Race Politics Have Opposite Effect—Interview With Authors of 'Black and White' | Crossroads

Hey, welcome back everyone. I'm sure you've all seen the news stories. Biden is going to be going after what he considers to be systemic racism within the country, within the government, within the military. But a big question is still standing over this country, which is do these programs to try to tackle racism actually reduce racism or are they making it worse? Now here to speak with us about this is Pat Brown and Dave Brown. They're the authors of the book. It's Black and White, How the Left is Destroying the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. and Our Founding Fathers. It's a mother and son author team and real great having you on the show. Thank you, Josh. Now, so this is a pretty strong statement you're making saying that the left is destroying what Martin Luther King Jr. set out to accomplish and what the founding father set out to accomplish. Now, I know a lot of people on the far, you know, this isn't necessarily like centrist Democrats, I assume, but the far left, a lot of them believe that they're fighting for racial equality. So it's a pretty bold statement to say that they're destroying this. What is the issue you're seeing with this? Well, you know, I raised non-white children through the eighties and nineties and during those times I thought things were getting a lot better. And then I saw a complete turnaround and I'm thinking, what happened to everything? Because things were indeed getting better. People were getting along. Blacks and whites were mixing and they were enjoying each other's subcultures if you want to call it that. And it was so, so much better as time was going on and then it took a complete reversal. And it's very frustrating to me because, you know, when you see your country going that direction, when you see a racial divide like this, where suddenly now blacks have to be over here, whites have to be over here, and we're not even supposed to have any real community anymore. That to me is a disaster. So in a sense, we're reproducing segregation 60 years later. And that's great. I was a nineties kid. I mean, I remember growing up with Dave Chappelle and, you know, rap was becoming popular and MTV and so on. It was a big, it was actually a big shift. And I know growing up too, I mean, I don't think I ever really cared about what race my friends were. You know, looking back now, I can see I had a very diverse group of friends, but I don't think we ever even talked about it, actually. I myself, I'm a nineties child and like you, race wasn't an issue. We had, you know, Dave Chappelle where race was talked about, but in a funny way where you all can get together and laugh about it. It wasn't divisive and weird and nasty the way it's become today. We used to have what we called cultural appreciation, and we could enjoy other cultures or subcultures. We could enjoy other people's music. We could enjoy other people's food. And now it's gone from cultural appreciation to cultural appropriation. So you can't even touch something that is supposedly from one group. There were some ladies out in California, I believe it was California and they, maybe it was in maybe Portland, Oregon, who knows where they were at, but they, they decided they they'd been in Mexico and they love tacos. They love tacos so much. They decided to have a taco stand. Oh my God. They got attacked for having a taco stand because they appropriated tacos from Mexicans. So no longer could you appreciate and have people say, well, that's really cool because these people who aren't even Mexicans love our food. So the Mexicans, by the way, weren't saying this was being said by the left. And it goes one way. If it was the other way around, no one would care and it wouldn't be a problem. But if the right people do it, now we have a problem. And it's a big deal. I know there are people these days who argue that, well, is it, doesn't it actually help, you know, underprivileged people, for example, if you make them recognize that they are oppressed and you help people understand that they're oppressed. I mean, do you feel that actually, do you feel that benefits people? This is one of the big narratives, of course, right now. I think when you convince people that they're oppressed, you create a victim mentality. You create an excuse for them to have for failure and that never helps anybody. It never helps somebody to be told, you know what, if you fail, it's not your fault. So continue failing. There's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. Well, you know, I think we've all seen a lot of the BLM protests where you look at the picture and it's mostly like white college kid liberals, it seems. And you know, of course, I think a lot of them do legitimately believe that they're trying to do something good. Do you feel that their actions are actually helping though? Well, tens of billions in damages, destroyed lives, property. Is that helping anybody? I'd say no. I guess, you know, bringing Black Lives Matter, it's very frustrating because, of course, we do care about black lives. And I certainly do because my children are not actually totally white. So I care about black lives. I care about biracial lives. And, you know, I care about people. And when you start dividing people by race, where everything is about race, an interesting thing happened recently. A lot of people have heard about Gorilla's Glue Girl. That just came out in the media. So Gorilla