PragerU Live: Carol Swain (5/25/17)

one hello everyone I'm Elicia Krauss here at the prer U HQ in Los Angeles and we're very excited to bring you another special pru live this time time with this week's presenter Dr Carol M Swain she's a professor of Law and a professor of political science currently at vanderbelt University she's also taught at Princeton so she's a real tough and Smart Cookie and congrats Carol thank you so much for being with us today your video has over 4 million views so it's getting tons of attention but people watching today should know that if they have the restricted mode on their YouTube account then that means when they log on they will not be able to see it because it is currently restricted by YouTube to find out more about that you can visit prageru.com petitions and find out why prageru seems to be censoring you know why YouTube seems to be censoring so many PR videos but first Dr Swain thanks so much for being here with us today are you actually saying that mine is being uh censored at this time yes ma'am it is you're kidding no did you not know that yes no it is it is currently I guess uncouth or something I don't know what YouTube has with a you know they Haven issue with history I suppose so you're saying that people can't watch the video now they can watch the video but if you're a parent like myself who has a kid on the internet and you have the restricted mode to block out you know things like awful content it would be dangerous for to educate young people right yeah I don't I don't think that there's I've watched the video a few times there's nothing sexually explicit there's nothing violent about it it's just the basic history and the Inconvenient Truth of the de the Democratic party and it still has over 4 million views so but yeah I know but um that's really unfortunate because uh Prager University provides a way for many uh you know homeschoolers and people who need to supplement the education that students receive in public and private schools it's a source for so many people so that's really unfortunate well it is especially because the majority of our viewers are under the age of 35 and you just brought up the public schools I I have so many friends I was homeschooled all 12 years but I have so many friends that have told me that they never really learned the history of either political party so do you think that the history of the major the two major political parties in the United States should be something that's taught in public schools today I would say so and you may know part of my story that I was a Democrat for most of my life and as a black person I know I should call myself African-American but I would call myself black um I knew all about slavery and Jim Crow and racism but I thought of it in terms of white people versus black people I was not aware of how intertwined the Democratic party history was with all of this and so for myself even though you know I studied American politics it did not jump out that this was one political party you know that was doing 99% of it and at what point in your life did you realize that just gradually uh over time but I learned the most after I left the Democratic party and I first around 2000 I was an independent and for various reasons as a conservative I felt that I could no longer vote for the Democratic party and uh it was 2009 when I officially became a Republican and then I started digging into history and I was sort of shocked and I think part of it was because my family was not a political family so we didn't think or talk in terms of Democrats versus Republicans like most black people you know you're born a Christian and you're born a a a Democrat and so I didn't question that but then once I started really dealing um uh really you know digging into the history I was pretty shocked at how little I knew and most people that I know whether they're Republicans Or democrats they don't have a good sense of the histories of the major political parties so so why do you think that many Americans don't know the history of the democratic party well I mean if you take a college course they have a superficial uh uh overview of the two political parties but it doesn't go into detail and so there's no way that a student would know unless they actually studied history so I think that's part of it and then as far as public schools uh with Civics courses I'm sure that it's an overview and it's not something that you would get unless you were to dig around and then I think it's shocking I wish uh every uh college and uh public school student could watch that video because it's very easy for them to do their own research and fact check everything that's in my video or other Prager University videos on your website there's a little documentary about your history your personal history and your professional history as well and you share how you came out of a awful um you know kind of child childhood and you were from an impoverished family you also talk about about a lot about poverty mentality can you share a little bit what with our audience what you think that is I think for a lot of people and uh one of my sisters uh my older sister we talk about this a lot in that um according to her she uh had the IQ of a genius and I wasn't there when her teachers told her her test scores but she uh said that she felt like this was our lot you know we were born you know into this poverty and we had to stay there and I think that the messages that you get from society is that if you're black to a certain extent it used to be if you were a woman if you're poor you know that's your lot there's no way out and I never accepted that I always believed that if I worked hard enough I could overcome the circumstances of my birth now it wasn't easy I ended up dropping out of school after uh 8th grade married at 16 had uh three children very rapidly but I later uh went back to school got a high school equivalency uh a community college degree and then went on to get four other college and university degrees and I did not squeak by uh I worked hard and I was an honor student uh and I started in one of the schools as a work