Attorney Dan Lennington from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty joins us to tackle the tough issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and equality in education. We dive into the shift from critical race theory to DEI in schools, explore the resurgence of race-based policies, and discuss the crucial role parents play in navigating their children's education amid controversial policies. Dan shares his insights on defending constitutional rights in landmark cases, underscoring the importance of parental authority.
This episode is a must-listen as we dissect how DEI policies, often derived from critical race theory, may lead to reverse discrimination and suppress free speech. We discuss real-life instances of renewed segregation and the push for drastic educational reforms under the guise of tackling racial injustices. The conversation also covers the challenges of compelled speech and pronoun preferences, highlighting the conflicts teachers face between personal beliefs and professional obligations. We conclude with a powerful message: discrimination in any form is indefensible, emphasizing the need for vigilance to preserve the core values of our education system.
TCC is THE podcast for conservative teachers, parents, and patriots who believe in free speech, traditional values, and education without indoctrination.
The views and opinions expressed by me are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any employer, school, or school district I have worked with in the past or present.
Thanks for listening to The Conservative Classroom. Teaching the truth. Preserving our values.
Attorney Dan Lennington from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty joins us to tackle the tough issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and equality in education. We dive into the shift from critical race theory to DEI in schools, explore the resurgence of race-based policies, and discuss the crucial role parents play in navigating their children's education amid controversial policies. Dan shares his insights on defending constitutional rights in landmark cases, underscoring the importance of parental authority.
This episode is a must-listen as we dissect how DEI policies, often derived from critical race theory, may lead to reverse discrimination and suppress free speech. We discuss real-life instances of renewed segregation and the push for drastic educational reforms under the guise of tackling racial injustices. The conversation also covers the challenges of compelled speech and pronoun preferences, highlighting the conflicts teachers face between personal beliefs and professional obligations. We conclude with a powerful message: discrimination in any form is indefensible, emphasizing the need for vigilance to preserve the core values of our education system.
TCC is THE podcast for conservative teachers, parents, and patriots who believe in free speech, traditional values, and education without indoctrination.
The views and opinions expressed by me are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any employer, school, or school district I have worked with in the past or present.
Thanks for listening to The Conservative Classroom. Teaching the truth. Preserving our values.
What does modern-day racism look like? How is diversity, equity and inclusion hurting our kids, and where can a parent or teacher turn if they feel their constitutional rights have been trampled on? Welcome to The Conservative Classroom, where we're teaching the truth and preserving our values. I'm your host, Mr. Webb, and I'm glad you're here. This podcast is a haven for conservative educators, parents and patriots like you, who believe in the importance of free speech, traditional values and education without indoctrination.
Mr. Webb:
Each week, we dive into issues that are plaguing our education system and keeping you up at night. In each episode, we offer common sense ideas to improve education in our classrooms and communities. You may feel like you're the last conservative educator or parent, but I want you to know that you are not alone. Want you to know that you are not alone. By the way, if you like what you hear today, please share this podcast with a like-minded educator, parent or patriot. Together, we can teach the truth and preserve our values. In today's episode, we talk with attorney Dan Lennington about equity, equality, reverse discrimination and parental rights, among other things. Now let's get started. Today, I'm excited to welcome a special guest to the conservative classroom Dan Lennington. Dan is here to discuss diversity, equity, inclusion equality under the law. Dan, thanks so much for joining us.
Dan Lennington:
Thanks a lot for having me Joey.
Mr. Webb:
No proble. Dan works for Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and Cory Brewer, who's been on the podcast a couple times, introduced us. So I don't know much more about you than our podcast listeners do. So, to start, can you tell us a bit about yourself, your background and what led you to constitutional law and your role at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, or WILL as we'll call it from here on?
Dan Lennington:
Yes, so I work at WILL. I am an attorney, I'm a deputy counsel and I'm in charge of our equality under the law project. Now at Will, we do lots of things. Primarily, we represent clients pro bono who have had their rights violated by usually government officials. So we've represented parents in the past in transgender litigation against school districts. We've represented small businesses who've had their rights violated during COVID shutdowns, represented individuals who've had their Second Amendment rights taken away. So we do all sorts of constitutional individual rights litigation, go to federal court and represent these people in order to vindicate the Constitution. And so I focus on what I call equality litigation.
