember that the panic around CRT is completely manufactured and disingenuous. How do we know that, Well, the originator of the attack has said so pretty plainly, Christopher Rufo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, And I would say all around like right wing, grifter, ship head, Yeah, whatever whatever choice word

you want. To use to explain him. Basically, he is the person who brought us this like panic around a relatively obscure academic theory and having that academic theory being negatively conflated with anything even tangently related to race. This is an intentional strategy, Rufo says, Peo will eventually turn critical race theory taxic as we put all of the various cutural insanity. It is under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in

the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. And I have to say I'm sad that he has been I would say, like pretty successful. The list of things I have seen people uninformed people on television call critical race theory. It would it's like things where saying I don't even know what that means, or like you know, this is just another critical race theory and then insert something that has nothing to do with the critical race theory. Yeah, yeah,

it's just like a boogeyman. For like, I don't want to investigate my privilege or exchance or standpoint at all. Exactly. So we know that panic around CRT is harmful for all kinds of reasons. But today I want to focus on the real human cost of what happens when you call anything even tangentially related to race CRT and then

whip up an intentional panic around it. And the story that I want to get into today is the story of Cecilia Lewis, because she really is someone who is, by all accounts like a very accomplished educator who got caught up in this CRT panic when really she had nothing to do with it. And her story is a good reminder of the fact that, you know, when we talk about these whipped up outrage like moral outrages, it's

not just ideological people. There are real people who get caught him across fire and it has a real damaging impact on their actual lives. Yeah, yeah, sad, Yeah. And if anyone's familiar with this story, it's it's it's terrible. I'm not so I'm excited. It's some terrible ship. So first of all, I have to give a very very big shout out to Nicole car investigative reporter at pro

Publica who wrote a really media expose on Cecilia Lewis's story. Honestly, it sounds like Cecilia Lewis was not someone who was super interested in telling her story publicly, Like I think that she just wanted it to lay low and have all of this go away and did not want was not someone who was interested in being caught up in

this kind of a public thing. But shout out to Nicole who really did a very meaty piece on what happened, but includes some like very very compelling, thoughtful interviews with Cecilian. So who is Cecilia Lewis. Cecilia Lewis is an educator who was living in Maryland. Her husband's job was being relocated to Georgia, and so she was like, Oh, I

need to find a job in Georgia. They were preparing to move from Maryland to Georgia when she got a new job at the Cherokee County School District in Georgia, where she was going to be the county's first administrator. Focused on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives commonly known as d e I. If you ever worked, like most people probably know what d e I is or have come into contact with some aspect of it, you don't know

what it is. It's basically initiatives that focus on things like implicit bias, able is um gender discrimination, and generally just tries to make everyone feel welcome and included in a space. So nothing to areas you know, if you if you had to take your employee, you know, harassment training or gender biased training, things like that. Folks are probably pretty familiar with it. It is a pretty common

standard thing in a lot of our lives. Cecilia also focuses on what is known as social emotional learning, which I'm gonna kind of like boil this concept down. It's basically just the idea of being empathetic to the emotional and social realities of a goal in the classroom. So saying things like, oh, sometimes students can feel anxious taking a test, or it's good for everyone to work together to accomplish our goals. Uh, those would be examples of

social emotional learning. So yeah, this whole stuff is remarkable. And just thinking about, like with the social emotional learning, how like maybe this all kicked off. Do you remember

when people were really mad about like content warnings in teaching. No, it's just very It's very strange to me because like a large number of the people that teach veterans right, just it's it's how poor people can go to niversity in this country and that that's not great, that's that's not a good idea, but but it is, it is what it is, And like it seems to me that if you're one of those people who very much enjoys respecting veterans, then maybe you should also not be trying

to retroduce into things that might um like, I have a lot of students who might have PTSD right and they'll have an accommodation letter for that, and if they have a thing that might be difficult for them or hard for them to hear about, talk about whatever, then then seems to me that the kind thing to do, respectful thing to do is to be, like we've talked about if you don't talk about this, absolutely fine, you know, you can go and we'll come back later and it'll

be great. But apparently that that became like a site of the culture wars, and of course these people are always hypocritical, like that's that's kind of the point. But yeah, it's just ridiculous. Yeah, we love respecting veterans until we have to do the things like like the smallest thing and not even do it just like except that this is a practice being done to help support veterans absolutely

not no, no, no no, no, I can't have that. It can't be can be doing something just nice to everyone, Like maybe we can only do it for veterans because they've earned their right to to not be like traumatized further in the classroom. But yeah, it's very strange that these things suddenly became a site of the cultural when

it's just being nice to your students. Yeah, I mean, that's that's something that when I was doing the research for this episode, I kept being struck by, Which is the things that these quote parents groups or concerned parents and air quotes say they are against are such basic tenets of like having respect for others, Like you don't want your you don't want your child being taught about having respect for others, or like basic empathy or you know,

the things that the things that they would list as their grievances about the ways that our schools are being used to like indoctrinate their kids into wokeness or whatever are such basic common principles and I can't I can't imagine that they would have that, like someone would make a big issue about their kids learning about it. Yeah, it's a very strange terrain to like to like make your stand in the culture wars. You know, I mean that as we recalled this, the culture wars are like

really focused on gas ovens. So I guess we're just like we're doing weird ship. Now wait what yeah, I don't know. Some it's some Texas representative was posted today that you could take his gas oven from his cold dead hands, which like like if they're going to focus on gas ovens and not like harass like trance people or children and fine, like like I can't wait for them to and then make a stand at their bath and beyond like whatever, whatever, whatever's coming next. But if

no more induction heat only, it's woke. It's the new woke oven. We should use coal. It's funny that you say that, though I did just recently learn that the reason why, and I'm sure people are going to disagree with this, and I'm not an expert, but that the reason why we think of gas as better than electric is just because of propaganda from the like the like petroleum ministry and natural gas industry. I had no idea.

