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

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1. 0:00All the movie asks is that in America,
2. 0:02don't you have the right to have your own opinion?
3. 0:05Especially if it's a well-thought-out opinion?
4. 0:07And why would you have a well-thought-out opinion
5. 0:11be denounced, because of your race,
6. 0:13as reflective of a sellout, of somebody who's an Uncle Tom,
7. 0:17who wishes bad things to happen to fellow members of his own race?
8. 0:21What is the logic behind that? And why is this going on?
9. 0:25And isn't this hurting the country? That's what the movie asks.
10. 0:28Are police actually using deadly force disproportionately against black people? And how does the focus
11. 0:34on police overshadow other monumental problems facing black America today?
12. 0:41Why is believing that black lives matter not the same as supporting the Black Lives Matter
13. 0:47organization? And why are black conservatives often excluded
14. 0:52from mainstream public awareness and discourse? In this episode, we sit down again with radio
15. 0:58talk show personality and bestselling author Larry Elder, who hosts The Larry Elder Show
16. 1:03for The Epoch Times. He is the executive producer of the new documentary “Uncle Tom.”
17. 1:11This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and I’m Jan Jekielek.
18. 1:15Larry Elder, it’s such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
19. 1:19Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. As Charlton Heston once said to me, thank
20. 1:24you for letting me borrow your audience. Well, because we're going to talk about Uncle
21. 1:30Tom, on your shirt. This film that you and I have been talking about for a while now. It’s
22. 1:37coming very, very soon. I've been working on this film, Jan, for two years.
23. 1:41Most people are completely oblivious to the history of the Democratic Party, the party
24. 1:44of slavery, the history of the Democratic party, Jim Crow laws, they're erasing all
25. 1:49of the history of this country. They want to cover up history. The real history, not
26. 1:53the revisionist history. If you are educated. White people have been taught a narrative
27. 1:57that has been created. You're ctually miseducated. and that's when I realized that I've been
28. 2:01lied to. I had been misled. It unraveled everything that I knew to be true.
29. 2:11Along with the director, Justin Malone, and it is about the grief that people like Candace
30. 2:17Owens, Herman Cain, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Allen West, and Clarence Thomas
31. 2:28get for simply suggesting that maybe, just maybe, the policies that blacks have been
32. 2:34following, the democratic policies that blacks have been voting for, the left-wing policies
33. 2:39that blacks have been pulling that lever for, maybe we ought to rethink them.
34. 2:44It’s not an angry film. It’s not a film that says: how dare you call us these nasty
35. 2:49names? It’s a film that says: why can’t we have an intelligent discussion about whether
36. 2:53or not we should be supporting school choice? Why can’t we have an intelligent discussion
37. 2:58about whether or not we should be supporting Roe v. Wade? Why can’t we have an intelligent
38. 3:01discussion about whether or not we should be having stronger borders? Because the studies
39. 3:06suggest that unskilled illegal aliens take jobs away from unskilled black and brown workers
40. 3:12and put downward pressure on their wages. Can we have a discussion about this without
41. 3:16my being called an Uncle Tom, a self loather, or a sellout?
42. 3:21Dean McKay is the executive editor of The New York Times and happens to be black. He
43. 3:26hired a conservative as a columnist named Bret Stephens, a never-Trump-er, the kind
44. 3:32of conservative that the New York Times hires as a Republican. Bret Stephens’ first column
45. 3:37had to do with his skepticism about climate change alarmism. That’s all; he didn’t
46. 3:41say “I don’t agree with it.” He just said “I’m skeptical that these alarmist
47. 3:44trends that people are predicting are going to happen.” Mckay said that people contacted
48. 3:50the New York Times angry that they hired this guy, angry that he wrote this column. Mckay
49. 3:56was surprised at the ferocity of people, because he hired a conservative to write a column
50. 4:01that, in his opinion, was very intelligent. Stephens raised some questions about climate
51. 4:05change. Mckay publicly said that he found out “the
52. 4:10left as a rule does not want to hear thoughtful disagreement” [in an interview at Code Conference].
53. 4:15That’s a verbatim quote. I argue that the black left doesn’t even believe there’s
54. 4:20such a thing as thoughtful disagreement. Therefore, we’re not having discussions in the black
55. 4:25community that, in my opinion, are healthy and could lead to a better outcome.
56. 4:29The number one problem in the black community is not racism. It’s not bad cops, although
57. 4:33we both know both exist. The number one problem is the large number of blacks who were raised
58. 4:38without fathers. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who later on became a democrat senator from
59. 4:45New York, wrote a paper called “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”. At
60. 4:51the time, 25 percent of blacks were born outside of wedlock, a number that he thought was horrific.
61. 4:56He felt if we don’t do something, take some sort of national action, this is going to
62. 5:00get worse. We’ll fast forward. Now 70 percent of black kids are born outside of wedlock,
63. 5:0525 percent of white kids now are, and nearly half of Hispanic kids are. Forget about Larry
64. 5:10Elder. Barack Obama once said, “children who grow up without a father are five times
65. 5:15more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out
66. 5:20of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.” [Barack Obama’s remarks
67. 5:23at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago on Father’s Day] Now, this is something
68. 5:24that we’re not even having a discussion about.
69. 5:26In my opinion, if you look at the proliferation of kids born outside of wedlock, it parallels
70. 5:31the rise in social spending under the so-called war on poverty that was launched in the mid-60s.
71. 5:38Lyndon Johnson launched it with the best of intentions. He felt that it was going to make
72. 5:41people more self-sufficient. All it did was create dependency. What is done is to incentivize
73. 5:47women to marry the government and incentivize men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility.
74. 5:52It is the number one social problem in America in general and the number one social problem
75. 5:57in the black community in particular, and we’re not having that discussion.
