'I'm Going To Be Simple About It—It's Really Stupid': GOP's Witness Rips 'Ethno-Mathematics'

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At Wednesday's House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) spoke to Dr. Erec Smith, Ph.D., a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute, about DEI.

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00:00Dr. Smith, one of the things I find interesting about this discussion is the idea that your

00:07value as an employee would be determined by where your ancestors come from.

00:14In other words, the implication being that there's an Asian way to be an engineer and

00:19a Hispanic way to be an engineer and a Northern European way to be an engineer.

00:25Could you comment on that ideology that your value of employee or the way you think as

00:30an employee comes down to, I guess, where your great-great-grandparents are from?

00:38I can tell you about some egregious examples in academia, but first I want to talk about

00:45this concept of colorblindness and the fact that colorblindness or the idea that colorblindness

00:51is inherently racist that comes from the DEI proponents that I've had interest with.

01:01If you tell people that colorblindness is a bad thing, you're telling them what to think

01:06of me without my say.

01:08If you tell somebody to look at a black person and say, well, they're black, you need to look

01:12at them differently, you're telling them to look at me differently without my say.

01:16You cannot erase individuality, individual sovereignty from this.

01:20Yes, we are parts of groups, but we are also, and perhaps primarily, individuals.

01:27To answer your question more directly, there are some egregious pedagogies out there that

01:32I think we need to talk about, like ethno-mathematics, for example.

01:36The idea that black kids learn math differently from white kids, and therefore we need black math.

01:44It's stupid.

01:45It's stupid.

01:46I'm going to be simple about it.

01:48It's really stupid.

01:50The idea that getting the right answer is somehow inherently white is stupid.

01:57The idea that having a teacher be the person with the most authority and knowledge in the

02:06room be a bad thing is stupid.

02:11There's no mathematics, there's ethnocomposition, you write differently if you're black.

02:17All these things are there to divide us in certain ways.

02:22And I see through it, and for that, I've been attacked.

02:28Now I'll give a question to any one of the three on the left.

02:34We have brought out today that this kind of affirmative action policy began in earnest.

02:41It was run informally before that, but in earnest in 1965.

02:45And there are outright businesses that have sprung up telling companies who to hire and

02:51who to promote and whatnot.

02:52I've talked to people in these businesses.

02:55As a practical matter, have these laws in 1965 resulted in discrimination since that time?

03:07In other words, are firms told to hire this person or that person?

03:11Particularly, we talk about race today, but it's very much with regard to women as well,

03:16since 1965.

03:17Mr. Glock, you want to take a crack at it?

03:20Yes.

03:21There have been significant effects across the entire economy of the United States because

03:26of these laws, changing how businesses compose their workforce, changing how they contract

03:32or subcontract out to others, and of course, as I've been-

03:34Does it result in, I'm running out of time here, does it result in discrimination based

03:38on sex and which men are discriminated against in 1965?

03:40Absolutely.

03:42Okay.

03:43Well, I'll ask Mr. Lennington, too, because he's a lawyer and deals with this stuff.

03:46Definitely the affirmative action, 11246, did result in discrimination.

03:52I would say the Civil Rights Act itself of 1964 is colorblind, though.

03:56Okay.

03:58Now, Mr. Christomorthy.

03:59can we see the television clearly on Facebook or a weekly link is located somewhere else.

04:01Okay.

04:03Yes.

04:04Yes.

04:05Ok.

04:06Next week ofessions.

04:08Thank you, guys.

04:09I'm going to hear a little weird thing.

04:11See myself?

04:12Just month off to here.

04:14I'm going to hear something.

04:15I'm going to hear some words.

04:16Give me a word right to you about 2 fingers.

04:18You won't departments.

04:20See myself.

04:22We're going to hear a thousand flag Perché, nothing.

04:24The sudden that we wake up for, we go halfway through these issues.

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