Dan Lennington:
We started the Equality Under the Law Project in 2021 in response to the just inundation of race-based programs that was being implemented by the federal government, state governments, cities, counties and private corporations, in which certain people were giving a leg up or a preference or a priority based on the color of their skin priority based on the color of their skin. This was all in response to the summer of 2020 and the George Floyd death and the ensuing riots, and the world just sort of went crazy in this area of race and originally we labeled it as critical race theory. We labeled it as critical race theory and I think more recently it's taken on the name DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion, and we're seeing a lot of this in K through 12 education, which I hope we can talk about today. But I'm at will. I run this project.
Dan Lennington:
Before this I was a federal prosecutor in Oklahoma. I've also argued cases on behalf of the state of Wisconsin at the Wisconsin Supreme Court and been largely a government attorney, and before that I went to law school and before that I was at Hillsdale College where I'm a graduate of. So that's sort of how I ended up here at Will in Wisconsin. But we we're a nationwide project, the Equality Under the Law project. We have represented clients so far in 18 states and we do it 100 percent pro bono and we rely on donations from people who want to support the Constitution and the rule of law.
Mr. Webb:
Well, there's so much for us to get into there. I wasn't even going to mention the transgender issue, but you mentioned it a minute ago. Do you mainly represent the transgender clients or more on the compelled speech side, with pronouns and such?
Dan Lennington:
Well, we represent primarily parents who have been lied to and locked out of decisions on whether their child should transgender or should trans become a transgender child.
Dan Lennington:
So, for example, we filed the very first case in the country challenging a policy at a school district which sought to hide transitions and name changes from parents. That was in a school district here in Wisconsin called Kittle Moraine, and we actually received a judgment recently that ruled that the school district was not allowed to do that, and I think that is also the first time a school district has been held accountable for their transition protocol. We've sued other school districts Madison Wisconsin School District is another one but since we started that project that's also exploded and parents have become more aware that school districts, especially almost primarily public school districts, are hiding transitions from the parents and telling the parents that they have no role in this. And so we call it parents' rights litigation, and the Constitution protects the right of a parent to direct the upbringing of their children, and so we go to state and federal court to defend those rights of parents.
Mr. Webb:
Oh, wow, so yeah, well, as I mentioned, I hadn't planned on even, you know, talking about transgender, transgenderism and the issues you know surrounding that. So me asking about the compelled speech side, that was kind of off the cuff. The parental rights side, though, that's so much more of an issue and, gosh, there's so many issues we'll get into and I have a bad habit of talking about these acronyms and not mentioning to some of the listeners maybe that that don't know. Crt, that's critical race theory. Dei's diversity, equity, inclusion. And what do you see as the most troubling in your opinion from, let's say, from a constitutional standpoint? The crt dei, reverse discrimination, compelled speech, parental rights what would you say is the number one, I guess, threat to constitutional rights.
Dan Lennington:
The number one problem in K-12 schools with DEI is treating people which would include students and teachers who are employees not as individuals but as members of racial groups, and so that's essentially what DEI is all about. Dei has sort of twin pillars. One is race essentialism, the idea that an individual's race is the most important thing about them, and it puts them on the spectrum of whether they are the oppressor or the oppressed. And the other pillar is systemic racism, that there are disparities in achievement and prosperity among racial groups, and this is all the result of embedded racism in the system. And so when you take this DEI theory, which includes race essentialism and systemic racism, and you put it in a public school, you are not treating teachers and students as individuals, you're treating them as archetypes or as members of certain racial groups that need to be treated according to their race and not according to their individual characteristics, and so it's that sort of foundational and fundamental flaw that causes all the other problems.
