The Daily Signal - It's Time for an Honest Conversation About Race in America

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

In the midst of outrage and shock over the death of George Floyd, many Americans want to respond in a way that will bring about positive change - they just don’t know how.  Sophia Nelson, commentator and author of the book: “E Pluribus ONE: Reclaiming Our Founders' Vision for a United America,” joins the podcast to explain how we can move forward as one nation and work together to vanquish racism in our country.  Be sure to check Kay Coles James op-ed here and this Daily Signal story entitle: "In the Wake of George Floyd’s Death, What These Black Leaders Think Should Happen." We also cover these stories:  In a call to governors, President Trump urged them to be tough when it came to the violent protests over the death of George Floyd.  President Barack Obama and George Floyd’s family members are speaking out against the violent riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death.  The Minnesota attorney general says he will hold the police officers involved in the death of George Floyd to “the highest degree of accountability.” Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, June 2nd. I'm Kate Trinco. And I'm Virginia Allen. In the midst of outrage and shock over the death of George Floyd, many Americans want to respond in a way that will bring about positive change. They just don't know how. Today, I talk with Sophia Nelson, commentator and author of the book, E. Pluribus I, reclaiming our founder's vision for a United America.

Nelson explains how we can move forward. as one nation and work together to vanquish racism in our country. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. In a call to governors, President Donald Trump urged them to be tough when it came to the violent protests over the death of George Floyd, the African-American man killed in Minneapolis last week when an officer knelt on his neck for nearly 10 minutes, despite Floyd saying, I can't breathe.

The country faced riots in several areas over the weekend, as well as peaceful protests. In a call to governors, Trump reportedly urged them not to be weak. Here's some of what Trump said, using audio CNN obtained and says is from Trump's call to the governors. President Barack Obama is speaking out. against the violent riots in the wake of George Floyd's death. In an op-ed for Medium published Monday, President Barack Obama wrote, the small minority of folks who've resorted to violence in various forms, whether out of genuine anger or mere opportunism, are putting innocent people at risk, compounding the destruction of neighborhoods that are often already short on services and investment,

and detracting from the larger cause. George Floyd's relatives are also speaking out against the violence. On Sunday night, Terrence Floyd, George Floyd's younger brother, joined ABC News to tell the world how his brother would have wanted his community and all of America to respond to his death. Like I said, he was about peace. He was about unity. But the things that's transpiring now, yeah, they may call it unity,

but it's destructive unity. It's not what he was about. That's not what my brother was about. You know, he would motivate you to channel. If you're angry, it's okay to be angry, but channel your anger to do something positive or make a change another way. And Quincy Mason Floyd, one of George Floyd's sons, is also calling for an end to the violence. During a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally on Sunday in Bryan, Texas, Floyd told KBT.S. that, quote, tearing up things, it's not going to solve anything.

My dad is in peace, and we have to be the ones to deal with all this stress. It's going to be tough to get over this day by day. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison addressed on Monday the fact that three officers were present during the killing of George Floyd, but have not been charged, at least yet. The fourth officer, Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck, has been charged with third-degree murder. Ellison told MSNBC that the three other officers would be held to the highest degree of accountability that the law and the facts will support.

The nation's capital is under curfew. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced yesterday that the city would be under a curfew Monday and Tuesday night beginning at 7 p.m. The mayor's decision to close down the city two nights in a row is in response to violent protests in D.C. after the death of George Floyd last week. Many of the protests have taken place close to the White House. During a press conference on Monday, Bowser said, quote, we will not allow the continued destruction of our hometown by people who are coming here to protest or by D.C. residents. We certainly empathize with the righteous cause that people are here protesting. Every single American should be

outraged by the murder of George Floyd. However, smash windows and and looting are becoming a bigger story than the broken systems that got us here. Next up, we'll have Virginia's interview with Sophia Nelson in which they discuss racism in America. Conservative women. Conservative feminists. It's true. We do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories in interviews that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called

feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. I am joined by Sophia Nelson, commentator and author of several books, including her latest E. Pluribus I, reclaiming our founder's vision for a United America. Sophia, thank you so much for your time today. It's my pleasure to be with you, and I'm looking forward to our discussion. Me too, me too. Now, Sophia, that vision of a United America is really currently being tested in the wake of George Floyd's death. Can you take just a moment and remind us of that vision that the founding fathers had for a United Nation?