So basically my whole life I have I've never had a gas stove, and I've always been like, oh, it would be so great to have one. Come to find out, elect electric is just as good, if not better. Yeah, it's it's fine. You've been gasolate, and the phrase I've been gasolate and the phrase, um, now you're cooking with gas that was a a manufactured phrase by the gas fun fact. I just learned that that is fascinating. It's great to see these people have adopted marketing is their

entire identity, the thing that's never happened before. So back to Cecilia Lewis. Basically, you know, if you think back to when the entire world was having this sort of like reckoning around race and racial justice. In the wake of that climate, the Cherokee County School District was like, we should have our first ever d e I administrator, and that was one of the part of the reason

why Cecilia was hired. But as we know that climate so came with this backlash from folks who probably felt like, oh, my, I feel challenged. My I'm starting to feel a little bit threatened in the fact that I am on the top of the of you know, the social hierarchy. So as we know that came with backlash, and I think that what happened to Cecilia is part of that backlash. Cecilia was excited to start her new job and by

all accounts was like a talented, accomplished educator. But she gets an email from the administrator at her new school district asking her if she has ever heard of CRT and this was kind of before the CRT panic had really taken root, and Cecilia was like, I don't, I

don't know what that is. I've never really heard of that. Now, the fact that she was such an accomplished teacher with like a master's degree, had been in the field for a while, and that she had never even heard of it really goes to show you how wild of a claim it is that she was somehow also planning on incorporating this this academic theory into her into her work at the school. She said she had never even heard

of the concept. Right, So before she even starts at the school, district, parents start using a private Facebook group for Cherokee County School District Parents to dig into her background. Um One person posted that Cecilia's quote critical race theory background was a threat to the kids and encouraged everybody to send an email to the school board complaining, but

again Cecilia say she didn't even know what this was. Basically, what they are saying is, this is a black woman who has the word diversity in her title, right Like, It's like very clear that this is Cecilia was not somebody who had had any history of teaching CRT. She says that she had never even heard of it. It does not show up in any public posts or statements that she has ever made in the history of her

being alive at this point. And yet these parents are convinced that she has a background in critical race theory just for no reason other than her being a black woman. That's so odd, like, and it's not something that anyone ever will be teaching to like anyone unless you're like precocious and extremely smart, You're not engaging with like critical theory in school, and not until you get like upper

level university classes, right exactly. I mean, the whole the whole thing is a farce, right and so um And I think this really shows to me how so much of the reporting around critical race theory was bad in so many ways, But probably the way that was the most infuriating to me and the most harmful in my opinion, is the way that it really allowed grifters to raise their personal profiles by getting up in school board meetings

and screaming about critical race theory, you know. And I think that I would watch news reports, like local news reports where parents were being called, you know, concerned parents, or parents concerned about school transparency, or parents a parent who started a local grass rood organization, but they would never talk about the way that those organizations were funded, coordinated and propped up by right wing think tanks for instance, or you know, they just would let these people go

on tell vision, spewing nonsense and getting engagement on it without ever asking any kind of critical questions about why that was. And I think that I don't know, I think that when we allow for grifters to just have the stage, all of us lose out right. And so these are people who realize that if they showed up to their local school board meetings and gave like a fiery speech, they might end up on Fox News. They

might end up being a contributor to Fox News. They might be able to parlay this and a run for public office, which more on that later, um. And I think that these people are just like Charlatan's who use these kinds of issues to personally enrich themselves and the way that the way that local media especially allows them

to do that, I think it's criminal. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's ridiculous, kind of credulous or even like this both sidesing of things right that you don't actually need to give the side who are lying about stuff at time. And they did a coup here by the way they cooed the school board really yeah, like I forget exactly

what's happening. There was like a protest and then the school board basically left and I think people were like interrupting a shouting touch and and the school board and decided to leave for their for their own safety, I think. And then these people installed themselves as the school board. They like went out there and did like a that's right, that's right, like we're the school board now, yeah, yeah, Which it's not how school boys work? Is that how

anything works? Like yeah, and you're so right about this kind of really bad both sides that we see because something that so I live in d C and one of the hotbeds of anti critical race theory nonsense, was loudon County, which is in northern Virginia, pretty close to d C. And so I would watch on my local news how this issue was being framed by local like local media, and I know that we you know, I don't want to rag on local media too much because I know that they're very under resource, and so I

can I can understand why you would flap together both sides package and just like air it. And it's fine because you know, when you just have to get something out. I told I can understand that, but just what a disservice it did. And I think it's interesting how whenever local media would highlight parents on the issue, almost always, by default, those parents were white and had a problem with inclusion in the classroom, And so where were black

parents who were like this is kind of scary. People are showing up at school board meetings foaming at the mouth, and it's it's concerning to me who we centered as concerned parents in that whole conversation. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating, and yeah, it's you have to think about the impact your reporting. Like yet, like you said, people have to get stuff out, and I understand that, and I've had

to get stuff out myself. But like maybe we have a little bit too much news, and this is what happens when when we don't take any kind of editorial stance, and yeah, we'd like act like a fucking golden retrieve with just being like, oh look look at these people

and retrievers already. I don't know, I just feel like sometimes like we report things like with like these little dogs that are just like, oh look someone's shouting, let's give them a microphone as supposed to being like huh, example I like to use for local media, it's like cops withs fentanyl. I love goal media here, like about a year ago, did this insane story on like this cop who would like contact overdose, which isn't a thing that you can do, and yeah, just being like, oh look,

it's a great story, it's an exciting video. Put it out, put it out, put it out, and not just be like her. But what if it's not true? Why don't we contact a single medical doctor or just Google? Can you contact overdose fentanyl? Because like the American College of Medical Toxicology is extremely clear. But yeah, instead, you know, I guess you get some clicks or something. I don't know. It's disappointing. There are great local reporters too. Yeah, yeah,

I don't want to read a local reporting. The fentanyl thing is something that burns me up. I will go I always go off on a complete hand. Yet I saw one recently where the headline suggested that a police officer was doing a traffic stop the fent atyl blew up. There was a gust of wind, and they say that the fent atyl like blew up her nose and that she that like she had an overdose that way, it's like the amount of anti Just just think about it for one second, if that's something that you think that

makes sense. Like she opened the car door, there was a gust of wind, wouldn't you know it it blew right up her nose. Yeah, it's mad, it's and it really hurts people, right like, because if you see someone overdosing, you should go and try and help them. And if you have knock and you can very very easily help them.

