The Daily Signal - Juneteenth and Why Jan. 1 Might Even Better Day to Celebrate End of Slavery, With Carol Swain

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

On June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston Bay, Texas learned they were free.  In 2021, June 19 became a national holiday, and while Carol Swain says it might be more appropriate for Americans to celebrate the end of slavery on Jan. 1, the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Juneteenth is a wonderful opportunity for Americans to reflect on our nation’s past.   Swain, an award-winning author, political scientist, and former professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt University, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the history of Juneteenth and how Americans ought to celebrate the day. Swain also discusses her work in the field of education and the hopeful shift happening within U.S. colleges and universities.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If people who care about America, if they have not read the Declaration of Independence, made that way through the short Constitution, if they don't know the Bill of Rights, it would be a great time to really dig into these documents that help make America great. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, June 19th. I'm Virginia Allen. And that was Dr. Carol Swain. Dr. Swain spent 30 years working as a professor, both at Princeton and Vanderbilt. She's also an acclaimed author and political scientist. And she joins us on today's show to talk about the history of Juneteenth, why we celebrate it here in the United States, and also to discuss the topic of education, both from K-12 all the way through higher ed, tackling the issues of DEI and critical race theory. Stay tuned for my conversation with Dr. Carol Swain.

after this. We get it. With big media bias, it's hard to find accurate, honest news. That's why we've put together the Morning Bell newsletter, a compilation of the top stories and conservative commentary. To subscribe, just head todailysignal.com slash morning bell subscription or visit daily signal.com and click on the connect button at the top of the page. Well, it is my honor today to welcome back to the Daily Signal podcast, Dr.

Carol Swain. She's an award-winning author and award-winning political scientists, a former professor at both Princeton and Vanderbilt, and a lifetime member at the James Madison Society. Dr. Carol Swain, thank you so much for being with us today. It is always great to do something with the Heritage Foundation, and so I'm excited about an opportunity to talk with you today and your viewers. Yes, well, it's really, really special to have you back on. And on today, on June 19th, or Juneteenth, as it's been come to be known, if we go all the way back to June 19th, 1865, that was a very significant day. Explain what happened on June 19th, 1865, if you would, Dr. Swain. Well, that was the day that slaves in Gaveston, Texas, learned that they had been set free.

and this was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln. Wow. And so, I mean, just a marker of really that was the transition, right? When all of a sudden, even after the Civil War has been over, but this significant day where now every enslaved person now knows, I am free. that every slave learned that they had been set free. Anyone that was dependent on their slave owners to inform them of the latest news, you know, may have endured slavery much longer. Hmm. We saw just several years ago, obviously Juneteenth be made a federal holiday. But was Juneteenth celebrated even before it was made a federal holiday?

Well, if you Google, it says that it was. I actually was not aware of it being, you know, this big deal until, you know, when it became a big deal after George Floyd's death. And I noticed in my research about Juneteenth that the NAACP has tried since 2014 to get the Emancipation Proclamation that recognized as a federal. holiday and that and they wanted january first uh to be the federal holiday for lincoln's free and other slaves which i would say would is more significant in that for most people in the nation who had been uh uh enslaved in the south or anywhere else that they were slaves they got their freedom when lincoln signed the proclamation So the people that did not hear about it until two and a half years later, like this is a smaller group of people.

That's a subset. So it's interesting to me that even though the NACP was pushing for one particular date for a holiday that I would say would have been more significant, the Juneteenth became a national holiday because of the politics surrounding George Floyd's death. That is fascinating. Is there still a push and a movement to get that federal holiday in recognition of the Emancipation Proclamation? I don't know, but the resolution is still out there on the NACP's website. Interesting. I think it would make sense to combine both of those significant events to combine them into one holiday. How do you think that Americans should celebrate Juneteenth? How are you going to celebrate? I'm going to be speaking about it.

I'm working my way through it because to me it's new and anything that comes out of politics, I have a little bit of trouble with the politics that's around it, George Floyd's death, how it was exploited by various groups. And so for Juneteenth, I think that we should recognize that the emancipation proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln was an even more, more significant for freeing blacks, you know, across the country and that we should recognize that that is more significant. It is not a federal holiday. And if there's going to be a push, then activists should push to combine the two days. So me, I'm going to celebrate it by being

the activist telling people, if you really want to celebrate, you know, the more significant event, then you need to be celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation, rather than Juneteenth, that somehow became very politicized. And it was something that was important to enough black people that President Trump was the first person who said he would make it a federal holiday. Joe Biden, you know, beat him to the punch by signing the legislation. So there's a lot of politics involved. And at the end of the day, it's about getting black support for Democrats or Republicans. So maybe a great way to celebrate Juneteenth is to pull out the Emancipation Proclamation, read through it with your family, with your kids, which leads me to the question of history.

