Controversy has reared its head again in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) in California. The district recently convened a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwPu4CQ_rZk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">special board meeting</a> to deliberate on its Ethnic Studies curriculum and the potential renewal of a contract with Community Responsive Education (CRE). <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-a-new-ethnic-studies-curriculum-promotes-anti-semitism-in-california">As I reported last month,</a> the State of California previously rejected the draft Ethnic Studies curriculum co-authored by CRE founder and director Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, which was deemed to promote antisemitism and neo-Marxist ideology.
Though the district’s multi-stage contract with CRE was canceled in 2023 amidst the controversy, Tintiangco-Cubales’s ideas live on. No wonder many are concerned that PVUSD is considering a renewed contract with CRE.
The meeting made it clear that PVUSD was fully aware of the nature of CRE’s philosophy when it was previously considered for the Ethnic Studies curriculum. Assistant Superintendent Claudia Monjaras argued in her presentation to the board that CRE did not develop the curriculum — that the district’s staff developed the curriculum with only support from CRE. Yet the reality is that the core ideas and philosophy of CRE remain central to the curriculum. 
Ms. Monjaras’s characterization of the curriculum as being primarily a product of her team is akin to an individual arguing in traffic court that an external influence, namely alcohol, had little bearing on their reckless driving. Similarly, the philosophical underpinnings of CRE are deeply interwoven into the curriculum and cannot be dismissed as incidental or superficial contributions.
The special <a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/pvusd/Board.nsf/files/DEXVZ7831F15/$file/Special%20Board%20Mtg%20Packet.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">board meeting packet</a> and <a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/pvusd/Board.nsf/files/DEXW2N835755/$file/3.28%20ES%20Special%20Study%20Session%20(1).pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PowerPoint presentation</a> referenced at the meeting makes the goal of Ethnic Studies clear: “The vision of Ethnic Studies in Pajaro Valley Unified School District is to provide rich learning that centers experiences, stories, and knowledge of Ethnic Studies groups while also shaping a lens to understand and critique dominant power structures, ultimately to eliminate racism and intersectional forms of oppression. Ethnic Studies will provide a culturally and community-responsive education values the F.I.E.L.D.S in and of Pajaro Valley.” This may be laudable in certain contexts, but I fail to see how these lofty aims relate to the mission of any school district.
Throughout the meeting, CRE supporters among both staff and public commenters repeatedly used terms such as “solidarity,” “oppression,” “systems of power,” “dominant narratives,” “intersectionality,” “lived experience,” “white supremacy,” and “critical consciousness” — all of which are hallmark concepts of neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory (CRT). It is concerning that these loaded ideological terms are being introduced surreptitiously without clear acknowledgment of the underlying philosophy and its appropriateness for K-12 education.
The adoption of such ideology promotes a backward-looking worldview, which both lacks a constructive vision of the future and fails to recognize that significant social progress has been made over the past several decades. Instead of fostering hope and optimism, this framework is mired in grievances that suggest a cultural regression of a century ago.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-907565 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/Pajaro-Valley-II.png" alt="" width="258" height="287" /></div>
In its “Ethnic Studies Framework &amp; Guiding” document (board meeting packet), PVUSD borrows the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_fist" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clenched black power fist</a> rising out of a book with a pencil in hand as its logo. This clenched fist has most recently been associated with the <a href="https://www.capitalfm.com/news/black-lives-matter/blm-black-power-fist-symbol-meaning-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Black Lives Matter (BLM)</a> movement in 2020 and also closely associated with the struggle for Black civil rights. However, the <a href="https://www.rd.com/article/history-behind-the-clenched-first-and-the-symbol-for-black-power/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clenched symbol</a> also has historical significance in 19th century Europe, where it represented revolutionary courage against European monarchies. The symbol ties in perfectly with neo-Marxist thought of revolution to overthrow what are perceived to be dominant power structures of oppression in current day America.
The state of California <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB101" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mandates</a> only a single semester-long course of Ethnic Studies for students to earn a high school diploma, whose current model curriculum could have adequately served as the foundation for PVUSD’s ethnic studies efforts. While the mandate is reasonable, PVUSD’s approach of embedding Ethnic Studies seen through a CRT lens into a multi-year endeavor in English courses crosses into the territory of indoctrination rather than education. Investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a curriculum tied to CRE and neo-Marxist ideology, which had been rejected by the state because of its controversial nature, represents both a financial and educational misstep.
Given PVUSD’s current English and math achievement challenges, prioritizing Ethnic Studies to this degree is misaligned with the district’s most pressing needs. During the 2023-2024 school year, only <a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/pvusd/Board.nsf/files/DDK29600FC8D/$file/2024_SARC%20Pajaro_Valley_High_School_20250123.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">25%</a> of students met or exceeded state standards in English, while only 18% achieved the same in mathematics. The funds already spent — and those proposed on Ethnic Studies — would have been better utilized to enhance student academic performance. The purpose of K-12 education is to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive as contributing members of society, not to cultivate the next generation of social activists. Teaching social activism should never take precedence over academic achievement.
California school districts must learn from PVUSD’s missteps and focus on their fundamental mission: educating students. The integration of divisive ideologies into the curriculum undermines this mission, shifting the focus away from preparing students for productive futures. The PVUSD board should reject controversial influences and return to the state-provided model as a guide that emphasizes balanced, inclusive education.
Ethnic Studies should aim to educate students about diverse histories and cultures in a way that fosters unity and forward-looking ideals, rather than perpetuating divisive rhetoric and outdated grievances. The focus must remain on education, not indoctrination, ensuring that students gain both historical awareness and the tools to envision a brighter, more connected future.
* * *
Walter Myers III is a Senior Fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and an adjunct faculty member at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Graduation day

‘Systems Of Power’: CA Ethnic Studies Program Continues To Radicalize Students

'Systems Of Power': CA Ethnic Studies Program Continues To Radicalize Students

Anti-Racism

California

Education

Ethnic Studies

Intersectionality

Marxism

Opinion

Oppression

School Boards

White Supremacy

Woke Culture

Professional race grifter <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/ibram-x-kendi">Ibram X. Kendi</a> is seeing his Boston University &#8220;Center for Antiracist Research&#8221; (CAR) close when its charter with the college expires on June 30, per the university’s <a href="https://www.bu.edu/articles/2025/ibram-x-kendi-departing-boston-university/">website</a>.
The center currently has 12 staff members who will remain employed until the June closure. CAR was founded in 2020 following the massive public outcry stemming from the death of George Floyd. The center faced declining contributions and support beginning in 2023, when donors began to question what, if anything, the center was producing. 
The announcement comes after Kendi said he was leaving Boston University to become the director of the newly created Howard University Institute for Advanced Study in Washington, D.C.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
We are pleased to announce the appointment of Ibram X. Kendi, Ph.D., as the director of the newly established Howard University Institute for Advanced Study.
The institute will be dedicated to interdisciplinary study advancing research of importance to the global African… <a href="https://t.co/BlJIJ1j6Vj">pic.twitter.com/BlJIJ1j6Vj</a>
&mdash; Howard University (@HowardU) <a href="https://twitter.com/HowardU/status/1885085663457878439?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Boston University noted that in September 2023, &#8220;with public support having shifted and contributions waning,&#8221; the center &#8220;pursued a new strategy under Kendi,&#8221; which &#8220;included eliminating 19 staff positions.&#8221; Kendi was accused of financial mismanagement, but an audit done by BU found no evidence of wrongdoing, per <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/center-anti-racist-research-close-down-2024015">Newsweek</a>.
In the past, the center has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ibram-x-kendis-academic-center-focusing-on-antiracism-to-fire-staffers">sponsored projects</a> like creating an “antiracism curriculum,” an “antiracist book festival,” and “antiracism training for the workforce.”
The center described itself as &#8220;a full-service organization that translates antiracist ideas into action by unifying research, policy, narrative, and advocacy efforts. We take a rigorous, research-based, and integrative approach to transforming a racist society to an antiracist one.” 
It faced criticism for not producing any tangible research or assets during its existence despite being receiving millions of dollars in grant money and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/01/30/ibram-kendi-howard-university-bu/?isMobile=1">more than $50 million</a> in donations.
Kendi, whose real name is Ibram Henry Rogers, is the author of books like “Antiracist Baby” and “How to Be an Antiracist.” 
He said in a statement: “Despite all the headwinds we faced as a new organization founded during the pandemic and the intense backlash over critical race theory, I am very proud of all we envisioned, all we created, all we learned, all we achieved—the community we built, the people we helped and inspired.” 
Kendi concluded, “To all the faculty, staff, administrators, students, supporters, and Boston community members, I feel honored to have been able to do this work with you over the last five years. I am departing for an opportunity I could not pass up, but what connected us at CAR remains, especially during this precarious time. Our commitment to building an equitable and just society.”
&nbsp;

Ibram X. Kendi

Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Antiracism’ Center Shutting Down

Ibram X. Kendi's 'Antiracist' Center At Boston University Closing Down For Good

Boston

Critical Race Theory

Race

U.S.

