The Megyn Kelly Show - The BLM Grift, Overcoming Adversity, and the Importance of Faith, with Dr. Carol Swain | Ep. 281

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dr. Carol Swain, author of "Black Eye for America" and longtime academic, for a wide-ranging interview on growing up in extreme poverty, overcoming adversity, racial tensions in the 60s and today, the importance of faith, her struggle with "suicide gestures" growing up, race in America, how she came to her conservatism, the attacks on right-leaning professors on college campuses, students turning on her at Vanderbilt, the woke drift in academia and American culture under Obama, the "Black Lives Matter" grift, the truth about Critical Race Theory, how Americans can find back against racial ideology, the "new morality" of liberalism, how parents can fight back, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Joining us today, Dr. Carol Swain, author, former professor, and distinguished senior fellow for the constitutional studies at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Her story is absolutely incredible. It's completely inspiring. From growing up in severe poverty and dropping out of high school, she went on to earn her GED, a bachelor's in criminal justice, a master's in legal studies from Yale Law School, and a PhD in political science from University of North Carolina. She spent many years as a very successful and beloved professor before leaving the university system altogether once the annoying woke students started to turn on her. Her recent books focus on education and how curriculum like critical race theory is burning down American ideals. And she's got a lot of common

sense advice for her fellow Americans and parents. Welcome back, Carol. So great to have you. Thank you so much. So it's been fun. I was telling my family last night that I first got introduced to you on Glenn Lowry's show, his TV blogging heads. And I listened to the two of you talking about academia and what it's become. And as I referenced up at the top, the annoying students, the woke students who want everyone to talk just the way they talk and see the world just the way they see it. But you have earned the right to a different opinion. And our audience is going to understand why in about 90 minutes. Okay, so let's start not quite at the beginning, but I mean, I've heard you tell your story before, but you did grow up in severe poverty in a shack, one of 12.

And where was that? Was it Southern Virginia? Southwestern Virginia, about 10 miles from Booker T. Washington's birthplace. And what was it like back then? So 1954, if my math is correct. So what was life like for those first 10 years? I was born in 54. And what was it like? I was living in the country. I was living in poverty. But I think that when you're around other people that are poor, you don't think about it. And by the time I was 10 years old, I was very much aware of the civil rights movement in the sense that we did not have indoor plumbing. Most of the people, I guess, around us and we were living in the community that most of the people were white that were around us. But when we went to school, we went to a predominantly black school. And I have said many times that my family was the poorest of the poor because we were poorer than most of the other black children in that black school. And it was reflected in our clothes.

We didn't have a car. We had to walk along a dirt road. It seemed like a mile or so, but recently I went back and probably it was a half a mile, but we had to walk down a dirt road, cross a highway, two lane highway, stand on the side of the road, waiting for a school bus that often broke down, especially in the winter time. And so we didn't have a watch. And so you didn't know if the school bus had, if you'd missed the school bus, if it was still coming, if it was broken down. And if it was broken down, we missed school. And there was one winter where me and my siblings missed 80 of 180 school days because there were lots of snow. We didn't have snowshoes.

I understand your mom dropped out of high school when she was in 10th grade and your dad when he was third grade, only had a third grade education. So how did they put food on the table? I can tell you that my mother, in some ways, she was almost like a feminist in that she divorced early on. She got a divorce. And so I had a stepfather and that stepfather was alcoholic, abusive, as well as my mother. I grew up with was an alcoholic at the time. And my stepfather worked for a white family, and our home was located in a field, that shack, owned by his employer. And so, you know, he would bring, he'd get paid on a Friday. Usually there would be a fight.

There was always a struggle, you know, to eat and for food. And there was a country store owned by the man that owned the land that we lived on. And we would go there and get some things on credit. And I can remember going there, you know, trying to get something my mother told me to get and having the store manager say that, sorry, can't do it. Your stepfather didn't pay his bill. So it was difficult. I can say that I had grandparents that did care about us. And so a lot of times my grandfather and my grandmother would come and they would give us food. And my understanding is that your grandmother gave you, in addition to food, something that would prove really important to your future. And that was books.