And there aren't many downsides using knock at but if you think that by being within twenty of them, you're going to overdose yourself, and you might not do that, and that that person might not make it and like

it's really damaging. It's not just like silly and funny, and it's unfortunate for these dec ops, but like it's it's unfortunate that someone's told them a lie to the degree that they're they're having these sort of psychosomatic problems, right, Like totally it's not very nice for them, I'm sure. And it's also I think that your point is such a good one that it's incredibly stigmatizing for people who

do use substances. I think the idea that like you can't even touch them or you'll get it, like it it's it's incredibly like dehumanizing, and I think it I think it is a myth that normalizes this kind of stigmatizing, dehumanizing understanding of people who use substances that we should really be all working to dismantle because it makes us all less safe. It's harmful to all of us. Yeah, And like we did this with HIV right as well.

Essentially like ignored evidence that suggests you can't get HIV from using the same fucking lift as someone elevator for those of us who in America, but or chair or something did did did that helps? Did they made me laugh? Yeah? It stigmatized people and actually I make I make my students switch of a film about that particular thing. Um, I'm sorry, we've gone way off topic. Thing O defense a all thing will always will always take me off topic.

So let's talk about some of these professional ass haters who whipped up a fury around Cecilia Lewis. Like, these people are like haters of the sucking year in my book. So, before Cecilia Lewis had ever moved to Georgia or even started her job there, Ronda Thomas, the founder of the nonprofit Truth in Education, was really on the on the case of keeping Cecilia out. So the website for her organization, Truth and Education, has a long list of things that

they oppose in schools. They're trying to protect kids from social emotional learning, critical race theory, radical gender ideology, obscene and inappropriate books, comprehensive sex education, diversity, equity and inclusion, and many other destructive practice is ruining our schools. Side note this must also include proof reading because look at this screenshot that was on their website. Are obscene materials in your s c O O L Library? So I can tell you, I can tell you who's not in

the fucking library. Whoever wrote that on the website, it's cool that way, are they in your school library? Magnificent stuff. So here's a little bit of Ronda explaining why she does what she does in her own words. And in the past four years, I've been involved in educating legislators and parents on the comprehensive sex ad that's in our schools, the critical race theory once it came on the scene, uh, and also the social emotional learning. So I felt really

passionate about it. I thought God called me to this. I had so many parents coming and very concerned. So we've been very involved in educating them, helping them work with their school boards, finding school board members. Were just doing everything we can to really assist these parents because they're in a very difficult situation and we're seeing their children propagandize through all this. And it really is a

Marxist agenda. Not only is the critical race theory Marxism, but the comprehensive sex set is too, because Marxism is all about separation of family, breaking down the country. And what is key to our country? It's our family, all right? You get the idea, So cursed aside, and the fact that like people can look up false consciousness and understand what marks sort about race and maybe investigate why that's not actually right. This reminds me so much of the

are you guys familiar with the Trojan Horse affair? I think that not seeing not like the Greek thing, but like the scandal in British education, whereby there was largely like a mass panic about like like quote unquote fucking whatever this means to different people, right, Sharia law in education and like quote unquote islamicization of British schools. And there's an excellent podcast. I think it was people who did cereal. They made it, made it serious about this

and people should listen to it. Um. But like it's the same same ship, right, like it's it's it's it's just fabricated mass panic about like they're taking our children. Yeah, I mean, I sorry. That sounds fascinating to me, And it's so interesting because like I want to talk about this later in the episode, but how schools and like education has long been this this place where you can

always reliably get people scared and panic. Like there's something about schools and I think that the vibe of like sending your kid off to school is like a very stressful, you know, emotional thing for a lot of parents. And I think that it's just it's just like it creates the conditions for really harmful panics to take root and spread um And I think that's one of the reasons why we see education as this battleground and we have

for so long. Yeah, And like the nature of the world is such that generations will always be different, right, and they have been, Like you can find that Greeks and Romans writing about these kids today and their ship music. But like you send your children away to school, they get exposed to other perspectives, to other people, and they come back different from the way they were if you

just kept them in your little bubble and cokinge. And increasingly, I'm guessing for a lot of these people, their kids are coming back more tolerant, more aware of people who are different from them, right, and what diversity means and why it's probably a good thing. And they didn't like that so that they got mad and made up of thing exactly exactly. So that brings me to another hater

of the year in this story. Noel Kahanian, who runs protect Student Health Georgia, a nonprofit that is basically the same stuff as Rhonda's is um it's all based in fearmongering, and it's so interesting. So I went to her website, her organization's website, and they would have you believe that

schools are handing out hardcore bondage pornography to kids. So on her website, under the section remove obscene Materials, she writes, Georgia law contains a loophole that allows school libraries and public libraries to expose children to obscene and harmful materials both visual and verbal descriptions. The definition of harmful to

minors is stato masochistic abuse. It means actual or simulated flagellation or torture buy or upon a person who is nude, clad in undergarments, a mask or bizarre costume, or the condition of being fettered, found, or otherwise physically restrained by one so closed or nude. I don't know that that's I don't know that that's really being handed out in school libraries, Like I don't know that that is really It's interesting to me, how, like anybody where was the