You’ve probably heard of the classic rhetorical question known as the paradox of tolerance: should we tolerate the intolerant? Equally as important as that question, however, are the presuppositions embedded in it: who decides who the intolerant actually are, and what exactly does it mean to not tolerate them in civil society? Rest easy, a corporate activist group called the Human Rights Campaign has graciously <a href="https://x.com/IsaacWillour/status/1876656703996829703" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shouldered the burden</a> of deciding who America’s biggest businesses should and shouldn’t tolerate. And if you’re reading this, you’re probably on the blacklist.
What is the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)? Formed in 1980, the group is currently the most dominant force pushing progressivism and non-fiduciary activism through the boardrooms of corporate America. Much of this is done through a ranking system known as the Corporate Equality Index, which grades how ‘inclusive’ companies are on a scale of 1–100. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the conditions for a perfect score aren’t merely tied to nondiscrimination (because that would be too easy), but conveniently have to do with how far a company is willing to go to validate Left-wing cultural talking points.
Recently, the HRC released its <a href="https://reports.hrc.org/corporate-equality-index-2025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2025 edition</a> of the Index. Allow me to walk you through a few of the “tolerant” and “inclusive” talking points contained within. The HRC will drop a company’s score (in other words, brand a company less tolerant) for:
<ul>
<li>“undue influence by a significant shareholder calculated to undermine a business’ practices related to its LGBTQ+ employees.” In other words, listening to shareholders concerned about the impact of woke policies. </li>
<li>“advocating for public policies or regulations related to LGBT+ equality that would be detrimental to employees and their families.” This could mean anything, including policies aimed at protecting religious liberty and free expression.</li>
</ul>
And maybe most egregiously:
<ul>
<li>“directing corporate charitable contributions to organizations whose primary mission includes advocacy against LGBTQ+ equality.” Underneath all those nice-sounding words is a sinister reality: donating to organizations that push back on the extremes of gender ideology is now intolerant—and not to be tolerated.</li>
</ul>
Let’s not mince words about who that includes: That means countless religious nonprofits; countless educational institutions; countless ministry and humanitarian organizations that do incredible good for humanity are all considered intolerant. Chances are, that also means your personal place of worship. Any business that dares to support these sorts of organizations, or the groups that support them, is intolerant under the dictates of the policing activists at HRC.
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And despite encouraging recent trends, corporate America is still listening to these activist sentiments. Take Meta. They recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/massive-maga-win-facebook-reverses-its-censorship?topStoryPosition=3">phased out fact-checking</a> in an apparent win for free speech and online expression. Yet, they currently have a perfect score on the HRC’s Index. Brands like Amazon, Target, Google, Chase, Microsoft, &amp; Disney? All top-tier <a href="https://www.hrc.org/about/corporate-partners" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sponsors</a> of an organization that considers donating to a religious pregnancy center a mark of inexcusable bigotry.
The only real bigotry and radicalism here is their own. Activist groups like HRC, in claiming to fight for tolerance, embrace intolerance at the first sign of anything less than total fealty to their radical demands. They’re more than happy to (inaccurately) paint critics of DEI and ESG as “far-right” radicals, “aimed at rolling back progress for non-discrimination.” 2024 saw many businesses <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-left-wing-activists-are-trying-to-save-corporate-wokeness" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cut ties</a> with the HRC — and in response, the HRC <a href="https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/hrc-foundation-announces-record-participation-in-upcoming-2025-corporate-equality-index-docks-scores-of-seven-companies-in-current-ranking-following-their-pullback-from-workplace-inclusion#:~:text=The%2025%20point%20Responsible%20Citizenship,fall%20to%2070%20from%2095" target="_blank" rel="noopener">smeared</a> them as “retreating from inclusion,” because being pro-business, to corporate activists, apparently stops the minute you don’t get what you want.
2025 should be the year that the pendulum truly swings away from the HRC. It’s far past time to stop using corporate resources (read: shareholder money) to appease activists who believe that covering puberty blockers for children is an indispensable element of a company’s healthcare plan. The corporate engagement work that many in the DEI/ESG skeptic crowd, including myself, engage in every day, is not about pressuring companies into some “conservative” version of corporate activism. It’s about true political neutrality across the board — zero discrimination, zero partisan side-taking, and zero biased policies.
The HRC, and many of the other activist organizations we’re up against, apparently don’t want that. And that says far more about them than it does about anyone else.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN, and The Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Aerial view of New York City skyline at night

The Radical Intolerance Behind Woke Corporate Activism

Business

Corporations

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Human Rights Campaign

LGBTQ

“DEI isn’t actually dead,” proclaimed a recent CNN headline, in a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/17/business/dei-isnt-actually-dead/index.html">piece</a> by consumer reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn that somehow managed to be both condescending and ignorant at the same time. CNN would like you to believe corporate diversity isn’t really going anywhere, just changing its external terminology from the oft-maligned term “DEI” to more nebulous terms like “belonging” and “inclusivity,” while maintaining all of its internal elements.
Personally, I both love and hate this piece and the viewpoint it belies. I love that CNN actually believes the DEI skeptic coalition — made up of many serious investors, dedicated state fiduciaries, and corporate engagement professionals — is naive enough to just go away because companies changed the names of their diversity departments. But I also hate that CNN’s dream scenario might actually happen. Let me explain.
The ball’s rolling. This year was a major step towards undoing the damage done by discriminatory diversity initiatives and rejecting the radicalism of much of modern &#8220;anti-racism.&#8221; And it&#8217;s not even just Trump’s victory (although America’s rejection of Kamala Harris is a lesson DEI advocates seem unwilling to learn). Thanks to the efforts of conservative activists like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walmart-caves-massive-retailer-the-next-woke-domino-to-fall-under-pressure-from-robby-starbuck" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robby Starbuck</a>, there is a growing list of companies walking back, slashing, or in some cases altogether removing their DEI initiatives.
There&#8217;s also the ever-growing wave of scrutiny on the discriminatory elements of DEI coming from <a href="https://adflegal.org/press-release/adf-calls-corporations-ditch-dei-policies-light-2024-election/">legal groups</a> like Alliance Defending Freedom, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-state-treasurers-investors-urge-major-companies-to-drop-discriminatory-dei-agenda" target="_blank" rel="noopener">financial officers</a> in red states, and of course the shareholders we represent every day in the corporate engagement world.
The halls of American academia are following suit, with campuses like the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/05/university-of-michigan-dei-cut" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of Michigan</a> and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/diversity/race-ethnicity/2024/07/31/u-missouri-axes-dei-office-pre-empt-state-mandate" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mizzou</a> overhauling their DEI initiatives. Even whole states like Idaho are <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/idaho-board-education-bans-dei-offices-initiatives-all-public-universities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">taking steps</a> to stamp DEI out of publicly-funded institutions. And that’s not even considering the broader social pushback against the racialism that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fate-of-the-racially-furious" target="_blank" rel="noopener">infected</a> American society post-George Floyd, from the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3148007/am-i-racist-fighting-the-culture-war-with-a-smile/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">success</a> of documentaries like Matt Walsh&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/am-i-racist#" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Am I Racist?</a>&#8220; to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/opinion/daniel-penny-jordan-neely-subway-killing.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rejection</a> of the race narratives surrounding high-visibility court cases like Daniel Penny.
That’s the roadmap. And it’s easy to think the momentum of the battle against DEI’s problematic elements is all downhill from here. In reality, these are just the first steps, albeit crucial ones. The next steps? Keep walking the road. This is a labor that will take years — and losing momentum is the one thing we cannot afford. In fact, losing momentum is what the Left and the advocates of DEI’s most pernicious elements are counting on us to do. Seems unimaginable given the groundswell of anti-DEI, anti-ESG, and generally anti-woke sentiment that’s sprung up post-November. Give it time.
Post-inauguration, when life returns to normal, we have to keep at the task of rooting out the discriminatory and divisive ideology that so often permeates DEI programs. The staying force of the Left is tremendous. But we’re not just in a battle against the forces of the Left. We’re in a battle against the force of institutional inertia. If we stop, we lose. We must keep pushing. If you work for or own shares in a company with DEI programs, keep pushing for answers. If you’re at a college with a DEI program, keep pushing for answers. If we do these things, and don’t give up, 2025 can be America’s best year yet on rejecting the discrimination and divisiveness so many DEI programs promulgate.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN and the Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

A Walmart Store Ahead Of Earnings Figures

The Year The DEI Tide Turned

Am I Racist

Equity

Matt Walsh

Racism

Robby Starbuck

Walmart

Daniel Penny Acquitted In Trial Over Death Of Jordan Neely On NYC Subway

Is This The End Of The BLM Era?