Yes. I mean, those books saved my life. And I think about the woman that my grandmother worked for, her name was Ada Corns. And she was white and she had this brick house. And back then, a lot of the whites around us had brick homes and they were one story homes, but they were very nice. And my grandmother cleaned her house. And every now and then, Ada would decide she was going to change her furniture and my grandmother would get whatever she discarded. And this was very nice furniture. So she gave her a library and we had encyclopedias as well as all the classic books. And so my grandmother, she allowed the children, they were old enough to read, to have access to those books. And she wasn't worried about whether as children we'd turn the books up or she allowed us access.

And I think it made all the difference in the world. But I think Ada Collins knew exactly what she was doing when she gave my grandmother that library. Wow. I mean, at this point, if anybody had given us a snapshot of, you know, very young Carol, just given the circumstances, people wouldn't have been saying, oh, this is going to be a Ph.D. college professor at some of the most revered institutions in America. But it began really with some love and some books. It doesn't take all that much more to spark a love of learning or an interest in it or just a little flame, but it would have to be nurtured over the years. And we'll get to that and how it happened, how you started to actually think of yourself as something more. Before we leave those first 10 years, what was the sleeping arrangement with 12 kids and your mom and your stepdad? And I realize if there's 12, they can't all have been

around at one time, but how did, like, how did life work inside of that two room house? Well, I have to say that the two rooms were expanded by my stepfather into four rooms. And once he added the two rooms on the back of the house, there was a room for the children and there was a bedroom for my mother and stepfather. Before that, we slept on the kitchen floor. Well, once we had a bedroom for the children, there was a girl's bed and a boy's bed. All the girls slept in one bed, all the boys slept in another bed. And probably there were not more than nine of us living in the house at that time, because some of the children were born after we left the country. And I can tell you that I left home in my early teens, pretty much. By the time I was 13 or 14, my older sister and I left my mother's house.

I could say we ran away from home because we didn't have permission. And we went to live with our father that we didn't really know. And that created its own adventures and risks. At one point, our father got ill. And so it was teenagers running the house. And I had an older sister, you know, that loved, she liked, you know, she liked boys and dating. And I was always quiet and I was not into that stuff. And so there were some dangerous situations that came about because of her boyfriends. Right. I'm sure. Before you got to that point, I was thinking about J.D. Vance, who had a similar situation where his mom had more serial men in her life, and it was very damaging for him. They tended to be abusive and alcoholic and abject poverty. And he did have a grandmother, his mama, who loved him and believed in him,

but no money, absolutely not two nickels to rub together. And both of you, of course, he's running for U.S. Senate right now. So it's just these American stories are so inspirational, especially in today's day and age when you're told America's awful and you have no chance and the system's against you, especially if you're a woman, especially if you're a black woman and so on. But this is 54 to 64, your first 10 years at a very tumultuous time in the country, and especially going in 64 to 70, when we were fighting some major racial battles in the country and the Civil Rights Act was passed

and the Voting Rights Act and all that. So what was your experience growing up in the South as a young, poor, black girl with race in America? I don't think we focused on it that much. We had a television. I had access to television and watched the news a lot. I was interested in politics and in the news a lot. I was interested in politics and in the news. And I believe there was an air of optimism because I felt like we were winning the battle because the media portrayed the civil rights movement in a way that was positive for Black people that would be watching it on the news. And I remember the Kennedy assassination, you know, being in school and coming home and I was watching TV, you know, when Jack Ruby shot Oswell. I remember that. And I also remember being very interested in Bobby Kennedy, John Kennedy, and just watching and remembering and being affected

by the assassinations of the 1960s. In fact, after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, I lost interest in politics for many years. I had stayed up late that night watching him win that primary. I went to bed and when I awakened the next morning, you know, he had been shot and killed. And that impacted me greatly about America. And so I don't think that, you know, my mother, my stepfather and the people I was around, my grandparents, no one talked about white people, hating white people. I was always curious, though, about why my grandfather always said yes, sir, no, sir, to white, young white men, or almost like teens. I just didn't understand that. And I don't think I ever asked him why I understand it now,