76. 5:59When someone like myself or Bob Woodson, another community activist who’s in the film, raises
77. 6:05these questions, instead of this igniting a healthy discussion, people like myself are
78. 6:09denounced and dismissed as Uncle Toms, as self loathers. Why? That’s what the film
79. 6:14asks. Why can’t we just have an intelligent discussion? Why are you assuming that I have
80. 6:18some sort of malintent behind it? All I’m trying to do is get people to realize their
81. 6:22God-given potential, the same as I assume you’re trying to do, and we just have a
82. 6:26different philosophy about it. I don’t consider you to be self-loathing. I don’t consider
83. 6:30you to be a race traitor because you’re advancing policy that I think hurt [us]. Why
84. 6:34are you making that assumption about me? You know, it’s a very fascinating time to
85. 6:40be talking about this. It’s almost crazy because of this horrible killing of George
86. 6:47Floyd that happened just a few weeks ago and the resulting protests. There are a lot of
87. 6:53very well-meaning people on the streets wanting to support black lives, right? At the same
88. 7:01time, there are a lot of concerns. I’ve heard from a lot of people that there’s
89. 7:05only one way that’s allowed to think about this, and people lose their jobs, their careers,
90. 7:13relationships, and so forth. The narrative is that racism remains a powerful
91. 7:19impediment for black progress in America, whether it’s systemic racism, a term you
92. 7:23hear a lot, structural racism, another term you hear a lot, institutional racism, or one
93. 7:28that I heard Beto O’Rourke come up with, foundational racism. If America were institutionally
94. 7:34racist, why is it that in the 50s if you ask white people, would they ever support a black
95. 7:39person president? The answer was no. Fast forward, Obama got elected. He got a higher
96. 7:44percentage of the white vote than John Kerry did. We’re [still] talking about institutional
97. 7:48racism. It’s crazy. In 2015, Freddie Gray died in police custody.
98. 7:55At the time of his death, the mayor of Baltimore was black, the number one person running the
99. 8:02police department was black, his assistant was black, all the city council members were
100. 8:08democrats, majority black, the state attorney who brought the charges against six officers
101. 8:11was black, three of the six officers charged were black, the judge before whom two of the
102. 8:18officers had their cases tried was black. By the way, he found him not guilty. The US
103. 8:25Attorney General at the time, Loretta Lynch, was black, and of course, the president of
104. 8:30the United States, at the time Barack Obama, was black. You have all these people running
105. 8:34the institution. I’m reminded of something that comedian
106. 8:36Wanda Sykes said shortly after Obama got elected, and she talked about what was gonna happen
107. 8:41down the road if and when things didn’t change. She said, “How are you going to
108. 8:45complain about the man when you are the man?” Well, these American cities where we have
109. 8:50these police chiefs that are allegedly racist have been run by Democrats for decades. Democrats
110. 8:56have picked these officers, and in many cases, the chief of police happens to be black. People
111. 9:01are still screaming about institutional racism. We were having this interview in Los Angeles.
112. 9:06From 1992 to 2002, L.A. had back-to-back black police chiefs. There was a black police chief
113. 9:13in charge during the O.J. Simpson case. You might recall all these allegations about evidence
114. 9:18planning and fabricating evidence and framing an innocent man. Because of all these allegations,
115. 9:24the then-police chief Willie Williams did a complete and total departmental review to
116. 9:28find out if anybody had done anything wrong at all in connection with the O.J. Simpson
117. 9:32case. This is during the trial now. The report came out and found no evidence
118. 9:35whatsoever anybody had done anything wrong. It didn’t matter. It didn’t move the needle
119. 9:40one way or the other. Those who felt that O.J. Simpson was an innocent man framed by
120. 9:44the racist LAPD continue thinking he was an innocent man framed by the racist LAPD, even
121. 9:49though the racist LAPD is run by a black man who just did a report that said nobody did
122. 9:53anything wrong in connection with the O.J. Simpson case. My point is it didn’t matter.
123. 9:58Part of the protesters are demanding diversity in our police departments. As if, once you
124. 10:03have diversity, magically these problems are going to go away. L.A. is about 40 percent
125. 10:08or so Hispanic, about 30 percent white, a little under 10 percent black, the rest of
126. 10:12it is Asian or Pacific Islanders. That’s exactly the percentage of the LAPD, and it
127. 10:19is still being accused of being racist. In the NYPD, it’s the same thing. If you look
128. 10:23at the racial demographics of the city and look at the demographics of the police department,
129. 10:27they mirror each other, and still recently, the officers of the NYPD are being subjected
130. 10:34with water balloons. [There are] urine-filled water balloons, trash cans full of water thrown
131. 10:40at them, cars set on fire. Never mind how diverse the NYPD is. The average person that
132. 10:46the average person on the street is going to encounter will be a person of color, [but]
133. 10:49it doesn’t matter, because of this false narrative.
134. 10:53The stats simply do not reflect the idea that the police are going after black people. If
135. 10:58anything, the stats show the opposite. There is a black economist named Roland Fryer who
136. 11:04teaches at Harvard. Because of all these prolific, high profile shootings, he just knew that
137. 11:12the police were disproportionately using deadly force against black people. He was kind of
138. 11:16surprised that no one had done a comprehensive study to corroborate that, so he thought he
139. 11:19would do it. He said that the results were the most surprising of his career.
140. 11:25Not only were the police not using deadly force disproportionately against blacks, they
141. 11:30were more hesitant, more reluctant to pull the trigger on a black suspect than on the
142. 11:34white suspect, presumably because they were afraid of being accused of being racist. That
143. 11:38same result was replicated in a study published in a publication put out by the National Academy
144. 11:42of Sciences, where researchers looked at every shooting in 2015 [and] every shooting in 2016.
145. 11:47[There was the] same conclusion: the police were not using deadly force disproportionately
146. 11:51against black people. The reason blacks are two and a half times
147. 11:56more likely to be killed by a cop than a white person is the crime rate, which is substantially
148. 12:02higher in the black community than in the white community. A young black man is eight
149. 12:07times more likely to be a victim of homicide compared to a young white man. The number
150. 12:11one cause of preventable homicide of young whites is accidents like car accidents and
151. 12:18drownings. The number one cause of death, preventable or non-preventable for a young
152. 12:22black person is homicide, almost always committed by another young black person.