Court

Daniel Penny

Health Care

Jordan Neely

Murder

New York City

Social Justice

Subway

A Biden State Department official tasked with combatting “systemic racism” displayed her far-left bonafides in a series of since-deleted social media posts, unearthed by The Daily Wire, in which she blasted Trump supporters as racist and praised a vitriolic anti-police rant from a left-wing activist.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/meet-the-state-department-official-bringing-dei-to-foreign-policy">Desiree Cormier Smith</a> is the State Department’s first ever Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice. Smith, a former employee of George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, is also a far-left radical, as evidenced by a trove of posts on her <a href="https://x.com/DesireeMCormier">now-deleted</a> X profile between October 2020 and January 2021, before she was <a href="https://www.state.gov/biographies/desiree-cormier-smith/">appointed</a> to her post in 2022.
Smith, who is tasked with building “global partnerships to combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia,” was named to her position as the Democratic administration pursued a broad diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda. Now, she could be relieved of her position as the incoming Trump administration pledges to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/heres-how-the-trump-admin-can-purge-dei-from-americas-military-and-foreign-policy?topStoryPosition=1">purge DEI</a> from the federal government.
“We need this kind of honesty and accountability across all our government institutions!!” Smith said in response to a <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/kansas-city-police-board-viral-speech">vitriolic rant</a> in 2020 where a left-wing activist named Keiajah Brooks called cops “soulless white people” at a Kansas City Police Commission meeting. “I stan,” she said in another post in response to the video of the diatribe, also requesting someone to put music in the background of the clip.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835561 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.03-PM-300x256.png" alt="" width="540" height="461" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.03-PM-300x256.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.03-PM-676x576.png 676w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.03-PM-768x654.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.03-PM.png 946w" sizes="(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px" /></div>
“I&#8217;m not nice and I don&#8217;t seek to be respectable. I&#8217;m not asking you all for anything because y&#8217;all can&#8217;t and won&#8217;t be both my savior and my oppressor,” the leftist says in the video while speaking at the meeting. “So I&#8217;m not here begging anything of soulless white folks.”
Brooks went on to launch personal attacks against the members of the commission, telling one that he was an &#8220;out-of-touch and disconnected old white person with nothing but pure apathy seeping through the bulging veins of his paper-colored skin.&#8221;
Smith was so enamored with the clip that she asked someone to add backing music to the video, with one user fulfilling her request.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
&#8220;i&#8217;m not asking yall for anything bc yall can&#8217;t and won&#8217;t be both my savior and my opporessor&#8230;&#8221; &#8211; KJ Brooks 👏👏👏
here you go <a href="https://twitter.com/DesireeMCormier?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DesireeMCormier</a>&#8230; Kansas City Police Commission Board Meeting being ETHERED by Ms. Brooks 
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 <a href="https://t.co/HZ7Yv1qZ0C">pic.twitter.com/HZ7Yv1qZ0C</a>
— ™️i&amp;i (@RasTefferi) <a href="https://twitter.com/RasTefferi/status/1321537131844521985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2020</a></blockquote>
Smith was happy with the product, calling the activist in the video, Keiajah Brooks, “Queen Brooks.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835563 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.54-PM-300x125.png" alt="" width="598" height="249" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.54-PM-300x125.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.54-PM-768x319.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.41.54-PM.png 972w" sizes="(max-width: 598px) 100vw, 598px" /></div>
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who serves as the Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told The Daily Wire that Smith&#8217;s comments were divisive and harmful.
“The State Department exists to protect and advance the interests of the American people at home and abroad. However, many of Ms. Smith’s comments only serve to divide Americans and damage our cause and credibility on the world stage,” McCaul charged before reaffirming his support for Trump’s goal of purging the woke agenda from the federal government.
“I’m certain President-elect Trump will dismantle President Biden’s woke agenda at State and restore the department to its original mission of creating a more secure, democratic, and prosperous world benefiting Americans and the international community.”
The State Department did not return a request for comment.
The remarks from Smith, who makes <a href="https://govsalaries.com/cormier-smith-desiree-m-176287791">over $180,000 a year</a> in her State Department role, were just a sample of the many posts she made pushing far-left views and denigrating white people and Trump.
“Black Voters Saved White America Again and You’re Very Welcome,” she said in one post after the 2020 presidential election. “Interesting how non-Americans are able to see and name this much more clearly than many (white) Americans,” she wrote in a quote tweet to a post arguing that Trump’s 2020 candidacy was evidence that “the US is a deeply broken society.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835565 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.42.40-PM-300x214.png" alt="" width="520" height="371" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.42.40-PM-300x214.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.42.40-PM-806x576.png 806w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.42.40-PM-768x549.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.42.40-PM.png 1402w" sizes="(max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px" /></div>
“Very very real,” Smith said in response to a tweet that read, “The fact that this presidential race is even this close proves that white supremacy is very real in America.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835567 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.43.25-PM-300x97.png" alt="" width="563" height="182" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.43.25-PM-300x97.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.43.25-PM-1024x331.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.43.25-PM-768x249.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.43.25-PM.png 1038w" sizes="(max-width: 563px) 100vw, 563px" /></div>
She also signaled her agreement that racial minorities are locked in “an abusive dynamic” in which they are “blamed for not overcoming the concerted racism of white ppl.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835575 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.16-PM-300x112.png" alt="" width="630" height="235" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.16-PM-300x112.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.16-PM-1024x381.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.16-PM-768x286.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.16-PM.png 1042w" sizes="(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px" /></div>
In yet another tweet condemning white Trump supporters as racist, Smith urged her white friends to “miss me with the ‘I can’t believe it was so close’ texts and go talk to your racist families and high school friends. We did the work. Now it’s your turn.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835579 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.59-PM-300x113.png" alt="" width="730" height="275" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.59-PM-300x113.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.59-PM-1024x385.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.59-PM-768x289.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.45.59-PM.png 1408w" sizes="(max-width: 730px) 100vw, 730px" /></div>
The Open Society Foundations alum directed her ire at Trump in some tweets, including one in which she signaled her belief that Trump was a “textbook” example of a fascist. She quoted a left-wing organization in another post, appearing to affirm the belief that “Donald Trump is a blessing to dictators around the world” and is “creating a global network of gangsters.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835583 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.46.58-PM-300x224.png" alt="" width="474" height="354" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.46.58-PM-300x224.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.46.58-PM-770x576.png 770w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.46.58-PM-768x575.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.46.58-PM.png 1374w" sizes="(max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px" /></div>
Smith advocated for radical policies as well, calling for reparations and an end to the electoral college system, which she alleged was based on racism.
“We begin to repair our nations through reparations and healing,” one post read, with another saying, “Racism and slavery are at the root of this peculiar way to elect a president. In the 21st Century, it still submerges the Black vote. It’s past time to get rid of the Electoral College.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835587 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.47.47-PM-300x151.png" alt="" width="566" height="285" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.47.47-PM-300x151.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.47.47-PM-1024x515.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.47.47-PM-768x386.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.47.47-PM.png 1416w" sizes="(max-width: 566px) 100vw, 566px" /></div>
In one post, Smith claimed that she was the victim of the type of “subtle racism” that “kills Black women” after a nurse didn’t escort her to the restroom when she had been sedated for a minor surgery.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class=" wp-image-835589 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.48.37-PM-300x73.png" alt="" width="687" height="167" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.48.37-PM-300x73.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.48.37-PM-1024x249.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.48.37-PM-768x187.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/11/Screen-Shot-2024-11-27-at-12.48.37-PM.png 1388w" sizes="(max-width: 687px) 100vw, 687px" /></div>
Smith <a href="https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-state-department-racial-equity-rep-says-white-diplomats-like-america-too-much/">garnered headlines</a> following her appointment when it was revealed that she had accused white diplomats of being too “protective” of the United States in a podcast interview. Non-white diplomats, according to Smith, &#8220;come with a certain humility that I would say that a lot of white foreign service officers lack.&#8221;
The far-left official could now be one of the bureaucrats who is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/heres-how-the-trump-admin-can-purge-dei-from-americas-military-and-foreign-policy">fired</a> upon President Trump’s return to the White House.

Desiree Cormier Smith

State Department DEI Head Called Trump Supporters Racist, Praised Anti-Cop Rants In Deleted Posts

