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• About Dr. Tabia “lee” Lee

There is a 1950s film from the National Education Association in which a teacher is being accused of teaching her students about communism. The parents are outraged and they go to the principal, and one of the quotes from the principal when he’s addressing these infuriated parents is really relevant to today and the theme of Curiosity, Controversy, and Intellectual Courage. The principal tells the parents that modern schools have a responsibility to prepare children to assume their responsibilities of citizenship. He explains to them that involves three things: a respect for facts, a constant search for the truth, and knowledge of the world as it actually is today. He says that these are essential to our democratic way of life. When the teacher is put on trial for her teaching about democracy and communism and comparing the political ideologies to each other and having her students get a greater understanding of it, she explains that if we don’t understand the facts about something, how can we choose to address it or combat it? She also explains that teachers have a responsibility to teach their students how to think, not what to think.

I want to preface my introduction with that and speak about three things I’ll be touching on in this brief talk today. First, I’ll be speaking to you about ideological subversion, which is something I think we all need to understand, to understand the current social and political climate in America and more largely. Also, I’ll speak to you about social justice approaches and how they’re addressing and involved in the ideological subversion process, and the road ahead.

First, what is ideological subversion? It may be something you may not have heard of. I strongly encourage you, if you have not read the book Love Letter To America by Yuri Bezmenov who was a KGB defector, this book was published in 1984,^[1] I strongly encourage you to read it and you may be struck by the uncanny resemblance to many of the things that are happening in our society and in America and more globally. What is ideological subversion? It is the process of changing the perception of reality in the minds of millions of people all over the world.

Now I could spend probably a couple of hours, maybe even a semester, unpacking the ideological subversion process. I’m not going to do that today. I’m going to largely focus on the step of demoralization. But it is a four-step process, demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and normalization. Bezmenov explained that this process is one that is encountered and carried out by Americans to Americans. This isn’t an outside influence. It happens to the people that live in a place by the people who live in a place, with the ideological help of communist subverters.

Most of the actions he explains are overt, legitimate, and easily identifiable. But the trouble is that they are stretched in time. In other words, the process of subversion is a long-term process that the average person doesn’t notice because they’re not paying attention to what’s taking place around them, and they’re really not paying attention to the historical memory of what has taken place before and how history repeats itself. For me as a former history, social studies and civics teacher, that’s something that really resonates, and is really relevant to today’s time.

It’s really important for us to understand that the process of ideological subversion, I really like this metaphor he uses, he says that it’s the small hand of your watch—you know it moves, but you can’t see it moving.

The three levels of demoralization as described by Bezmenov are ideas, structures and life. First, let’s take a look at ideas. When we’re thinking of ideas, the methods that are used involve a subversion of religion, education, media, and culture. Politicizing everything, commercializing things, making religion more entertainment than edification. Really focusing on, in education, permissiveness and relativity. Some of these things sound familiar, right? In terms of our media, a monopolization of media, manipulation of it, discrediting of experts and also elevation of non-issues, things that are not important, having the public focus on that. Of course in terms of culture, elevation of false heroes and role models.

What are the results of this when this takes place in society? We really have an a preponderance of ignorance. A preponderance of uninformed myopia. Addictive fads, death wishes, all of these things that are present in today’s reality if you just take a moment to turn on your news.

In terms of structures, Bezmenov explained, that there are various methods in areas that come under attack when an ideological subversion process is in place. Where we’re looking at, in terms of law and order, a legislative and not moral focus. A focus on rights versus obligations. Demoralization of intelligence in your police and military structures. In terms of our internal politics: antagonisms.

What does that produce in a society when, when someone is actively engaging in these things and willfully engaging in these things? It produces mistrust in justice. It produces less powerful responses to things and less individual responses to things that should be responded to. Feelings of defenselessness, disunity and isolation.

The final area of demoralization outlined by Bezmenov is life. This is a big important one because it really does involve the breakup of things like the family and destabilization of it very intentionally. In terms of health, a focus on unhealthy activities, junk food, all of these things; of focusing on race, which we definitely see. “Lowering the uppers.” Elevating or centering the marginalized is how it might be said in critical social justice language. In terms of our labor, really looking at this lack of loyalty, no loyalty to each other or causes, but producing, increasingly, focus on loyalty to the state.

Then we have the “enfeebled masses.” There’s hatred and division that results from these types of demoralization efforts and people feeling victimized and alienated. We see that definitely in our schools, in our communities, and all aspects of American life.

How does social justice approaches relate to this?

Social justice is one of the main avenues that ideological subverters are using to influence American society at this time. I became very interested in it because I wanted to understand why did it seem like reality was upside down? Why do we no longer know what a male is and what a female is? I really resonated with Bezmenov’s words that the purpose of this process is to change your perception of reality to such an extent that even despite an abundance of information and evidence about the danger of communism, you are unable to come to sensible conclusions in your own interests and in the interests of your nation. We see this reality upside down. Everything we knew previously, we don’t know anymore. There’s lots of confusion about basic biological facts and other things nowadays.