BDSS section in my fourth grade school library? I really needed to find it. But it's just it's all fearmongering, right. I think that most people would read this and be, oh, she is clearly trying to stoke my fear and outrage about you know, my kids being threatened by you know, perverts or something to get me to act. I don't see how anybody could look at these and think this is not just meant to fearmonger. Yeah, very sure. And some of the ships in the Bible, I guess there's

probably some some flagellation and maybe that's what they're going for. Yeah, maybe. Um. And it's interesting to note that both of these women's organizations on their websites have places where they encourage people to send in tips about schools teaching things that they don't like, or to surveil school board members. Right. It was like, oh, you know, definitely has Yeah, it definitely has that aspect of surveillance and turning people in who

you suspect of teaching things that you don't like. Um. And so these parents are just grieving smongers who have figured out how to use this outrage and stoke it to generate attention, not just for their like bullshit liberty in schools or whatever mantra, but to also pay attention

to them to personally raise their profiles. ProPublica got audio of Noel telling parents how to go to school board meetings and to use what she calls the tsunami effect to just pile on with more and more outrageous speeches and to get good video of, you know, really stellar performances. She told a crowd, it's good in case Tucker Carlson wants to put you on the air. It really helps. I think these are people who are open about the fact that they are gunning for television opportunities and for

fame and for eyeballs. They haven't They're not just concerned parents. There are people who have an axe to grind and also just really want to be on television party normal staff. Yeah, and I think James, it goes back to something that you said earlier about our sort of digital media climate where we have this vibe where attention is what sells like and so these parents know they can display to that.

So it's not it's not parents getting up at a school board and making a thoughtful saying something thoughtful or like genuinely trying to have actual discourse or ask a question or find actual understanding. No, no no, no, they're interested in little stunts and grandstanding because they know that's what's gonna pop, that's what's going to work in our current

digital media ecosystem. Right, Like, if it if it can't be distilled to like a TikTok or a tweet or like like an instagram real, then is it is it really worth like saying in like you're not gonna get the attention for it, right from being like I don't understand what we're teaching and I'd like to know, Like I'm concerned, but please explain to me what a d

I coordinated does, for instance. Exactly, So, at a school board meeting, these people start discussing Cecilia, who began has not even started her job in the school district yet, and they're basically saying that she's an outsider who it's going to change the district. Listen to how racialized. What they say in these meetings is we are we said you can't, you know, you can't find some way and if you're looking for her back, it's not about the power,

it's what she's going to bring. So and they're there every parenty U. So basically they really talk about her like they're like, oh, it's not that she's black, if they wanted to find somebody black, Atlanta's just down the street, which like what like it's it's very clear to me

that they're dancing around race. So they really are careful to be like, oh, it's not we're not racist, we're not racist, but it's just about we don't like her, and so it's it's using all this language that is really trying to make her this outsider, which again, they don't really know anything about this woman, what she's planning on teaching. She has not even started yet, so they're just completely basing this off the fact that she is a black woman who has the word diversity in her title.

And remember how Cecilia said that she had no idea what critical race theory was when her administrator asked her about it. Well, even as all of this outrage was brewing, she still didn't really know what it was. She told Republica that she actually had to research it to confirm that had nothing to do with her role. But she was like, I don't know, maybe I missed a memo somewhere that this is what I'm doing. Because they're so upset um And again, this is the one who doesn't

have social media. She only has a LinkedIn. She has never made public statements about CRT or really any kind of like public social media statements of any kind. Really, she doesn't do social media. But in a forty eight hour period, the school gets one hundred form letters demanding that Cecilia's employment offer be rescinded because of her perceived involvement with critical race theory. And why they're upset is super clear, right, it's because she's black. And one letter

they basically spell this out. Somebody writes, did you know that seventy seven point eight percent of the population is considered white alone, seven point seven are black, at eleven point one are Hispanic. Are we now in a county that is going to care to a handful of people? Like the way that this is so obviously an overtly racialized and like about this incredibly white community feeling threatened by a black person coming from Maryland is very clear.

And also another thing to know is that she's coming from Maryland, but the place where she works in Maryland is also very white and also is like deeply trumpy, So it's not it's not like she's coming from Baltimore, where she's coming from from one heavily white school district that voted for Trump to another heavily white school district that voted for Trump. God forbid your children at school in Cherokee County, learn why they're living in a trumpy

white school district. Right. So people are outrage age and there is a school board meeting. The meeting you can find videos of the meeting on YouTube, and the meeting is like one of those school board meetings where you know it's standing room only. They have to have security. They have met they have installed metal detectors because that's how outraged and pissed that these people have been whipped

up into a frenzy. And so she doesn't live there, so Cecilia is not even able to be to speak in this meeting, but she does watch it on a live stream, and basically she watches as all of these people who hired her, who talked about how excited they were to have her doing this d I work that they wanted to do, basically turn on her. The superintendent who hired her to work on d I says, while I initially entertained and publicly spoke about the development of

a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion d I plan. I recognize that our intentions have become widely misunderstood in the community and it created division. To that end, I have concluded that there will be no separate d I plan. So the thing that Cecilia had been fired to lead, he just gets up and it's like, never mind, y'all, we're

not doing it. It's over. Also, State Rep. Brad Thomas says that he's going to draft a resolution to make teaching critical race theory and the sixteen nineteen project illegal in Georgia again, both of which have fuck all to do with Cecilia's job. And just again it's like just a mixed bag of perceived black things. It's like, oh, we're gonna throw in like we don't think anybody should play a Missy Elliot album on campus either, throw that

in there. It's like it's just like they're just like grabbing at things they perceived as black, and thanks they're

against it. It's bizarre, Like and look, God, if you wouldn't your child to fucking navigate the world, Like maybe maybe they should be paying attention to the sixteen project, Like maybe it would be good if that was even Like I'm in California, right, which is like extremely awoke as education systems go, and like I will have students come to my classroom like totally unaware for instance, of like really any of the history of like the Black

Panthers or the American Indian Movement stuff which is extremely important in making the country that we all have to live in, especially stuff where you, like I taught a course on political violence and that's not something we talk about very much in schools at all, but like we we are massively under educated on a lot of this stuff and very strange just out of curiosity in your personal like education journey, when did you And I am not super familiar with how it works where you grew up,

but when do you When did you feel like you started getting a better education on the things that are

so often left out of the story. Well, I went to a lot of different schools, but one of the schools we had a couple of priests who had had to leave South Africa because of their like fervent opposition to apartheid, and like, I think that opposition may have straight into political violence, but they we're pretty good and being like there's some funked up ship going down eleven year old children and you should be aware of this.