State Department

Wokeness

One of the most profound and honest <a href="https://rlo.acton.org/archives/124960-the-strange-death-of-dei.html">conversations</a> I’ve ever had on the subject of DEI came courtesy of a DEI advocate I spoke with last year. I asked her a simple question: if she believed in DEI as a useful element of corporate policy in theory, why is it that so many DEI programs fail in practice? Her honest answer: “We have to be very robust in our methodology, and we haven’t been. Being able to articulate the meaning of the D, E, and I is critical. If you can’t present it to highlight the fundamental good in the training, it doesn’t work.” An obvious answer, perhaps — but a telling one. The reason for the diversity downshift in American culture, in many cases, is a practitioner issue: DEI proponents have, in many instances, failed to make the argument of why such training is a fundamental good. To the contrary, we’re seeing a growing body of evidence that DEI’s fundamental good, just maybe, was profoundly oversold.
On Monday, we got our first look at a critical scientific finding that’s lending new support to the arguments of DEI’s strongest critics — and taking flack from progressive media outlets set on not giving it the coverage it clearly deserves. A <a href="https://networkcontagion.us/wp-content/uploads/Instructing-Animosity_11.13.24.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study</a> from the Network Contagion Research Institute, released in collaboration with the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab, examined the effects of exposure to training that emphasizes awareness of/opposition to “systemic oppression.” Its goal was answering the question at the core of the DEI debate: do diversity programs that highlight systemic oppression actually reduce bias and improve group dynamics by “increas[ing] empathy,” or do they “increase hostility” towards those that antiracist philosophy paints as oppressive?
The study had subjects read either (1) an essay containing typical antiracist arguments about white supremacy and race discrimination, or (2) a control essay about corn production. After reading, subjects analyzed a race-neutral hypothetical interaction: a student applying to an elite university and having their application rejected by an admissions officer. Subjects who read the antiracist essay, which contained excerpts from antiracist figures such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, viewed the student’s rejection through what the study deemed hostile attribution bias, perceiving the admissions officer as discriminatory, unfair, and guilty of ‘microaggressions.’
The subjects who were primed with antiracist literature:
<ul>
<li>Demonstrated an increased willingness to punish the admissions officer in the hypothetical scenario, despite the scenario not mentioning the race of the student.</li>
<li>Viewed real-life court cases as discriminatory that the control subjects perceived as fair</li>
<li>Viewed entire people groups (Hindus) as more racially discriminatory after reading material on caste discrimination</li>
</ul>
The study explained the risk of DEI programs focused on oppressed/oppressor class groupings in the following way: “[DEI] interventions may foster authoritarian mindsets, particularly when anti-oppressive narratives exist within an ideological and vindictive monoculture.” In other words, the oppressor/oppressed distinctions reflected in many modern DEI narratives can actually increase bias, hostility, and attribution of discriminatory beliefs among groups, as opposed to decreasing them. This finding suggests that exposure to ‘antiracist’ narratives decreases people’s ability to view situations rationally; if biased by a preconceived narrative of discrimination, people are more inclined to see discrimination at play in interactions that an unbiased observer might perceive as perfectly fair and reasonable.
<h3><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a></h3>
Is this survey the nail in the coffin for dwindling DEI programs? Of course not — at the end of the day, it’s just one study within a larger body of literature. But the response of media outlets like the New York Times and Bloomberg, who <a href="https://www.nysun.com/article/press-times-suppress-findings-study-dei-training-amplifies-hostility-instead-reducing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suppressed</a> coverage of the study, should be an indicator to us as to just how important these findings are. This survey is not business as usual. On the contrary, its findings should be a wake-up call to those who still hold out optimism for DEI efforts as a whole. For years, DEI critics have argued that the narratives of modern ‘antiracism,’ which too often prioritizes identity politics and indefensibly broad generalizations over the necessary nuance of looking at the real world, are unfit for purpose. These findings are incredibly sharp arrows in our quiver.
It’s time for Americans at large, and the institutions and governments that serve them, to put DEI programs under the fine-toothed comb of scrutiny they have always deserved and examine if their fundamental good is really as good as it’s advertised to be. Programs that create and foster hostility on the basis of race fail basic function tests for building society, engendering trust in institutions, and making Americans less divided. And if DEI programs can’t do any of those three, whether in the boardroom, the classroom, or in the government briefing room, it’s time to ask why they exist at all.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN and the Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and Justin Folk, director of the hit comedic documentary &#8220;<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Am I Racist?</a>&#8220;on a special <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/creating-documentaries-that-challenge-narratives-from-what-is-a-woman-to-am-i-racist-10-27-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire</a>.
The Daily Wire’s new Matt Walsh-starring comedy “<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/">Am I Racist?</a>” is now the most successful documentary to hit theaters in a decade — despite major headwinds from legacy media and a hostile Hollywood. We sat down with the director, Justin Folk, to discuss his film’s box office run, its launch on Daily Wire+, and why getting conservative content in theaters is now more crucial than ever.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us to discuss the box office run of the Matt Walsh comedy “<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/">Am I Racist?</a>” is its director Justin Folk. Justin, great to have you on the show.
JUSTIN: Yeah, thanks for having me. It&#8217;s good to be on with you guys. Listen to you guys a lot, actually.
JOHN: We love to hear that. Look, you directed the Daily Wire&#8217;s first big documentary hit, “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman">What Is A Woman?</a>” This film is sort of a sequel in some ways, but it’s also very different on many levels – that includes this time you took your film to theaters. That&#8217;s a major risk, but it appears to have paid off here. First, how much has the film brought in from theaters at this point?
JUSTIN: Well, we&#8217;ve passed the $12 million mark at the box office, which is very, very exciting and actually quite historic for a documentary. I believe we&#8217;re the top documentary of the decade. And to achieve that sort of level of success in the theaters out of the gate for The Daily Wire, I think, was a big achievement and I&#8217;m really proud of it. I know the team is proud of it. Ultimately, there were a lot of people involved in that effort. But at the base of it all, we had to make a good film for that to happen. You mentioned that this film is different than “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/what-is-a-woman">What is a Woman?</a>,” and that&#8217;s by design. We didn&#8217;t want to come out with a half-hearted sophomore effort, and we knew we had to do something different. We knew we had to kind of go bigger. “What is a Woman?” is a little bit more of a straightforward documentary. This one is much more of a comedy and we felt like the issue of race demanded a different approach. With what we&#8217;re seeing with all the race hustlers and the people who are dividing us as a society, we just felt like ridicule would be one of the best tools we could use when making this film.
JOHN: Right. Speaking of ridicule, describing the film was actually a bit of a struggle sometimes for people. Some called it a “mockumentary,” which is not actually correct, but it did include a lot of mocking of things, as you said. If you could sum up the approach to this film, what were you trying to attain?
JUSTIN: Well, first of all, let&#8217;s start with the category. It would officially be categorized as a comedic documentary, which isn&#8217;t a very sexy term. I don&#8217;t think those two things usually go together. So I think it&#8217;s hard for people to kind of understand what this is. But it&#8217;s comedic and so there&#8217;s a lot of laughs, there&#8217;s a lot of jokes in there, but it&#8217;s a documentary, too, because these are very real situations that we put Matt Walsh in and we wanted things to play out with real people. So that approach was something we basically started with. We knew the success of “What Is Woman?” was achieved by allowing people to kind of talk, to say what they really feel about things, and that was very eye-opening for Americans. In terms of race, same thing here, we wanted these people pushing this race agenda to just say in their own words what they felt and what they wanted for the rest of us as Americans. We felt that would be powerful for Americans just to see and then to decide for themselves if this is the right path. The approach involved taking Matt, dropping him into the situation with these people, and essentially having Matt believe them, then chart the course based on all of their prescriptions. And that&#8217;s what Matt did. He basically became one of them, and in doing so, I think we revealed the ideology underneath and what&#8217;s behind it all. When Matt adopted this character as an anti-racist grifter himself, you got to see what&#8217;s behind it philosophically and what it all leads to. And that was our goal, to have Matt become one of them, essentially.
<div id="attachment_796413" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-796413" class="size-large wp-image-796413" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-15-Sep-2024-07-18-AM-8749-1-1024x576.jpg" alt="Am I Racist? movie starring Matt Walsh. Screenshot courtesy: DailyWire." width="1024" height="576" />The Daily Wire</div>
JOHN: You know, it strikes me that this the “Yes, and&#8230;” approach that you learn in improv – the entire film is Matt performing a “Yes, and&#8230;” which really opens the door for letting some of these DEI “experts” go deeper into their ideology than they normally would if you started to question their approach. And it clearly worked here. Did you expect this kind of reception in theaters, this degree of success?