Dan Lennington:
So, for example, we have seen actual racial segregation in schools. I have heard allegations of segregations on field trips, on buses, in classrooms, and what I mean by racial segregation is a class that's only offered to Black kids, a math class, for example, in one school district here in Wisconsin only offered to Black kids. The Madison Metropolitan School District in the state capitol here in Wisconsin had a policy for reading. It was reading curriculum and it mandated that K through five teachers who are teaching a reading curriculum that they must quote. Meet with your black students first and more often. I'm going to read that again.
Mr. Webb:
And that's in writing, that's in black writing.
Dan Lennington:
Meet with your black students first and more often.
Dan Lennington:
We've had other school districts that have had back to school nights where they're called things like student of color, freshman orientation.
Dan Lennington:
We have had children as young as five who have been required to stand up in front of class and explain their white privilege to the other students, to stand up in front of class and explain their white privilege to the other students. We've had teachers who have been told that they need to act a certain way because we don't need another white woman talking to the students, and so all these things come from this foundational belief that there are these inequities in our system and the only way to get rid of them is to treat people according to race. And, at the end of the day, what it means is that white kids should be treated less than and be given less priority and preference, and children of color, which is typically black kids, not Asian kids, black kids and Hispanic kids and Native Americans are given some sort of preference that we will implement to make up for, fill in the blank, historical wrongs, jim Crow, slavery, segregation. That's what's going on. It's happening to teachers and it's happening to students.
Mr. Webb:
So how does critical race theory play into that? Is that the bedrock of the idea behind it being okay to segregate in this way?
Dan Lennington:
Yes, I really do think so. Do think so. Um, critical race theory is more of a way, um a lens that you would view all interactions through. Um, so you would. You would take a classroom and you would say at the end of the day, a teacher sits down and a teacher would evaluate. Um, I, I have six black kids and I have 14 white kids. Did I call on the black kids in a disproportionate way? Did I have one-on-one conversations with them in a ratio that is related to that six out of 20 ratio that we have in class? Because if I did do something disproportionate let's say I had a line leader and my line leaders over the last month were mostly white kids, disproportionate to the population of the whites in the class. That's evidence that I in fact have implemented a racist system in the classroom and that there is no other excuse for what I've done.
Dan Lennington:
Now, this sort of self-reflection that I'm describing to you is not theoretical.
Dan Lennington:
There are school districts that I have heard of, many school districts, that mandate that at the end of a day, a teacher will sit down at his or her desk, will take out a list of the students that is divided up by race, and we'll contemplate whether they treated the kids differently based on race, based on all aspects of interaction, from their grades to their one-on-one time, their treatment, and that you must.
Dan Lennington:
It's that sort of race essentialism that really comes out of the CRT, this critical I mean it is critical. You're critiquing the system that you're working on based on this theory that all disparities are the result of racism and you, as the K-12 teacher, are part of that system. So you need to deconstruct it, you need to tear it down and rebuild something that is more equitable. This is all Marxist. I mean, if people think it sounds Marxist, it is Marxism. It's about tearing down the systems we have and rebuilding a more perfect society. So that's where the sort of heady CRT comes into this and is really boiled down into diversity, equity and inclusion. And it's really boiled down into diversity, equity and inclusion.
Mr. Webb:
As a teacher, as specifically a middle school math teacher, with all that's on teachers' plates on a daily basis, I can't imagine, on top of everything else, having to sit down and calculate what percentage you know I let I called on white versus black students.
Dan Lennington:
And that that, to me, is just insane. Yeah, it's a self critique, and um, they'll, um, they'll meet once a week, uh, in these um equity sessions and the teachers will critique each other. And it takes its form from something called the struggle session, which actually used to happen in Maoist China, where people were yelled at or criticized or belittled or accused of racism or accused of not supporting the party in that case. But there will be these internal sessions where these K-12 teachers will just grapple with their own racism by how the minority kids, their grades, are lower on average than the white kids, and that's all my fault, and it's just this sort of internalized and then externalized struggle. And struggle is another word that you hear in Marxism a lot. My Struggle is the title of a very famous book. So there, yes, this is. It's. Sometimes, you know, people hear this and it gets very academic, but when it comes down to it, what's going on in the classroom?