And like, I think I was younger than that when apartheid ended, but um, around then I was like, oh, that's pretty messed up maybe, and then like my family traveled a lot to go to different parts of the world and just being like, fuck, these little kids that I'm playing with here have have a different situation to me, and that's pretty sunked up. So I think I was probably about ten or eleven, Okay, yeah, when I when I became work, and it's all been downhill from there. Obviously.

Now you're working. Now, you're working with cool vown media, making lefty Marxist podcast. Yeah, out here reading marks and it's like transiting children's genders or whatever it is is fourthing kids in the drag brunches. They work expect how we do. We're out there every days, kidnapping your children on the front lines. Main just projecting like b DSM porn into kindergartens. Always, Sophie makes me, Yeah, that's that's Sophie's that's Sophie's job as the leader of this ship.

It was weird when she got me the giant projector. But now I understand why. So at this school board meeting, things start to go off the rail. Cecilia is mentioned by name, and when she is parents, many of whom are we're not able to get into this packed house school board meeting who are outside start beating on the windows and screaming no, no, no, when her name gets brought up. Here's a little a little taste of what that sounded like. So it's like a circus. It is

like a circus. It is a lot of Caucasian people banging on the edge of a scop window. Yeah. I hope they're all well sunscreened. I'll just say that, because it's like a hundred percent white ample crowd. No again, this angry about somebody who they have never spoken to. They don't know any any anything about, right, this is like And that's just the overflow crowd of folks who were not able to fit into the school building for

the meeting. So the meeting is adjourned and it's still pandemonium and school board members have to be escorted home by the police because it is not safe. So in this meeting they passed the resolution to banned critical race theory and not teach the sixteen nineteen project, and that there's not going to be a d e I initiative in the school. Cecilia responds and a statement saying, I wholeheartedly fell in love with Cherokee County when I came

for a visit and accepted the position. But somehow I got caught in the crossfire of lies, misinformation, and accusations which have zero basis um. And so I will give the tiniest, most miniscule defense of the school system here and that. Cecilia does say that she got lots of calls from administrators who were like, oh my god, we're so embarrassed, We're so sorry. You know the classic this

is not who we are. They say that they still want her to come work for the school district, but just not in d e I as planned because they got rid of the d e I initiative. Cecilia understandably, it's like fuck no, right. Her husband is like, absolutely,

no way we are moving there. You are not working with these people in no way does it seem like a safe situation her She hasn't even moved to this this community or even started this job, and so she already resigns before her first day, So you would think that's the end of it, right, These these people got what they wanted. There's gonna be no d I in the school district. Cecilia is not coming to work there.

You know, it shouldn't be the end of it. Well, you're gonna have to get used to me saying this like five more times in this episode, because every time you're like, shouldn't that be the end of it for these people, it's not. The story continues, and this is where stuff gets a little bit weird because there's kind of a lot of overlap of some of the conspiracy

theory stuff that we've talked about before. Cherokee County parents keep using their private Facebook group to speculate on Cecilia's whereabouts. Cecilia is still in Maryland, mind you, she did not end up coming to Georgia, so she is still just like in her home in Maryland. But people are making posts in this private Facebook group being like I saw her at the hardware store, I saw her in a

white car and had Maryland plays. So it's just like just like, really, I mean, I can't even imagine chasing something like chasing somebody out of the community, and so they don't they don't even come there because they because I've I've You've been so horrible to them. And then after you get your way, you're going to continue to like speculate on their whereabouts as if she's hiding in lows, lurking in your community, just waiting to pounce, and like

teach your kids about diversity or something. What are you communicating to your children, Like monthly just going on her private Facebook group to harass and black lady in Baltimore who she thinks she saw it lows like exactly exactly, like the like the posts on the group are are like just just something. There's something very very different of like y'all have too much time on your hands and are way too obsessed with this one person that you

have never even met. Yeah, very strange. So Cecilia never ended up coming to Georgia for that job, but her husband is still meant to be relocating for work, and so she still intends to look for work in Georgia. She ends up getting her resume passed along to a job as the social studies supervisor in copp County, Georgia, which is nearby Cherokee County. So when she gets this job, that same private Facebook group for Cherokee County parents lights up.

Even though she is not intending to work for Cherokee County, She's working in another county. Uh. These parents continue surveiling this one educator that they've never met or spoken to and has nothing to do with the education of their child with point and the comments on the posts about her getting another job are horrible. One person writes, she's a syringe filled with division, razor blades, and hate, like this was the one that they've never even met and

they have no idea what her background is. Yeah, what a bizarre Yeah, it's very strange. I'm just looking. Isn't that like just outside Atlanta? M hm yeah, yeah, but it's still not Okay, it's great because you look on the I found out Google Maps. It's nice to see Stone Mountain still kicking around. They'll kick in, they'll kick in, totally normal. That's the that's the normal stuff where I say,

d I is what's in? What's its fermenting division and bad? Yeah, it's like, oh, that's like these I mean, it's one of those things where I hear a lot worse, like oh, black people are so obsessed with race. Now, excuse me while I name all of our roads and monuments after fucking Confederate heroes and ship like mountain here. Yeah, make my racist mountain my monument of racism. But y'all are

obseted with the race that y'all I did. I was in Georgia, not this year, our last summer writing about a refugee women's hiking group, which is very cool thing. And people are in Atlanta. They should they should go support them, give them money. But it's fascinating because Stone Mountain is like not the neighborhoods around that am not like all wealthy white people and a lot of these these women who are like who had arrived from Afghanistan

or run or all over the world. Right, we're like, oh yeah, I love to go hiking in Stone Mountain. It's great. I can get outside a second, Like, which is the best fuck you to the racist on the mountain I could possibly think of, right to see these families enjoying their time outside. You have a whole This is such a tangent. You have a whole background, and like um inclusion in the outdoors. Right, Yeah, it's something