You know, there's so much debate over how we interpret American history. I'm curious what your favorite sources are for history. As the American people want to maybe on June 10th or in this season during summer with their kids, maybe want to do a little bit of a deeper dive into U.S. history. What are the sources that you go to? I go to original documents. And one of the things that my nonprofit is doing this summer on June 28th, we are doing a constitutional camp for middle school children. And as part of that, we have an expert's come in. our experts are schoolteachers, and I would do some of the talking. We have a representative from the American Journey project that was started by Glenn Beck.

They will have artifacts the children can handle that come from that error. So I think that it's important always to go to the original documents. And I love your idea about celebrating Juneteenth by pulling out the Emancipation Proclamation, it was not that long and reading that original document. And also reading some documents, some of Lincoln's speeches, some of the speeches of people who were in opposition to freeing the slaves and just really make it about learning. It shouldn't just be about hot dogs and whatever, you know, fireworks.

It needs to be about education. And the only way we can educate ourselves about history is to go to the original source documents. And so if people who care about America, if they have not read the Declaration of Independence, if they have not, you know, made that way through the short constitution, if they don't know the Bill of Rights, it would be a great time to really dig into these documents

that help make America great. So practical. Well, you are so passionate about education. This is a topic that, of course, has been, an integral part of your own journey, your own life, your own career as a professor. And as you mentioned, you have this new initiative of really promoting strong education. When you look at our school system today, all the way from our elementary education, all the way through college, how are we doing in America?

Well, the public schools are failing, and so are many of the private schools. And I have turned a lot of my efforts this year to supporting classical Christian schools. I've spoken at numerous fundraisers for academies, also some Catholic schools, because Catholic schools do an excellent job of educating children, not just Catholic children, but all children. African American boys do especially well in Catholic schools. and so I'm really focused on K through 12 education. I will always be fighting for higher education because I've spent, you know, 30 years as a professor before I retired. So I care about higher education, but I believe that the K through 12 educational environment is toxic. And for parents who can't homeschool, they need to have an alternative to the public schools.

At the same time, I support public schools. I have a grandson that's in public schools. I'm working to get him out of public schools to put him actually in a Catholic school because I believe he would get a better education. But many of the private schools, the Christian schools, have been infiltrated with diversity, equity, and inclusion and ideas that we associate with Marxism and the LGBTQ agenda. It's worked its way even into some of the private academies, some of the Christian schools don't have strong positions about the differences between males and females that's based on science, not based on religion, based on science. So there's a critical situation that our children face. And it's an all-hands-on-deck moment for Americans who care about education. I care about education. I will fight for public schools because other people's children are trapped there. But if I can have my way,

my great-grandchildren will not be trapped in any of the public schools I see today. What do diversity, equity, and inclusion programs or critical race theory, what effect do those things have on the psychology of young people? I can tell you that critical race theory, and I have two books that are relevant to this, Black Eye for America is one that was written,

for our parents to educate them about critical race theory and how it was impacting education, it's all about shaming white children. And it accuses the white race of being oppressors. It says that every minority is a victim. I don't want my great-grandchildren or anyone's children to see themselves as a victim. and it also puts the burden on white people for addressing racism and all the problems that minority communities face, the responsibility for helping yourself has been removed from them. It's been led at the feet of white people.

White people are supposed to solve the crime problem, the unweared motherhood issue, the housing problems, the drug problems, the murder problems, all of these things. things and it's not productive for black people. And I would like to see that changed. But the most serious thing that happens for young children is that they're being exposed to adult ideas that they shouldn't be exposed to. And that's through critical race theory more than diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diversity, equity, inclusion, we see that mostly at the college level, but also in some private academies, and that's very focused on group identities, on the equity notion that we should have equal outcomes. It pushes the ideas associated with something like math,

math being racist. And if racial and ethnic minorities believe math is racist, and they approach it in a non-traditional way, it's more likely than not that they will end up not having the kind of skills they need to be successful in most of the fields in America. And then the inclusion that's being pushed, it's not the same as integration. Like in my era, and when I say my era, I'm thinking when I was a child, the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed, it was about non-discrimination, equal opportunity, and integration. That was obviously, for racial and ethnic minorities. There were open doors, but people had to work hard and prove themselves. I believe that was a better system.

It allowed people like me to overcome poverty and to become successful. And I would rather have an environment that comports with our laws, our civil rights laws and our equal opportunity laws, that bans discrimination, whether it's against whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, heterosexuals, homosexuals, advanced discrimination, period. It opens doors of equal opportunity by making people aware of opportunities. And those that need a helping hand, give them a helping hand, but don't guarantee the outcomes, don't lower the standards.