Mr. Webb:
it is race discrimination, it is treating people differently based on race, and that is illegal aren't we supposed to judge students, in this case, by the content of their character instead of their race? And how are we supposed to do that if we're constantly supposed to think about race? This to me, I don't understand how the same folks that are pushing race to be anti-racial, pushing race to be anti-racial, like, do they not see that you can't do one without accidentally doing the other? Does that make any sense?
Dan Lennington:
Yes, yeah, you know. Ibram Kendi, in his first edition of his book how to Be an Anti-racist, says the way to stop past discrimination is present discrimination and the way to fix present discrimination is future discrimination. His second edition of that book he actually deleted that phrase. But that is, the essence of anti-racism is discrimination, it's to make up discrimination, it's makeup discrimination. If anybody's a sports fan and they see an umpire make a bad call, what do people say? They say, well, there will be a makeup call on the next to play, the next foul or the next out will be a makeup call. That's essentially anti-racism. That's Ibram Kendi, how to be an anti-racist. It's makeup discrimination.
Dan Lennington:
And so what you do is you put the whites in a classroom and you make them ponder their own white fragility and their whiteness and how they have implicit bias, unseen, it's unknowable. It's a faith, it's a creed. It's very religious in a lot of the words that you're confessing your own whiteness and that you can never get over your original sin of whiteness unless you confess it and you say it and you promise to do better and that you'll be redeemed by your own works. I mean, it sounds very religious because it is. In some ways it's very Marxist. But your question about don't they know they, the purveyors of DEI don't they know that they're just discriminating based on race? And I think the answer is yes, they know discriminating based on race? And I think the answer is yes, they know. And because at the root of this, a lot is politics and wanting to use a system to gain power.
Dan Lennington:
And if we really look at disparities in America and disparities in schools and I think if you actually said how to talk to K-12 teachers and said why is this group of kids doing worse academically and socially and in terms of discipline than another group, than another group the honest and thoughtful teacher would say well, johnny comes from a very difficult home. They're poor, his dad's in jail and his mom doesn't have enough time to watch him. They don't read very much at home, they don't have a lot of books on the shelf, they don't have dinners every night. At the same time, they don't have a social network. They come from a crime-ridden community. Those are all reasons why Johnny grows up to be disruptive in class and not do good on his ACTs when he's 17 and not go to college.
Dan Lennington:
It's not because of Johnny's skin color, and no one thoughtful would ever say it's because of your melanin that makes you violent in class, or it's because of what society did to your ancestors which makes you violent in class. No, it's because Johnny hasn't seen his dad. Or it's that Johnny is from a very dangerous neighborhood and he's afraid every night. Or it's that Johnny's very poor and his mom is working so much and doesn't have any time to read to him at night. I mean, those are real reasons why kids don't succeed. And you will notice, the language I'm using is towards the individual, johnny as a person and his circumstances, not his racial group, which is what DEI would do.
Mr. Webb:
Dei would say, because of his racial group so let me, let me ask you this question. This is something I've noticed over the years and I've talked about, probably talked about it on the podcast too. I'm not sure if I talked about it with a legal expert like yourself, but we we went from equality to using the word equity. Now, what is the difference between equity and equality?
Dan Lennington:
And how has that changed policy over the years? So equality is treating everybody equally, not treating people differently based on their race or their sex or their religion. So, for example, at a school having a discipline matrix that applies to everybody equally, school having a discipline matrix that applies to everybody equally, your first offense is a detention, your second offense is a call home and a detention, your third offense is a suspension. That would be a set of rules, a discipline matrix, and you're in middle school. I think you probably think about discipline once in a while. You would apply that set of rules equally, based on what they've done and everybody. The rules are applied equally to everybody. Equity would be we have to have equal results based on whatever category you want. So let's just choose race 20% of the kids are non-white, 80% are white. So your discipline matrix you would fill in the equals and you would say equals 20, equally to the students, based on race. You'd apply the rules in a discriminatory way in order to ensure that the outcome, the 80-20 ratio, is upheld, no matter what. So what you have at the end of the day in discipline in public schools is you have very unsafe schools.