I've tried to write about a lot. Yeah, I think it's really important, and I think it's something that we have. Really it's got better. But like every single time I've been to Outdoor Retailer for as long as I think, which is a trade show of the outdo industry, the theme is inclusion, and then it's the same fucking thing every year, and it's extremely tiresome. And that I'm like a cist, gender heterosexual, white guy, and I find it tiresome.

And I can imagine like some of the ship my friends have had to deal with in the outdoor industry is just extremely cringe. Yeah, we should do we should, we should talk about it, we should. I am happy to I tried to say on the subject. Yeah, it's not my thing to like obviously, I'm like I said, and miss cis hat white guy, but we could all do more in the outdoor industry. And yeah, it's it's disappointing,

and it continues to be disappointing. And we appropriate ship from indigenous people and like virtue signal, but then don't actually look pay native artists who use native art and that kind of stuff, and it's yeah, it's bad. Don't do that don't do so before Cecilia starts her new job. The complaints from the same parents who you know, we're complaining the last time even though she's not even working

in their county. Hoor in, and they really illustrate again this complete lack of understanding of CRT and the job that Cecilia was hired to do. Parents called Cecilia a quote well known advocate of critical race theory when again remember she's never talked about it publicly. She didn't even know what it was. Cobb County, like Cherokee County, also had voted to ban teaching critical race theory and the sixteen nineteen project, even though this is something gonna do

with what she was hired for. But Apparent emails the school district and basically expresses worry about critical race theory being taught. The superintendent reply saying, I agree what a hundred percent with you about critical race theory. Don't worry because it's banned in this county. The parent replies, why has Cecilia Lewis been hired by Cobb. She was hired by Cherokee Schools for CRT and was run off because the parents put up such a fight. Now, Cobb has

quietly hired her. This is not a good move for the optics that Cobb has supposedly banned CRT. So again, this person who has nothing to do with it, just just bye bye virtue of her being a black woman. That is all that takes to connect her with critical race theory. So she starts this job and it is red flag city right like. She ends up being asked to prepare a presentation to introduce herself to all the social studies teachers at a training, and then when she

goes to this training, she's not allowed to speak. Um, all these different changes happened to her position. She was hired as a social study supervisor, but any correspondence to social studies teacher that she's going to have now needs to be approved ahead of time, and she says that nothing that she ever writes gets approved. Basically, they were shutting her out of this job that she was hired for, she explains to Republic As. She says, it was pretty

much them tucking me away. Every meeting was canceled, every professional learning opportunity that I was supposed to lead with my team, I couldn't do every department meeting with different schools. I was told I can't go, And honestly, kind of kudos to her, because I don't know, a lot of people might be fine withdrawing a salary for a job that they don't actually have to do, but Cecilia was not, and she ends up resigning. So now she has been chased out of not one, but two different jobs because

of this group of parents. Yeah, this is yeah. Cutos to this lady for like being incredibly brave. I would not be in the state fucking Georgia if I was like, no, absolutely not bold, but yeah, good on her for sticking to our guns. And in the end, these hating as parents of Cherokee County, they realized that they were wrong to drum up fake outrage around one black woman for no reason, and they were all deeply ashamed of their behavior and they were gonna reflect inward. Oh wait, no, no, no,

I'm just kidding. They were like high fiving and like popping bottles. Right. They took Cecilia leaving the state of Georgia as a rallying cry to continue to work to amass more power on school boards. They started a group called Educate Cherokee, where they bragged about chasing her out of town, claiming it as one of their accomplishments. On their website, they wrote, bring your ideas, energy and enthusiasm.

We need to convert all of it to an effective election to effort to eliminate critical race theory by replacing all the current school board members up for re election with new Conservatives committed to our cause. The group that initially ousted Cecilia started calling themselves the four Can Do More coalition, and they launched a website that reads, and I know physically in pain. What a powerful win for settler colonialism that you can call your group educate fucking

Cherokee and not interspection that for a second introspection. Yeah, no, wild Maybe maybe school should teach some ship. Yeah if if only they had they had D E I or like so. On their website, they say In May one, Cherokee County was taken by surprise when it was announced that our conservative board voted to bring in Cecilia Lewis as administrator on a special assignment director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. However, her history was riddled with critical race

theory ideologies in her previous school district. Why would the current board vote seven to zero to bring in someone to implement programs not in alignment with the family values of our community. They had a whole plan to basically take over the school board through running for local school boards. They were even endorsed by the seventeen seventy six Project pack, which you remember was that thing created to be sort of in opposition to the sixteen nineteen project Like oh

you say sixteen nineteen, we say seventeen seventy six. Cool. Yeah, yeah, very strange. Good, Yeah, I remember them doing this as if those people didn't own slaves, like like it exactly. However, they all lost. They do. They're all losers, and they

did what losers do, which is lose. They all lost their fucking elections, and of course, probably not surprising to you, when they lost their elections, they tried to pull that same kind of like, oh, rigged the election, like oh, we need to like ridged vote kind of nonsense that we're all so familiar with by now, yes, steal what what date? We what day we at? Now? This is

like post Trump. Yeah, this is post And it's funny because we did an episode about Shay and Ruby Freeman about how since that has become a common song in dance, right, like I lost this election. Ergo it's rigged ergo. Special lecters like how that has just become a thing that is now in our our national bloodstream to all of

our destriment. Yeah, we don't even have to wait to lose, right, Larry Elda had its website ready for that ship before the day of the election, like he did, pivoted his website to stop the steel like like a midnight the day before the vote. Well, also, that is like, really, it's not. It's like if you are if you think you know you're gonna lose, you know what I mean. It's like, well, I'm not a winning endorsement transparent griff here.