JUSTIN: You know, I was hoping for this level of success, this reception. The thing that surprised me was how consistent the response was in terms of being positive and in terms of people understanding the humor. If I had a fear, it was that we were making a film that only the demographic males 25 to 55 would really enjoy, but the rest — women and older people — it would maybe just kind of go over their head. But that hasn&#8217;t been the case. I had the fortunate ability to go to some of these pre-screenings before the film came out, and I got to watch the audience react to a lot of the jokes and a lot of the things that were in the film. And it was universal. It was across the board, the reaction that we got from people in the audience – whether they were young or old or male or female. And that just gave me a big sense of pride that we made something that everybody can enjoy. Now some people think some jokes are funnier than others, and some people really love some moments in the film compared to others. But really it was, as a filmmaker, you try to make something that would be universally accepted and liked, and that was just great confirmation for what we did.
<iframe style="width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; border-radius: 10px;" src="https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creating-documentaries-that-challenge-narratives-from/id1576594336?i=1000674596692" height="175" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation"></iframe>
JOHN: Now one of the controversies for the film early on involved critic reviews. This film has gotten outstanding audience reviews from the start, but was shunned by major media critics. Where did the critic reviews stand at this point? Did you get some of the legacy critics to actually weigh in?
JUSTIN: We had a couple mainstream critics eventually limp in with a review. And I think they did that because they were sort of called out for, for ignoring this film. Initially they were staying away from it. We have our theory why they were staying away from it, and that involves the fact that it was a good film – and I don&#8217;t think they wanted to give Matt Walsh that platform. We did have a lot of, I guess, mid-tier critics review the film, and it was very, very well-accepted by them. And these are people with no ax to grind. These are people who don&#8217;t work for a major media entity, and they were just quite honest with their review and they just were like, “Wow, this is a very, very powerful and very funny film.” Some of them even got backlash for doing so. We can kind of understand why some of these mainstream critics ignored it because we knew they would actually face a lot of backlash.
<div id="attachment_796125" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-796125" class="size-large wp-image-796125" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-13-Sep-2024-06-00-PM-700-1024x576.jpg" alt="Am I Racist? movie starring Matt Walsh. Screenshot courtesy: DailyWire." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-13-Sep-2024-06-00-PM-700-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-13-Sep-2024-06-00-PM-700-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-13-Sep-2024-06-00-PM-700-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-13-Sep-2024-06-00-PM-700-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/MixCollage-13-Sep-2024-06-00-PM-700-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot courtesy: DailyWire.</div>
JOHN: Yeah. At what stage did you begin to plan for a theater launch? Was this the plan all along or did this sort of become more concrete later on?
JUSTIN: Listen, there&#8217;s a lot of risk involved in going to the theater, and there are a lot of things that need to fall into place. And I&#8217;ve got to give credit to The Daily Wire team. I&#8217;ve got to give credit to Jeremy Boreing for navigating all that – Jon Lewis, Dave Coleman and the whole team. First of all, we had to convince theaters to take us. We had to convince the exhibitors themselves that this is something that they would want to have in their theaters and would actually do good business. And so there was a lot of hurdles along the way, and, meticulously, Daily Wire got over all those hurdles, and positioned this film in such a way that the exhibitors would take it. Also all the marketing that took place, there&#8217;s just so much involved in going to the theater. There&#8217;s a ton of risk, and that risk is something you definitely have to consider when launching into this. But I&#8217;m glad we did. I think we proved what we set out to do. And I just feel very fortunate that we were able to have people see this in theaters, where they could sit together in a group and laugh.
JOHN: About that, how significant is it for conservatives in particular to get content into theaters like this?
JUSTIN: As conservatives, we have to play on the battlefield that the rest of society plays on. We have a tendency to kind of shrink back into our silos and speak to only our people. And, listen, as conservatives, we have the best ideas, we have the winning ideas, and those ideas need to be played out on the main stage. And in the case of theaters, theaters are a main stage. Theaters are a place where a lot of people go for their entertainment. These are people, some of them, that aren&#8217;t really engaged in politics. These are people that have busy lives and don&#8217;t pay attention too much to a lot of the issues. And so we need to reach those people. And so, we need to perform the way the Left does when it comes to getting our ideas out there to the mainstream, and theaters is one way we can do that. And so, listen, not every conservative film is meant for the theaters. Different films have different purposes. In our case, we really went hard. We kind of went hard to the paint with the fact that we wanted to make this an entertaining movie first, and then have our ideas tucked in alongside. And, you know, that makes our film very palatable for a movie theater environment. But, listen, I think it&#8217;s very important that conservatives take some of that ground back from the Left and have our ideas play out on the main stage.
JOHN: Yeah, and seeing this reach over 1,600 theaters was a massive deal, just almost symbolically. The film is now going to be available on demand exclusively on the Daily Wire+ platform. In general, do theater runs help or hurt streaming performance in the industry?
JUSTIN: Theater runs. are extremely helpful. In fact, a lot of distributors refer to theatrical releases as a big marketing campaign. And I think that&#8217;s the truth here because it allows you to get your film out there in the public in a way that you wouldn&#8217;t normally have it out there. And so the theatrical release of “Am I Racist?” I think is only going to help really raise awareness with the general public, and then point those people back to Daily Wire+ to go watch it, if they didn&#8217;t get a chance to see it in theaters. And so, yeah, I think the theatrical release is really going to help this film. I think it&#8217;s going to really drive a lot of attention to it for the home entertainment platform and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/am-i-racist-official-trailer">Daily Wire+</a> platform. I&#8217;m excited about that because a lot of people didn&#8217;t get a chance to see it. People have busy lives, but at least they heard about it. And now they can go watch it on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/videos/am-i-racist-official-trailer">Daily Wire+</a>. the good news there is they can watch as many times as they want, it&#8217;s not a one time viewing. And I do recommend that with this particular film. This is the type of film that you&#8217;re going to want to watch a couple of times just to catch all the great performances that Matt has throughout.
<div id="attachment_812569" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-812569" class="size-large wp-image-812569" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/10/00_AIR_16x9_OCT28_V05-1024x576.jpg" alt="Am I Racist" width="1024" height="576" />DailyWire+</div>
JOHN: Yeah, I found that myself, there&#8217;s so many little details that you miss the first time around. For you personally, this is a unique film. It&#8217;s unorthodox in many ways. As a filmmaker, what did you learn in the making of this particular film?
JUSTIN: There&#8217;s a lot I learned in making any film, and it seems like every time we go out and do something we&#8217;re endeavoring to do something very difficult, and we&#8217;re diving into a topic. And when you dive into a topic, you have to sort of live it while you&#8217;re making it – and in this case, it was even more so, because Matt had to live this character, and so we had to essentially think like the other side. Matt had to adopt their beliefs and let them play out. So I learned a lot about the topic itself. I also learned a lot about America and how we view the issue of race, and how there are actually way more people who think rationally about this issue than I think we realize. It&#8217;s just that they&#8217;ve been taken advantage of. They&#8217;ve been polite. I think these people who are pushing this DEI agenda have taken advantage of so many people in this country who don&#8217;t want to be mean, who don&#8217;t want to be called a bigot. And so one of the things I learned was actually a hopeful thing, which was most people don&#8217;t go along with this stuff. They don&#8217;t go along with this racial division. That was sort of a hopeful thing I learned along the way. We found that common, everyday people don&#8217;t really buy what&#8217;s being sold by these so-called “race experts.” And so that was a very uplifting realization for me.
JOHN: Some of the more powerful moments in the film came from just regular folks dismissing the racially divisive talking points. Final question, what&#8217;s next for you? Any plans to work further with Walsh or any other Daily Wire talent? Can you answer this question?
JUSTIN: Absolutely. I mean, I can say that we are working on stuff and it&#8217;s been a pleasure to work with Matt on these last two films. We have such a great team. It&#8217;s a small, tight knit team of just great professionals who are just the best at what they do. And I&#8217;ll be honest with you, it&#8217;s a lot of fun making these movies with Matt. It&#8217;s not always easy, it&#8217;s a challenging thing to do what we&#8217;ve been doing, but it has been a ton of fun and we would love to keep that going.
JOHN: Well, we hope you do. Justin, thank you so much for talking with us. It&#8217;s been a pleasure.
JUSTIN: Thanks, John. Great to be on.
JOHN: That was Justin Folk, director of “Am I Racist?” available starting this week exclusively on Daily Wire+ – and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/creating-documentaries-that-challenge-narratives-from-what-is-a-woman-to-am-i-racist-10-27-24" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire</a>.

