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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 documentaryUncle 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 Stephensfirst 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 outthe

  • 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, were 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 calledThe 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. Well 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 were 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 were 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 youre 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 youre 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. Were [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 youre

  • 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

  • abouthands up, don’t shoot.” It’s a mantra youre 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 goOh, 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 youve 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, theyre 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. Theyre around a lot of other young people,

  • and they all say the same thing, so theyre 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 thatracism 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 foryou are a victim, and were 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. Youre

  • 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. Were 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 were 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 youre for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,”

  • [onThe 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, youre 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-calledsquadpublicly 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. Youre 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 theyre 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 filmthere’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 youre talking about are much deeper than party right?

  • They are, and that is why the viciousness is so over the top. The man youre 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 yoube 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, somethingthat 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

  • youre 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 saysFrankly, [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 likeOh, 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 youre 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 were hurting our kids by peddling

  • this notion that youre 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 coachesHit

  • 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 youre

  • describing. You contend, as the film contends, that there’s no such thing as systemic racism.

  • But I’m finding myself thinking, as youre 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 attendedbecause

  • 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 youre 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. Theyre 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, youre never going to be able to do something about

  • the fact that youre 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. Theyre 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

  • youre 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 parentshouse. 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 youve 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 theyre 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.

  • Theyre 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. Theyve 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. Youre 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. Were 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.

All the movie asks is that in America,

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