153. 12:29It’s not cops killing black people, it’s black people killing other black people. According
154. 12:34to the CDC, the rate at which cops kill blacks has declined 75 percent in the last 50 or
155. 12:4360 years, while the rate at which police kill whites has flatlined. So arguably, if anybody
156. 12:47has anything to complain about, it’s white people, because if you look at the crime rate,
157. 12:51one would have thought that the rate at which police kill blacks would be even higher. If
158. 12:57anything, the cops are hesitant, as I mentioned in these studies, to use deadly force against
159. 13:03a black person because of a fear of being accused of being racist.
160. 13:07Now, nine unarmed black men were shot and killed by the police according to the Washington
161. 13:14Post last year [in 2019]. Nineteen unarmed whites were shot and killed by the police
162. 13:17last year, altogether fifteen unarmed blacks. That number is still smaller than
163. 13:23the nineteen whites who were shot and killed. If there’s a White Lives Matter protest
164. 13:29that was arranged, I never heard about it. It is not happening.
165. 13:32Isn’t this good news? That’s the other
166. 13:34thing about my movie I tried to stress. I’m suggesting that the problems that you’re
167. 13:40talking about in America can be explained away in a nonracial way. Isn’t that good
168. 13:46news? To know that the disproportionate number of blacks being killed by the police has to
169. 13:51do with our crime rate and not because the police are racist, isn’t that good news?
170. 13:55Then shouldn’t we start tackling what’s going on with our families that’s causing
171. 13:58all of this stuff? Instead of the reaction [is that] I’m a
172. 14:02sellout; I’m a self loather; I hate myself; I’m an Uncle Tom; I have never been called
173. 14:06the N-word; I’ve never been arrested by the police. These are the kinds of things
174. 14:09that people say. By the way, these are not true. I’ve been called the N-word; anybody
175. 14:13my age has been called the N-word. Yes, I was arrested once for mouthing off to an officer.
176. 14:19I was young and impetuous, and frankly, I got what I deserved. I’ve never had the
177. 14:24impression that the police are out to get people. That’s never been my personal experience
178. 14:29and the data do not support it. One more quick thing. There’s a city here
179. 14:32in California called Rialto. Rialto has about 100,000 people. It is as diverse as California.
180. 14:41The police department was ordered to have their officers wear body cams. The officers
181. 14:46were reluctant to do it. They didn’t want to do it, but they did it and announced the
182. 14:49program to the city, so civilians knew that cops they encountered were going to have body
183. 14:54cams. What happened? Officer use of force fell 50 percent, officer complaint fell 90
184. 15:01percent. Now a superficial reaction to that would be,
185. 15:04“well the cameras change the behavior of both the civilian and the police officer.”
186. 15:07Oh contraire, the police behaved as they were trained. As the camera demonstrates, they
187. 15:12behaved as they were trained. People stop lying on the police. They stopped making false
188. 15:19complaints. They stopped resisting because they knew they were being filmed. It is a
189. 15:23crime to falsely accuse the police of engaging in police brutality when they didn’t do
190. 15:28it, and it is also a crime to assault a police officer. This was now being taped. Officers
191. 15:34didn’t have to use deadly force or any kind of force, because the civilians behaved more
192. 15:38responsibly. What does that tell you? It tells you that
193. 15:40people have been lying on the police. We know one major case … [of this]: the Michael
194. 15:47Brown Ferguson case. That’s the case where Michael Brown allegedly was running away from
195. 15:51the officer saying, “My hands are up. Don’t shoot.” His friend, Dorian Johnson, is the
196. 15:57one who said that he said that. It turns out it was not true. It started this whole effort
197. 16:03about “hands up, don’t shoot.” It’s a mantra you’re still hearing, and the whole
198. 16:07thing was a lie. That’s how frequently people lie on the police.
199. 16:11By and large, the police are trying to do the best job. It is the department of government
200. 16:16that is arguably the most scrutinized. You have internal audits, you have civilian reviews,
201. 16:22you have the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] locally, you have the state attorney, you
202. 16:26have the feds, you have the media, you have the aggressive defense bar, [and you have]
203. 16:32the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Movement]. It is arguably the most-watched over and inspected
204. 16:37agencies we have in our country because of the awesome responsibility that they have.
205. 16:42They have the ability to take your life, and as a result, we ought to be scrutinizing them,
206. 16:46and we do. So what do you make of this new executive
207. 16:50order that the President just recently assigned around police reform.
208. 16:57Well, I think of it as I think of gun control measures that occur after a mass shooting.
209. 17:04Do something, do something, do something; politicians are pressured by the public to
210. 17:08do something. The republican party and Trump felt pressured to do something. The principal
211. 17:16thing that this executive order did was to suggest the departments ban the use of the
212. 17:22so-called chokehold or carotid hold. Well, most departments have already banned it, except
213. 17:28in the case of using it to save the officers lives so the officer doesn’t have to resort
214. 17:32to a firearm. That’s the policy here in L.A. That’s been the policy of big cities
215. 17:37all over the country for years. I’m not sure it’s going to do a whole
216. 17:40lot other than give the American people the impression that Trump cares about this issue,
217. 17:45and he’s acting on it. The reason Trump seems awkward is because he doesn’t believe
218. 17:49the premise. The premise is that the police are engaging in systemic racism against blacks.
219. 17:53He doesn’t believe it, because it’s not true. As a result, it’s hard for him to
220. 17:56sound phony and go “Oh, this is horrible. This is a reflection of our racism.” the
221. 18:01way Obama would do. Obama would talk about how racism is in America’s DNA. Obama said
222. 18:07the Cambridge police acted stupidly. Obama said that we have our own troubles. There’s
223. 18:11a place called Ferguson, Obama invited Black Lives Matter to come in.
224. 18:17Trump is not doing any of those things, because he does not accept the premise. He rejects
225. 18:21the idea that the police are out to get black people and as a result, he’s not making
226. 18:24any sweeping statements, because they would come across as being insincere, and they would
227. 18:28have been insincere. You just make me think of so many things.