Another thing we see is demoralization through mass education. I love this explanation that he provides, that the Marxist-Leninist concept of education emphasizes environment and mass character of education over the individual, individual abilities and quality. There are examples from a book called So You Made It to a Protest by a group called Woke Kindergarten used in K through 12 schools.^[2] This was being used in San Francisco area schools. It’s also being used throughout the nation by other schools in K through 12 areas. In one instance, a Bay Area school district spent $250,000 on this program. What they found was that test scores not only of the targeted students that this program was supposed to be helping and elevating, they fell for all students across the board because these are not the things that students need to be learning about. This does not help students to become critical thinkers to be indoctrinated into critical social justice ideology. I really like this explanation here if we can we can apply it to today’s world, too—these subverters have produced generations of graduates

“who can’t spell, who can’t find Nicaragua on a world map, and they cannot think creatively and independently.”

Contemporary permissiveness and moral relativity really does facilitate ideological subversion in a nation.

Another process that’s used in ideological subversion and demoralization is the advancement of bad ideas. This is where the principles of democracy are used against us. Democracy is by definition a recipient of a multiplicity of ideologies and values, whether good or bad. Unfortunately, bad ideas are often proven and revealed only after a long period of time, during which many have absorbed them and allowed them to change their nation’s attitudes and behavior. Here we have a teacher proudly celebrating that their 5th graders learned about white privilege and thought of examples of where this privilege lives in our everyday world. This is a construct that is unproven. It is purely ideological, and because we in our democracy allow for the free market of ideas, some of these bad ideas often get elevated, and we’re only now starting to see the harmful effects of it, and the discrimination that results from it, and the isolation and victimization that results from ideas like white privilege.

Another thing that ideological subverters do is they try to debase your base. In the U.S.A, again, we have this multiplicity of ideas and ideologies. We see from a recent [pro-Palestinian] encampment protest, this is a person who has climbed atop a statue of Benjamin Franklin, put a keffiyeh on his head and he’s waving a flag of another nation, or not even another nation, but he’s waving a flag that is not the American flag and showing their dominance over the American process. This is what happens when in our education system we do not have a proper emphasis on the main and basic American ideology of the original republic and the free market system. It becomes unfashionable to be an intellectual or to subscribe to this so-called outmoded set of ideas, the ideas that are foundational to our survival as a nation.

I’d like to speak to you a little bit about social justice approaches with these things in mind. Because there are some different ways to approach teaching and learning about social justice and what we have right now is a preponderance of critical social justice ideologies that is guiding most teaching and learning about social justice topics. But there is another way, and I hope to, through my scholarship and research and some of the actions and things I’ve been developing recently, to help people get back to the basics that we need to focus on.

From a critical social justice perspective, which is the default in many spaces, there’s the foundational assertion that America was founded on and is irretrievably rooted in white supremacy. Another foundational assertion of this approach is that systemic racism is baked into American society and is the cause of every disparity. From a classical social justice perspective, a foundational perspective would be that America was founded on and is rooted in the aspirational goals of fairness and equality for all and that racism is not the cause of every disparity. You can see how, on many campuses, what prevails is a critical social justice ideology as a default and anyone who speaks against that or even suggests assertions, foundational assertions that are opposite to that become someone who becomes targeted.

Another thing that we can look at are the instructional tools and methodologies, and there are differences between these twp approaches. A critical social justice approach focuses on what they call decentering whiteness. Another thing that it focuses on is raising so-called critical consciousness, and also the “liberation struggles” of BIPOC—that means Black, indigenous, people of color; intersectionality, which is an unproven construct that is now being used in student-facing pedagogy, instead of in the critical legal scholarship that it was founded in, it’s now been brought into face-to-face instruction with kindergarten through 12th grade students and above.

How does a classical social justice perspective differ from that? Key instructional tools and methodologies from this perspective involve focusing on American pluralism. It involves raising social consciousness, which is the idea that we are all interconnected and that we are all responsible to each other. It also involves a focus on the contributions of diverse, minoritized people to e pluribus unum and a more perfect union, whereas in a critical social justice perspective, the proponents of it suggest that there’s only four groups that we should ever focus on as minoritized groups, and it’s simply just not historically accurate.

What do these different social justice approaches recommend and promote? A critical social justice perspective focuses on anticolonial, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-racist informed ideas and practices. It prioritizes present discrimination as a remedy for past discrimination. It emphasizes the equality of outcomes.

From a classical social justice perspective what would be emphasized is liberal democratic values, inquiry-based practices, objective pluralism, and empowered pathways, informed ideas and practices. It prioritizes human dignity and equal treatment of all under the law, focusing on equal citizenship and the struggles around that, and emphasizing the goal it has for society: equality of opportunity.