Glue Girl, she wanted to make a really slick hairstyle. So she took Gorilla Glue and put it in her hair. And by the way, it looked really, really good. So the effect was nice. But then she couldn't actually get it out of her hair. And she's now getting surgery because the glue stuck to everything in her skin. And it's miserable and dangerous. And so now she's getting surgery. So anyway, she went on the Internet and she put this information out. And everybody sort of thought it was kind of funny. And then I saw this article in USA Today. I think it was yesterday. And somebody said, talked about how hair products is systemic racism. So I'm like, how the heck are hair products systemic racism? And what happened was this woman who was writing this article claimed that black women didn't get enough education about hair products. Now, I think that's a big insult to black women who have been doing their hair for thousands of years, and have used many, many kinds of products to get whatever kind of result they would like. And certainly white women have had problems with hair products. Like hasn't a white woman ever like use a bad perm and have a huge frizz or had a horrible hair color turned out to be some horrible red, orange nightmare? What about in the 70s when we used to iron our hair and burn it on the ironing table? So I mean, this is ridiculous that this will be systemic. And what's even and then she goes on to say, if you go to a store, the black products, the black hair products on the bottom shelf, although if you're in maybe Montana, where 95% of the people are white in a certain town, yes, you're going to have black hair products on the bottom shelf. But I live in Prince George's County. And believe me, the white people products on the bottom shelf, because we're mostly a black county. So this is absolutely just ridiculous. And anybody who knows history, and this is black history months, so hey, they should know this. Madam CJ Walker was a black woman who in 1905, realized that, hey, there's not enough black hair products on the market. She went out and made a company and became a millionaire selling black hair products. But I do not think there's systemic racism on black hair products. But it seems like they're finding that the left is finding every excuse they can to say this is black, this is white. And anything that's black is being being assaulted and pushed down by white people. And that's not helping our country. And I can't speak personally about hair products, obviously. But there's a tendency to treat black people like children, like we're incapable of understanding, you know, not to put Gorilla Glue in your hair. It's so ridiculous. And our white allies seem to condescend toward us and that sort of paternal attitude toward us, I find insulting, personally. You know, I've actually heard a lot of people say that, that the very nature of victim mentality creates a hierarchy, where there are people who believe that they're like serving you like you know, Madame Antoinette or something like that. Like, you know, here's some bread, you poor man, you know, eat some cake. Yeah, you know, it. I've heard a lot of people express that, that actually it bothers them, this this type of culture that's coming about. And even worse than that, if you're a black person, and you're a conservative, in my personal experience, liberals respond almost as if you're ungrateful. How dare you not appreciate what I've done for you? It's obviously very condescending. You know, you're almost like a slave that escaped the plantation. You know, how dare you? I provided so well for you, and you didn't appreciate what I did for you. And that's equally condescending and insulting. You know, actually, I've talked with Larry Elder about this as well. And he gets called an Uncle Tom for having political views that they don't approve of. And I know he's been kind of, a lot of people I've spoken to are kind of like, what, you want me to be equal, but you don't want me to have my own opinions when it comes to politics? How does this work? Well, that's essentially it. The left always wants to have an open dialogue and debate, except if you disagree with them, in which case, please be quiet and sit over there. So if you're a black conservative, you're dismissed, you know, immediately. And our attempt right now, while we're speaking up, is we need enough black voices to speak up and say, hey, we disagree with what's going on. We don't like the direction this country's headed into. And if we're loud enough, I think at some point they can't ignore us. And hopefully that will slip into the mainstream and rub off on some of the liberals out there who think that all black people think alike, are a Black Lives Matter supporter, are, you know, support the Democrat policies. We want to change that sort of attitude. That's our hope. It's funny because when we wrote our book, one of the things he pointed out in it is that when people see us, they think we're liberal. We have to be liberal. After all, you know, I married a black man in 1979. I have three non-white children. I've traveled the world. He's traveled the world. He's spent a whole year in India going to school, spent time in Mexico. I've done the same thing. And we have friends of all races. And so everybody says, oh my God, you know, you're so, you're so liberal. And the problem is we're not. And we might have been more liberal at one point, but we moved toward the middle and then we moved a little bit toward conservatism and then worked