Am I Racist? Movie Premiere

EXCLUSIVE: ‘Am I Racist?’ Director Talks Race Hustlers, Ridicule, And Conservatives In Media

EXCLUSIVE: 'Am I Racist?' Director Talks Race Hustlers, Ridicule, And Conservatives In Media

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Early in the afternoon of May 1st of 2023, several passengers on board a New York City subway car thought their lives were about to end. A 30-year-old career criminal named Jordan Neely — who had been arrested more than 40 times, including for punching a 67-year-old woman on the subway and breaking her nose — had just boarded the train. And as soon as the doors closed, he began threatening the passengers. Multiple eyewitnesses said that Neely threw his jacket across the train, adopted a fighting stance, and yelled, &#8220;Someone is going to die today.&#8221; Neely added that he would happily &#8220;kill anyone&#8221; and &#8220;take a bullet,&#8221; saying he was &#8220;ready to go to Rikers&#8221; and &#8220;ready to do life&#8221; because he wanted to &#8220;hurt people.&#8221;
One passenger on the train later told a New York grand jury that Neely&#8217;s behavior was &#8220;sickening&#8221; and &#8220;satanic.&#8221; Another passenger testified that what he experienced was &#8220;absolutely traumatizing,&#8221; above and beyond anything he had previously experienced in more than six years riding the subway. He recounted the moment when Neely approached him, saying he thought he was, &#8220;going to die.&#8221; A mother and her son hid behind a stroller as Neely began lunging towards them, coming within a half a foot of some passengers. A student commuting to high school said she prayed that the doors would open so that she could escape. One retiree who rode the subway every day for more than 30 years told the Grand Jury: &#8220;I have been riding the subway for many years. I have encountered many things, but nothing that put fear into me like that.&#8221;
What happened next is documented on video. This is a report from shortly after the incident. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Video shows NYC subway confrontation end with fatal chokehold" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FUGFJ7CE-jY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As you heard, the witnesses didn&#8217;t think Jordan Neely was in serious danger. He was fighting back the whole time. Instead, the people on the train justifiably thought their lives were at risk. And so they joined in to help 25-year-old Daniel Penny, a former Marine, subdue the threat.
Police who responded didn&#8217;t arrest Penny. That didn&#8217;t happen until more than 10 days later, after politicians like AOC and Julie Salazar charged that Neely&#8217;s death was a public lynching. 
Pretty much the only prominent politician in New York who didn&#8217;t go to that extreme was the mayor, Eric Adams. He <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/10/eric-adams-neely-death-forced-hospitalizations-00096231" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Neely&#8217;s death made him realize that it&#8217;s really important to institutionalize a lot of mentally ill vagrants, which is true. And now they&#8217;ve charged Eric Adams with a bunch of crimes, because he kept going off script. Just in case you were wondering how New York works.
Meanwhile, Left-wing activists also began <a href="https://x.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1655311097686106113" target="_blank" rel="noopener">terrorizing</a> the subway system, saying they wouldn&#8217;t stop until the D.A., Alvin Bragg, brought charges against Penny.
So they kneel on the tracks. They prevent a bunch of people from getting to where they want to go. And yet, none of these BLM activists are going on trial this week. The mob always gets what it wants in New York. So instead, this week, jury selection began in the trial of Daniel Penny. Alvin Bragg has charged him with criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter, which could put Penny in prison for up to 15 years. On Monday, BLM was outside the courthouse, and again they were chanting, &#8220;No justice, no peace.&#8221;
When I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1158-the-left-anoints-the-new-george-floyd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talked</a> about this case last year, I went into some detail about the media&#8217;s attempts to paper over Jordan Neely&#8217;s record. They kept calling him a &#8220;Michael Jackson impersonator,&#8221; as if that&#8217;s why the passengers had to subdue him. The implication is that he was moonwalking too much, or doing a really bad rendition of “Man in the Mirror.” I also discussed how this episode is being manufactured to create as much racial tension as possible. If Daniel Penny had been black, then no one would be talking about this case at all.
What I didn&#8217;t talk about, because we didn&#8217;t have all the details at the time, is what the inevitable prosecution of Daniel Penny was going to look like. And now that we have that information, it&#8217;s safe to say this is easily the most egregious criminal prosecution in a case of self-defense since the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. In fact, it’s significantly worse than the Rittenhouse trial, in my opinion. We all knew this would be a political show trial. What we didn&#8217;t know is how flagrant the show trial would be.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1469-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
I&#8217;ll start with the prosecution&#8217;s theory of the case. This is from the <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/10/20/us-news/daniel-penny-trial-begins-jurors-to-be-asked-what-would-you-do/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Post</a>: 
<blockquote>Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has argued that Penny knew during the encounter that he might kill Neely, even if that was not his intention. They’ve cited testimony from a Marine trainer, who told the grand jury that Marines are taught that chokeholds — which are meant to be a non-lethal restraint — can sometimes be fatal.</blockquote>
Before we get into the the testimony they&#8217;re talking about, let&#8217;s be very clear about what&#8217;s happening here. The prosecution is effectively conceding that, when Daniel Penny restrained Jordan Neely, he wasn&#8217;t trying to kill him. So they&#8217;ve downgraded this to an accidental lynching. The prosecution is saying Daniel Penny should spend 15 years in prison because he supposedly disregarded a risk that chokeholds can sometimes be fatal. And to make that argument, they have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Penny and his fellow passengers weren&#8217;t experiencing a reasonable fear for their lives during this incident. That&#8217;s the needle they plan to thread here.
To put this in context, the typical manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide case in New York looks nothing like this. The textbook <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2013/158.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">example</a> would be that someone gets intoxicated, drives well over the speed limit, crosses the double-yellow line and kills someone. That&#8217;s the kind of clearly reckless behavior the law normally applies to.
But in this case, Alvin Bragg wants to imprison Daniel Penny because, in direct response to a dangerous vagrant making threats of violence, he performed a defensive maneuver that could, potentially, be lethal.
Of course, literally any kind of physical altercation could be lethal. A punch or a shove could be lethal. If everyone acknowledges that Penny wasn&#8217;t trying to kill Neely, and was just trying to restrain him so that he didn&#8217;t hurt any of the passengers, then what exactly are we doing here? What are they saying about this particular chokehold that makes it so reckless, and so inappropriate, that it&#8217;s criminal?
I went and pulled up some of the testimony from the government&#8217;s expert witness on chokeholds. It&#8217;s contained in the defense&#8217;s motion to dismiss the case, which a judge rejected. The expert&#8217;s name is Sergeant Caballer. Again, this is the government&#8217;s witness, not the defense witness. And this is what he told the grand jury in this case. The sergeant <a href="https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/daniel-penny-motion-to-dismiss.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified</a> that, in the Marines, the chokehold technique that Penny learned is a non-lethal maneuver intended to subdue an aggressor. The sergeant did say a chokehold can be fatal when it&#8217;s applied &#8220;to the full extent.&#8221; But as the defense&#8217;s motion outlines, the expert clarified that Penny didn&#8217;t apply the chokehold to the &#8220;full extent.&#8221;
According to the sergeant, if you want to kill someone in a chokehold, then your best bet is to place more pressure on the arteries by pushing the head forward. You&#8217;d also want to apply pressure to the carotid arteries using a specific placement of the arm and elbow. But Penny didn&#8217;t do either of those things. The sergeant testified that Penny&#8217;s arm did not allow him to, &#8220;apply a lot of pressure to those carotid arteries.&#8221; Instead, Penny placed pressure primarily on the, &#8220;upper part of the jaw.&#8221; Here&#8217;s the key: &#8220;All things considered of where his hand placement is and arm placement, it looks as though he&#8217;s just holding him.&#8221;
Additionally, several eyewitnesses testified that they never heard Neely &#8220;gasping, gagging, or saying he could not breathe.&#8221;
In other words, Daniel Penny performed a maneuver that he was trained to perform as a non-lethal way of subduing threats. It took him several minutes longer than he probably thought it would, because Jordan Neely was fighting back and because he had a coat on. But that&#8217;s what happened here. 
By the way, this is the kind of maneuver that&#8217;s so common in the military that you can pull up hundreds of videos of chokehold training. Here&#8217;s one of them:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="choke out or tap out? #shorts" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SKi07fUd3tY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
So they&#8217;re making light of the whole thing. They probably shouldn&#8217;t, but that gives you some idea how widely taught the technique is. The expected result is the person who&#8217;s subdued will quickly recover. 
That obviously didn&#8217;t happen in this case. And from the testimony of the medical examiner so far, we don&#8217;t know exactly why. The medical examiner indicated that asphyxiation was the cause of death. But from the defense&#8217;s motion, we don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s actually supported by the evidence. Causation is going to be a big issue in this trial — as in, did Daniel Penny actually cause the death of Jordan Neely. We don&#8217;t know if Jordan Neely died because of pressure that was applied to the carotid artery, or to the windpipe, or for some other reason.
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH&#8217;S &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; COMING TO DAILYWIRE+ OCT. 28</a></h3>
What we do know is that, when someone has to be forcibly restrained by several people for their own protection, there&#8217;s a risk something can go wrong. People die suddenly when they get hit with a Taser. Sometimes people die suddenly when they go for a run. Stress is inherently dangerous, and physical altercations only compound the risk of someone dying. It happens all the time. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s a bad idea to pick fights with people on the train and threaten to kill them. Even when they&#8217;re trying to subdue you using a non-violent technique, things can go wrong. That&#8217;s a risk the aggressor assumes — not his victims.
What this testimony from the government&#8217;s witness underscores, once again, is that this case never should have been brought. No matter what happens — even if Daniel Penny is acquitted — it&#8217;s still a grotesque miscarriage of justice. A healthy society would have given Penny an award and thanked him for his service to the community. Instead, the same prosecutors who tried to jail the leading presidential candidate are now trying to imprison a man who defended a subway car full of passengers from a raving lunatic. 
And this isn&#8217;t just happening in New York. In Chicago, the police board just recommended firing a police officer because he shot someone who drew a gun on him. That&#8217;s not an exaggeration. They want to fire a police officer because he defended himself against an armed man, on camera. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Chicago, IL🚔
•Reginald Clay pulled a gun on a cop during a foot chase. •The Police Board recommended termination. •The Police Superintendent disagreed but was overruled. 
•Alleged Policy Violations. 1. Foot chase policy. 2. De-escalation policy.
(1) <a href="https://t.co/ONcPZIMkAW">pic.twitter.com/ONcPZIMkAW</a>
&mdash; police.law.news (@policelawnews) <a href="https://twitter.com/policelawnews/status/1847673162051260599?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 19, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This is what the destruction of Americans&#8217; constitutional rights looks like. For the millions of people living in places like Chicago and New York, it&#8217;s happening in real-time. The only choice they&#8217;re offered is to submit to the mob, or get crushed by it. This is what Soros-backed prosecutors like Alvin Bragg are doing all over the country. They&#8217;re implementing mob rule. That&#8217;s been their goal for several years now. And with the trial of Daniel Penny, we&#8217;re about to see just how powerful the mob has become.