228. 18:34Me too, I should listen to myself more often. One time, … I lost my train of thought,
229. 18:46and I said, “I’m sorry, I forgot where I was. I wasn’t listening.” [Laughter]
230. 18:52You tackle the idea of systemic racism directly in the film. One of the scenes in the film
231. 18:58is this now famous interview that you did with Dave Rubin, where on camera he kind of
232. 19:07realizes that he doesn’t get what he means about systemic racism himself. Why are we
233. 19:18still talking about systemic racism? If, as you’ve argued, there really aren’t many
234. 19:26real examples of it? Because [the concept of systematic racism]
235. 19:29advances the agenda of a lot of people. It advances the agenda of the media. I think
236. 19:33a lot of people in the media went into the profession because of [Bob] Woodward and [Carl]
237. 19:39Bernstein. In the 1970s, they’re the ones who exposed Richard Nixon and all the stuff
238. 19:45he was doing. A lot of people went into journalism because they wanted to be a champion, right
239. 19:52the wrongs, what’s the term: comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, something
240. 20:00like that. I think a lot of young people who have gone into the media truly believe that
241. 20:05racism remains a major problem in America. They’re around a lot of other young people,
242. 20:08and they all say the same thing, so they’re all having these feelings being reinforced.
243. 20:11I also think that it sells copies. If you run stories about George Floyd being a microcosm
244. 20:20of the racism in America, it sells copies. Racism sells. It also advances the interests
245. 20:26of academia, there are a whole bunch of professors that are professors of African American Studies,
246. 20:31professors of ethnic studies, and where are they going to go if all of a sudden, people
247. 20:38realize that race has never been more insignificant in terms of becoming successful in America?
248. 20:45Where are these people going to go? And of course it advances the agenda of the
249. 20:48Democratic Party, because without getting black people angry and stirred up over the
250. 20:53assertion that “racism remains a major problem, and by the way, these republicans over there
251. 20:57don’t give a damn about that, and we do,” the Democrats don’t get that 90-95 percent,
252. 21:03nearly monolithic black vote without which they cannot win at the presidential level.
253. 21:07They have to constantly talk about race and racism, and they have to go after people like
254. 21:11Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain, and Allen West,
255. 21:20because they reflect the antithesis of what the Democratic Party stands for.
256. 21:25The Democratic Party stands for “you are a victim, and we’re here to help you.”
257. 21:29Black conservatives are saying, “Not only are we not victims, but many of your policies
258. 21:33are hurting the very people you claimed to help.” Take the minimum wage. Study after
259. 21:37study has shown that what it does is cause employers to defer hiring decisions, reduce
260. 21:42the hours of people’s jobs, or raise prices on the very people who are going to be buying
261. 21:46things in the inner city that don’t have a great deal of money. These things are counterproductive.
262. 21:51The welfare state is counterproductive for the reasons that I just mentioned. You’re
263. 21:55incentivizing women to marry the government and allowing men to abandon their financial
264. 21:58and moral responsibility, and that’s why we have this 70 percent out of wedlock birth
265. 22:02rate right now. Not doing anything about illegal immigration
266. 22:05hurts. George Borjas, the Harvard economist, has probably done more work on the impact
267. 22:10of legal and illegal immigration than maybe any other economist. He says no question that
268. 22:14unskilled, illegal aliens compete for jobs that otherwise would be held by black and
269. 22:18brown unskilled Americans and puts downward pressure on their wages. We’re not even
270. 22:23having that discussion. For a black conservative to raise these kinds
271. 22:26of issues, instead of igniting a healthy discussion about whether or not we ought to be advocating
272. 22:31tighter borders and whether or not we ought to be voting for the party that does that,
273. 22:36people like myself are denounced as Uncle Tom and sellouts. The word that I dislike
274. 22:40the most is not Uncle Tom, not bootlicker, not bug-eyed bootlicker, not bug-eyed foot
275. 22:47shuffling bootlicker, not coconut, not Oreo, not the Antichrist. I’ve been called all
276. 22:53those things. The word that I fear the most is being called
277. 22:56wrong. Rarely am I called wrong. Am I wrong about my assertion about the welfare state
278. 23:01and the proliferation of kids being raised without fathers? Am I wrong about the competition
279. 23:06posed by unskilled illegal aliens to black people? Am I wrong about government schools
280. 23:10producing kids that cannot read, write, or compute at grade level? Am I wrong about these
281. 23:14things? If I’m wrong, show me how I’m wrong. When you call me an Uncle Tom, it shows
282. 23:19that you have no ammo, and we’re not having the discussion that advances the best interest
283. 23:24of the people you claim to care about. So the name-calling is a way to just stop
284. 23:29the discussion. Shut the conversation down, because they need
285. 23:32to have that power. That’s why Joe Biden recently said to a black interviewer, “If
286. 23:38you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,”
287. 23:43[on “The Breakfast Club”] Now, people criticized him and he apologized for making
288. 23:47the statement, but all he was doing is articulating a basic premise of the Democratic Party, that
289. 23:54if you don’t think a certain way, you’re a sellout. If you don’t think a certain
290. 23:58way you lack compassion for your own people. … Last year, Ayanna Pressley, who’s one-quarter
291. 24:04of the so-called “squad” publicly said, “We don’t need any more brown faces who
292. 24:09don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces who don’t want to be a
293. 24:13black voice.” What does that say? The same as what Joe Biden said, that there is only
294. 24:18one way to be black. That [way] is to be left-wing and vote for the Democrats. It is a standard
295. 24:23position for the Democratic Party. I’ll give you a more glaring example. In
296. 24:27the mid-1990s, there was a proposition in California called Proposition 209 to get rid
297. 24:32of the use of race and gender in public admissions to colleges and universities. In government
298. 24:39hiring and issuing contracts, you can’t use race as a factor, and it passed overwhelmingly
299. 24:45in California. It was led by a black man named Ward Connerly, who happened to be married
300. 24:49to a white woman. Ward Connerly was a small businessman who didn’t like the whole idea
301. 24:53of the set asides for black people, so he campaigned and successfully got rid of race-based
302. 24:59preferences. He had a political opponent named Diane Watson,
303. 25:04who later on ran for and got elected to the US House of Representatives. At the time,
304. 25:08she was a local lawmaker. She said this publicly, Jan, publicly: Let me tell you why you support
305. 25:13this proposition. You’re married to a white woman. You have no ethnic pride. You don’t
306. 25:19want to be white. You hate being black. Then when she was asked about it by reporters,
307. 25:23she said: That’s right. I said it, and I don’t take it back. To this day, she never
308. 25:27took it back. Holy David Duke, who can say something like that publicly and get away
309. 25:31with it? She did, because she’s a democrat. The democrats don’t want to colorblind society.