So again, in the episode that we did about um Shay and Ruby Freeman, we talked about how the business of local elections have been so intense that regular people just don't want the headache and the risk to their personal safety of being involved in anymore, leaving these critical roles to be filled by extremists, and that very same thing is threatening our local school boards and education system

as well. According to chalk Beat, extremists have launched at least eighty five attempts in two to recall two d and twenty five school board members, a record number of recalls for a single year, especially given that only twenty three states even allow for voters to recall school board members. I will say that like, it does maybe seem like the tides are maybe turning a little bit on this um.

Just like those losers who targeted Cecilia Lewis who all lost their elections for school board in Michigan, extremists who are running for school board candidates who attacked like woke public schools lost far more racist than they won. This is true in parts of New Mexico, Ohio, and Connecticut. And my hope is that people are just sort of getting sick of this, like they're they're just enough already.

We don't want our school boards to become a complete circus of who of you know, who is vuying like American Idol style to be on Fox News or whatever. Yea, And I would be curious to get your take on this, Shamus, because I think that one of the reasons why education is such an effective kind of battleground for all of this is that there's a historical precedent for it. You know, this idea of concerned parents being used as a smoke screen to fuel and mask hate. You know, biggots were

not pro segregation in the fifties. They were concerned parents advocating for school choice. And you know, it was not homophobes who wanted to strip gay people of their rights. It was concerned parents who wanted to keep their kids safe from the threat of gay teachers. Right and so, like, I think that schools and education have always been this historical place where a lot of hate can be masked

by concerned parents who are concerned for their kids. Yeah, I think what we need is Dark Brandon to send the hundred first air one to eSchool Cecilia Lewis to school every day like Eisenhower did. Yeah. Yeah, And I'm not trying to are are you a parent, James, I'm so I'm not trying to like let these parents off the hook at all. But I do think that parents sending their kids to school is like, I do think that that is that leaves some people open or vulnerable

to manipulation. Right, Like, parenting is very difficult. Parents do not have a ton of resources or like meaningful institutional support, and there are legitimate threats to the safety of kids, Like if you sending your kids off to school, they might not come back. And that's probably a very scary reality. And I think that when people are scared and also

under resourced, it creates the prime conditions for manipulation. And I think oftentimes the real threats are like systemic, big, scary, thorny issues, And so it's a lot easier to be like, oh, the threat to your kids, it's black people the threat to your kids, mass or drag queens or whatever, because even though it's ridiculous and harmful, because it's just like easier for people who are angry and scared and under

resource to wrap their head around. Yeah, Like and I can imagine it is petrifying, right, you raise this little human being and you get like four or five years old, then you entrust him to someone you barely know, and like you, kids get shot in their schools far too often in this country, and like that that must be. I can't imagine how scary and wearing that is. But like, yeah, that Mark has got a lot of ship wrong, but he got a lot of ship wrong with false consciousness.

But I do sometimes think that like, yeah, you're you're attacking the facade, not not the foundation of the structure with this stuff exactly. And you know, this is just not something that educators get into the field to deal with, Like as educators. When I was teaching, I made no money. I had to work even though I was like like a full time lecturer at a university, I had to work at a cafe on the weekends. I wasn't making

a ton of money. And so who, just like with the election situation, like who would want to for not a lot of money have to deal with people like this who are making it not just not just precarious, but also unsafe to do a job that's like pretty low paid at times. Like it's just like not what educators get into the field to deal with. And I think that we're seeing a lot of the impacts of that. There's not a lot of national data about educator shortages,

but I do know that is a statewide problem. According to the Washington Post, the Nevada State Education Association estimates that roughly three thousand teaching jobs remained unfilled across the

states seventeen school districts as of early August. In a January report, the Illinois Association of Regional School Superintendents found that eight percent of school districts statewide we're having problems with teacher shortages, while over two thousand teacher openings were either empty or filled with a less qualified higher or

less than qualified higher um. The famous true in Houston for the largest five school districts are all of reporting between two hundred and a thousand teach positions remaining open. And I think, you know, I'm I'm not going to pretend to know what the cause of the teacher shortages, but I have to. I have to imagine that the kind of extremist takeovers that we have seen of our of our education system has to be playing a role

in it. Yeah, I mean, you just don't. You shouldn't have to deal with that ship full start, but to deal with it for you know, less than minimum wage by the time you commute to work and like buy your students books and stuff, right, like we pay teachers terribly and yeah, it's it's just not worth it. It wasn't there a state the drafted National Guard into like teaching positions for a while, Yep, yep, yeah, totally normal. We've seen that National Guard being at to teach in Florida.

Florida was allowing veterans with no teaching background and without bachelor's degrees to teach, which, by the way, after all of the SANTIS is like puffery around that program. It resulted in a whopping seven new teachers. So thank you to SANTIS for that program. And I think that that's also part of it. I think that like the deeper nationalization of educators being like, oh, anybody can do it. I think that's part of what's going on here. And I think, you know, my hot take is this is

all by design. It is by intention to dismantle and disarm our public education system to the point where it will no longer be a viable option for folks. Yeah, and yeah, a lot of people are certainly, like wealthy people have always been sending their children sort outside of the public educationation system, right that, Like it should be

one thing that we can all get behind funding. There shouldn't be disagreement about this, Like everyone wins even if you don't have children, right, everyone wins when our children are better educated and better people like that, Thus the d I stuff. But yeah, apparently we can buy us thirty fives, but we you know, we can't give our teachers heating or whatever. Yeah, it's it's a like it's what when I think about my time as a teacher, it's not it's like not easy work. It's very emotionally