toward conservatism because we saw what the liberal thinking and the policies were doing to the country. So it's not that we don't, aren't quote open-minded, but we want good policies that make our country move forward and that don't cause a divide between the races. And part of that is not us necessarily moving to the right. It's the left is moving so far to the left that we look right wing in comparison. I'm actually, if you look at my viewpoints, fairly moderate, but by today's standards, I'm next to Hitler. Yeah. Dave, you actually said something interesting a bit ago where you said that what the left is doing with these race policies is they're bringing back segregation. That's a pretty bold statement. Can you explain that to us? So let's talk about Black Lives Matter, which will kind of relate to that. Well, they're a Marxist organization and people have this assumption that they, Black Lives Matter wants to improve race relations. I would argue that as a Marxist organization, their intent is to make race relations worse. They want more friction, more conflict, because when you create that conflict, eventually you can destroy the foundation of society so you can rebuild it and what they want in their image is this new social utopia. And so they want separation. They want anger and division because if we got along, well, they'll have no power. Yeah, it's actually true. Actually, I was reading a book just recently about some of the early writings about the race movements in the US and they actually talk about this, that they wanted to create class conscious because they believe people were oppressed and they didn't recognize the repression. And so they had to convince people that they were victims and then start rallying them to go out and protest for social change. Now, you're saying that you don't believe these protests for social change have actually benefited things, that you're saying that what they're doing is going against or destroying even what Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned and also what the founding fathers envisioned. Can you explain that to us? Go ahead, Dave, because this is your thing. You're good at it. I would say, you know, if you look at the black community right now with our interactions with law enforcement, for example, it's getting worse. When you convince people that they're oppressed and they should be angry, that bubbles over until their daily interactions with law enforcement. And that's why we're seeing more and more videos of black men, you know, fighting the cops because they're told that they're oppressed. They're told that they should be angry. They're told if a cop comes and talks to you, that they are oppressing you. And so, yes, it's getting worse, not better. And that's by design. And what's really sad about Black Lives Matter, which is amazing, is that they themselves have come out and said, we are a Marxist organization. They have their whole, I think it's ten rules they have for the organization, their manifesto, shall we say, it says we want black power for black people. So there's nothing in the organization that wants white people around at all. And yet there are many blacks who do not know this. There are many whites who do not know this. And they actually think Black Lives Matter is something wonderful. And it's amazing that they don't realize what kind of organization they are promoting. And Black Lives Matter was kind of caught with their hand in the cookie jar with that part on their website about, you know, rejecting the Western nuclear family. And that was rightfully called out. And very quietly, they removed that because, you know, they're Marxists, but they don't want to necessarily be caught being Marxist, Marxist, you know, super Marxist. And even for them, they had to go, OK, that one looks bad. People are on to us. Pull back up a little bit. Oh, that's gone. We were just kidding. They're not kidding. And I feel that whole thing with their attack on nuclear family, especially as a black person, where in the black community, the illegitimacy rate is one of the biggest reasons why there's so much black crime, black dysfunction in the black community. So for an organization that wants to help black people, they were actually encouraging rejecting the nuclear family. That's that's the main issue in the black community. How can you be for black, you know, improvement if that's one of your goals? It's it's absolutely in contradiction. And that exposes what they really are, not a pro-black organization, a Marxist organization using black people as tools, as their foot soldiers in this revolutionary cause they have to want to destroy our our our foundation. Yeah, I remember watching the stories on that when they removed that part of their website because people noticed that they're like, what is what is destroying the nuclear family have to do with racial equality? And that's a good point, too, is that wouldn't that actually make worse a lot of the problems you're seeing? Because, you know, fatherlessness is one of the big causes of this, no matter what race you are, actually, when it comes to the challenges people face. Right. You can trace the crime rate in the black community with the illegitimacy rate. So since the 1950s, it's gotten worse and it correlates with the lack of black fathers. So ironically, as we got more freedom in the black community and more legal rights, there's more crime and more dysfunction. So that's that's the main issue driving all of all the issues in