310. 25:37They want to color-coordinated society, and they’re the ones who do the coordinating.
311. 25:41That’s what’s going on here. This is a complete rejection of MLK’s message of a
312. 25:46colorblind society. They don’t want that. They want to have the power to determine who
313. 25:51gets what and where and why based upon skin color, not based upon diversity of ideology,
314. 25:55based upon skin color. … In the film … there’s this, I think
315. 26:03probably we could call him the main character, Chad, right? I love watching his kind of journey
316. 26:09throughout the film. He’s talking about looking at democratic versus the republican
317. 26:17platform and so forth. But the concepts you’re talking about are much deeper than party right?
318. 26:25They are, and that is why the viciousness is so over the top. The man you’re talking
319. 26:33about is named Chad, and Chad has a contracting company. He is not a politician. He doesn’t
320. 26:41have sharp elbows. He’s not angry. He’s not in your face. He’s just a regular guy,
321. 26:47trying to make it in America as a small businessman. He’s religious, and he said one of his friends
322. 26:54encouraged him, because he was saying such anti things about the Democratic Party, to
323. 27:00read the platform of the Democratic Party and the platform of the Republican Party.
324. 27:05He had never done that, so he took him up on the challenge. After he read both platforms,
325. 27:11he said: Damn… I’m Republican. I believe in low taxes. I believe in less regulation.
326. 27:19I believe in personal responsibility. The movie is about the reaction he got from
327. 27:24friends and family who didn’t say, “what caused you to rethink your assumptions? What
328. 27:31material have you looked at?” He was denounced by friends and family as an Uncle Tom and
329. 27:36a sellout. The movie simply follows his life, his career, his journey, and what caused him
330. 27:42to begin to rethink some of his assumptions. All the movie asks is: in America, don’t
331. 27:47you have the right to have your own opinion, especially if it’s a well thought out opinion?
332. 27:53Why would you … be denounced because of your race, as reflective of a sellout, of
333. 28:00somebody who’s an Uncle Tom, who wishes bad things to happen to fellow members of
334. 28:05his own race? What is the logic behind that? Why is this going on? Isn’t this hurting
335. 28:10the country? That’s what the movie asks. Larry, something … that struck me as really
336. 28:17bizarre recently is the removal by HBO Max of Gone with the Wind, possibly one of the
337. 28:26most famous films of all time, out of rotation extensively, because it’s racist. What are
338. 28:33your thoughts? It’s part of what some people call the cancel
339. 28:36culture. I don’t call it that. I call it the revenge culture. [It’s] the idea that
340. 28:40you’re going to go around and find all the things that offend you with the sensibilities
341. 28:45of somebody living in 2020. It’s absurd. The film was made in 1939, the year that all
342. 28:52these amazing films came out. It was considered to be cutting edge in cinematography, cutting
343. 28:58edge in dialogue. At the end of the film, when Clark Gable says “Frankly, [my dear,]
344. 29:02I don’t give a damn,” that shocked people. No one ever used the D word in movies before.
345. 29:07I didn’t see the movie until I was in my 30s. The reason I never saw it was because
346. 29:12I never really wanted to. I knew that it was a movie that portrayed the South in kind of
347. 29:16a beautiful way and the mansion in kind of a beautiful way, and I thought it probably
348. 29:21soft-pedaled slavery. So for all those reasons, I, Larry Elder, was never interested in seeing
349. 29:25it. Also, it was a long movie. I have a short attention span… . I know my mother loved
350. 29:31the movie. My father, as far as I know, had no opinion of it one way or the other. I know
351. 29:37my mom liked it. Now the reason I saw it is that I was dating somebody who told me it
352. 29:41was the greatest film she’d ever seen. I said, I’m surprised that anybody black feels
353. 29:46that way about it. She was like “Oh, I think it’s a moving movie. I love the story. I
354. 29:49love the way the South used to be, and it’s about how it changed because of the Civil
355. 29:54War,” and I said okay, so I watched it. The film is long. I thought it was an entertaining
356. 30:02film and an enjoyable film. I wasn’t offended by it. I didn’t think it romanticized slavery,
357. 30:07but it certainly did not take a harsh condemnation of it.
358. 30:13Why anybody would find that so offensive that it would be taken out of rotation and apparently
359. 30:18going to be replaced with a disclaimer that some of these images are offensive is beyond
360. 30:24me. We know some of the images are offensive. You want to take out Tarzan, because the white
361. 30:28guy swinging through the jungle on a vine basically runs the place? When do you want
362. 30:33to stop doing that kind of stuff? I understand that Obama’s mom’s side owned slaves.
363. 30:41His father’s side came from an area of Africa where there was a great deal of slave trading.
364. 30:45I don’t know whether his family was involved in it, but certainly the people from that
365. 30:49part of Africa where his dad is from were involved. You could argue that Obama has his
366. 30:55hands involved in slavery on his mom’s side and on his dad’s side. Should we remove
367. 31:00Obama’s name from every building around? It is sickening. I understand there’s a
368. 31:04movement to get rid of the Washington Monument, get rid of the Jefferson Memorial because
369. 31:09both Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. You know, nobody owns slaves now. The whole
370. 31:17reparations movement is, in my opinion, an attempt to extract money from people who were
371. 31:22never slave owners to be given to people who were never slaves.
372. 31:25What is the purpose of all of this? Is it going to make the 70 percent of black kids
373. 31:30being born outside of wedlock go away? Is it going to do something about the 50 percent
374. 31:34dropout rate in some of our inner-city high schools, and the fact that many of these kids
375. 31:37who do graduate cannot read, write or compute at grade level? Is it going to solve the fact
376. 31:41that among young black men, 25 percent of them have a criminal record, either arrested,
377. 31:45in jail, on parole, or on probation? Is it going to solve any of these things?