but then I didn't. And he, what year was he born? 1900, I believe. Wow. Yeah. And he was a very fair skin. I mean, he could pass for Caucasian. My mother is fair skin. She's not as, you know, she couldn't vest for Caucasian. But my family, you know, there were people in it that had lots of Caucasian blood. So you mentioned 13 or 14, you and your sister try to go out on your own. And by age 16, you got married, which I imagine was another form of escape. It was definitely a form of escape, but I don't know if you remember a Florida boy some years ago, may have been in the eighties. He got lots of attention because he filed to place himself in a foster home to sort of emancipate himself from his parents. I can tell you that I

did the same thing when I was about 13, that I went to the juvenile court on my own and filed a petition to be placed into a foster home. And it created all sorts of turmoil in my family because even though I told the truth about the circumstances that made me want to be in a foster home, my family, they got very upset, my aunts and uncles and all these people, because they felt that the social workers would come and take all of my mother's children away. And I was tested by psychologists and went through a process. But on the day that I was supposed to testify, all I did was cry. I didn't say anything about what was taking place. And so the judge ruled that I could live with my grandmother. That still was not a solution because by then my

grandmother's house had burnt down, the library was gone, and she was living in a trailer. And when that didn't work out, you know, I'm still looking for escape. And I ended up deciding that getting married would be a way out. And so that was part of that decision. But there's something else that I share sometimes when I give what I would call, as a Christian, I'd call my testimony or my story is that around that time, age 13 or 14, I got introduced to Jehovah's Witnesses. And they were knocking on doors and they were preaching at that time that the world was going to come to an end in 1975. And I was just thinking, for one thing, I guess I believed them. I did believe them. And at that point, I knew I was different. I always knew that I was different. And I always felt like I was making a mistake. She also told me that when I got

married, she had to sign. She said twice that I was making a mistake. And at any rate, I joined them for a while. And it had a lot to do with their message, the world would end in 1975. My belief in it and thinking that I wanted to experience having children and I wanted to experience life, all of that were factors in my decision to get married at 16. And I was not pregnant when I got married. I was just looking for a way out. The man I married, I wasn't in love with. He had a job, he had a car. And that was all that was necessary. Wow. That story reminds me of my brother's son, my brother, my brother's wife, and their two

sons were home one day. This is down in Atlanta. And a Jehovah's Witness person came to the door, knocked on the front door, and they answered and gave him a little pitch on what it would be like and why they should become Jehovah's Witnesses and made it sound really good. And their little guy who was, I don't know, he was probably six or seven at the time,

said, it sounds great. They promised all sorts of fun things that they were going to do together. And he was like, let's do it. And my brother looked at him and said, you understand if we become Jehovah's Witnesses, you don't get to celebrate Christmas anymore or your birthday. He said, forget it. Never we become Jehovah's Witnesses, you don't get to celebrate Christmas anymore or your birthday.

He said, forget it. Never mind. The door slammed shut. They don't disclose that up front, Carol. Well, you know, I knew all that, but I wasn't getting anything for Christmas anyway. My heart's desire, the thing that I wanted most for Christmas was a paint by number set one Christmas. I didn't get that and an easy bake oven. And some of my friends have heard me tell this story so many times that this year they gave me the paint by number set. Oh, I mean, the easy bake oven was

revolutionary back then. I grew up, I was born in 70 and that was by far my favorite toy. It was like, you actually could bake little terrible tasting cupcakes in it. So your instincts were dead on. It was fun. One of these days, maybe you'll get that. You get that next year for Christmas. All right. So Bowie, can I just go back? Cause were you living with your sister, just the two of you alone at some point prior to you getting married then? Was there a stint of just the two of you? Yes, it was. So I can tell you a little bit about my sister's boyfriends. She had one boyfriend that his favorite thing to do was to get us in the car and try to race a train, try to beat, wait till the train was coming and try to beat the train across the, get across the tracks.