the black community, illegitimacy, lack of fathers, lack of family. And one of the interesting things about Black Lives Matter is they went after the police and because they've gone after the police there, the police are now having trouble recruiting anybody to be in the police, especially black people, because who wants to be an Uncle Tom in their own community? Right. So now when the police have their academies, they used to have academies with like maybe 80, 90 people in them, and now they have eight or nine. And so how are they so understaffed now that they can't even serve the community properly? And who are they serving? A lot of times it is the black community and the black community doesn't need less help. They need more help. And that yet Black Lives Matter has pretty much put a big damper on that and has destroyed a lot of jobs. This was a great opportunity for a lot of black people to get jobs as police officers. And now they don't want to do it. So what does that tell you about Black Lives Matter? Are they helping the black community or are they not helping? It shouldn't be defund the police. It should be fund the police, give them more training so that we can improve relationships. Defunding it does the exact opposite, as you point out. And you know, it's not that there isn't work to be done in the United States. There's always work to be done and there's always good ways to approach things. Like, for example, with Black History Month. Black History Month was very popular back in the day when pretty much there weren't very many black people in the history books. That has improved over time and it could be improved some more. But we don't want to turn Black History Month into Black Lives Matter Month where, as a matter of fact, in Prince George's County, where I live, they actually approved Black Lives Matter as running Black History Month. So now they're introducing racism against white people. They're introducing the Marxist theories in that month. And that is not where you want it to go. What you really want to do is expand the history of black people into our entire American history. Work on that, but don't cause more division. It used to be a celebration of black people, a positive thing that we all could partake in. And now it's a celebration of everything to be angry about. And I think it's destructive. Another phenomenon we're seeing is this white guilt and the encouragement of it. I think we've all seen the videos of, you know, these activists walking down the street, black activists walk down the street and, you know, making white women get on the ground and like kiss their boots. And, you know, they do it. They do it. And I mean, do you feel that you feel this helps in any way? I'm curious. You know, I feel bad for white people because a lot of them are frightened. They're absolutely frightened to say the wrong thing, post the wrong thing. Am I going to lose my job, my career? Will I be a social outcast? And, you know, that's honestly by design, you know, white people make up the majority of this country. So that's the group that Black Lives Matter needs to be frightened so that they're scared and don't fight back. Because black people, we're 13 percent. 13 percent is not going to overturn the majority. They need white people to submit. And that's what we're seeing right now, that attempt. The other thing we're seeing is this race consciousness. And this actually surprised me when I first started seeing the writings on this, because they don't want people to become blind to skin color. When I was growing up, that was what they wanted. They wanted you to not look at the color of a person's skin, right? That was Dr. King's idea to judge a person by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin. It's changing now where they want you to look at a person's race and to really assume their privilege or their persecution based on the color of their skin. I'm curious, do you feel that the recognition of race, I guess for you, Dave, I mean, do you feel more people see you as your race now rather than just a person? How do you feel this has affected things? Yeah, you know, I've always found that my personal experience, you know, people will see your race and there are stereotypes. But my thing has always been, as soon as you talk to somebody and you have some rapport with them, people stop seeing race and it just sort of melts away. And the way to get to a colorblind society is by dialogue, by conversation, by interacting with one another in a positive way. And that causes race to sort of melt away and become background. And now it's, you know, I think I can, in your experience, being a white person walking around, her race has definitely stood out in our county, which is majority black. And so yeah, so for her, not just myself, her skin color is, you know, changing her interactions with people in public. And what's really sad is that once upon a time, I could go into places which were predominantly, not just my county, but for work. I worked with hospitals in one of my careers as a medical sign language interpreter, and I used to work in predominantly black hospitals. And when I went in and was signing with people, they were like, Oh, you're so cool, you know, because I signed, by the way, black American sign language, because I worked in the black community. And the black people I work with thought I was awesome. And now I noticed that if I walk into that same place, now I'm looked at like, Oh, you're a white person. Oh, you know, and