The Thomas Theorem
Or why queer educators are actually indoctrinating your kids
In a written piece and on my YouTube channel, I’ve talked about the “people in the valley” phenomenon.
It is an allegory.
Two men are standing on top of a hill, looking down into a valley at a group of people they do not know. The first man has some passing experience (or at least claims he does) with the people in the valley. This man, for whatever reason—power, status, attention, who knows—decides to describe the people in the worst way. They are immoral, duplicitous, lazy, violent, or whatever. The second man listens, aghast at what the first man is describing, and develops animosity towards “those people.” The first man knows that much of what he is saying is distortion, and so can only believe his story so much. But the second man, with only the first man’s words to go on, swallows the story wholeheartedly. He generates more hate and animosity towards “those people” than the duplicitous messenger.
The first man is a “thought leader.” The second man is most of us: the “followers,” “subscribers,” or, just in general, an “audience.” The people in the valley are the “others” that we come to hate. The allegory explains why we develop negative feelings towards groups of people with whom we have no real experience.
This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Nor is it restricted to any ancestry, sex, or political orientation. But I think this phenomenon is more prevalent today because modern technology, again using that allegory, puts us at the tops of valleys more often. People with different backgrounds, beliefs, and lifestyles are sharing digital space with us—people we otherwise would never have met.
The Thomas Theorem
Consider these two social issues that have polarized American society over the past few years:
Hoards of illegals are on a violent rampage in America’s cities.
Immoral queer educators are sexualizing and indoctrinating young people in their classrooms.
People having real experience with undocumented migrants and queer educators in school systems know that these issues are in large part manufactured, and the reality is far more complex. Moreover, those depicted as immoral, duplicitous, lazy, violent, or whatever, were by and large…not.
In other words, this is not like, say, calls to reform the criminal justice system because of discrimination against people of color. I do believe there was quite a bit of exaggeration by activists—during the height of the BLM movement, I heard claims that young Black men had to fear for their lives when they left their homes. I think that is a bit much. But there were actual, systematic studies done to show that people of color were being mistreated in the criminal justice system. The two social issues I listed above are built on distortions. There is, at least to my knowledge, no reputable research supporting these claims.
But those distortions worked!
Because, as sociologists William Thomas and Dorothy Thomas (unrelated) argued:
“If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” — William Thomas & Dorothy Thomas (1928)
The Thomas Theorem suggests that it’s not what is actually happening that matters, but what people believe is happening. If people think something is real—even if it isn’t—their actions will be based on that belief, and the outcomes of these actions will be real.
A few points before moving on:
Perceptions shape reality. How one sees a thing or situation matters far more than what the thing is. Suppose I describe the American flag as being made of a weather-resistant fabric such as nylon or cotton, with embroidered or printed stars and sewn or printed stripes. I add that there are thirteen alternating red and white horizontal stripes, and a blue rectangle in the upper left corner with fifty white stars. But what does this tell us about how people see the flag? Maybe some see it as a symbol of freedom—Ol’ Glory, as it were. In some parts of the world, the flag might be perceived in the opposite way—as a symbol of imperialism. Be it Ol’ Glory or imperialism, that is the reality for those with those perceptions. And so, perceiving the flag as Ol’ Glory leads to flags being festooned everywhere, creating the reality of that person being patriotic.
How a situation is defined is what ultimately matters. I think we can all grasp the “perceptions shape reality” idea. “Defining” a situation, on the other hand, might be an unfamiliar idea to most. But in order to have the perception of the flag as either Ol’ Glory or a symbol of imperialism, it must first be defined that way. We don’t get our perceptions from thin air. They must come from either personal experiences or through a third party - that first man at the top of the hill.
Actions based on perceptions are real in their consequences. I find this aspect of the theorem most interesting and most relevant to what we are experiencing today in this country. The second man, the man who has fallen for the distortions of the first, now acts on those distortions. And his actions validate the distortions of the first man!
Let’s move away from allegory to the current sociopolitical moment and the current mass deportation push. This is powered by a definition of migrants as criminogenic and violent. Then, based on this distortion, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) adopt an aggressive approach to apprehending and deporting undocumented migrants. The very fact of migrants being rounded up, put in handcuffs, and shuttled off to detention centers is what happens to criminals. Ergo, they are criminogenic. Some migrants will justifiably resist arrest—especially if they are being chased by people in masks (what is that about?). This may lead to violent interactions between ICE and migrants. Ergo, migrants are violent. The distortion leads to actions which then validate the distortion.
Queer educators are indoctrinating your kids
This brings me to the subtitle of this piece: why queer educators are actually indoctrinating your kids.
Suppose thought leaders see the relative rise of out-of-the-closet queer educators as a problem. Suppose they cherry-pick documents from classrooms and snippets from content put online by queer educators to define this situation as “queer educators are trying to turn your kids gay.” I write “suppose,” but this actually happened—most notably with Chaya Raichik. Raichik rose to prominence with her Libs of TikTok account on Twitter. She took videos from queer educators out of context and presented them to her Twitter followers with her own commentary. She effectively defined the situation for her followers as “indoctrination” and the queer educators as immoral.
Now suppose these distortions are acted upon. School boards make it their mission to remove the “indoctrinators” from their school district. They act based upon the distortion. They base their hiring of new teachers on whether or not the candidates want to teach these materials in the classroom. The potential hire is then caught in a reality where they must say explicitly or signal implicitly that they are not “indoctrinators.” This, of course, validates the idea that there was indoctrination going on in the first place. Then, several years down the line, members of the school board can pat themselves on the back, saying they successfully removed the indoctrinators and their materials from classrooms.
At that point, we might as well say queer educators were indoctrinating kids.
Going down into the valley
Because modern progressivism is in line with my moral compass, I tend to apply these sociological ideas to issues I see as important. I view the distortions applied to queers and migrants as wrong. I see some of the actions based on these distortions—the abrogation of the human rights of migrants and the bigoted policies directed at queers—as being immoral. I can easily identify these distortions because I have actual experience with these groups—evidence that pushes back against the the distortion. In other words, I’ve been in the valley and I know the man I am talking to at the top of the hill is shoveling me a load of crap.
But this is a human phenomenon.
The allegory and the theorem discussed in this piece are useful for anyone. Most of us are in the position of being the second man, looking down into that valley, trying to make sense of it all. And so, if one is conservative, they may identify other phenomena or issues as being more important and worthy of their attention.
Whether you are conservative or liberal, we will all fall for these distortions unless we take real steps to “go down into the valley” and speak with our fellow human.