And there were several times where he had to spin the car around rather than to plow into the side of the train. So, you know, I'm sitting in the back seat of the car. Then she had a boyfriend that liked to play with guns. And I remember vividly the names of these guys. Well, this one particular one would put a bullet in the gun, spin it around, and he would point it at us and pull the trigger, and it would go click, click, click. Then it would stick it out the door, and it would go off. And so he was playing Russian roulette, and I was so afraid of the boyfriends and we were living in

the city at that time the two of us and eventually my sister did get shot by one of those boy one of her boyfriends and me I was always quiet and there was a time you know in the late 60s, I guess that would have been late 60s because I got married in 71. All of this stuff would have happened before then. We were trying to make our own drugs and there were not drugs around where we were. At least we didn't know how to get them. And so we were crushing aspirins and stuff like that and rolling that up. And when drugs did become available, I had no interest whatsoever. So I never smoked a joint. And the closest I came was when we rolled up those aspirins and tried to smoke that. Wow. I mean, yeah, desperate times, I guess. But when I'm hearing you, I'm thinking about all these. Any one of these could be considered a major childhood trauma, divorce or alcoholism or fighting any sort of physical abuse or corporal punishment. the Russian roulette story, your sister being shot, seeking to be put in foster care, growing up in abject poverty, and so on. Any one of those could be considered a major childhood trauma that would be predicted to come back to cause major issues later in life without some massive intervention. And I'm looking at you now, and I know your resume, and I've listened to you

a million times. You're brilliant, and you're just such a deep thinker on so many issues. So like I'm left wondering, I don't, I never heard of you talk about the intense therapy you went through. I know you found God, but what, what made the difference between, because even people who get educated don't necessarily just let go of that kind of trauma, right? So how are you so well? Well, I mean, we could talk about my faith, but I can tell you that it's been a long journey. And late teens, early 20s, at some point, I started going to the medicine cabinet. And I think this started when I was much younger and I would just grab a handful of pills. And during the time I was with my sister and we were living alone in Roanoke, Virginia, I would take bottles of pills like aspirins and I would, you know, vomit up, you know, black fluid, which I'm sure was blood. I didn't know at the time. And most of the time, I didn't go to the hospital. I should be dead. And I went through a period where

I struggled. I was weird. I loved Dark Shadows. You probably don't know that there was a show with Bonham Collins called Dark Shadows. No, it's ringing a bell. Well, it had vampires and it was spooky and stuff like that. But I did what doctors call suicide gestures, which is really a cry for help. And I was in counseling a lot. I cannot say the counselors helped me because when I would tell them my story or what I was thinking, I guess they would always agree with me or they would feel like if they were in that circumstance, they would feel the same way. But I didn't want someone agreeing with me. I wanted them to sort of tell me how messed up I was or something.

But they were like, holy crap, Carol, this is bad. This is really bad. You're like, wait, what? Get yourself together. Most of them didn't do that, but I can tell you that I did have a male counselor, you know, and I was sitting there on the couch crying and he comes, puts his arms around me, kisses me in the mouth, and then tells me that I could never come back there again. What? Well, I mean, he did the right thing, I guess, because he said I couldn't come back there again, but that was what he did. And at some point, I decided that counselors did not have the solution. And throughout all of this, I've always felt like there was something I was supposed to

do. My mother said as a child, I was so different from my other children because I was so serious and that things came out of my mouth that she didn't think came out of, would come out of a child's mouth. And that I was always interested in running the household. And I can remember screaming at her that she was an alcoholic. She needed to get help and giving her my opinion on her parenting skills. I can remember that. I'm sure she loved that. Right.

But mostly, you know, I felt like I was a participant observer and that I was watching people that were not like me. And so I did not fit in. And I can say, yes, honestly, that I've never really fit in to the environments where I've been. And but it's fine now because, you know, age 68. I mean, I learned to accept myself, but my Christian conversion experience was the turning point. Up until that time, I had suffered with a lifelong shyness. I had the opportunity to be on Good Morning America back in the 90s, and I was afraid to do it. I was afraid. And it was only after I had my conversion experience that I started getting over my shyness and I started doing media.

And I felt like God impressed on me that he had given me a message bigger than me. And I had a very dramatic Christian conversion experience. It started in a medical hospital where my life played in front of me and I thought I was dying. And that set in motion the process that eventually changed me. And I went through a period when mostly I was agnostic while I was in academia, but I was spiritual, believing that there was something bigger than me God in my life, but I believe one God, many paths. I would not have said Jesus Christ. My journey took me through new age, Eastern religions, and just full circle to Christianity. But because I had been familiar with Christianity

and Jehovah's Witnesses, and I did not feel like organized religion had any solutions. So I did not go the traditional route had any solutions. So I did not go the traditional route to get to where I am today. Well, especially once the world continued after 1975, you were over the Jehovah's Witnesses. Wait a minute. I left them before 1975. I was over with them before 75. And so the part of my story about 1975 is that my world ended. Jehovah's Witnesses said that the world would come to an end, I believe it was October 14, 1975, where early by 1975, I'd had enough of them. And I actually was disfellowshipped from them, meaning that they're not supposed to speak to me. And they turned me over to Satan for damnation of the flesh.

It felt wonderful because it meant that they couldn't speak to me anymore at the time. But at 75, I got my high school equivalency. I took a job outside the home working in a garment factory. I had a daughter die of a crib death and I filed for divorce that summer. And so Jehovah's Witnesses were actually right. My world ended in 1975. 1976, I start college and all of these opportunities open up for me. And that, you know, that is the significant part of my story. People came into my life. They encouraged me. They steered me. Many of those people,

in fact, most of those people were white. And so when I look at race, I do look at it differently than a lot of other people. And during the time I was at the community college earning my first degree. And when I was working those minimum wage jobs, I didn't just work in a garment factory. I've been a sales clerk. I've sold things from door to door. And I've worked in nursing homes for the elderly, you know, and I've done all these jobs and I was working along poor white people. Uh, and they were just like me, you know, we all needed a 25 cents an hour raise. They love that children. They wanted that children, you know, to have a better life, just like I did. And, um, for whatever reason, I don't think that I have been wired to see race the way other people do.

I know about the struggles of the poor. And so I've always felt like we focus too much on race when we really need to be focusing on, I would say, the day, people are people. And I've just never felt the way a lot of the radicals have felt about race, even though I can say that in high school, I had my militancy, never reached high school, but during junior high, I had my militancy days in that I wore Afro and I love James Brown. And I can remember drawing, I have our talent, a picture of George Wallace, nailing it on a tree where everyone would see it when the bus came. It was a wanted dead or alive poster. So I did that. Mm hmm.

Well, I mean, there's so much in there to dissect, but it's listening to you talk. It's a miracle you lasted in academia as long as you did, Carol. I mean, it's like these views, as you know, are reboding there. And you've written and talked about that quite a bit as well. After the break, I'd love to get back into really how, though, like after you get your GED, how do you go from, OK, I got a GED to a PhD to professor at Princeton to professor at Vanderbilt. How did, how did that, I mean, it's, it's related to her work ethic and God and the journal journey that she was on, even though he came and knocking

a few times and Carol, she didn't necessarily hear him very clearly in the beginning. She got there eventually. Uh, we'll take a pause, Carol, while we squeeze in a break and pick it up with Dr. Carol Swain right after this. So Carol, you decided to get your GED, you did that. And then as I understand it, you had an encounter with a medical doctor who paid you a compliment. And you started to think about what your future might look like differently. Yes, it was after one of my suicide gestures. This doctor, he spoke to me and you know, that I was intelligent, I was attractive, I could do more with my life, and I had forgotten that I was intelligent,

because even during those years when we were missing lots of school, my older sister and I could miss, you know, a week of school, two weeks of school and still go in and make an A or a B. And I guess that's a credit to my mother. Cause I know that my mother could have gone to college under a different set of circumstances. She had polio and that was a factor in her dropping out of school. She couldn't climb the steps of the high school. And so he reminded me, you know, that there was a time when I was smart. And also the high school class that I would have graduated with, people were graduating that, you know, in my mind, I knew these people and I knew that they were not as smart as I was. And I learned about the high school equivalency test at a time when I was too young to take it, because in the state of Virginia, you had to be 20 to take it.

And I wasn't 20 when I learned about it. But I did take the test and I was told that I had one of the high scores they had seen, except in math. I barely passed math. I scored in the 34th percentile. And I think that 32 was the failing percentile. And that had a lot to do with, there's no way that you can do well and understand algebra and higher mathematics if you're not in school and understanding the processes. And I did drop out after completing the eighth grade. I started the ninth grade, and that was when I totally left school. And I remember that the last report card that I received in school was all Fs. And that was because there was so much turmoil. At that time, I was living with my sister in Roanoke that there was no way to focus or study. It was all about survival. So you wind up taking the GED, you score well. And then I love the story of you. You went first to community college and I heard you, I think it was on James Dobson's

podcast talking about how you were the one. This is the one thing I tell people, Carol, when they say like, how should I get ahead or what should I do to, you know, if I want your job, what should I do? And I always say, say yes to everything, especially when you're young, like be the one volunteer to work overnight, work on Christmas, work on the weekends. Be the one who says yes to empty the garbages if that's what they want you to be above nothing. That's never. And you know what? I'm still that person.

I'm still the one who is like, I'll do it. I'll do it all. I can I can do it. I can turn things around. And it's amazing because not everybody's that way. So if you can just make yourself that way or commit to being a hard worker, success will follow. And that was so evident in your community college experience. Tell us what you did while you were there.

You know, sometimes I don't tell this part of the story because I don't believe, I don't think people will believe it, but I was a work study student working 10 hours a week in the community college library. Often the regular employees would call out. And so there'd be a crisis about who's going to work the evenings. And I would always volunteer to work the evenings. And so the library director created a full-time job nights and weekends. They hired me for that. And I had a position where when I decided to get a four-year degree, I could go to school full-time during the day, work nights and weekends, bring my children to work when I needed to and set them at a table. You know, I didn't know God at the time, but he certainly set up the perfect job situation for me. For five years, I worked for the state of Virginia, getting paid what was

the salary at that time. And I was going to school and because people didn't use the library nights and weekends, I studied and I graduated magna cum laude from Ronald College. Wow. And prior to that, I skipped over. I feel like these are God's messengers. But I skipped over the orderly who did that. He or she put a book on your bed. Can you just cover that?

Because I feel like that's one of the messengers. Two different stories. When I was working in a nursing home, an African orderly from Sierra Leone told me that he went to college with a lot of people who were not as smart as I was. I ought to go to college. And so that's how he planted the seed that led me to check into the community college and start my college education. So the medical doctor and the African orderly had words that changed my life. Now, the story about the hospital experience, that was during the time when I had, I would say, Paul on the road to Damascus trip experience. I was in the hospital for a medical reason. I was taking medications and some people

would say that it was a medication, but my life played in front of me and I thought I was dying. And I was just totally, I would say, messed up and lost. I didn't actually know that, but I know that my life played in front of me. It was as if there was a narrator showing me different points in my life, asking me to choose. And I knew about, you know, I knew about Jesus. I knew about Christianity, but I believed in reincarnation at the time. After I tell this story, any credibility I have left in the world is gone but anyway let's let's I'm excited I believed in reincarnation because I couldn't explain my life how is it that of the 12 I was the one that got out it didn't make any sense to me my life was always better than their

lives I was buying a new house when I was 17 and And it just, and that happened because I happened to be listening to the radio. They were advertising FHA 235 homes. All you needed was $300 down. And so I watched a brick house being built from the ground up, you know, that I lived in. And so to my family, you know, my experience was so, it was just, it was just so different. And, but I had, and I had a lot of guilt about that. It didn't make sense, you know, why my life was so much better than everyone else's. But in that hospital, I chose Christ, even though I didn't know, you know, anything about Christianity. But at first I was thinking, you know, that when the narrator said, you'll not be born again,

that I had reached the top of this, you know, karmic circle. And that was why I wasn't going to be born again. As a Christian now, I know that it means that you have this one life. You got to get it right, this one life. There was a black Pentecostal chaplain at the Princeton Hospital. That is not a community where you should get a Black Pentecostal chaplain. Maybe you get Lutheran, you get Catholic, Episcopalian, you don't get Black Pentecostal, but there was one there. And my father had been a Pentecostal. I had not been any of that stuff. And he talked with me and there was a cleaning lady who in a cold metal tub in a inner city hospital, inner city church in Trenton. But I didn't understand really what I was doing. And I came

out of that experience going to church for about three months, but leaving it behind and blending new age and Eastern religions, because I never felt like the Christian religion had answers. It didn't have any power. And so for a while I had the Swain religion, which was a blend of a whole lot of stuff. And it took me probably another two and a half to three years to really understand the Christian gospel, what it meant to follow Jesus Christ. And when I made that decision, I got rebaptized. So that is part of that part of my story. How I got from the community college to the four-year college, four-year college. I hadn't planned to get a bachelor's degree. I applied for jobs in business, had chosen business because I had been told that

art was not practical and I wanted to be practical. And when I applied for jobs in the business realm, I was told I needed a bachelor's degree. I went through the college catalog. I looked for the field that had the least amount of math. It was criminal justice. And that interested me. And political science, I was interested in it because it was about power relationships. And it was not that I wanted it. I wanted to study people who had power.

And I was happy to go to a predominantly white school because I've been black all of my life. I've been around black people. I wanted to know how the rest of the world thought and felt. Well, none of that is in any way credibility threatening. I think to the contrary. But when you look back and you sort of see these little messengers coming, whether it's the African orderly or the doctor or the woman who put the book on the bed, it does seem to me was the beginning of troubles for you in the academic setting, because it's not a particularly spiritual realm. And I'm not so sure they were, you know, based on what I've heard you talk to a lot of folks, that they were totally in favor of this new version of you. I can tell you that the Princeton years were hard, but not because I was a Christian or anything like that.

I was struggling with all the trauma, I guess, from my childhood. And I started getting attacked by other blacks early on. I mean, part of it had to do with the fact that they had black political scientists, black organizations. I was the student. I was the Black person that didn't join the Black student union when I was getting my four-year degree because I was too busy. I was trying to distinguish myself. I mean, I had a plan that I was going to graduate with honors and I had children. And so I was focused. And in graduate school, I just was not involved in the Black stuff. When I became a political scientist,

I did not grow through the ranks of black political scientists. All of a sudden, they discovered that there was this black woman at Princeton that was getting all this attention. And my first book, it won national prizes and all this stuff. There was a lot of jealousy, and I was attacked, and I was told that I was a conservative. And back then I did not want to hear that I was a conservative and I definitely wasn't a Republican. And I was told that, you know, that I had sold out black people and that if they, they could be at Princeton too, but they weren't willing to sell out their race. And I just didn't know. And I would look at my resume.

I would look at my CV and I would just wonder, you know, like, how did this happen? Because everything they were saying and their worldview was so different from my worldview. But Princeton years, they were a struggle. And I started the spiritual journey right after I got tenure. And it was almost like when I was on that quest for tenure, I had told them when I was hired that I was going to do it in three years and seven years normally. And the person who chaired my search committee, he was John Giulio, you know, who President Bush appointed to be the head of the first faith based initiative. And now he's a professor at Penn, as far as I know. He had gotten tenure in one year and he came from a working class background.

Father was a cop, Italian. And so he, you know, didn't really fit either. And so I thought if, if John could do it in one year, I certainly can do it in three years. And so when I was hired, I told them I was going to do that. And people said, oh yeah, fine. And, and I actually, you know, went up early and got early tenure and that created problems and it created problems because, you know, I had outside offers and I played hardball. I was asked, you know, what would I do if they told me to wait a year? And I said, I'll take one of my offers. And my chairman at the time asked me, well, if you take one of your offers, can we ever get you back? And I said, no, I'll spend the rest of my life proving what a mistake Princeton made.

And so they gave me tenure, but those were the circumstances. And so then after I got tenure, and I think a lot of it had to do with, I just wanted to prove that someone from my background, you know, could go to Princeton and they could get tenure and they could get it early. The depression came back, you know, and then that really accelerated the spiritual journey that culminated, you know, with the conversion experience towards the end of my career. When you're chasing ghosts and you think if you can catch the ghost, it's going to make you feel happy. It's the thing you need to feel fulfilled. Then you catch the ghost and it does what a ghost will do, which is goes right through you and out the other way in a totally unfulfilling way. And then you're left to say, now what? That didn't work at all right now. That's right.