Dan Lennington:
We have done reports at will published research reports that kids are feeling much less safe at schools and it's the result of lax discipline policies. I've had a mother call me before who said that her eighth grader was stabbed on a bus by a child, and that child who stabbed her child had been written up many, many times for threatening other students, beating up other students on the bus over a series of months, and the school district was afraid to do anything about it because the child, the perpetrator, was African-American and they did not want to be disproportionate. They were saying, if we punish him and we punish the other kids that are doing that, we won't be at the 80-20 mark that we need to be at. Well, it'll be 50-50. And we can't be at 50-50 because we have an 80-20 population.
Dan Lennington:
And that is the sort of religious fervor with which equity is imposed. It is imposed on these schools and these systems and these kids in such a way that it doesn't matter if kids go home stabbed or bloodied or beaten. What matters is the principle, and the principle is we need equity, equal results, because if we don't have equal results, it proves that we're all racist and we know we're not racist. So that's where this becomes dangerous, when kids start getting hurt and, by the way, teachers getting hurt, you know, we see on social media a lot teachers getting hit over the head, with chairs in classrooms gone out of control, teachers being punched by students. And I would say, if you went in and looked at those schools, they're not being run with a discipline policy that is based in equality Right, they're being run with a disciplined policy that's based in equity.
Mr. Webb:
And that situation that you mentioned about the student on the bus and getting attacked by someone who should have been disciplined, maybe even taken out of the school system. I don't know how severe or how many times something like that happened. That's exactly the kind of cases that you guys work on, isn't it?
Dan Lennington:
Yes, that's, exactly that's one of the types.
Dan Lennington:
Yes, we deal in the K. Let's just narrow it to K through 12. We deal with parents who believe that their child is not being protected because of some DEI policy. We had another student contact us and this is in the area of compelled speech, which I should circle back to. A student who was in high school wrote an essay about how she had been retaliated against by the teachers in her school because she would not believe, she would not say that all cops are racist or that law enforcement is all racist, that she disagreed with that idea and she also disagreed with the idea that you can't be a racist against a white person. And teachers retaliated against her. Guidance counselors sat her down and tried to talk her out of it and tell her she didn't know what she was saying. She needed to change her beliefs about race and racism in America.
Dan Lennington:
And this student who happened to be an immigrant and racism in America. And this student who happened to be an immigrant, a recent immigrant, was told by another administrator that she did not have a right to have an opinion about race in America because she quote just got here. She just got here. She can't have an opinion. That's compelled speech. That's the idea that you are not allowed to speak your mind, have your own personal beliefs, that you have to say what the government wants you to say and believe what the government wants you to believe, although we have a freedom of speech and a freedom of conscience in this country, uh, and so that is a very dangerous thing and that does happen to students who are not allowed to believe certain things or not allowed to say certain things. I think we in the news recently there was a story about a young man who was penalized at school because he used the phrase illegal immigrant in California and he was either suspended or got some sort of discipline that would be compelled speech. You can't say. You have to say undocumented person, you can't say illegal immigrants. But most of the time what we hear and it's very difficult legally to deal with this is when a school district is imposing its beliefs on a teacher and telling the teacher that hey, in your private life, when you leave this building, you've got to be an advocate, you've got to be an ally, you've got to be an anti-racist, you have to be a disruptor in your personal life. You can't just do this work, do all the hard work here at school, you got to do it in your personal life.
Dan Lennington:
We've heard that from teachers too. Is this sort of all-consuming aspect of DEI that it's got to infect your personal life in addition to your public life as a teacher? Now, of course, a public school can compel a teacher, just like an employer in private school can tell a teacher when you teach math, you got to say two plus two is four. When you teach, you know about this element of history. You've got to teach this element of history. You know we can tell teachers what they have to teach. There's not really a lot of academic freedom in K through 12. But you can't force a teacher to believe something they don't believe in or to do something in their personal time that they don't. That's off the clock. So that's the sort of compelled speech we see. A lot is definitely with teachers in this training that they get related to DEI or CRT.