Jury Selection Begins In Daniel Penny Trial For Death Of Jordan Neely

How The Daniel Penny Trial Proves Self-Defense Is Under Attack In Our Country

Alvin Bragg

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There are a lot of stories out there about lottery winners who go on to destroy their lives. Something like 70% of them supposedly go bankrupt within a few years. And it&#8217;s not hard to see why. When you give a lot of money and attention to a person who didn&#8217;t earn any of it, that person doesn&#8217;t suddenly change overnight. Instead, more often than not, all of their worst character traits are amplified ten times over. And in many cases, that leads to a very public and humiliating collapse.
This is a principle that doesn&#8217;t just apply to individuals. It applies to organizations too. Unearned fame and fortune are far more destructive than they might appear. And right now, there&#8217;s no organization on the planet that proves this point more than the WNBA. The league just posted its highest average game viewership in 24 years. They&#8217;re bringing in massive new sponsorships, at least by the league&#8217;s standards. They&#8217;re selling out arenas, which used to be unheard of. This should be a dream come true for everyone involved in the WNBA — from the executives to the players to the reporters who, for their sins in a past life, have been cursed with the job of covering a women&#8217;s basketball league. Everyone should be overjoyed.
But there&#8217;s a big problem. All of this success — every bit of it — is due to the presence of one player in the league: a generational talent named <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/caitlin-clark" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Caitlin Clark</a>. She&#8217;s the reason the WNBA just won the lottery. Without Caitlin Clark, no one cares about any of these players or the league. With her, most people still don’t care. But a lot more people care than did before. And everyone knows that. Therefore, everyone in the league other than Caitlin Clark is doing exactly what so many lottery winners do. They&#8217;re allowing all of their worst personality traits to surface. They can&#8217;t help themselves.
Several months ago, I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/white-player-diversifies-the-wnba-champions-of-diversity-are-somehow-not-happy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">covered</a> the many cheap shots that Clark has had to deal with on the court. Some of these cheap shots look a lot like <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/wnba-upgrades-foul-on-star-caitlin-clark-to-flagrant-1-violation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criminal assault</a>, but of course they weren&#8217;t prosecuted. I also talked about the many &#8220;champions of diversity&#8221; in the media who are strangely very unhappy about the diversity that Clark has brought to the WNBA, a league that&#8217;s mostly made up of black players. There&#8217;s been a lot of resentment in this league lately, in particular since this season began.
And the thing about resentment, as we all know, is that it tends to fester over time. It gets worse and worse. And that&#8217;s exactly what we&#8217;re seeing now that the season is winding down and the playoffs are underway. Over the past week, race hysteria in the WNBA has somehow reached yet another inflection point. The league is currently in the midst of the single most contrived racism scandal in any professional sport, at least since the fake noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1453-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
Specifically, a bunch of WNBA players have come out claiming that they&#8217;ve been victimized by &#8220;racial slurs&#8221; and other racist attacks. In other words, they are now accusing the people who have started showing up to WNBA games — for the first time in more than two decades — of being horrible racists.
Now for the fine print. None of these &#8220;racial slurs&#8221; — some of which have supposedly occurred during games — have actually been caught on camera. There&#8217;s no visual or audio evidence that might substantiate any of this. There isn&#8217;t a single credible report. And that&#8217;s extremely unusual, obviously, given that there are cameras and smartphones at every WNBA game. 
You&#8217;d think that, if a mob of racists were buying up WNBA tickets so they could heckle the players with racial slurs, then the video would be all over the internet. But those videos are not all over the internet. They aren’t anywhere on the internet. So instead we have to take the players&#8217; word for it. 
Here&#8217;s Brittney Griner, for example:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 Griner" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mSIhS7oAfsI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The question was about the massive growth of this league, which was dead in the water just a year ago. &#8220;What do you think of all the new fans,&#8221; asks the reporter. And instead of some gratitude — some appreciation for the people who saved the WNBA, who pay to come out to see bad players like Brittney Griner — we get resentment. The fans are racist, says Griner. They buy tickets just so they can yell racist things. And not only that — these racists happen to be magicians. They can shout racist things while also being completely invisible. You can hear what they say, but it&#8217;s impossible to record it or broadcast it anywhere. They&#8217;re like ghosts. They just appear in the stands, shout the N-word a few times, and then they disappear.
Put aside the fact that Griner is obviously lying. Let&#8217;s say, hypothetically, that someone did shout a slur at a WNBA game, and it really bothered Brittney Griner. Nothing about the answer makes sense, even in that context. Why would that be the first thing that Griner mentions when the reporter asks about the fans? Why not say, &#8220;The overwhelming majority of the fans are great people, and I&#8217;m so happy they&#8217;re paying money to see me playing basketball as badly as I do&#8221;? 
If anyone should be striking a note of gratitude, it&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/brittney-griner">Brittney Griner</a>. Less than two years ago, the Biden administration traded away a Russian arms dealer — someone who conspired to murder American citizens — in order to get Griner out of a Russian prison. So Griner has every reason to be extremely grateful to this country — not just because of the paycheck for playing basketball poorly, but also because the United States is a lot nicer than a Siberian gulag. At the very least, you&#8217;d expect Griner to be happier than the usual WNBA player. But that&#8217;s obviously not the case.
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a></h3>
Of course the media — especially the sports media — is uncritically reporting on this phantom crisis of racism at WNBA games. Just search “WNBA racism” in google and you’ll get dozens and dozens of mainstream media articles frantically shouting about the racism crisis in the WNBA. Many other players have raised the alarm about this invented epidemic. Here’s another one:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;It&#39;s heartbreaking that &#8230; the excitement around the league is at its highest, but the racial slurs and the derogatory comments and the online bullying are also at their worst.&quot;
ESPN&#39;s Andraya Carter says there is &quot;no space&quot; for WNBA fans who dish hate: <a href="https://t.co/5ggjUdk4Dk">pic.twitter.com/5ggjUdk4Dk</a>
&mdash; Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) <a href="https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1839159138716160240?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 26, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Notice the sad music in the background. Law enforcement might have to get involved. WNBA games have become Klan rallies, from what we’re told. You won’t see any of that on video or hear any of it. But take the WNBA’s word for it. Take the media’s word for it. Yet some WNBA players are still upset that the media isn’t making an even bigger deal out of the fake racism scandal. Reading from USA Today:
<blockquote>“Chicago Sky rookie Angel Reese says the media should have done more to combat the ongoing issue of racism in women&#8217;s basketball before it reached a boiling point. The WNBA on Wednesday condemned all ‘racist, derogatory or threatening comments’ that have been directed toward players after Connecticut Sun All-Star Alyssa Thomas called out &#8220;racial comments from the Indiana Fever fan base&#8221; following the Sun&#8217;s series-clinching 87-81 victory over the Fever. Reese said this has been a long-standing issue, noting that she&#8217;s been the subject of racially motivated hate for some time. Reese, however, said her pleas for accountability and action have been repeatedly ignored. ‘The media has benefited from my pain &amp; me being villainized to create a narrative,’ <a href="https://twitter.com/Reese10Angel/status/1839457079544656170">she wrote on X</a>. ‘They allowed this. This was beneficial to them&#8230; Y’all a little late to the party and could have tried to put out this fire way before it started.’”</blockquote>
Yes, it’s a fire raging. You won’t see the fire. But it’s there. Trust Angel Reese on this one. This shaming obviously had the desired effect on some in the media. Which led to this line of questioning:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 loaded question" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eBE4PnFI7gk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;NaLyssa, how did you personally deal with the hate, the racism, the attention, the scrutiny?&#8221; If you listen to these press conferences, you&#8217;d think that skinheads are rushing the court and assaulting the players in the middle of the games. At the very least, you&#8217;d expect that this player would&#8217;ve been subjected to some kind of horrible racist chant from one of the WNBA&#8217;s racist ghost fans.
Here&#8217;s what actually happened. NaLyssa&#8217;s has a girlfriend named DiJonai Carrington who also plays in the WNBA. And recently, Carrington nearly took Caitlin Clark&#8217;s eye out on the court just a few minutes into a game. This is one of many flagrant fouls against Clark that have occurred since she started in the league, and this one wasn&#8217;t even called. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Caitlin Clark HIT IN EYE, NO FOUL on Dijonai Carrington | Indiana Fever vs Connecticut Sun WNBA" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DW8AjbzpYUk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
After this foul, as you&#8217;d expect, there were a lot of angry fans on social media. To a lot of people, this looked intentional. So in response, a USA Today reporter named Christine Brennan did what any reasonable &#8220;sports journalist&#8221; would do. She asked Carrington if the hit was intentional. Watch:
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These are obviously reasonable questions from Christine Brennan. They&#8217;re not &#8220;racist.&#8221; They&#8217;re not offensive. They&#8217;re the bare minimum you&#8217;d expect under the circumstances. But Carrington immediately gets snippy and obnoxious in response. And then, just for asking these questions, Brennan — who, incidentally, is one of the biggest <a href="https://x.com/SbondyNBA/status/1839734099054887063" target="_blank" rel="noopener">champions</a> of women&#8217;s sports in the industry — is now getting dogpiled.
In particular, the WNBA Players&#8217; Association <a href="https://www.instagram.com/thewnbpa/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;ig_rid=b7e4450c-3bc6-4366-80b3-052bb522ae36">just put out</a> one of the most demented statements imaginable. They wrote:
<blockquote>We call B.S. &#8230; To unprofessional members of the media like Christine Brennan: You are not fooling anyone. That so-called interview in the name of journalism was a blatant attempt to bait a professional athlete into participating in a narrative that is false and designed to fuel racist, homophobic, and misogynistic vitriol on social media. You cannot hide behind your tenure.</blockquote>
The statement then said Brennan was guilty of &#8220;abusing&#8221; her &#8220;privileges,&#8221; and charged that she does not &#8220;deserve&#8221; her &#8220;credentials.&#8221; It continues: 
<blockquote>We call on USA Today Network to review its Principles of Ethical Conduct for Newsrooms and address what we believe is a violation of several core principles, including seeking and reporting the truth. USA Today Sports should explain why a reporter with clear bias and ulterior motives was assigned to cover the league. We also urge the league to review its policies and take measures to prevent such issues, protecting the integrity of the game and its players.</blockquote>
So we&#8217;re at the point now that journalists can&#8217;t even ask black players about fouls they commit against Caitlin Clark without being accused of racism for asking the question. That&#8217;s how much racism there is in the WNBA. Even asking questions is now racist. Obviously there&#8217;s no reason to take any of these people seriously. 
But, just to make sure I wasn&#8217;t missing anything, I went looking to see if I could find the most egregious examples of racism in the WNBA. And I came across this monologue from a sports commentator named Nick Wright. It&#8217;s from a couple of days ago and it’s about as unhinged as you&#8217;d expect. Watch:
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His grand example proving the WNBA is racist is that a woman mocked the player who gave Caitlin Clark a black eye with her nails. Apparently that&#8217;s racist because some black people have long nails. That&#8217;s it. That&#8217;s why this podcast host is invoking the Civil War. Mockery of WNBA players is a threat to the entire country, apparently — at least if those WNBA players are black. If they&#8217;re white, you can mock them all you want. You can assault them on the court, in fact.
What this fake outrage tells you is that &#8220;racism&#8221; isn&#8217;t really what they&#8217;re upset about. This is just too manufactured and overblown to take seriously. They&#8217;re reaching — to a degree that&#8217;s comical and delusional at the same time. This scandal has been invented, out of whole cloth, by WNBA players for one reason, and one reason only: They are wracked with envy and resentment that the most popular player in the league is white. What they&#8217;re really claiming is that Caitlin Clark, by bringing a bunch of white fans to the league, has naturally also brought racism. Basically they&#8217;re complaining that too many white people are watching women&#8217;s basketball now. And for her part, Caitlin Clark has basically <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/sports/caitlin-clark-addresses-racism-following-wnba-statement-those-arent-fans-those-are-trolls" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gone along</a> with this narrative. She made a statement denouncing all of the made up racism.
<h3><a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a></h3>
The racial hysteria reminds me of the summer of 2020, just playing out on a much, much, much smaller stage. A white woman playing basketball has become the WNBA&#8217;s George Floyd moment. And just like we saw with the George Floyd situation, before long, people are going to start pushing back. No normal person wants to pay money to support a team, only to be told they&#8217;re racist and horrible. That&#8217;s a big part of why the DEI grift has begun to collapse.
And it&#8217;s why the WNBA&#8217;s brief resurgence isn&#8217;t going to last very long either. Very soon, the league will be back on the path to irrelevance and bankruptcy. It&#8217;s clear that none of these players or executives or &#8220;sports journalists&#8221; really want the league to succeed, anyway. To borrow an adage from the world of sports commentary, you might even say the WNBA is like a rubber band — one that&#8217;s been stretched to the limit by pathological narcissists who only know how to complain and demean their own fans on the basis of their skin color. And one deranged sports podcast and self-pitying press conference at a time, that rubber band is about to break.

