HBO talk show host and podcaster Bill Maher scoffed at Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston’s proclamation that U.S. schools must teach children Critical Race Theory.
During Maher’s recent Club Random podcast, Cranston went off on states such as Florida for working to limit or ban woke Critical Race Theory maintaining that America’s founding is inherently racist.
The topic arose when the pair began to discuss slavery and Maher insisted that historical figures including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington should not be “canceled” over their connections to slavery because slavery was common both in the U.S. and overseas at the time.
But Cranston insisted that it is “essential” to teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) because the slave trade permeated the early Republic.
“It’s 400 fucking years that we’ve dealt with this, and our country still has not taken responsibility or accountability,” the actor exclaimed.
Maher was skeptical, though, asking what Cranston thinks the U.S. has not taken responsibility for.
“For the history of the systemic racism that’s in this country,” Cranston blasted back, adding that “Critical Race Theory, I think is essential to be teaching.”
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Maher was not convinced and wondered what Cranston meant by “Critical Race Theory.”
“I mean, teaching how the race trade and racism is systemic in everything we’ve done in government, in social activities,” Cranston added.
Maher went on to say that a country does have some deeply rooted problems with racism and suggested without proof that the Second Amendment was initially meant to keep people in chains.
“It’s like, for example, why the Second Amendment really has to do with, in a country where you were keeping a hostile people in chains, you needed guns to keep the lid on that. So that’s a lot to do with why other countries don’t have a Second Amendment the way we do,” he said.
But he still said he feels that “Critical Race Theory” is too much of a “catchall” phrase.
“Critical race theory, I mean, it’s just one of these catch-all terms, if you mean we should honestly teach our past, of course, if you mean more what the 1619 book says, which is that it’s just the essence of America and that we are irredeemable, that’s just wrong,” Maher told Cranston.
Maher has denigrated CRT in the past. In Nov. of 2021, for instance, Maher objected to attacking parents in Virginia who opposed CRT.
While he agreed in general, Cranston asked, “But, even teaching our past and being honest, and owning up to who we are as a country and the history?”
Maher insisted that schools are already doing that, even as Cranston blasted Florida.
“In Florida they want to do away with critical race theory, and a lot of other states, because sometimes it veers off into things that are really not appropriate in schools,” Cranston said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed legislation that bans Critical Race Theory in the Sunshine State’s schools. In his signing ceremony, DeSantis insisted that in Florida, “We Believe in Education, Not Indoctrination.”
But Maher said that teaching kids that they are oppressors is “introducing ideas about race that are inappropriate for kids that age who can’t understand it,” and added that “lacking in this country.” He added, “That’s what parents are objecting to.”
Still, Cranston also agreed that things sometimes go too far in woke schools.
Critical Race Theory has been pushed heavily by the controversial 1619 Project by New York Times columnist Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Jones, for instance, claims that 1619, not 1776, should be regarded as the date of the true founding of America because 1619 was the year the first slave ship arrived in the American colonies.
In 2020, Hannah-Jones admitted that in 1995 she wrote a letter calling white people “bloodsuckers” and “barbaric devils.” She also claimed that “The white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.”
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