Mr. Webb:
My biggest fear as a teacher when I first started teaching I've been teaching about 10 years, excuse me. So when I first got into teaching as a male teacher, I was told by several different people protect yourself, make sure you know if a female student, for instance, comes in on your planning period, you know, step out in the hallway where you can be seen. Because the thing then was, you know the fear of allegations, you know false allegations, you know you give a. Maybe a girl earns a bad grade and it's from a male teacher, so she'll make something up, and I don't think it happened that often. But that was the main concern, you know, when I first started teaching and at some point that changed to. You know I'm not worried about that anymore.
Mr. Webb:
I'm worried about having a student who is, let's say, a girl that decides to be a boy, student who is, let's say, a girl that decides to be a boy, and I'm supposed to call her by he, him or whatever pronouns they choose. That's what I was worried about, and I'm a teacher in Kentucky and now in Kentucky I think it was last year that they passed a law that was vetoed by the governor, but it was a super majority that overrode his veto, where teachers no longer have to call students by their preferred pronouns. They can call them by whatever biological sex they actually are. But I think there's a lot of teachers in a lot of other states who that's one of their main concerns. Am I going to slip up someday with the wrong student, not use the correct pronoun and then end up losing my job? Do you see things like that with the pronoun usage?
Dan Lennington:
Yes, we do, and there are cases that are percolating through the courts right now and I think that eventually, this issue of pronouns that there's many issues with pronouns, but the compelled speech issue is going to have to go to the US Supreme Court at some point to get some clarity and precision on does a public school teacher have to call a boy a girl, precision on does a public school teacher have to call a boy a girl, um, if the public school teacher believes that's actually um, boy, um, and maybe even has religious convictions that that we are created in god's image, male and female.
Dan Lennington:
They were created um, as as Old Testament says, hebrew scriptures and even if you're not a Christian, you may have that belief. You may have a very strong belief that we're created male and female. So there may be a religious component to that which would make this even more compelling sort of case. But yes, I know there are teachers out there that are in courts right now litigating over this compelled speech issue. So that's one of the issues with compelled speech and pronouns with compelled speech and pronouns.
Mr. Webb:
We've talked about compelled speech, critical race theory, diversity, equity, inclusion. Is there anything we're missing? Is there an important issue that we haven't covered? We touched on parental rights a little bit. Is there anything?
Dan Lennington:
we've missed? No, I do. I mean, I think that you know our Constitution has a lot of rights in it and we seem to focus on the ones that are written expressly the freedom of speech, religion, freedom of the press, due process but this right there is a fundamental right to direct the upbringing of your children and it has been recognized as an unwritten constitutional right. That is definitely part of the US Constitution, by courts for over a century. That and a part of the family union that we get to. We get to direct the upbringing of our children. And that.
Dan Lennington:
For a school to to take away that right through these transgender policies and say we are going to lie to parents because we are your parents now, which is a sign that was on the door of a classroom in Eau Claire, wisconsin I'm your parent now.
Dan Lennington:
If your parent doesn't affirm you, I'm your parent now. The school district is not your parent, it can't be your parent and it takes away the rights of real parents when it acts like this. So I would say that people should embrace their role and their vocation as a parent and to think about the ways that the school district might be trying to usurp that. And it's not just transgender issues. There is a whole curriculum I'm sure you've had guests on before talking about social emotional learning, which is a pseudo psychology that diagnoses kids with depression and anxiety and in many ways is actually a medical treatment or experiment on children that we have. That's disguised as a curriculum and it's very dangerous and it's taking away parenting from parents and it's putting it in the hands of unqualified teachers and I say that unqualified to give medical advice Right Teachers.
Mr. Webb:
So what advice would you give to teachers and parents that are listening?