Indiana Fever v Connecticut Sun – Game Two

Race-Baiting WNBA Players Are Sabotaging Their Own League Out Of Spite

Basketball

Caitlin Clark

Sports

WNBA

Women's Basketball

On August 11, 1998, a lifelong criminal named Marcellus Williams was looking for a house to rob in a gated community in University City, Missouri.
By that point, Williams already had several prior criminal convictions, including for robbery and burglary. He shouldn&#8217;t have been on the streets at all, but apparently a judge let him out of jail so that he could commit more crimes and victimize more people. And that&#8217;s exactly why he was in University City on August 11.
When Marcellus Williams knocked on the door of a home owned by a 42-year-old journalist named Felicia Gayle, no one answered. So Williams broke a window and let himself in. After he noticed that someone on the second floor was taking a shower, Williams went downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and waited. When Gayle emerged from the shower, Marcellus Williams stabbed her 43 times, including seven separate fatal wounds. He then stole Gayle&#8217;s purse and her husband&#8217;s laptop before leaving the house to pick up his girlfriend.
Immediately, his girlfriend noticed something was wrong. Williams&#8217; shirt was bloody. His neck was scratched. Inexplicably, there was also a new laptop in his car. The next day, Williams&#8217; girlfriend noticed a purse in the trunk that contained Felicia Gayle&#8217;s identification card. When she confronted Williams about this, he admitted that he had just murdered a woman. He threatened to kill his girlfriend if she went to the police.
Then, a few months later, Williams was incarcerated for an unrelated crime. (This is the theme in his life, after all; he&#8217;s constantly in prison because he&#8217;s constantly committing serious crimes). In this particular instance, when Williams was in jail, promptly bragged to another inmate that he had murdered Felicia Gayle, and provided non-public information about the killing. When that inmate got out of jail, he went to the police department and told them what he had heard. During their investigation, detectives spoke to Williams&#8217; girlfriend, who confirmed that he had confessed to the murder. The police also found several items belonging to the victim in the Buick that Williams was driving, as well as the stolen laptop belonging to the victim&#8217;s husband.
On these <a href="https://law.justia.com/cases/missouri/supreme-court/2003/sc-83934-1.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">facts</a>, Williams was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death. On appeal, Williams&#8217; attorneys raised several objections, most of which were technical in nature. But there were a couple of claims that related to his guilt or innocence. Specifically, Williams said that the jury should have been given the opportunity to determine that he was a mere accomplice to the murders, as opposed to the actual killer. That&#8217;s because, according to the defense, &#8220;several unidentified hairs and shoe prints were found at the murder scene.&#8221; Additionally, Williams&#8217; girlfriend was supposedly &#8220;seen with a laptop computer&#8221; after Williams was incarcerated.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1451-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h4>
But these arguments weren&#8217;t convincing to the Supreme Court of Missouri. For one thing, there was evidence showing that &#8220;several workmen&#8221; and &#8220;hundreds of guests&#8221; had been inside the home in the months prior to the murder, so you&#8217;d expect to have some unidentified shoe prints and hairs lying around. Additionally, Williams told both his girlfriend and the inmate that he was alone when he committed the murders. And finally, there was no evidence that Williams&#8217; girlfriend possessed the same laptop computer that was stolen from the murder scene. She just had a laptop — any laptop.
If you tune into any mainstream media coverage of the Williams case, you won&#8217;t hear any of the details I just outlined — all of which are undisputed, and come directly from the Supreme Court of Missouri. You won&#8217;t hear news anchors recount all of the ways in which it&#8217;s clear that Marcellus Williams is extremely guilty of murder. Instead, you&#8217;ll find emotional segments like this one, which just aired on CNN:
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Putting aside the melodrama for a moment — If we&#8217;re being honest, that segment is a little surprising. It&#8217;s your last meal, and you can request anything you want — and you choose tater tots instead of curly fries? Unfortunately, the rest of the CNN segment doesn&#8217;t explain this questionable decision, as confusing as it obviously is. Instead, the anchor focuses on reinforcing the current BLM narrative that Marcellus Williams&#8217; execution was unjust. To that end, she talks about how &#8220;prosecutors&#8221; and &#8220;the victim&#8217;s family&#8221; didn&#8217;t want to see Williams killed. She implies he might even be innocent. And she barely even mentions the woman who was brutally stabbed 43 times in her own kitchen, or the mountain of damning evidence in the case.
Let&#8217;s take both of those claims in turn. First of all, the &#8220;prosecutor&#8221; that the CNN anchor is referring to is a &#8220;restorative justice&#8221; activist named Wesley Bell. Bell was not the original prosecutor on the case, which was tried more than 20 years ago. He parachuted in at the last moment, in defiance of the state&#8217;s attorney general, to try to delay Williams&#8217; execution. Earlier this year, Bell claimed in court filings that DNA evidence might exonerate Williams.
Specifically, there was supposedly unknown DNA on the murder weapon. 
But that claim fell apart in recent weeks. According to the Missouri judicial branch, attorneys, “received a report indicating the DNA on the murder weapon belonged to an assistant prosecuting attorney and an investigator who had handled the murder weapon without gloves prior to trial.&#8221; So there was no unknown DNA on the murder weapon after all.
<h4><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a></h4>
This month, a court in Missouri <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H_8gEp_1LgUzEsUAEEXg1643UJw88rja/view" target="_blank" rel="noopener">looked into</a> what exactly happened with the handling of this murder weapon. They determined that, back in 2001, it was normal practice for detectives in St. Louis to handle evidence, without wearing gloves, after the crime lab had processed the item and determined there was no useful DNA or fingerprint evidence on it. And in this case, because the killer wore gloves, there was no usable evidence on the knife. So the detective and the prosecutor repeatedly handled the knife, as part of trial preparation. Nothing about that, in any way, suggests that the knife was &#8220;tampered with,&#8221; or that there might have been another killer. So the court upheld the conviction.
As the state attorney general put it: 
<blockquote>One of the defense’s own experts previously testified he could not rule out the possibility that Williams’s DNA was also on the knife. He could only testify to the fact that enough actors had handled the knife throughout the legal process that others’ DNA was present.</blockquote>
That attorney general emphasized that the other available evidence was very clear: 
<blockquote>The victim’s personal items were found in Williams’s car after the murder. A witness testified that Williams had sold the victim’s laptop to him. Williams confessed to his girlfriend and an inmate in the St. Louis City Jail, and William’s girlfriend saw him dispose of the bloody clothes worn during the murder.</blockquote>
This is overwhelming evidence, obviously. And if you read between the lines, even this new prosecutor concedes that. In recent court filings — and in his interview with CNN — the prosecutor didn&#8217;t even claim that Williams was necessarily innocent. Instead, he pointed to alleged defects in how the trial was conducted, including jury selection. Here&#8217;s part of the prosecutors&#8217; interview with CNN:
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&nbsp;
It&#8217;s an incredible moment. They&#8217;re both claiming that Marcellus Williams was executed too hastily — more than 25 years after he killed a woman in her own kitchen. That&#8217;s too fast, apparently. We just need another 25 years to really investigate this case, and see if we can find some new information. Maybe some new witnesses will turn up. Maybe we&#8217;ll find new surveillance footage. Who knows? Apparently the point is, even after you&#8217;re convicted, you get 50 more years to prove you&#8217;re really innocent. At least, that&#8217;s what you get if BLM and the corporate press think they can turn you into a martyr. If you&#8217;re a white guy on death row, then no one really cares. You’ll notice that the only condemned criminals anyone ever cries over are black. Plenty of white guys get put to death, too, but they never become a trendy cause for the media and activists. I wonder why?
The other argument that they&#8217;re using is that people connected to the victim supposedly don&#8217;t want this man to be executed. Again, this isn&#8217;t a claim that&#8217;s related to whether Williams killed someone or not. It&#8217;s an argument about what the family wants. But if you look closer into this claim, it falls apart as well. Here&#8217;s part of a letter written last month by Laura Friedman, who&#8217;s now married to the victim&#8217;s former husband:
<blockquote>After 26 years of competing court filings, secret commissions, TV news alerts and front-page headlines, my husband&#8217;s personal pain is once again the subject of public discussion and debate. &#8230; This is now the fifth time this family tragedy has been revisited, relitigated and reappeared in the press. We are exhausted and exasperated. &#8230; Whether the death penalty is deserved in a case like this is a matter for debate. Williams&#8217; guilt is not.</blockquote>
Notice what&#8217;s actually going on here. Laura Friedman emphatically says that Marcellus Williams is guilty. The media just ignores that part. She also says that she just wants this case to be over, so that the family can get some closure. They&#8217;re clearly tired of how activists have dragged this case out for more than 25 years. The media ignores that part, too. Instead, the story from the mainstream media is that the family and loved ones close to the victim supposedly don&#8217;t want the death penalty.
These are the lies that are underpinning the latest attempt by race hustlers to manufacture another George Floyd scenario. 
For example, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSqu9YNOEPM" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Henry Rogers</a>, a.k.a. Ibram X. Kendi, <a href="https://x.com/ibramxk/status/1838769254553837758" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>:
<blockquote>Tonight, Missouri lynched Marcellus Williams. DNA evidence proved he was innocent. It didn’t matter. Because the United States is a serial killer of Black people.&#8221; For her part, Cori Bush — who just lost her primary to Wesley Bell — also <a href="https://x.com/RepCori/status/1838740528734638565" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called</a> Williams &#8220;innocent&#8221; and said his death was &#8220;depraved.</blockquote>
The NAACP had a similar <a href="https://x.com/NAACP/status/1838718578465378620" target="_blank" rel="noopener">message</a>:
<blockquote>Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man. Governor Parson had the responsibility to save this innocent life, and he didn’t. The NAACP was founded in 1909 in response to the barbaric lynching of Black people in America — we were founded exactly because of people like Governor Parson who perpetuate violence against innocent Black people.</blockquote>
There are a lot more statements like this, from every BLM activist and race hustler you&#8217;d expect. Mainstream media organizations are saying much the same thing. They&#8217;re claiming that there&#8217;s no difference between executing a man convicted of a brutal homicide — and who clearly did commit that brutal homicide — and lynching a random black person who&#8217;s done nothing wrong. If these people had any degree of intelligence or integrity whatsoever, they&#8217;d recognize how degrading that is to black people who haven&#8217;t committed any crimes. They&#8217;re being equated with a career felon who killed a woman for no reason.
The only lesson we can draw from this is that the NAACP, Henry Rogers, and corporate media don&#8217;t believe that black people should get the death penalty when they murder a white person. They probably don&#8217;t think any punishment is appropriate, frankly, based on how they&#8217;re lying about the death of Felicia Gayle. We are witnessing crass race hatred spilling out into the open.
We all know that, if Marcellus Williams were white, or if his victim had been black, then there wouldn&#8217;t be any outrage whatsoever. This is the clearest imaginable example of a manufactured racial narrative, and of course it&#8217;s happening in an election year.
And it&#8217;s riling up all the lunatics you&#8217;d expect. In one post that has hundreds of thousands of views on X, an activist <a href="https://x.com/mrgnbrmll/status/1838659426716410063" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>: 
<blockquote>The murder of Marcellus Williams is connected to the murder of the people of Palestine and the people in Haiti and the people in Lebanon and the people in &#8230; Let your grief move you to see this as part of one state approved project.</blockquote>
Yes, Marcellus Williams is &#8220;connected&#8221; to the &#8220;people of Palestine&#8221; and the &#8220;people of Haiti and Lebanon.&#8221; As deranged as this post is, it does have a shred of honesty in it. The truth is that no one campaigning on behalf of Williams actually thinks he&#8217;s innocent. If a woman is brutally murdered and you confess to the crime to multiple people, giving them details that you wouldn’t have known unless you’d been there — and you are found with the victim’s property in your car — then you’re guilty. Period. It is basically impossible to even conceive of a scenario where all of that could happen and yet you’d still be innocent. That’s because Williams is guilty. He did it. He brutally butchered an innocent woman. He deserves to die for what he did. It’s that simple.
<h4><a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI</a></h4>
But none of the activists really care about the facts of his case, or even about Williams himself. These, after all, are not empathetic people. These are not people who value human life. Millions of human children have been killed by abortion in this country and these people not only don’t care about that, but celebrate it. They apparently feel infinitely more sympathy for a convicted murderer who stabbed a woman 40 times than they do for 60 million dead children combined. How could anyone’s heart be that twisted? How could their sympathies be so wildly, psychotically misdirected? Well, because they actually have no sympathy at all for anyone. It’s all a show. It’s an act.
This is about a much larger effort to undermine and ultimately destroy the rule of law in the United States. And this effort is being undertaken by people who care far more about Haiti and Lebanon than they care about this country. That&#8217;s why they&#8217;re trivializing the murder of this young white journalist in Missouri. It&#8217;s why they&#8217;re mocking her family and pretending her killer is innocent. Only the most dysfunctional hellholes on the planet have explicit, distinct standards of justice depending on the skin color of the assailant and the skin color of the victim. And after this surreal and delusional effort to absolve Marcellus Williams, it&#8217;s clear that we&#8217;re much closer to becoming one of those hellholes than we might like to admit.

MixCollage-26-Sep-2024-04-01-PM-1534

This Man Confessed To His Brutal Crimes … And They Still Call Him ‘Innocent’

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