complex work. And the fact that we are just allowing for extremists and Charlatan's and grifters to attack educators in this way, I think, as you said, like we all lose out. We're going to be a less educated populace, we are going to be less equipped to deal with the challenges that we know are facing our country down the line, and I think everybody loses. Yeah, it's very strange, Like it's such a difficult challenge, Like you end up becoming a lot of things, a lot of different things,

a lot of people. Right, people will come to you with their with their emotional needs, like I've I've helped students fix their trucks and their cars before. Like you sort if you're at the front line of whatever it is that these young people are facing and you're there sort of often there are only person outside of the household that they speak to regularly and in some cases right, so you're there to sort of connect them with other services. Right,

be that counseling or sort of housing. Increasingly, I'm sure it's the same where you are, Like with many of our students can't afford to pay rent and they end up like living on the streets or living in their cars, and so you become the front line. And that when my email inbox after I'm done, I'll have some kind of email about how to connect students with housing services

or something. So you're doing all this stuff and then getting paid very little, and now you've also got like this this mob of people screaming outside, Like I can understand what people don't want to deal with that ship. Yeah, I can completely understand. And it makes me sad because I feel like, as you just articulated so thoughtfully, teaching, I loved teaching, and teaching was like I had a license plate that said love to teach, Like teaching was

a part of my identity. And I don't think it's I don't think it's good when that is just so callously attacked. When when people who go into the profession because they really love it are attacked, and people realize they can make a name off of themselves by attacking them,

I think it just it just it makes me very sad. Yeah, yeah, especially as like students play so much trust in their teachers often right Like, it's extremely sad to see their parents or maybe not their parents, other parents attacking them and sort of yeah, I don't know, it's such a strange. I understand why it's become this this sort of site of the culturals. But like I said, like everyone loses.

It's really yeah, it's it's for someone to sort of go after and there are people who like crafted this narrative, right like, and for them to choose to go after some of the most altruistic professions in our society. It's yeah, it's just pathetic and sad and incredibly frustrating. But this all brings us to sort of our conclusion. I want to talk briefly about what I think needs to be done well. For one, I think that tech leaders and social media platforms need to take seriously their role in

spreading harmful attacks on public education. One the National Education Association, then social media platforms in general, a letter asking them to act on this specific part of the conversation, saying quote, take for example, the alarming growth of a small but violent group of radicalized adults who falsely believed that graduate level courses about racism are being taught and k through twelve public schools because of misinformations brought on social media.

And there are another small, yet vocal group of extremists who are putting the safety of our children, educators, and families at risk over the notion that wearing a mask is an infringement on personal liberty. The speed and reach of these lies that are manipulating so many of our citizens would not be possible without the use of social media platforms. So I think that this is definitely a situation where tech leaders need to get in the game and really have an honest accounting of the ways that

they have made this problem worse and act. Second, I think that in general, our media needs to do a better job of reporting on issues, specifically issues that are so disingenuous like the CRT panic, so that the next

moral panic doesn't take off. You know, we talked about how Christopher Rufo was so explicit about his strategy for making critical race theory this toxic thing that you could put anything under the category of why have we allowed that same exact strategy to be effective when it comes to things like lgbt H folks or Drag Queen Story Hours and things like that. And then lastly, this is

a little bit of looking inward. I think the misinformation and disinformation community needs to do better for whatever reason. I think that when it comes to misinformation about something like COVID or vaccines, it's a lot easier for us to talk about and do a lot of public education around than compared to something like critical race theory that is based on inaccurate or inflammatory statements around racial identity.

So I think that as a community of folks who are interested in doing public education around how false information works and is spread and is weaponized, we have to be better about taking up that mantle and taking up that fight when those attacks are rooted in identity. But there is a little bit of a happy ending here, because I am happy to report that this whole ordeal did not stop Cecilia Lewis. Cecilia currently works as a head of HR for a school district here in the

DC area. So this was not the end of her. She didn't, you know, She continued to be the talented educator that by all accounts that she was um and still is. And so yeah, I think it's a story of how all of these panics can really have a human cost that can really derail people's professional lives and personal lives in these ways that they just don't deserve, Like regular people don't deserve to get caught up in somebody's you know, cultural war grievance so that they can

be the next Fox News superstar. Right. Like, I saw this video of a woman at a school board meeting. She was upset about pronouns and classrooms and she was dressed as a cat, right Like, who it doesn't make It doesn't serve anybody to have people be like I have this cat, I have this cat suit. Let me just bust it out on the school board meeting. Like that's not a good situation. Yeah, Like if you're a cat sup person, that that's all well and good, Like

you should wear a catsoo, but yeah, maybe don't. Don't. Don't make that your thing at the school. It's like the turf in Scotland who decided to flash everyone because other people were sexualizing kids. It's bad. It's bad. Well that is all I have. James. Where can folks hear you read you all of that? Okay? Um? So We have a podcast called it Could Happen here also on

cool Zone Media. People can find it by searching that, and they will hear me far too much probably and become annoyed and go on the Internet and post about that. But yeah, they're can hear me there. I do Twitter, it's just my name, James Stout. Don't do other social media because of all this that we've just talked about. But yeah, those are the those are the two main things. I don't know. People should go and read. Maybe they should read some critical theory. Maybe they should read like

Ordering Lord or something like that. And and then actually, you know, take the take some to rain back for being nice to other people, which is anything that you want to plug at the end here me yeah, oh well you could. Well. Thank you for listening to this podcast. You can listen to my other podcasts. There are no girls on the Internet, and you can follow me on Twitter at Bridget Marine or on Instagram at Bridget Burney in DC. Okay. Cool Fun Episode Internet Hate Machine is

a production of cool Zone Media. From more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Check out our website cool zone Media dot com, or find us on the I Heart radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts