Why Are Black Conservatives Called Uncle Tom?—Larry Elder Talks George Floyd Protests & New Film

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All the movie asks is that in America,
don't you have the right to have your own opinion?
Especially if it's a well-thought-out opinion?
And why would you have a well-thought-out opinion
be denounced, because of your race,
as reflective of a sellout, of somebody who's an Uncle Tom,
who wishes bad things to happen to fellow members of his own race?
What is the logic behind that? And why is this going on?
And isn't this hurting the country? That's what the movie asks.
Are police actually using deadly force disproportionately against black people? And how does the focus
on police overshadow other monumental problems facing black America today?
Why is believing that black lives matter not the same as supporting the Black Lives Matter
organization? And why are black conservatives often excluded
from mainstream public awareness and discourse? In this episode, we sit down again with radio
talk show personality and bestselling author Larry Elder, who hosts The Larry Elder Show
for The Epoch Times. He is the executive producer of the new documentary “Uncle Tom.”
This is American Thought Leaders ??, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
Larry Elder, it’s such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. As Charlton Heston once said to me, thank
you for letting me borrow your audience. Well, because we're going to talk about Uncle
Tom, on your shirt. This film that you and I have been talking about for a while now. It’s
coming very, very soon. I've been working on this film, Jan, for two years.
Most people are completely oblivious to the history of the Democratic Party, the party
of slavery, the history of the Democratic party, Jim Crow laws, they're erasing all
of the history of this country. They want to cover up history. The real history, not
the revisionist history. If you are educated. White people have been taught a narrative
that has been created. You're ctually miseducated. and that's when I realized that I've been
lied to. I had been misled. It unraveled everything that I knew to be true.
Along with the director, Justin Malone, and it is about the grief that people like Candace
Owens, Herman Cain, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Allen West, and Clarence Thomas
get for simply suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the policies that blacks have been
following, the democratic policies that blacks have been voting for, the left-wing policies
that blacks have been pulling that lever for, maybe we ought to rethink them.
It’s not an angry film. It’s not a film that says: how dare you call us these nasty
names? It’s a film that says: why can’t we have an intelligent discussion about whether
or not we should be supporting school choice? Why can’t we have an intelligent discussion
about whether or not we should be supporting Roe v. Wade? Why can’t we have an intelligent
discussion about whether or not we should be having stronger borders? Because the studies
suggest that unskilled illegal aliens take jobs away from unskilled black and brown workers
and put downward pressure on their wages. Can we have a discussion about this without
my being called an Uncle Tom, a self loather, or a sellout?
Dean McKay is the executive editor of The New York Times and happens to be black. He
hired a conservative as a columnist named Bret Stephens, a never-Trump-er, the kind
of conservative that the New York Times hires as a Republican. Bret Stephens’ first column
had to do with his skepticism about climate change alarmism. That’s all; he didn’t
say “I don’t agree with it.” He just said “I’m skeptical that these alarmist
trends that people are predicting are going to happen.” Mckay said that people contacted
the New York Times angry that they hired this guy, angry that he wrote this column. Mckay
was surprised at the ferocity of people, because he hired a conservative to write a column
that, in his opinion, was very intelligent. Stephens raised some questions about climate
change. Mckay publicly said that he found out “the
left as a rule does not want to hear thoughtful disagreement” [in an interview at Code Conference].
That’s a verbatim quote. I argue that the black left doesn’t even believe there’s
such a thing as thoughtful disagreement. Therefore, we’re not having discussions in the black
community that, in my opinion, are healthy and could lead to a better outcome.
The number one problem in the black community is not racism. It’s not bad cops, although
we both know both exist. The number one problem is the large number of blacks who were raised
without fathers. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later on became a democrat senator from
New York, wrote a paper called “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”. At
the time, 25 percent of blacks were born outside of wedlock, a number that he thought was horrific.
He felt if we don’t do something, take some sort of national action, this is going to
get worse. We’ll fast forward. Now 70 percent of black kids are born outside of wedlock,
25 percent of white kids now are, and nearly half of Hispanic kids are. Forget about Larry
Elder. Barack Obama once said, “children who grow up without a father are five times
more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out
of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.” [Barack Obama’s remarks
at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Father’s Day] Now, this is something
that we’re not even having a discussion about.
In my opinion, if you look at the proliferation of kids born outside of wedlock, it parallels
the rise in social spending under the so-called war on poverty that was launched in the mid-60s.
Lyndon Johnson launched it with the best of intentions. He felt that it was going to make
people more self-sufficient. All it did was create dependency. What is done is to incentivize
women to marry the government and incentivize men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility.
It is the number one social problem in America in general and the number one social problem
in the black community in particular, and we’re not having that discussion.
When someone like myself or Bob Woodson, another community activist who’s in the film, raises
these questions, instead of this igniting a healthy discussion, people like myself are
denounced and dismissed as Uncle Toms, as self loathers. Why? That’s what the film
asks. Why can’t we just have an intelligent discussion? Why are you assuming that I have
some sort of malintent behind it? All I’m trying to do is get people to realize their
God-given potential, the same as I assume you’re trying to do, and we just have a
different philosophy about it. I don’t consider you to be self-loathing. I don’t consider
you to be a race traitor because you’re advancing policy that I think hurt [us]. Why
are you making that assumption about me? You know, it’s a very fascinating time to
be talking about this. It’s almost crazy because of this horrible killing of George
Floyd that happened just a few weeks ago and the resulting protests. There are a lot of
very well-meaning people on the streets wanting to support black lives, right? At the same
time, there are a lot of concerns. I’ve heard from a lot of people that there’s
only one way that’s allowed to think about this, and people lose their jobs, their careers,
relationships, and so forth. The narrative is that racism remains a powerful
impediment for black progress in America, whether it’s systemic racism, a term you
hear a lot, structural racism, another term you hear a lot, institutional racism, or one
that I heard Beto O’Rourke come up with, foundational racism. If America were institutionally
racist, why is it that in the 50s if you ask white people, would they ever support a black
person president? The answer was no. Fast forward, Obama got elected. He got a higher
percentage of the white vote than John Kerry did. We’re [still] talking about institutional
racism. It’s crazy. In 2015, Freddie Gray died in police custody.
At the time of his death, the mayor of Baltimore was black, the number one person running the
police department was black, his assistant was black, all the city council members were
democrats, majority black, the state attorney who brought the charges against six officers
was black, three of the six officers charged were black, the judge before whom two of the
officers had their cases tried was black. By the way, he found him not guilty. The US
Attorney General at the time, Loretta Lynch, was black, and of course, the president of
the United States, at the time Barack Obama, was black. You have all these people running
the institution. I’m reminded of something that comedian
Wanda Sykes said shortly after Obama got elected, and she talked about what was gonna happen
down the road if and when things didn’t change. She said, “How are you going to
complain about the man when you are the man?” Well, these American cities where we have
these police chiefs that are allegedly racist have been run by Democrats for decades. Democrats
have picked these officers, and in many cases, the chief of police happens to be black. People
are still screaming about institutional racism. We were having this interview in Los Angeles.
From 1992 to 2002, L.A. had back-to-back black police chiefs. There was a black police chief
in charge during the O.J. Simpson case. You might recall all these allegations about evidence
planning and fabricating evidence and framing an innocent man. Because of all these allegations,
the then-police chief Willie Williams did a complete and total departmental review to
find out if anybody had done anything wrong at all in connection with the O.J. Simpson
case. This is during the trial now. The report came out and found no evidence
whatsoever anybody had done anything wrong. It didn’t matter. It didn’t move the needle
one way or the other. Those who felt that O.J. Simpson was an innocent man framed by
the racist LAPD continue thinking he was an innocent man framed by the racist LAPD, even
though the racist LAPD is run by a black man who just did a report that said nobody did
anything wrong in connection with the O.J. Simpson case. My point is it didn’t matter.
Part of the protesters are demanding diversity in our police departments. As if, once you
have diversity, magically these problems are going to go away. L.A. is about 40 percent
or so Hispanic, about 30 percent white, a little under 10 percent black, the rest of
it is Asian or Pacific Islanders. That’s exactly the percentage of the LAPD, and it
is still being accused of being racist. In the NYPD, it’s the same thing. If you look
at the racial demographics of the city and look at the demographics of the police department,
they mirror each other, and still recently, the officers of the NYPD are being subjected
with water balloons. [There are] urine-filled water balloons, trash cans full of water thrown
at them, cars set on fire. Never mind how diverse the NYPD is. The average person that
the average person on the street is going to encounter will be a person of color, [but]
it doesn’t matter, because of this false narrative.
The stats simply do not reflect the idea that the police are going after black people. If
anything, the stats show the opposite. There is a black economist named Roland Fryer who
teaches at Harvard. Because of all these prolific, high profile shootings, he just knew that
the police were disproportionately using deadly force against black people. He was kind of
surprised that no one had done a comprehensive study to corroborate that, so he thought he
would do it. He said that the results were the most surprising of his career.
Not only were the police not using deadly force disproportionately against blacks, they
were more hesitant, more reluctant to pull the trigger on a black suspect than on the
white suspect, presumably because they were afraid of being accused of being racist. That
same result was replicated in a study published in a publication put out by the National Academy
of Sciences, where researchers looked at every shooting in 2015 [and] every shooting in 2016.
[There was the] same conclusion: the police were not using deadly force disproportionately
against black people. The reason blacks are two and a half times
more likely to be killed by a cop than a white person is the crime rate, which is substantially
higher in the black community than in the white community. A young black man is eight
times more likely to be a victim of homicide compared to a young white man. The number
one cause of preventable homicide of young whites is accidents like car accidents and
drownings. The number one cause of death, preventable or non-preventable for a young
black person is homicide, almost always committed by another young black person.
It’s not cops killing black people, it’s black people killing other black people. According
to the CDC, the rate at which cops kill blacks has declined 75 percent in the last 50 or
60 years, while the rate at which police kill whites has flatlined. So arguably, if anybody
has anything to complain about, it’s white people, because if you look at the crime rate,
one would have thought that the rate at which police kill blacks would be even higher. If
anything, the cops are hesitant, as I mentioned in these studies, to use deadly force against
a black person because of a fear of being accused of being racist.
Now, nine unarmed black men were shot and killed by the police according to the Washington
Post last year [in 2019]. Nineteen unarmed whites were shot and killed by the police
last year, altogether fifteen unarmed blacks. That number is still smaller than
the nineteen whites who were shot and killed. If there’s a White Lives Matter protest
that was arranged, I never heard about it. It is not happening.
Isn’t this good news? That’s the other
thing about my movie I tried to stress. I’m suggesting that the problems that you’re
talking about in America can be explained away in a nonracial way. Isn’t that good
news? To know that the disproportionate number of blacks being killed by the police has to
do with our crime rate and not because the police are racist, isn’t that good news?
Then shouldn’t we start tackling what’s going on with our families that’s causing
all of this stuff? Instead of the reaction [is that] I’m a
sellout; I’m a self loather; I hate myself; I’m an Uncle Tom; I have never been called
the N-word; I’ve never been arrested by the police. These are the kinds of things
that people say. By the way, these are not true. I’ve been called the N-word; anybody
my age has been called the N-word. Yes, I was arrested once for mouthing off to an officer.
I was young and impetuous, and frankly, I got what I deserved. I’ve never had the
impression that the police are out to get people. That’s never been my personal experience
and the data do not support it. One more quick thing. There’s a city here
in California called Rialto. Rialto has about 100,000 people. It is as diverse as California.
The police department was ordered to have their officers wear body cams. The officers
were reluctant to do it. They didn’t want to do it, but they did it and announced the
program to the city, so civilians knew that cops they encountered were going to have body
cams. What happened? Officer use of force fell 50 percent, officer complaint fell 90
percent. Now a superficial reaction to that would be,
“well the cameras change the behavior of both the civilian and the police officer.”
Oh contraire, the police behaved as they were trained. As the camera demonstrates, they
behaved as they were trained. People stop lying on the police. They stopped making false
complaints. They stopped resisting because they knew they were being filmed. It is a
crime to falsely accuse the police of engaging in police brutality when they didn’t do
it, and it is also a crime to assault a police officer. This was now being taped. Officers
didn’t have to use deadly force or any kind of force, because the civilians behaved more
responsibly. What does that tell you? It tells you that
people have been lying on the police. We know one major case … [of this]: the Michael
Brown Ferguson case. That’s the case where Michael Brown allegedly was running away from
the officer saying, “My hands are up. Don’t shoot.” His friend, Dorian Johnson, is the
one who said that he said that. It turns out it was not true. It started this whole effort
about “hands up, don’t shoot.” It’s a mantra you’re still hearing, and the whole
thing was a lie. That’s how frequently people lie on the police.
By and large, the police are trying to do the best job. It is the department of government
that is arguably the most scrutinized. You have internal audits, you have civilian reviews,
you have the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] locally, you have the state attorney, you
have the feds, you have the media, you have the aggressive defense bar, [and you have]
the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Movement]. It is arguably the most-watched over and inspected
agencies we have in our country because of the awesome responsibility that they have.
They have the ability to take your life, and as a result, we ought to be scrutinizing them,
and we do. So what do you make of this new executive
order that the President just recently assigned around police reform.
Well, I think of it as I think of gun control measures that occur after a mass shooting.
Do something, do something, do something; politicians are pressured by the public to
do something. The republican party and Trump felt pressured to do something. The principal
thing that this executive order did was to suggest the departments ban the use of the
so-called chokehold or carotid hold. Well, most departments have already banned it, except
in the case of using it to save the officers lives so the officer doesn’t have to resort
to a firearm. That’s the policy here in L.A. That’s been the policy of big cities
all over the country for years. I’m not sure it’s going to do a whole
lot other than give the American people the impression that Trump cares about this issue,
and he’s acting on it. The reason Trump seems awkward is because he doesn’t believe
the premise. The premise is that the police are engaging in systemic racism against blacks.
He doesn’t believe it, because it’s not true. As a result, it’s hard for him to
sound phony and go “Oh, this is horrible. This is a reflection of our racism.” the
way Obama would do. Obama would talk about how racism is in America’s DNA. Obama said
the Cambridge police acted stupidly. Obama said that we have our own troubles. There’s
a place called Ferguson, Obama invited Black Lives Matter to come in.
Trump is not doing any of those things, because he does not accept the premise. He rejects
the idea that the police are out to get black people and as a result, he’s not making
any sweeping statements, because they would come across as being insincere, and they would
have been insincere. You just make me think of so many things.
Me too, I should listen to myself more often. One time, … I lost my train of thought,
and I said, “I’m sorry, I forgot where I was. I wasn’t listening.” [Laughter]
You tackle the idea of systemic racism directly in the film. One of the scenes in the film
is this now famous interview that you did with Dave Rubin, where on camera he kind of
realizes that he doesn’t get what he means about systemic racism himself. Why are we
still talking about systemic racism? If, as you’ve argued, there really aren’t many
real examples of it? Because [the concept of systematic racism]
advances the agenda of a lot of people. It advances the agenda of the media. I think
a lot of people in the media went into the profession because of [Bob] Woodward and [Carl]
Bernstein. In the 1970s, they’re the ones who exposed Richard Nixon and all the stuff
he was doing. A lot of people went into journalism because they wanted to be a champion, right
the wrongs, what’s the term: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, something
like that. I think a lot of young people who have gone into the media truly believe that
racism remains a major problem in America. They’re around a lot of other young people,
and they all say the same thing, so they’re all having these feelings being reinforced.
I also think that it sells copies. If you run stories about George Floyd being a microcosm
of the racism in America, it sells copies. Racism sells. It also advances the interests
of academia, there are a whole bunch of professors that are professors of African American Studies,
professors of ethnic studies, and where are they going to go if all of a sudden, people
realize that race has never been more insignificant in terms of becoming successful in America?
Where are these people going to go? And of course it advances the agenda of the
Democratic Party, because without getting black people angry and stirred up over the
assertion that “racism remains a major problem, and by the way, these republicans over there
don’t give a damn about that, and we do,” the Democrats don’t get that 90-95 percent,
nearly monolithic black vote without which they cannot win at the presidential level.
They have to constantly talk about race and racism, and they have to go after people like
Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, and Allen West,
because they reflect the antithesis of what the Democratic Party stands for.
The Democratic Party stands for “you are a victim, and we’re here to help you.”
Black conservatives are saying, “Not only are we not victims, but many of your policies
are hurting the very people you claimed to help.” Take the minimum wage. Study after
study has shown that what it does is cause employers to defer hiring decisions, reduce
the hours of people’s jobs, or raise prices on the very people who are going to be buying
things in the inner city that don’t have a great deal of money. These things are counterproductive.
The welfare state is counterproductive for the reasons that I just mentioned. You’re
incentivizing women to marry the government and allowing men to abandon their financial
and moral responsibility, and that’s why we have this 70 percent out of wedlock birth
rate right now. Not doing anything about illegal immigration
hurts. George Borjas, the Harvard economist, has probably done more work on the impact
of legal and illegal immigration than maybe any other economist. He says no question that
unskilled, illegal aliens compete for jobs that otherwise would be held by black and
brown unskilled Americans and puts downward pressure on their wages. We’re not even
having that discussion. For a black conservative to raise these kinds
of issues, instead of igniting a healthy discussion about whether or not we ought to be advocating
tighter borders and whether or not we ought to be voting for the party that does that,
people like myself are denounced as Uncle Tom and sellouts. The word that I dislike
the most is not Uncle Tom, not bootlicker, not bug-eyed bootlicker, not bug-eyed foot
shuffling bootlicker, not coconut, not Oreo, not the Antichrist. I’ve been called all
those things. The word that I fear the most is being called
wrong. Rarely am I called wrong. Am I wrong about my assertion about the welfare state
and the proliferation of kids being raised without fathers? Am I wrong about the competition
posed by unskilled illegal aliens to black people? Am I wrong about government schools
producing kids that cannot read, write, or compute at grade level? Am I wrong about these
things? If I’m wrong, show me how I’m wrong. When you call me an Uncle Tom, it shows
that you have no ammo, and we’re not having the discussion that advances the best interest
of the people you claim to care about. So the name-calling is a way to just stop
the discussion. Shut the conversation down, because they need
to have that power. That’s why Joe Biden recently said to a black interviewer, “If
you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,”
[on “The Breakfast Club”] Now, people criticized him and he apologized for making
the statement, but all he was doing is articulating a basic premise of the Democratic Party, that
if you don’t think a certain way, you’re a sellout. If you don’t think a certain
way you lack compassion for your own people. … Last year, Ayanna Pressley, who’s one-quarter
of the so-called “squad” publicly said, “We don’t need any more brown faces who
don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces who don’t want to be a
black voice.” What does that say? The same as what Joe Biden said, that there is only
one way to be black. That [way] is to be left-wing and vote for the Democrats. It is a standard
position for the Democratic Party. I’ll give you a more glaring example. In
the mid-1990s, there was a proposition in California called Proposition 209 to get rid
of the use of race and gender in public admissions to colleges and universities. In government
hiring and issuing contracts, you can’t use race as a factor, and it passed overwhelmingly
in California. It was led by a black man named Ward Connerly, who happened to be married
to a white woman. Ward Connerly was a small businessman who didn’t like the whole idea
of the set asides for black people, so he campaigned and successfully got rid of race-based
preferences. He had a political opponent named Diane Watson,
who later on ran for and got elected to the US House of Representatives. At the time,
she was a local lawmaker. She said this publicly, Jan, publicly: Let me tell you why you support
this proposition. You’re married to a white woman. You have no ethnic pride. You don’t
want to be white. You hate being black. Then when she was asked about it by reporters,
she said: That’s right. I said it, and I don’t take it back. To this day, she never
took it back. Holy David Duke, who can say something like that publicly and get away
with it? She did, because she’s a democrat. The democrats don’t want to colorblind society.
They want to color-coordinated society, and they’re the ones who do the coordinating.
That’s what’s going on here. This is a complete rejection of MLK’s message of a
colorblind society. They don’t want that. They want to have the power to determine who
gets what and where and why based upon skin color, not based upon diversity of ideology,
based upon skin color. … In the film … there’s this, I think
probably we could call him the main character, Chad, right? I love watching his kind of journey
throughout the film. He’s talking about looking at democratic versus the republican
platform and so forth. But the concepts you’re talking about are much deeper than party right?
They are, and that is why the viciousness is so over the top. The man you’re talking
about is named Chad, and Chad has a contracting company. He is not a politician. He doesn’t
have sharp elbows. He’s not angry. He’s not in your face. He’s just a regular guy,
trying to make it in America as a small businessman. He’s religious, and he said one of his friends
encouraged him, because he was saying such anti things about the Democratic Party, to
read the platform of the Democratic Party and the platform of the Republican Party.
He had never done that, so he took him up on the challenge. After he read both platforms,
he said: Damn… I’m Republican. I believe in low taxes. I believe in less regulation.
I believe in personal responsibility. The movie is about the reaction he got from
friends and family who didn’t say, “what caused you to rethink your assumptions? What
material have you looked at?” He was denounced by friends and family as an Uncle Tom and
a sellout. The movie simply follows his life, his career, his journey, and what caused him
to begin to rethink some of his assumptions. All the movie asks is: in America, don’t
you have the right to have your own opinion, especially if it’s a well thought out opinion?
Why would you … be denounced because of your race, as reflective of a sellout, of
somebody who’s an Uncle Tom, who wishes bad things to happen to fellow members of
his own race? What is the logic behind that? Why is this going on? Isn’t this hurting
the country? That’s what the movie asks. Larry, something … that struck me as really
bizarre recently is the removal by HBO Max of Gone with the Wind, possibly one of the
most famous films of all time, out of rotation extensively, because it’s racist. What are
your thoughts? It’s part of what some people call the cancel
culture. I don’t call it that. I call it the revenge culture. [It’s] the idea that
you’re going to go around and find all the things that offend you with the sensibilities
of somebody living in 2020. It’s absurd. The film was made in 1939, the year that all
these amazing films came out. It was considered to be cutting edge in cinematography, cutting
edge in dialogue. At the end of the film, when Clark Gable says “Frankly, [my dear,]
I don’t give a damn,” that shocked people. No one ever used the D word in movies before.
I didn’t see the movie until I was in my 30s. The reason I never saw it was because
I never really wanted to. I knew that it was a movie that portrayed the South in kind of
a beautiful way and the mansion in kind of a beautiful way, and I thought it probably
soft-pedaled slavery. So for all those reasons, I, Larry Elder, was never interested in seeing
it. Also, it was a long movie. I have a short attention span… . I know my mother loved
the movie. My father, as far as I know, had no opinion of it one way or the other. I know
my mom liked it. Now the reason I saw it is that I was dating somebody who told me it
was the greatest film she’d ever seen. I said, I’m surprised that anybody black feels
that way about it. She was like “Oh, I think it’s a moving movie. I love the story. I
love the way the South used to be, and it’s about how it changed because of the Civil
War,” and I said okay, so I watched it. The film is long. I thought it was an entertaining
film and an enjoyable film. I wasn’t offended by it. I didn’t think it romanticized slavery,
but it certainly did not take a harsh condemnation of it.
Why anybody would find that so offensive that it would be taken out of rotation and apparently
going to be replaced with a disclaimer that some of these images are offensive is beyond
me. We know some of the images are offensive. You want to take out Tarzan, because the white
guy swinging through the jungle on a vine basically runs the place? When do you want
to stop doing that kind of stuff? I understand that Obama’s mom’s side owned slaves.
His father’s side came from an area of Africa where there was a great deal of slave trading.
I don’t know whether his family was involved in it, but certainly the people from that
part of Africa where his dad is from were involved. You could argue that Obama has his
hands involved in slavery on his mom’s side and on his dad’s side. Should we remove
Obama’s name from every building around? It is sickening. I understand there’s a
movement to get rid of the Washington Monument, get rid of the Jefferson Memorial because
both Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. You know, nobody owns slaves now. The whole
reparations movement is, in my opinion, an attempt to extract money from people who were
never slave owners to be given to people who were never slaves.
What is the purpose of all of this? Is it going to make the 70 percent of black kids
being born outside of wedlock go away? Is it going to do something about the 50 percent
dropout rate in some of our inner-city high schools, and the fact that many of these kids
who do graduate cannot read, write or compute at grade level? Is it going to solve the fact
that among young black men, 25 percent of them have a criminal record, either arrested,
in jail, on parole, or on probation? Is it going to solve any of these things?
If the goal is to make black people feel better about themselves, we already feel good about
ourselves. Look at self-esteem tests over the last thirty years. Every single time I’ve
seen any of these tests, it almost always shows black people have higher self-esteem
than white people, much higher self-esteem than Asians. Black girls have much higher
self-esteem than white girls who are obsessed with a barbie doll image. Black girls are
far more realistic about the variety in their body shapes and feel much more confident about
who they are. If the goal is to make black people feel better, mission accomplished.
So I’m not sure what the purpose of it is other than revenge, getting back.
That’s why I believe O.J. Simpson was cut loose. One of the jurors years later was interviewed.
Her name was Carrie Bess, and she was asked about the verdict. She said, and I’m paraphrasing:
I voted not guilty because of Rodney King. The filmmaker was gobsmacked. In the whole
film, the filmmaker never said a word, but this one he couldn’t help himself. He said,
did the others feel that way too? You hear him saying [it]; you don’t see him, but
you hear his voice. She said: 90 percent of us did. Revenge for Rodney King.
This is revenge for slavery, revenge for Jim Crow, revenge for every slight that you ever
felt that you received. It’s called the revenge culture, not the cancel culture, and
that is what this is all about. It’s absurd. When and where does it stop? Perpetuate the
notion that I’m somehow a victim? I’m not a victim.
What is the connection between this revenge culture that you’re describing and the victim
culture that actually features very prominently in Uncle Tom?
Well, it’s all the feeling that because of the historical past of America, because
of slavery, because of Jim Crow, black people are unequal, net worth unequal. All these things are
true. The question is, in order for you to get more, is it appropriate morally, legally,
and politically, to accuse somebody of having benefited from slavery from Jim Crow and therefore
as a beneficiary owes you money? “You should pay me something.” That seems to be what
the ethos is. All a state can be is just in its own time.
Obama was elected in 2008. I’m old school, Jan. I used to get the LA Times, The New York
Times thrown to my house. The next morning, I go get the newspapers. On the front pages
of both newspapers were big color pictures of black parents hugging their kids saying,
“I can now for the first time credibly say, you can be anything you want to be. I can
now say it and mean it. I’ve always said it.” They said it, but never really meant
it. This was with the election of President Obama.
Yeah, “I had my fingers crossed when I said [you can be anything you want]” All these
parents pretty much said that. I remember reading it and saying to myself, “Wow, what
would these parents have said had Obama lost?” My mother always told me I could be anything
I wanted to be, and I always believed her. I think we’re hurting our kids by peddling
this notion that you’re a victim, by peddling this notion that you should exact revenge
on people who did nothing whatsoever to you, because it’s then taking time and energy
away from things we ought to be doing. I recently posted on Twitter, a graph showing
the amount of homework done by Asian kids, the amount of homework done by white kids,
the amount of homework done every night by Hispanic kids, the amount of homework done
every night by black kids. Now, what does this have to do with institutional racism?
How is a white bigot preventing you from doing two good hard hours of homework every single
night, which is what the Asian kids are doing? There’s a correlation between how much work
you put into something and what you get out of it. They certainly understand that when
it comes to sports. You frequently will watch black kids being told by their coaches “Hit
the boards! Hit the boards! Hit those free throws! 500 free throw shots every day.”
[They are] doing these kinds of drills all the time, but you don’t find the same kind
of discipline when it comes to math and science and English and literature. We get the connection
between hard work and sports. We don’t seem to get the connection between hard work and
success in life. This is the kind of thing that I’m hoping the movie will create a
healthy dialogue about. Larry, this is fascinating, what you’re
describing. You contend, as the film contends, that there’s no such thing as systemic racism.
But I’m finding myself thinking, as you’re talking just now, that maybe it does actually
exist, but in a different direction than people typically think.
Well, that’s an excellent point. I have said that there is systemic racism, but not
the kind of systemic racism that you think. [An example is] when you compel a parent to
send a kid to my former high school Crenshaw High School, where there was a front-page
LA Times article a couple of years ago, noting that only 3 percent of the kids at my former
high school can do math at grade level, and where Ice T told me he attended … because
he wanted to go to a Crypt’s school. [Crypt] is the name of the gang that controls that
school. What responsible parents send their kid to a school where only 3 percent of the
kids can do math at grade level and by the way, a school that is run by the Crypts? The
answer is nobody would, but you are mandated to send your kid there, because of the way
our public education system is set up. The Republican Party wants to give that urban
parent a voucher, so that parent can take their kid to a school that the kid can get
in. Now, if you’re mandated to send your kid to an inferior, underperforming government
school, it seems to me that is systemic racism. If you are incentivizing women to marry the
government, and allowing men to abandon their financial, moral responsibility and causing
a proliferation of black kids being born outside of wedlock, with all the attendant social
ills, that is systemic racism. If you are doing nothing about policing the border so
that more and more illegal aliens come to America and take jobs that would otherwise
be held by unskilled black and brown workers and put pressure on their wages, that is systemic
racism. But that’s not what the left means when
they talk about systemic racism. They’re talking about hostile anti-black attitudes
that allegedly pervade America when again, the data shows the contrary.
Speaking of this victim culture, victim mentality, one of the things I noticed in the film was
that Carol Swain describes how she only learned that she was poor and disadvantaged while
in college, which through my mind for a loop. From a liberal professor she said.
Yeah. Who told her when she said something that
the professor didn’t like, “Well, you’re never going to be able to do something about
the fact that you’re black.” She was kind of surprised by that since this person purported
to be a liberal. If you think about the policies of the left, they really are suggesting that
you as a black person really can’t measure up. Why after all, would you want to lower
the required SAT scores for a black person, unless you feel the black person can’t score
high enough on the SAT on his own. It is very condescending.
I was on a plane ride once with a man who was a prominent Democrat politician in Cleveland
when I lived there. He was a commissioner. I’m not gonna say his name. We were on the
plane together having a couple a couple of pops; he had more pops than I had. I asked
him, “Don’t many people in your party really feel that black people can’t compete
on their own? That’s why you support affirmative action.” I don’t believe he would have
responded the way he did had he not had a couple of pops. He said, “Yeah, I know a
lot of people that really believe black people just really are inferior. They’re not good
enough, therefore we have to change the rules.” I’m not sure he would have said that he’d
been sober, but he said that. That really is the assumption, isn’t it?
We have to change the rules. We don’t adjust the basketball hoop for white people. We don’t
make the race longer or shorter for white people. Why are we changing the rules over
here for black people? When I get on an airplane and I see a black pilot, I don’t want to
know about affirmative action. I want to make sure that this guy aced his pilot exam, and
he’s there because he’s the most competent pilot that I could possibly have. When you
wheel your mom into the ER room and you see a black doctor, do you want to think in the
back of your mind: Did he get into medical school because he was black? Did he get through
because he was black? These have real-world consequences. We ought to be talking about
the best and the brightest. We ought to be determining who gets what based upon the content
of their character and not based upon the color of their skin.
That’s really interesting, because it makes me think of another element in the film, where
you’re talking about Booker T. Washington, who is frankly someone that I just wasn’t
aware of until a few years ago. Bob Woodson, who I recently had on the show and of course
features prominently in film, argued that post slavery under Jim Crow, black America
actually did pretty well for itself. It’s remarkable, using this ethos of Booker T.
Washington. Booker T. Washington wrote a book called Up
from Slavery in 1901. Now think about that, that’s 36 years after slavery. He was born
a slave. If you read the book, he’s more optimistic about the future for black people
than some of our so-called black leaders are right now. His argument was to work hard,
put time into it, and become a value to your community. Once you do that, people want the
best and they will come to you, and it will be the path towards your door.
He had an ideological opponent named W.E.B Dubois who felt that we ought to be pursuing
integration with white people. Dubois became a communist, renounced his American citizenship,
and is now in my opinion a historical footnote, whereas Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee
Institute still exists, and his philosophy of hard work and accountability, in my opinion,
is what we all ought to be embracing, no matter your race in America.
There’s all these characters in the film. Let’s say that a lot of us maybe aren’t
so familiar with Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas. I hope every American knows
who Clarence Thomas is. Well Jan, there is a reason a lot of blacks
don’t know who Clarence Thomas is, don’t know who Walter Williams is, and don’t know
who Thomas Sowell is. The most prominent publication for blacks historically has been Ebony Magazine.
I cannot remember a time when the current issue of Ebony Magazine was not on the coffee
table in my parents’ house. That’s how influential it is to us. They had a feature
every year called the 100 most influential black Americans, and we’d have people in
there like MLK and so forth. Because so many blacks became so prominent, they had to upgrade
it to the 100 plus most influential black Americans. That’s what it was last time
I checked. Every year absent in the list of the 100 most
prominent black Americans is Clarence Thomas; absent is Walter Williams; absent is Thomas
Sowell. Now Clarence Thomas is only one of nine members of the Supreme Court. By definition,
he’s influential, yet he’s not in this publication. Thomas Sowell was described by
David Mamet, the playwright, as America’s most important contemporary philosopher, who
he credits with helping to change him from being a brain dead liberal. Walter Williams
to my knowledge is the first, and I think only, economics chairman of a non historically
black college or university. Both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams collectively have probably
written about 60 books. Most black Americans don’t know who they are in part because
of the way they are treated by the black media that completely excludes them and acts as
if they don’t even exist, and it’s an absolute outrage. I addressed that to some
extent in this film. Let’s talk about Black Lives Matter. This
is important to me. On the face of it of course black lives matter. They matter to me; I hope
they matter to most Americans. Then, of course, there’s Black Lives Matter, the organization.
I won’t even say the movement, because I think a lot of the people in the movement
are for black lives matter, the concept right? I know you’ve studied Black Lives Matter
quite a bit. Can you kind of give a thumbnail of what this group is about?
Well, the whole movement didn’t start because of Ferguson, it started before that, but it
certainly got a big spin because of Ferguson. It was a movement that started based upon
the assumption that the police are engaging in systemic racism against [black] people.
If the premise is bad, the movement is bad, and the organization is bad. The premise is
bad, and the movement is bad, and the organization is bad.
The organization, by the way, is not just about black lives matter. One of their principal
statements refers to Israel as an apartheid state and to the Palestinians as oppressed.
It’s a left wing movement that’s hostile, in my opinion, to the values that made this
country great. It’s built upon this phony narrative that the police are out to get black
people, when in fact, the studies show the opposite. Now it’s one thing just to have
a stupid point of view. Lots of people have stupid points of view that are harmless. This
is harmful. It causes young black men when they’re stopped
by the police to become far more confrontational than they otherwise would be. After all, why
not be confrontational? If you believe the man pulling you over is going to do you ill?
Why be cooperative? I understand that. It also causes the cops to pull back and become
less proactive, because they are afraid of being called racist. So what happens? Crime
goes up in the very same area that the Black Lives Matter activists claim that they care
about. It’s undermining the country, it is inconsistent with the best interest of
black people, and it’s built upon a lie. So what would you say to the millions of people
of all different shapes and stripes and colors that do care genuinely about black lives and
feel there’s an issue at this point. We saw them on the streets peacefully protesting
and so forth. Most of them were there with the best of intentions.
They’re just wrong, watching too much CNN, watching too much MSNBC, or reading too much
New York Times. Read some conservative publications. Read Heather Mac Donald. Probably nobody has
done a better job of assembling all the data on police and police interaction with civilians,
then Heather McDonald. Read the police public context survey.
That’s something that the DOJ does every three years. They asked over 60,000 Americans
“In the last year, did you have contact with the police? If so, tell me about your
contact. Were you verbally abused or physically abused? They can’t find any evidence whatsoever
of a pattern of abuse against black people. It’s not like the government doesn’t care
about this. They’ve been looking at it. There’s a study that came out during the
Obama administration called Race and Traffic Stops, something like that. It was published
by the National Institutes of Justice, which is the research arm of the DOJ. They tried
to find out whether or not black people were being pulled over because of racism. They
found out 75 percent of black motorists admitted that they were stopped for a legitimate reason.
The other big takeaway is that you name the offense, whether it’s speeding, driving
without a license, driving without your headlights, or driving without an expired tag, a black
motorist was more likely to do it. Again, isn’t this good news to know that the disproportionate
cases of blacks being pulled over has to do with behavior and not because of racism? Again,
that study came out in 2013. There was an allegation years ago that the
police were pulling over black motorists
on the New Jersey Turnpike.
The then Governor Christine Todd Whitman ordered a study. The study came in, and they found
out officers couldn’t even tell the race; the cars are going too fast. The reflection
of the light at night, forget about it. You can’t even tell who’s in the car. They
concluded that the reason black people were being pulled over, is because the faster the
speed, the more likely it is, it’s a black driver driving. She didn’t like the results.
She complained about bad methodology and hired a different group. [With a] different methodology,
Same result. [Racism is] not there. The data just do not support that.
Isn’t this good news? By the way, it doesn’t mean there aren’t
bad cops. When a cop kills somebody, no matter his race or her race, that should be investigated
by the feds. They have awesome power, and they should be watched, but the idea that
there’s some sort of systemic pattern simply is not borne out by the data. If it were,
I wouldn’t say what I said. I don’t want the police to have a free rein and go after
black people any more than anybody else does. It just isn’t there. You’re making things
worse. So tell us a little more. When is the film
coming out? The film called Uncle Tom is coming out on
June 19th. We’re putting it online. Go to uncletom.com and be the first in your hood
to get some Uncle Tom merch. So, it’s a provocative name.
It is. It is. As I said, I’m not even sure I should
use those words. Well, it’s a provocative name, and the reason
I’ve called it that is because we are often called Uncle Tom. By the way, a lot of people
have never read the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom was actually a hero of the
book. The villain was a guy named Sambo. So whenever anybody calls a black person Uncle
Tom, it tells you they never read the book. It tells you something about their education
K-12 and why we need vouchers. Any final words before we finish up?
The final word would be this, the movie is not a vindictive film. It’s not an angry
film. It’s not a film that says, “How dare you?” It’s a film that simply takes
you on a journey of what happens when a person without any kind of political vendetta, without
any kind of anger simply suggests that maybe, just maybe, I should be thinking about a different
party than the one that my race has traditionally supported. It talks about what happened to
this gentleman because of this, and it raises a very important question: why can’t we
have a healthy discussion in the black community without dissenting views being denounced as
coming from an Uncle Tom? Larry, it’s such a pleasure to have you
again. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank
you for allowing me to borrow your audience.