378. 31:51If the goal is to make black people feel better about themselves, we already feel good about
379. 31:55ourselves. Look at self-esteem tests over the last thirty years. Every single time I’ve
380. 31:59seen any of these tests, it almost always shows black people have higher self-esteem
381. 32:03than white people, much higher self-esteem than Asians. Black girls have much higher
382. 32:08self-esteem than white girls who are obsessed with a barbie doll image. Black girls are
383. 32:12far more realistic about the variety in their body shapes and feel much more confident about
384. 32:17who they are. If the goal is to make black people feel better, mission accomplished.
385. 32:21So I’m not sure what the purpose of it is other than revenge, getting back.
386. 32:25That’s why I believe O.J. Simpson was cut loose. One of the jurors years later was interviewed.
387. 32:31Her name was Carrie Bess, and she was asked about the verdict. She said, and I’m paraphrasing:
388. 32:37I voted not guilty because of Rodney King. The filmmaker was gobsmacked. In the whole
389. 32:45film, the filmmaker never said a word, but this one he couldn’t help himself. He said,
390. 32:48did the others feel that way too? You hear him saying [it]; you don’t see him, but
391. 32:51you hear his voice. She said: 90 percent of us did. Revenge for Rodney King.
392. 32:58This is revenge for slavery, revenge for Jim Crow, revenge for every slight that you ever
393. 33:04felt that you received. It’s called the revenge culture, not the cancel culture, and
394. 33:09that is what this is all about. It’s absurd. When and where does it stop? Perpetuate the
395. 33:14notion that I’m somehow a victim? I’m not a victim.
396. 33:20What is the connection between this revenge culture that you’re describing and the victim
397. 33:26culture that actually features very prominently in Uncle Tom?
398. 33:30Well, it’s all the feeling that because of the historical past of America, because
399. 33:34of slavery, because of Jim Crow, black people are unequal, net worth unequal. All these things are
400. 33:42true. The question is, in order for you to get more, is it appropriate morally, legally,
401. 33:52and politically, to accuse somebody of having benefited from slavery from Jim Crow and therefore
402. 33:59as a beneficiary owes you money? “You should pay me something.” That seems to be what
403. 34:04the ethos is. All a state can be is just in its own time.
404. 34:10Obama was elected in 2008. I’m old school, Jan. I used to get the LA Times, The New York
405. 34:16Times thrown to my house. The next morning, I go get the newspapers. On the front pages
406. 34:22of both newspapers were big color pictures of black parents hugging their kids saying,
407. 34:27“I can now for the first time credibly say, you can be anything you want to be. I can
408. 34:33now say it and mean it. I’ve always said it.” They said it, but never really meant
409. 34:37it. This was with the election of President Obama.
410. 34:38Yeah, “I had my fingers crossed when I said [you can be anything you want]” All these
411. 34:41parents pretty much said that. I remember reading it and saying to myself, “Wow, what
412. 34:45would these parents have said had Obama lost?” My mother always told me I could be anything
413. 34:50I wanted to be, and I always believed her. I think we’re hurting our kids by peddling
414. 34:57this notion that you’re a victim, by peddling this notion that you should exact revenge
415. 35:03on people who did nothing whatsoever to you, because it’s then taking time and energy
416. 35:07away from things we ought to be doing. I recently posted on Twitter, a graph showing
417. 35:12the amount of homework done by Asian kids, the amount of homework done by white kids,
418. 35:15the amount of homework done every night by Hispanic kids, the amount of homework done
419. 35:19every night by black kids. Now, what does this have to do with institutional racism?
420. 35:26How is a white bigot preventing you from doing two good hard hours of homework every single
421. 35:30night, which is what the Asian kids are doing? There’s a correlation between how much work
422. 35:34you put into something and what you get out of it. They certainly understand that when
423. 35:38it comes to sports. You frequently will watch black kids being told by their coaches “Hit
424. 35:44the boards! Hit the boards! Hit those free throws! 500 free throw shots every day.”
425. 35:48[They are] doing these kinds of drills all the time, but you don’t find the same kind
426. 35:51of discipline when it comes to math and science and English and literature. We get the connection
427. 35:56between hard work and sports. We don’t seem to get the connection between hard work and
428. 35:59success in life. This is the kind of thing that I’m hoping the movie will create a
429. 36:03healthy dialogue about. Larry, this is fascinating, what you’re
430. 36:09describing. You contend, as the film contends, that there’s no such thing as systemic racism.
431. 36:15But I’m finding myself thinking, as you’re talking just now, that maybe it does actually
432. 36:21exist, but in a different direction than people typically think.
433. 36:25Well, that’s an excellent point. I have said that there is systemic racism, but not
434. 36:30the kind of systemic racism that you think. [An example is] when you compel a parent to
435. 36:34send a kid to my former high school Crenshaw High School, where there was a front-page
436. 36:40LA Times article a couple of years ago, noting that only 3 percent of the kids at my former
437. 36:46high school can do math at grade level, and where Ice T told me he attended … because
438. 36:55he wanted to go to a Crypt’s school. [Crypt] is the name of the gang that controls that
439. 36:59school. What responsible parents send their kid to a school where only 3 percent of the
440. 37:03kids can do math at grade level and by the way, a school that is run by the Crypts? The
441. 37:08answer is nobody would, but you are mandated to send your kid there, because of the way
442. 37:14our public education system is set up. The Republican Party wants to give that urban
443. 37:19parent a voucher, so that parent can take their kid to a school that the kid can get
444. 37:24in. Now, if you’re mandated to send your kid to an inferior, underperforming government
445. 37:29school, it seems to me that is systemic racism. If you are incentivizing women to marry the
446. 37:35government, and allowing men to abandon their financial, moral responsibility and causing
447. 37:39a proliferation of black kids being born outside of wedlock, with all the attendant social
448. 37:43ills, that is systemic racism. If you are doing nothing about policing the border so
449. 37:48that more and more illegal aliens come to America and take jobs that would otherwise
450. 37:51be held by unskilled black and brown workers and put pressure on their wages, that is systemic
451. 37:56racism. But that’s not what the left means when
452. 37:58they talk about systemic racism. They’re talking about hostile anti-black attitudes
453. 38:02that allegedly pervade America when again, the data shows the contrary.