by the way, what one of the things that's happening, which is really sad, is this new concept that only a black person can understand a black person. So you should, if you're a black person, you should have a black doctor, because white doctors will not do a good job with you. And in the in the medical sign language community, there's this new concept that if a black person goes into a hospital or anyplace else, they deserve a black sign language interpreter who understands them culturally and understands black American sign language. Well, the funny thing is, there's a lot of black interpreters who do not sign black American sign language because they never learned it. I do know it, but they're going to send the black person who doesn't know it instead of the white person that doesn't know it. So it's all based on the color of your skin as opposed to can you do the job? And are you are you are you doing the job? Well, and and that's a very sad thing when we're going to start picking people that have to match us racially. That's what white people used to remember white people used to say, I don't want a black doctor. Now white people don't seem to care about that. But now black people say, I don't want a white doctor. It's like, let me you know, you know, you're talking about we're assigning, you know, personal, you know, behavior to race and certain what the way you talk or the way you dress. And I personally find that extremely racist. And, you know, it's funny, we look at someone like Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, people who are of color who grew up privileged. And one thing I've noticed, and I find kind of sad is that they feel compelled in certain interviews to prove that they're black by Oh, I listen to hip hop. Oh, I have a friend called corn pop or T bone or Cory Booker, he has a T bone that we find didn't actually exist. And there's this need by black politicians to try to prove their blackness. And it's really sad because you are who you are. If you're black, it's not a choice. It's your skin color. It's not who you know, or how you talk or what kind of music you listen to. I like country music. Does that make me not black? No, it's good music. Sorry, I like it. It's cultural. You know, I grew up, you know, with some white collar friends, white, blue collar friends. And that's my country music. And I moved to the Eastern Shore, which is very rural. And there's more country music out there. I'm like, well, you know, just that's pretty good. And I started liking it. So you know, anytime we assign you know, characteristics to somebody because of the race, that's that's the most racist thing you can do. And I think that's very counterproductive. It hurts black people. That's interesting. You said it hurts black people. That's an interesting statement. How do you see this hurting them actually? Well, when if you're told if you're black, you need to talk a certain way. The reality is when you go for a job interview somewhere, and you're speaking to bionics, you're not going to get that job. If you're told that it's okay to walk around dressed a certain way with your pants hanging around your ankles and your hair and all sorts of, you know, weird fashions, people will judge you on that. And that will affect your prospects and finding a career and moving through corporate America. So telling black people that they should behave a certain way. And unfortunately, a lot of these, you know, black stereotypes as far as how we behave, aren't the most productive. And we should, you know, no black person should be told that their skin color determines, you know, how they talk or dress. That's, that's very, very harmful to them. This is interesting. So is it accurate to say that you're, what you're saying, I guess, is that it actually encourages stereotypes, where you're expected to fit into a stereotype because of the way that it's framed? Is this accurate? That's what it is. And a lot of times liberals will, will project something on as people in this, in the idea that's helping them. And it's their own sort of fantasy of how they view you. So, you know, the liberal sees me and they go, well, you're supposed to be A, B, C, and D. I'm going, wait a second, you're assigning that based on what? My skin color? And you're not racist? And that's the worst thing. Now, Dave, of course, I was reading through your book, and I know you're quite well versed in this. You mentioned a bit about what the Marxists are doing. You said that they're basically trying to use people based on their race as their foot soldiers for this movement they have. And, you know, ironically, trying to stir people up and stir up emotions that a lot of them didn't have, actually, by the admission of a lot of these individuals, these Marxists and progressives. I'm curious, based on your research, what do you see the intention of this being? What is the, what is the end game for this? Well, what is the 1619 Project? What is, what is their attempt? Why are we tearing down statues? They want to erase the foundation of what America is. You cannot build a new society on an old foundation. If you understand Marx, his philosophy was a revolutionary philosophy. It requires a changing of the guard. And in this case, our capitalist, you know, liberal society. And so the intentions of the modern-day Marxists is to erase that, to remove it. And right now they're trying to do that by convincing people that it's racist to appreciate George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, who