Yes, I think that's a great way to open, particularly in a moment. like this. And be clear, we're in a moment, and we're in a very American moment. You know, I'm an optimist, even in a dark moment like this. America has been here before, and the whole intent of my book, EPLURABUS 1, where I translated the word unum into one, is based on our motto, 1780. Charles Thompson is tasked by Sam Adams, cousin to John Adams to come up with a national motto. And he comes up with imploribus unum out of many one. Now, you have to put it into context, right? Because think back to 1780. We have now one, our independence. We are a new nation. And we have 13 colonies at the time, 13 individual states. And none of them agree on a whole

lot of anything. I mean, if you think, again, Massachusetts and Virginia agreed on everything, or Rhode Island and South Carolina agreed, they didn't. And yet they were in agreement in their purpose of unity. And I think that what we've lost in this moment is that we are under some mistaken belief that we all have to agree, that we all have to see the world the same, or even experience it the same, and we don't. That's not reality. And what we have to, we have to, to give back to is understanding that we are Americans first. And in a moment like this, I have never seen in my lifetime, and I am in my early 50s, I regret to say, I am. And I have never seen a moment in my lifetime. My parents are classic baby boomers, you know, grew up in the civil rights era,

mother from the West Coast, father from the East Coast, very different experiences growing up. But I listen to their stories, and I still have a grandmother who's alive at 90, who went through all of this. I mean, World War II, she's seen it all. She's seen the movement, the marches, and she's still someone that I talk to about this regular. And they experienced something very different than those of us who were born after, like, let's say, late 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond. We've had relative peace. We've had relative privilege. We've had relative success and not a lot of conflict, but here comes this moment.

And I've never seen anything like this before in terms of what I like to say, my white brothers and sisters, those who are my neighbors, my friends, even family members, because unless people forget, black and white people get married in this country. We have relatives that are part of our families. They may look different, but they are. And I've never seen a moment where white citizens are equally. outraged and upset, like really upset. This one struck a nerve here that I think is going to end up unifying us.

And what we have to remember is sometimes we fight, sometimes we disagree. But when Americans sense that something's not just and not fair, harking back to Dr. King and the civil rights era, when people saw what happened at Selma on the bridge, it changed and shifted the country. because people saw people peacefully walking across the bridge being ho, being beat, having dogs sicked on them. And people like Biola Luzza, who was one of the white women who went down to help and was murdered by some Klansmen while she was driving civil rights workers. So this moment is one of those moments where we have to look at ourselves and say, who are we? And we're Americans.

And when we get our IRA up, and right now, there are peaceful protests, but there are also those who are rioting and not doing the right thing. And I want to just say to them that rioting isn't going to get you what you want. That's not who you want to be. Protests is who we are as Americans. That's what we do. We march. We have the Boston Tea Party, which some would argue was a riot.

And sometimes we have to get attention. And so I just think that what I was trying to say in my book is that, that the founding fathers with all of their flaws and they had many. Slavery was a part of our beginning. And as you can see, we're dealing with that right now in the 21st century. Don't forget, America started 1607 here in Virginia. 1619, the first slaves arrived. So fast forward, 400 years later, Virginia, we're still talking about this.

So we've got work to do. But the reminder is what they wanted us never to forget. is that we are one America. That's why Lincoln saved the union at all costs, because had we lost the Civil War, had the union lost, we would be a nation split in two, south and north, and I don't know what would have happened with Westward expansion. All of that would have been in jeopardy. We wouldn't be the country that we are now. So unity of purpose is what I think people have to focus on. Not that we always agree, not that we always are going to like the same things, but that when we know something is not American, when we know it's not right, we know it's

not who we are, we buck up against it and we challenge it. And that's what's happening right now. And that makes me proud. I want to talk more about the power of this moment that you brought up, because I think that's so significant. We've never quite seen something like this where it is just, like you say, it's hitting a nerve deep within people that's causing a response to George Floyd's death, a death that never should have happened. What was your first response when you learned of Floyd's death and saw the video? Regrettably, and I suspect if you were to talk to Kay and Kay wrote a wonderful piece for Fox that, you know, we all read that was powerful. She didn't mince words.

You were to talk to any black person. You know what they're going to tell you they weren't shocked. Apauled, yes, shocked, no. For our white citizens, they're both shocked and appalled. And I say that because before we lost George Floyd, we lost Breonna Taylor, the EMT worker in Kentucky. We lost Omar Arbery in Georgia, jogging. We lost before that we could go through anyone from Philando Castile to Trayvon Martin to we can keep running down the names and it'll be a long list, Tamir Rice. So this happens often tragically.

And for the black community, and I was saying on another, I was on a radio show this morning, and on NPR, and I was saying that I got to talk when my dad bought me a car. I was 16, and before he gave me the keys, sat me down and explained the rules, which are if you get stopped by the police, here's what you do, you don't say anything smart. Your hands are visible, make sure you have your license and the registration. If you have a problem, you called me. Back then we didn't have cell phones. We had to use a pay phone.

And I remember that vividly. My brother got the same talk when he got a car. And so to this day, my brother, who's a grown man with children, I will check on him and make sure, particularly during times like this, hey, you be careful. I don't want you to do an XYZ. And he laughed because I'm his big sister. But it's not funny, but he thinks it's pretty amazing that at this stage of our lives,

I'm still tracking his whereabouts like that. And that's very common in our families and in our communities. Kay talked about this in her piece. So I think that for me, my reaction was very different, appalled, disgusted. I think what really affects us, though, Virginia, all of us is it hits our humanity. And what we all don't understand as human beings is, wait a minute, there's a person. And why didn't those other police officers do something? Because they had the power to tackle the guy, say, hey, you're being excessive or, man, you need to leave them alone.

they had the power to stop that and they did nothing and others were filming it and you can argue they were doing something by filming it but I'm concerned about the callousness that we have as a culture we've become a very coarse culture we don't value life and that starts all the way from the beginning of life to the end of life we don't value life in the 21st century the way we did when I was coming up or when my parents or grandparents were coming up and there was a difference in knowing right and wrong in that, hey, I'm not going to watch something like this go down. I'm either going to get involved or I'm going to get help. And I think that's what really has disturbed all of us that this was videotaped and the rest of us

watched it. We were all witnesses to a murder. And I think that's what has everybody a little bit messed up. Yeah. Thank you for bringing up K. K. Qualls James op-ed. We'll be sure to link that for our listeners because it is so well articulated exactly what you're saying. And, you know, Sophia, I'm, I'm, I'm having that same response that I think so many people are. I'm a white female. And I'm trying to discern what should my response be in this situation. And I've received emails from other people asking that question, saying, I'm a white American, but I'm obviously strongly against racism. I condemn racism.

I want to do something. What can I do? What is your response to that question? Well, it's a great question. And I'll say a couple things about that. one, thank you. I did a post on my Facebook page, and I think Rob, who's one of your colleagues, Bluey, kind of reposted it and took some parts of it on something he did on the podcast website,

and we can link that as well so people can see it. But one of the things I do is I wrote an open letter to everybody on my page who's, you know, one of my white friends or close friends, family, whatever. My nieces are biracial. They have a white mother and a black father. father. And so it's very close. And I wanted to say to my friends that, one, you don't have to apologize to me, so stop sending me text and DMs like you're doing to all your black friends, because you didn't do this. That's number one. Number two, white guilt is not what we need right

now this moment. What we need are allies. What we need are good people to stand up and say, okay, let me examine my day-to-day life and my interactions. Do I have friends of color? Do I have coffee with them? Do I know them? In the workplace, am I making sure that I'm inclusive of other opinions, lenses, thoughts? It's the little things. It may sound trite, but the way we're going to get through this,

I brought up one of my favorite quotes from the Plessy v. Ferguson case that Justice Powell quotes in the Bockey case, way down in the 70s. You have a case that legalized segregation, and then you have a case dealing with affirmative action. And Justice Powell quoting Justice Taney says, we must first be color conscious before we can be color blind. And it's one of my favorite lines because it's what's going to get us through. We have to stop saying these silly things like, I'm colorblind. No, you're not. I'm not.

We all see color. We all see gender. It's the first thing we see when we walk into a room. It just is. okay. The question becomes, what are we going to do about? How are we going to find ways to understand, have courageous conversations about the things we're afraid of, the stereotypes? Look, I'll be honest. And I've seen a lot of African-American leaders on national TV, myself included, who've all said, when we're conditioned to be afraid of large black men,

if I'm in an elevator and a large black man gets on, and it's just me and him, my fear of stereotypes, that man can be dressed in a suit, whatever. So it's not just white people that have these fears, because we all get bombarded with stereotypes. And there's stereotypes about black women, right? We're all angry, didn't you know? So if you buy into these stereotypes, it's how you perceive people and see them, and then that's how you're going to engage them.

And so what you can do is what we see people doing all over this country right now. white police officers and God bless our police officers this has to be a tough moment for them because they're really seen as villains right now I mean we've all watched the videos in places like Philadelphia and other cities all around where police

have literally been beat up by citizens beating them with signs on their bicycles you know violence and and then the police officers are engaging back and it's a mess because there is this righteous anger that has met this unrighteous group of people who I don't think are protesters at all. They're agitators who come in to take advantage of a very difficult moment we're having. And so we've all got to get smarter enough when we look at what people are doing,

particularly white citizens. They've been engaged in peaceful protests. My pastor, who's white, of a major church here in Virginia, gave an amazing message today. I was so proud of him. And we have a diverse church. He's a white pastor with a church that has 30% black and brown in it, which is rare in America. Most churches are still very segregated in 2021. That's just a fact.

And so he acknowledged, he said, I don't get it because I live as a white man, but I can pray with you, talk with you, protest with you, I can do whatever we need to do to make sure that this never happens again. And I think it's things like that that simply says we get it. We're awake. Oh, my God. Like everything you've been trying to tell us, that's really your reality. And I think when people feel heard, what did Dr. King say?

Riot is the language of the unheard. And so when people get angry, right, remember Rodney King, I'm old enough to remember that, I was just starting law school that year. And, you know, I remember Jack Camp, who you know is a hero of mine, rolling up his sleeves, he's HUD's Secretary, he goes down to L.A., He takes President Herbert Walker Bush with him, and they meet and they engage and they talk and they listen and Kim's out throwing the football with the young kids in the street and he's comfortable. And it was great to see a Republican conservative be able to do that. God, I wish we had Jack Kent right now because we need him.

But the point is that that's how we get through and that's how we fix this. We talk, we listen, we cry, we lean in. we stop judging, we stop telling people what their experiences are. We stop telling them what their experiences aren't and we just listen. And we try to do better. And then there has to be systemic change in the structure of how we police in this country, how we do a lot of things in this country. And that's why we keep ending up back here, Virginia,

because we keep putting band-aids on this gaping womb that's 400 years old. and we're not fixing the wound. We're not cleaning it out, letting it have sunlight, and letting it heal so that the wound is healed. That's why we keep in and up back here. And if we don't get it right this time, tragically, we'll end up right back here again. Give it a year, give it two.

We'll end up right back here again. Yeah. And you mentioned and spoke to that need for courageous conversations, and you spoke to that on your Facebook post as well that you referred to. we're on, you know, just a really basic level for, you know, the average person listening who has African-American friends, who maybe has some African-American family members. Where can they begin those courageous conversations with people right in their community? How can they do that? Yeah, I mean, we've been having them here in my neighborhood in Leesburg, you know, where I live, and I acknowledge this, I live in an upper middle class, well-to-do community.

We're probably one of the few black families here. Our neighbors are not just our neighbors. They're truly our friends. And in a couple cases, they're more like family. And even though we don't look the same, we have talked about this. And again, I have been surprised pleasantly about the outrage of my white neighbors. They don't like this. They're upset about it.

And they want to talk about it. and they're asking what to do just like you just did, and they look to me as someone who's out there, and I was on CNN on Saturday talking about this, and we got a lot of response because what I'm asking people to do is to become color-conscious and to understand that this country has a history

and that the way we're going to fix it is we have to really talk about it. And so it doesn't have to be deep. It just has to be listening and asking some basic questions like what is it like what what do you experience and and and what things do I need to be mindful of when I'm at work or when I'm whatever help me understand what maybe I can't see you know there's this big discussion as you know Virginia online about uh particularly what happened in Central Park with Amy Cooper right and the young man who was watching the bird watching

yeah and the young black man and you know she's calling 911 on him and telling him she's going to get him in trouble and he hasn't done anything wrong. She's dragging her dog. She clearly is in some type of crisis as a human being, number one. Number two, though, it's things like that. Here's a woman who it turns out is a, was a Hillary Clinton supporter, and I bring it up for a reason, under purpose. And she's her politics are more liberal, whereas people would have thought someone that would do that. The stereotype would be right that she's some type of rabid, conservative crazy lady. That's not the case. And that's a really good. point because it shows that none of us are immune from this. None of us. I have prejudices as a

black woman, things I have to work on. We all do. And so the only way we fix them is we confront them. And we sit down as we've been doing all weekend here in my neighborhood and people coming up. People are usually quiet shy. I've got an FBI agent on one side of me, a CIA agent, the other I mean, you've got a lot of government people here. And, you know, we've all been talking about this, and they're all pretty upset about it. And they don't want to ever see it again. And they're asking, what do I tell my kids? Because, you know, the kids are seeing it, right?

And so it all starts with the people you know. And that's how you're going to fix it. You've got to be willing to talk to the people you know and not just be polite and engage in this kind of a – you know how we gloss over things that we don't really want to talk about them? and we all do this all the time, we're going to have to come up with a better way, because again, this is going to keep coming up. And, you know, let me finish with this point is,

I don't want people to think that only in moments like this where we see a violent death of another human being, that that is the definition of racism. That is an extreme definition of racism, one that is rare and wicked and awful. But there are other, forms that are equally dangerous to us. But I'm seeing the images. Again, I'm looking at white

police officers, take a knee. Paul and Capernet caught a lot of heat for what he did. People didn't like it. And now everybody's taking a knee. So sometimes it takes somebody to say, hey, is this right? And I'm going to kneel in reverence and respect. I'm not going to burn up anything. I'm not going to tear down any buildings. I'm not going to be violent. I'm going to to respectfully say we need to address this. And I see that happening now. So that's the upside of this. That

it's still rough, but the history of America is rough. We fought a civil war in part over race. Think about that. 600,000 dead, both sides. Union and Confederate troops. That's the price we

paid to make this a more perfect union. To our parents and our grandparents listening, you talk about having that conversation, what advice would you give them, whether black or white, as they're watching the news and they're thinking, gosh, how do I talk to my kids? How do I talk to my grandkids about this? I think that particularly those who are the greatest generation that are still with us. Again, I have a grandmother that's 90, and I know that not a lot of that generation is still with us, but I think that one of the most wonderful things you can do

when you're a grandparent, whether you're in your 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, sit with your grandchildren and talk to them about the world you lived in. Talk about the Great War. Talk about how America liberated. Talk about D-Day. Talk about the things that you saw that really make you proud to be a part of this country, I think is a very good thing just to instill that patriotism and love of country in them. And then I think when it comes to race, particularly, you know, my parents who are babies,

boomers and their granddaughters are millennials very different you know you know like the okay boomer hashtags the millennials are not nuts about the baby boomers and vice versa they're not really liking each other a whole lot so we got to work with them and that's my point it's a dialogue that needs to take place is generational but I think that you can talk about race and you can talk about this by simply making it I want to be careful how I say this because this absolutely is about race and we all agree. However, comma, I want us to make it more about being a decent human being. Decent human beings, Christians, people who say they love God, we don't kill other people. We don't curse other people. We don't violate other people. We don't discriminate against other

people. And I think when you can get to that core code to borrow a word, a code that you live by, That's what I think is missing, Virginia, in this generation, we've done the wrong thing with the young people. They've learned a ghost, unfriend, cut off, delete, blah. That's their language. And they video everything. Everything's on a video. So I think that we've erred in setting an example of how to communicate, how to have conversation, which is not texting. Texting is not talking young people.

I know you don't know this, but it's true. And, you know, you need to have a verbal dialogue like we're doing right now. We're having a conversation. You listen. You speak. You speak. You listen. And I think when we can get back to those core values.

And again, this is not Republican, Democrat, liberal. It's human. It's American. It's let's be human. Let's treat each other with respect and decency. And if we can operate from that place, that's what. when we turn the corner because isn't that what this is really about it isn't racism about your utter lack of respect for somebody that doesn't look like you or is not the same as you

isn't that really what it's about yeah sophia thank you all right my pleasure i want to circle back before i let you go your book e plurvis one reclaiming our founder's vision for united america is so relevant right now tell us where we can find that book You can find it everywhere. Books are sold. Amazon Barnes & Noble, Hashets, the publisher, biggest publisher in the world. You can get it anywhere and go directly there.

Sometimes they have specials. You know, just quickly, I was telling my publisher how I wish that I had written that book right now and not three years ago because, wow, is it needed now? So they're expecting a resurgence. It's been selling out. So thank you for mentioning it. And you can go to the website, epluribus.1, and check it out.

We've got a whole website. Everything is there for you. Thank you so much, Sophia. We really, really appreciate your time today and just your insight and your wisdom on this topic. Remember, we're in this together, okay? And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast.

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