454. 38:09Speaking of this victim culture, victim mentality, one of the things I noticed in the film was
455. 38:16that Carol Swain describes how she only learned that she was poor and disadvantaged while
456. 38:22in college, which through my mind for a loop. From a liberal professor she said.
457. 38:29Yeah. Who told her when she said something that
458. 38:31the professor didn’t like, “Well, you’re never going to be able to do something about
459. 38:34the fact that you’re black.” She was kind of surprised by that since this person purported
460. 38:38to be a liberal. If you think about the policies of the left, they really are suggesting that
461. 38:44you as a black person really can’t measure up. Why after all, would you want to lower
462. 38:51the required SAT scores for a black person, unless you feel the black person can’t score
463. 38:56high enough on the SAT on his own. It is very condescending.
464. 39:00I was on a plane ride once with a man who was a prominent Democrat politician in Cleveland
465. 39:07when I lived there. He was a commissioner. I’m not gonna say his name. We were on the
466. 39:13plane together having a couple a couple of pops; he had more pops than I had. I asked
467. 39:18him, “Don’t many people in your party really feel that black people can’t compete
468. 39:26on their own? That’s why you support affirmative action.” I don’t believe he would have
469. 39:30responded the way he did had he not had a couple of pops. He said, “Yeah, I know a
470. 39:33lot of people that really believe black people just really are inferior. They’re not good
471. 39:37enough, therefore we have to change the rules.” I’m not sure he would have said that he’d
472. 39:40been sober, but he said that. That really is the assumption, isn’t it?
473. 39:46We have to change the rules. We don’t adjust the basketball hoop for white people. We don’t
474. 39:51make the race longer or shorter for white people. Why are we changing the rules over
475. 39:54here for black people? When I get on an airplane and I see a black pilot, I don’t want to
476. 39:59know about affirmative action. I want to make sure that this guy aced his pilot exam, and
477. 40:04he’s there because he’s the most competent pilot that I could possibly have. When you
478. 40:07wheel your mom into the ER room and you see a black doctor, do you want to think in the
479. 40:10back of your mind: Did he get into medical school because he was black? Did he get through
480. 40:14because he was black? These have real-world consequences. We ought to be talking about
481. 40:19the best and the brightest. We ought to be determining who gets what based upon the content
482. 40:24of their character and not based upon the color of their skin.
483. 40:26That’s really interesting, because it makes me think of another element in the film, where
484. 40:33you’re talking about Booker T. Washington, who is frankly someone that I just wasn’t
485. 40:40aware of until a few years ago. Bob Woodson, who I recently had on the show and of course
486. 40:48features prominently in film, argued that post slavery under Jim Crow, black America
487. 40:56actually did pretty well for itself. It’s remarkable, using this ethos of Booker T.
488. 41:02Washington. Booker T. Washington wrote a book called Up
489. 41:05from Slavery in 1901. Now think about that, that’s 36 years after slavery. He was born
490. 41:11a slave. If you read the book, he’s more optimistic about the future for black people
491. 41:16than some of our so-called black leaders are right now. His argument was to work hard,
492. 41:20put time into it, and become a value to your community. Once you do that, people want the
493. 41:27best and they will come to you, and it will be the path towards your door.
494. 41:32He had an ideological opponent named W.E.B Dubois who felt that we ought to be pursuing
495. 41:38integration with white people. Dubois became a communist, renounced his American citizenship,
496. 41:45and is now in my opinion a historical footnote, whereas Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee
497. 41:50Institute still exists, and his philosophy of hard work and accountability, in my opinion,
498. 41:56is what we all ought to be embracing, no matter your race in America.
499. 42:01There’s all these characters in the film. Let’s say that a lot of us maybe aren’t
500. 42:10so familiar with Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas. I hope every American knows
501. 42:18who Clarence Thomas is. Well Jan, there is a reason a lot of blacks
502. 42:21don’t know who Clarence Thomas is, don’t know who Walter Williams is, and don’t know
503. 42:25who Thomas Sowell is. The most prominent publication for blacks historically has been Ebony Magazine.
504. 42:34I cannot remember a time when the current issue of Ebony Magazine was not on the coffee
505. 42:38table in my parents’ house. That’s how influential it is to us. They had a feature
506. 42:45every year called the 100 most influential black Americans, and we’d have people in
507. 42:50there like MLK and so forth. Because so many blacks became so prominent, they had to upgrade
508. 42:57it to the 100 plus most influential black Americans. That’s what it was last time
509. 43:02I checked. Every year absent in the list of the 100 most
510. 43:07prominent black Americans is Clarence Thomas; absent is Walter Williams; absent is Thomas
511. 43:13Sowell. Now Clarence Thomas is only one of nine members of the Supreme Court. By definition,
512. 43:18he’s influential, yet he’s not in this publication. Thomas Sowell was described by
513. 43:23David Mamet, the playwright, as America’s most important contemporary philosopher, who
514. 43:28he credits with helping to change him from being a brain dead liberal. Walter Williams
515. 43:34to my knowledge is the first, and I think only, economics chairman of a non historically
516. 43:42black college or university. Both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams collectively have probably
517. 43:46written about 60 books. Most black Americans don’t know who they are in part because
518. 43:53of the way they are treated by the black media that completely excludes them and acts as
519. 43:57if they don’t even exist, and it’s an absolute outrage. I addressed that to some
520. 44:02extent in this film. Let’s talk about Black Lives Matter. This
521. 44:08is important to me. On the face of it of course black lives matter. They matter to me; I hope
522. 44:16they matter to most Americans. Then, of course, there’s Black Lives Matter, the organization.