In terms of race and gender identity ideologies, these two approaches also seek to advance different aims. Critical social justice approaches support developing identity based on racial and gender identity checkboxes. They embrace race essentialism and gender identity stereotypes and teach those directly to students. They explore the historical and contemporary effects of heterosexism, cisheteropatriarchy, and more. If you’re wondering where am I getting these terms from, it’s actually from the liberated critical ethnic studies model here in California. These aren’t words that I’m putting out, these are the words from these scholars themselves, and they’re quite proud and self-righteous about their aims and seeking to create co-conspirators and activists in students.

From a classical social justice perspective, there’s a support for developing a value-centered identity, a rejection of racist essentialism and gender identity stereotypes, and an exploration of the history and contemporary effects of human agency, resilience, and more.

We do have a choice on the road ahead. Where do we want to go as a nation, as individual schools, as individual teachers in our classrooms when we engage our students? Do we want to focus on equality or equity? The choice is really clear. Do we want equal opportunity or equal outcomes? We should be able to articulate why we’ve chosen this a particular path to our constituents and to our students as well.

What do you do? One thing you can do is stop aiding the subverter. There’s numerous American patriotic groups and organizations who are well-informed and who have solutions to combat the ideological subversion, the damage that’s been done with it. I can recommend Free Black Thought,^[3] where I serve on the board, as one. Seek these groups out, join them and do something. That’s the key: to take action in small, large, medium ways.

I’ve seen the need to have an alternative approach to teaching about social justice, so I have developed what are called the empowered social justice resources.^[4] These resources include guiding principles, which outline educator attitudes and practices that are needed for empowered social justice approaches. Also, I have developed the empowered social justice standards for grades K through 12. These are anchor standards and learning outcomes for grades K through 5, 6 through 8 and 9 through 12. These were developed as a counterpoint to the Southern Poverty Law Center social justice standards that are being uncritically used in K through 12 schools throughout the nation, which embody and enact race-normative ways of thinking about and being in the world, and a critical social justice ideology, which again is the default that’s not being named, and what I seek to do is name it so that people can know what they’re engaging in and that they can question their boards, their school leaders, their principals and their teachers if they’re only presenting one side or one version of teaching about social justice instead of a more balanced approach.

Also included in this framework is an empowered ethnic studies framework for grades 9 through 12, and this is really important because the critical liberated ethnic studies model is not only limiting in terms of who it views as minoritized throughout history, but it also makes some assumptions about race and ethnicity that are unfounded. You know, students are often taught, and I was taught as a DEI expert, that race is a social construct. That’s taught as a foundational truth that no one should question. But there are actually other philosophies of race, and this framework actually brings those to the attention of students along with looking at and exploring foundational documents such as the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and documents from the Interamerican Alliance, so that students can have an understanding of the importance of liberal democratic values. Understanding those three words are important, too, because there’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation with highly polarized and politicized wordings. When we’re talking about liberal democratic values, we’re not talking about the values of the Democratic Party, we’re talking about the values that are foundational to America in American society.

Using these standards and the parse questions for inquiry are ways to get out of the anti-Semitism, the willful exclusion of various groups from historical narratives that exist in the critical social justice approach. In this approach, the students actually read an excerpt from Ibram Kendi’s work on anti-racism, they read an excerpt from Coleman Hughes’s colorblind ideology, they read an excerpt from Sheena Mason’s racelessness ideology. They read these things because they have peers who are working from these ideologies, and because also it’s important to understand and do comparative analyses of these various ideologies when we really want to focus on learning and understanding what guides some of our political and social actions in the world. That’s what this framework does that is completely different from the critical social justice ideology, which willfully pretends that there aren’t many perspectives of looking at things, and which instead focuses it on indoctrination. I would like to encourage people to keep learning more about social justice approaches.^[5][6]

America: At the Crossroads of Social Justice Teaching & Learning by Dr. Tabia “lee” Lee

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About Dr. Tabia “lee” Lee

Tabia Lee (known simply as “Lee”) has contributed to the design, implementation, and evaluation of numerous educational and professional development programs. In the late 90’s she coined teacher ideology-in-practice and her Life Work is devoted to raising awareness about the ways that race, gender, and other ideologies influence and inform teaching practice.

Her commitment to teacher education and pedagogical design is grounded in her experience as a lifelong educator and a National Board Certified English, Civics, and Social Studies teacher in urban American public middle schools.  She is director of Dr. t. lee Educational Consultancy, a senior fellow at Do No Harm Medicine, and a founding member on the board of directors at Free Black Thought.

Lee holds a Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership and Administration from University of California, Irvine, a Master of Arts in Education (Curriculum and Instruction, Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development) from University of Phoenix, and a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology (Social Deviance) from University of California, Davis.

Learn more about Dr. Tabia Lee.