Dan Lennington:
Protect your rights. There are a number besides where I work, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, there are a number of nonprofit law firms around the country. Beacon is in Tennessee, southeastern Legal is in Georgia, there's the Pacific Legal Foundation, there's the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is one of the most famous sort of religious liberty groups in the country, and they actually have offices overseas now. Texas Public Policy, all these states, almost every state, many states have litigation centers, lawyers you can call for free, so you don't have to pay a lawyer, and so it's just a matter of getting on the phone and going on the internet and looking for resources. We at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty have a website. It's will-laworg. We have resources for parents on there dealing with all these issues.
Dan Lennington:
One of the things we're very proud of that's more recent, that my colleague Corey Brewer probably talked to you about last time, was that we have resources for school boards can adopt to be respectful of parent rights and free expression and due process and equality in the classroom and all the things, the transparency, all the things necessary to make a school district work well procedurally, work well as a matter of policy, and also to be respectful of parents' rights in the First Amendment, people's religious liberties and the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, so we are very proud of that.
Dan Lennington:
We give out those resources for free. Parents can download them, print them off and email them to their school board members and say, hey, here's a policy on pronouns. We think you guys should adopt this policy, and here I'm a taxpayer, I have a student in your district, here's a policy, and they're meant to be basically cut and paste policies that school boards can just use. So that's something we're very proud of. So we're just one of many state-based litigation centers or regional litigation centers and groups of lawyers who offer resources to parents so you can get information and advice without having to go hire your own attorney, and if we can't help you, we can direct you to someone else who can help you. So there are lots of resources out there.
Mr. Webb:
And thanks for sharing those. I'll definitely put links to will-laworg in the show notes and before I ask about how folks can connect with you on social media and if you have any other projects or anything else you want to share with our listeners, what's the one thing you want the listeners to remember, if they don't remember anything else about this episode?
Dan Lennington:
There's no excuse for race discrimination. There's no excuse for treating someone differently based on race. There's no excuse for treating someone differently based on race. And when you hear these words out there, like diversity, equity and inclusion, that's no excuse for race discrimination. And be on the lookout, because a lot of this discrimination is going underground and there are words that are coming into our lexicon right now that is cloaking race discrimination. And here are some of the words marginalized, underrepresented, historically excluded, disadvantaged, diversity. When you see those words, be on the lookout, because they almost always mean race discrimination. And race discrimination is not only when race is being used as a negative for some person, it's also when race is used as a positive for other people. So race could be either a benefit or a detriment, because when you say that a program is for one race, you're saying the opposite side of the coin, that it's not for a different race. It's a zero-sum game.
Mr. Webb:
I think a good rule of thumb is if you put the word white in there, would it be okay then? Would it be okay then, you know, if you, let's say, if you take the word black out and you put in white or persons of color, if you take that out and put in white, would whatever policy or whatever activity, if you substituted that in, would it be okay then or would it sound racist?
Mr. Webb:
That's exactly right, and if the answer is no, it would sound racist. If the word white was put in there, then guess what? It's still racist.
Dan Lennington:
Exactly A study group for white students to give them extra help for white students after class would be illegal and racist.
Mr. Webb:
I cringe when you say that you know, knowing that that's not really what you're saying, but I still cringe over that. Knowing that that's not really what you're saying, but I still cringe over that.
Dan Lennington:
So how can folks connect with you on social media or with Will? Yes, so we have our website. I'm also active on Twitter or X. My username is at Dan Lennington and I post a lot about race issues and things I'm seeing and you can connect with me there. And also, if you want to email me, my email is dan at will-laworg. It's on the website too.
Mr. Webb:
So you can email me or get a hold of me on X. I'll make sure and put links to those in the show notes as well. Thanks so much for joining us today, dan. It's been a pleasure having you on the conservative classroom. It was nice to meet you, nice to talk to you, and I know that our listeners appreciate your insights on equality under the law, diversity, equity, inclusion all these topics we've talked about. Thank you so much, you are welcome. Thanks for having me.
Mr. Webb:
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Mr. Webb:
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Mr. Webb:
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