523. 44:24I won’t even say the movement, because I think a lot of the people in the movement
524. 44:28are for black lives matter, the concept right? I know you’ve studied Black Lives Matter
525. 44:35quite a bit. Can you kind of give a thumbnail of what this group is about?
526. 44:41Well, the whole movement didn’t start because of Ferguson, it started before that, but it
527. 44:46certainly got a big spin because of Ferguson. It was a movement that started based upon
528. 44:54the assumption that the police are engaging in systemic racism against [black] people.
529. 45:00If the premise is bad, the movement is bad, and the organization is bad. The premise is
530. 45:05bad, and the movement is bad, and the organization is bad.
531. 45:07The organization, by the way, is not just about black lives matter. One of their principal
532. 45:11statements refers to Israel as an apartheid state and to the Palestinians as oppressed.
533. 45:17It’s a left wing movement that’s hostile, in my opinion, to the values that made this
534. 45:23country great. It’s built upon this phony narrative that the police are out to get black
535. 45:27people, when in fact, the studies show the opposite. Now it’s one thing just to have
536. 45:31a stupid point of view. Lots of people have stupid points of view that are harmless. This
537. 45:36is harmful. It causes young black men when they’re stopped
538. 45:39by the police to become far more confrontational than they otherwise would be. After all, why
539. 45:43not be confrontational? If you believe the man pulling you over is going to do you ill?
540. 45:47Why be cooperative? I understand that. It also causes the cops to pull back and become
541. 45:53less proactive, because they are afraid of being called racist. So what happens? Crime
542. 45:58goes up in the very same area that the Black Lives Matter activists claim that they care
543. 46:03about. It’s undermining the country, it is inconsistent with the best interest of
544. 46:07black people, and it’s built upon a lie. So what would you say to the millions of people
545. 46:16of all different shapes and stripes and colors that do care genuinely about black lives and
546. 46:22feel there’s an issue at this point. We saw them on the streets peacefully protesting
547. 46:28and so forth. Most of them were there with the best of intentions.
548. 46:32They’re just wrong, watching too much CNN, watching too much MSNBC, or reading too much
549. 46:37New York Times. Read some conservative publications. Read Heather Mac Donald. Probably nobody has
550. 46:41done a better job of assembling all the data on police and police interaction with civilians,
551. 46:47then Heather McDonald. Read the police public context survey.
552. 46:52That’s something that the DOJ does every three years. They asked over 60,000 Americans
553. 46:58“In the last year, did you have contact with the police? If so, tell me about your
554. 47:02contact. Were you verbally abused or physically abused? They can’t find any evidence whatsoever
555. 47:07of a pattern of abuse against black people. It’s not like the government doesn’t care
556. 47:12about this. They’ve been looking at it. There’s a study that came out during the
557. 47:15Obama administration called Race and Traffic Stops, something like that. It was published
558. 47:20by the National Institutes of Justice, which is the research arm of the DOJ. They tried
559. 47:25to find out whether or not black people were being pulled over because of racism. They
560. 47:29found out 75 percent of black motorists admitted that they were stopped for a legitimate reason.
561. 47:34The other big takeaway is that you name the offense, whether it’s speeding, driving
562. 47:39without a license, driving without your headlights, or driving without an expired tag, a black
563. 47:44motorist was more likely to do it. Again, isn’t this good news to know that the disproportionate
564. 47:49cases of blacks being pulled over has to do with behavior and not because of racism? Again,
565. 47:54that study came out in 2013. There was an allegation years ago that the
566. 47:59police were pulling over black motorists
567. 48:02on the New Jersey Turnpike.
568. 48:03The then Governor Christine Todd Whitman ordered a study. The study came in, and they found
569. 48:08out officers couldn’t even tell the race; the cars are going too fast. The reflection
570. 48:12of the light at night, forget about it. You can’t even tell who’s in the car. They
571. 48:16concluded that the reason black people were being pulled over, is because the faster the
572. 48:20speed, the more likely it is, it’s a black driver driving. She didn’t like the results.
573. 48:26She complained about bad methodology and hired a different group. [With a] different methodology,
574. 48:29Same result. [Racism is] not there. The data just do not support that.
575. 48:34Isn’t this good news? By the way, it doesn’t mean there aren’t
576. 48:36bad cops. When a cop kills somebody, no matter his race or her race, that should be investigated
577. 48:41by the feds. They have awesome power, and they should be watched, but the idea that
578. 48:46there’s some sort of systemic pattern simply is not borne out by the data. If it were,
579. 48:50I wouldn’t say what I said. I don’t want the police to have a free rein and go after
580. 48:54black people any more than anybody else does. It just isn’t there. You’re making things
581. 49:00worse. So tell us a little more. When is the film
582. 49:04coming out? The film called Uncle Tom is coming out on
583. 49:09June 19th. We’re putting it online. Go to uncletom.com and be the first in your hood
584. 49:17to get some Uncle Tom merch. So, it’s a provocative name.
585. 49:24It is. It is. As I said, I’m not even sure I should
586. 49:30use those words. Well, it’s a provocative name, and the reason
587. 49:35I’ve called it that is because we are often called Uncle Tom. By the way, a lot of people
588. 49:39have never read the novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom was actually a hero of the
589. 49:44book. The villain was a guy named Sambo. So whenever anybody calls a black person Uncle
590. 49:48Tom, it tells you they never read the book. It tells you something about their education
591. 49:52K-12 and why we need vouchers. Any final words before we finish up?
592. 49:58The final word would be this, the movie is not a vindictive film. It’s not an angry
593. 50:03film. It’s not a film that says, “How dare you?” It’s a film that simply takes
594. 50:07you on a journey of what happens when a person without any kind of political vendetta, without
595. 50:13any kind of anger simply suggests that maybe, just maybe, I should be thinking about a different
596. 50:19party than the one that my race has traditionally supported. It talks about what happened to
597. 50:24this gentleman because of this, and it raises a very important question: why can’t we
598. 50:29have a healthy discussion in the black community without dissenting views being denounced as
599. 50:35coming from an Uncle Tom? Larry, it’s such a pleasure to have you
600. 50:39again. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank
601. 50:41you for allowing me to borrow your audience.