were slave owners. They want to convince white people that they should abandon all their history. And let's face it, white people did found this country, for the most part. So that's what, that's what they're trying to do over time is to, especially we see that with the college kids. They're, they're so far gone in this, down this rabbit hole of just attacking everything that's traditionalist country. And so, yes, their long-term goal is to destroy the foundation of this country and rebuild their new society, the new utopia, which I think will look more like 1984 than any utopia. And you know, it's interesting because if it wasn't a Marxist attempt, we would see a slower, like we do with Martin Luther King. After he changed things and the civil rights movement went through, we saw a gradual change where there was more, there were more rights, obviously rights for black people. And there were more black people going into politics and into, into, into the medical systems and into businesses. And things started changing where things were growing, growing together. And if they wanted to continue that, if truly we just wanted to continue that this society become more, more colorblind, and as the society, the demographics change, because there are more black people than there used to be, or more brown people coming in from other countries, then it would just slowly change. And that would be just dandy. They don't like the slow change. In fact, they don't want the change at all. And that's why, but people don't understand that, that this is, they want to stop that change. They want to destroy everything so they can get what they want, which is a completely different society. Now, just last question here. Where do you see America heading with this? You've, you've watched the changes over the years. You've kind of seen the changes. Where is it heading first of all? And what do you think the solution is to this? If, if these movements aren't the solution, what is the solution? Well, as far as where it's heading, I think we have, you know, a living example in China, where we have a totalitarian government fused with the private sector, working in combination to be oppressive. And, and, and we see it here now with social media and the Democrat party coordinating with the social media giants to suppress free speech and to punish people. People are losing their jobs for having the wrong political opinion. Now we are seeing these sort of ideological tests being given to the military. Are you a Trump supporter? You know, are you on this board? Have you said this or that? We're going to, you know, purge you from the military. So I think we're heading toward the Chinese model. And how do we, how do we stop that? Well, that's, that's the big question. And I will say this about that. It's an issue of organization. The left, by nature, they're, they organize. That's what they do. They start winning college, you know, joining groups and organizing. What do Republicans do? Conservatives, you know, in college? Well, there's four of them wearing bow ties, drinking beer. And that's, well, we're going to, of course we're going to lose. So it's not in the nature of conservatives and libertarians to want to organize and create a structure to fight back. And unfortunately, we're probably 80 years behind the left in this matter. So we, the very first thing we need to do is remember, we can't win just by having one guy like Donald Trump have power. We need the organization behind them. And that happens at the micro level. So that's what we need to start at. This concept of unity that has been pushed, you know, Biden pushed this whole unity thing through his whole, you know, as he was moving toward the presidency, unity, unity is unity. And now that he's there, not so much unity, but still unity is being pushed that if you don't just go along with the program, you don't want unity. And people are believing this. They feel guilty if they don't want unity, but we have to stand up and say enough is enough. We want people to get together, but not with the fake unity you're putting together. We need to work, work to make sure that we keep our society and our country, the kind of society and country we want and not have it go downhill just because we want to, we don't want to cause trouble and we don't want to feel guilty. So unity, yes, but not the kind of unity that's being pushed. Yeah. And I think that's a problem. There's a lot of people, I know deep down may have problems with what's going on, but they're just frightened to actually stand up and say anything. It's easier to lay back and you know what, I have my house here in the suburbs. My kids are safe. I got enough money to go on vacation once a year. Please leave me alone. Go Black Lives Matter. I don't want to deal with this. And the more people that do that, the more we just lose out because there's not enough people standing up in a good way. Not in a crazy way, but in a good way saying, look, that is where we want to go. And we're going to also push forward for unity, but let's do it in a sensible fashion and a legal fashion and a right fashion and one that supports the constitution of our nine states. Great. Thank you. So just for our viewers again, their book is Black and White, How the Left is Destroying the Dream of Martin Luther King Jr. and Our Founding Fathers. And Pat Brown, Dave Brown, thank you again for being on Crossroads. Thank you, Joshua. This was a great interview. We enjoyed being with you. Thank you.