study student and because I was dependable and reliable it um resulted in a full-time job nights and weekends and I worked that job while I was getting my Bachelor's degree and I was going to school full-time at the time and I had children and it um goes to show that if you are determined and you know you really believe that what you do makes a difference you can overcome circumstances that on the surface they seem impossible so there's a TED Talk that's rolling around right now and I actually just saw it before I came in to talk to you today on this very special prayer you live if you're just tuning in of course we're joined by Dr Carol Swain she's our presenter for this week's video the Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic party and this Ted talk talks about how poverty isn't a character problem it's a cash problem uh what do you what are your thoughts on that well I mean it's it's a it's a combination I guess of course if you're poor that implies that you don't have a lot of money but uh at one time there were there's there were so many people that were selfmade millionaire there people that came from great poverty and back in those days they could work that way and end up at a institution like Harvard or Yale it wasn't so geared towards the elite people who were smart were able to get into institutions and if you had bright ideas you were able to overcome your poverty and so of course poor people have less money than rich people but there's something and messages from society that keep people in poverty and for minori they're told repeatedly uh that white people um you know are so biased against them that it doesn't matter what they do they're going to be discriminated against and young people are told that if you don't have role models that look like you then you can't achieve you know certain goals and I think that's totally ridiculous uh I know in my own experience that when I was in college there were not uh professors that look like me and many of my mentors were older white men because those were the ones that were teaching in the 70s and 80s and um they uh were the mentors that encouraged me to believe that if I worked hard enough I could do anything and I reached my goals and I exceeded my goals and um I think we send the wrong messages to our young people just because you're born poor doesn't mean you have to have to stay that way H do you think that pursuing a higher education is necessary in order to shed the weight and kind of that poverty mentality trap not I mean not necessarily there are many ways to be successful and not everyone belongs in college there are vocational jobs and just all kinds of jobs where people are able to work with whatever their talents are and they can be successful uh it helps to have an advanced degree in some cases but we all know people who have bachelor's degrees sometimes master's degrees and they working at Starbucks or they're working at a grocery store so that's far more uh involved and I think one of the worst things we can do is push people into college who are not prepared to be there or maybe we push them into a level of Education where they might have been successful if they had started like me in a community college but we start them off at a four-year College where they are thrown in with people who are better prepared they find themselves struggling they fail and they give up on education those same people could have been successful in many cases if they had started at the right institution so a final question for you and thank you so much for your time today do you think that there are some politicians in the United States who want to keep certain Americans in poverty I mean there's a poverty industry just like there's an abortion industry and to a certain extent I would say that there's a that there's a Cancer and disease industry and if if you were ever able to solve those problems you would put a lot of people out of business and so I think that when it comes to African-Americans Hispanics and poor whites the programs and policies we have in place are often designed by Elites educated at Ivy Leake schools they don't have a clue as to what they're trying to address they have some ideal in their minds but they really don't know much about the problems and so I think that we are using the wrong appro approach and the definition of insanity we hear often is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result and that's what we do when we approach poverty and that's what we do when we approach many of the problems affecting minorities Dr Swain thank you so much for making time for us today loved your prageru video and I'm so glad that over 4 million Americans have watched it and uh we'll keep you updated on that restricted mode that it's current currently on your video on YouTube thank you so much thanks for your time and this is just a quick note in case you guys didn't know Prager youu is hiring yep that's right if you want to be a Cool member of our awesome team except Jared um he's the only non awesome member he's not here that's why I had the backbone to say that just kidding we are hiring and you should check it out if you go to prageru.com you can find out more information and exactly what roles we are looking to fill I'm the director of Outreach you work with cool people like me every single day some of the positions are here in LA and I think some of them could be remote and on a more serious note I wanted to take a second to remind you all that while we sleep in maybe go to the beach and enjoy Barbecue on Monday for the long weekend it is Memorial day and today I'm wearing the Kia bracelet of a friend that I went to college with he was killed in Pia Afghanistan in 2009 and this bracelet was given to me by his dear wife Jane who's a fan of prageru and and is probably watching right now um just remember that this weekend can be very raw and emotional and difficult for many husbands and wives and parents and children so when you see a soldier or their family take the time to thank them this weekend thanks for watching and everyone have a wonderful and meaningful Memorial Day weekend e e e e e e