And then with inclusion, I believe in individualism. I don't believe that we should be focused on including people just because they belong to a group. when people are integrated into an environment, they become part of the whole. And we should be working forward, working on unity, bringing people together across racial, ethnic, political lines, within job places. The focus should be on the mission of the organization, not on pushing social justice agendas. And unfortunately, that's what we have descended to in America, that we have people that are pushing agendas. Well, and you spent, as you said, 30 years in the belly of the beef, in higher education. Are you optimistic for the future of our colleges and universities across America when right now, I mean, we think about what we've just seen in the past several months with so many pro-Palestine protests and.

So many protests on our college campuses, just a few years after we saw so many race-driven protests. What are we going to see at our universities in the next five to ten years? Can there be a real shift and a real change? I believe a real shift, the change is taking place now. And I have connections with colleges and universities as well as with young people. And young people are pushing back. They really want to be exposed to ideas. and during the era when I got my education, that was mostly during the 1980s, I would say that universities were closer to being a marketplace of ideas.

Like I was exposed to conservative professors, liberal professors, and I took those ideas and I became the person I am today. But I had to grapple with literature and grapple with ideas that made me feel uncomfortable that were foreign to me. I believe that's how education takes place, that it creates critical thinking skills. And we see progress because many corporations are moving away from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And we also see that with colleges and universities, even Harvard now, has decided that they will no longer require job applicants to write mandatory DEI statements. where they have to convince the search committee that they are going to advance, you know, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Those statements, you know, many of them were contrived. They had specialists telling people how to write the statements, what the search committee was looking for. They became meaningless. But it was also a way to weed out conservatives. Well, those have been jettisoned. And I believe that higher education to survive, they have to become more balanced. And colleges and universities are making decisions that they will try.

This is going to be difficult for them, but they would try to stay out of political issues. So we are making progress. And I believe that more and more colleges and universities are going to decide to return to some semblance of being a marketplace. of ideas, and you will see, you know, the conservative ranks grow because they have to do that to be able to attract students. And for parents and the people that fund universities, for them to be willing to pour their money into the educational enterprise, it has to be an educational enterprise and not an indoctrination center. We recently had Dr. Bob Woodson, on the show. And he said something very similar. So I'm encouraged to hear that you both are saying,

actually, I think we're seeing a really positive shift here and we're moving in the right direction. And I like the news. And I think that I was a part of that. And I want to pitch, you know, my latest book here. Please do. Let's hear it. The adversity of diversity. And it's how the Supreme Court's decision to remove race from college admissions criteria will doom diversity programs. And so this was published last year, last summer, after the Supreme Court decision. And at that time, a lot of people didn't understand DEI. And there was this argument that institutions would become Lily White. That's not true. And it's even racist to make that argument. We can have integration without discrimination.

And I argue in this book, the adversity of diversity that DEI programs, whether they're in the corporate world or in higher education, that they're doomed because they violate the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause

in the same way as race-based college admissions. So it's an argument that I've been making for a long time. I was very excited when the Supreme Court took up the Harvard and North Carolina cases. I anticipated the outcome and I see us making progress. And I think DEI is doomed. Of course, the people will fight back because it's a cottage industry. But in some states, such as Florida and Texas, the legislature has taken steps to eliminate those programs in higher education, and so they can't just remake themselves and continue doing the same thing under a

different name. I think that many of the resources that we're putting into DEI programs would be best used to help recruit students, to offer remedial classes, and to pour into the K-12 educational environment, like colleges and universities, if they want more racial and ethnic minorities, then they need to invest in K through 12 education. We're talking about millions of dollars that are being poured into DEI is supporting this huge bureaucracy within the college environment. It's very costly, and there's no value. There's no evidence that students are happier when they have tons of DEI officers

than they would have been if these people didn't exist. And it also takes away resources that would be, use for academic courses. Dr. Swain, how can our listeners buy that book and all your other books? How can they follow your work? Well, I'm everywhere. I'm on X as Carol M. Swain. I'm on Gitter, Facebook, and my website, I have two, B, B-E, thepeopleNews.com,

where I post many of my interviews as well as op-ed pieces, and there's a book link. And then Carolmswain.com, there's a book link as well. And if you order from the website, there's a Christian bookstore that fulfills those orders. But my books are on sale everywhere. And Black Eye for America, how critical race theory is burning down the house, that has been my best-selling book. and it has really, it has over 800 reviews on Amazon. That's a lot of reviews.

That's a lot of reviews. Well, it is always a joy and a pleasure, Dr. Carol Swain, to talk with you. Thank you for your time today. We really appreciate it. Thank you. With that, that is going to do it for today's episode. We are doing top news a little bit differently today instead of our normal top news edition because the Daily Signal team is off today for the federal holiday.

We are bringing you a special bonus episode with Congressman Chip Roy. My colleague here at The Daily Signal, Mary Margaret O'Lahan, sits down with the congressman. Make sure to catch this exclusive conversation this afternoon. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Bluey and Kate Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Mary Margaret O'Lehann, and Tyler O'Neill. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more or support our work, please visit dailysignal.com.