Now opportunity, I guess, to find out what's really bothering me. You perfectly captured it. It was chasing the ghost. And I won the highest prize a political scientist can win. Won three national prizes, earning more money than I ever imagined in my life. And I was miserable. It was terrible. I was so unfulfilled.

And I never thought of suicide again, even though some people thought I might. But no, I was never attempted to do the suicide gestures again. But I was terribly, terribly unfulfilled. But life would have so much more in store for Carol Swain, who would go on to accomplish so much, including, interestingly, well, I think you were the co-chairperson of President Trump's 1776 commission, just to name one that our audience is probably familiar with. We'll get to that piece of her story, the latest on Carol's thoughts on CRT in our schools, the arrest of this Black Lives Matter leader that just hit the news today for fraud in Boston. So many things to go over. So stand by with more with the one and only Dr. Carol Swain. And remember, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.

If you prefer an audio podcast, subscribe and download an Apple Spotify, Pandora stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. I was looking at the reviews on the Apple podcast show this morning. Love, love, love hearing from you all.

Love your thoughts and your feedback. Please go there and leave a comment. Promise. I will read it. And while you're there, you'll find our full archives. More than 275 shows, including the first time Carol was on, which was episode 219. More with her in one sec. So, Carol, when do you feel like things, because you wound up eventually at Vanderbilt,

and things were going very well there. As you say, you were award-winning. I think you were there for some 17 years. So when did things start to go south, and why? And, I mean, nothing went wrong with your teaching. It's just the student reaction to you. Well, I would like to say that the students that reacted to me were not Vanderbilt students that had taken my classes, that I was one of five university professors who were tenured across the country that were attacked around the same time. But I was probably, you know, one of the ones that got canceled first, even before we understood what cancellation meant. And so I left academia in 2017. It started changing dramatically after Obama was elected. But as far as my value to the world in terms of

other universities that were interested in hiring me or opportunities, all of that changed after I became publicly identified as a Christian. And I would argue that my Christianity and my conservatism has been far more detrimental to my career. I mean, I've been, it's changed my life. It's changed my life because, you know, I have a huge platform now, much larger than I would have ever had in the classroom. But I thought I would be in academia until I retired. Yeah. And yet viewpoints like yours are not allowed. And I don't I don't know specifically what it was, but this is what I'm reading. The Vanderbilt students, some some students started a petition, by the way, that's the exact same thing is going on to Yale Law School's Amy Chua, who gets targeted by jealous faculty members and woke students who

have never taken her class. Meanwhile, the line to get into her class is around the building. The students who actually sit and take her class absolutely love her. Her detractors are all people who are like, why'd she support Justice Kavanaugh? Screw her. So this is what, this is November 2015, Vanderbilt University students started a petition asking university administrators to stop Swain's teaching and require her love this to attend you you were becoming synonymous with bigotry intolerance and unprofessionalism what were they talking about what were they upset about well it started uh january 15 2015 you know it's you know seared in my mind and uh after the Charlie Hepdo attack in Paris, which was January 7th, 2015, I wrote an opinion piece that was published in the Tennessean where I criticized Islam. And I did not say radical Islam. I talked about how unless we that we needed to monitor what was taking place in that country and I was concerned about the people that were being brought in that

were not being encouraged to become Americans and to respect that Constitution and our way of life I made the statement that Islam was not like other religions that that pretty much unchecked, it posed a danger to us and our way of life, the response was swift. The day after my opinion piece was published, I knew that my life was over as I knew it. I knew that it was over at that point, because I had published many things that were controversial. Like I have questioned race-based affirmative action. My first book that won the national prizes, I questioned the drawing of majority Black districts and said that it was a bad idea to elect more Republicans. I have always been associated with provocative ideas, but there was something very different about what was taking

place. And my first hint was a student emailed me and told me that I might not want to come to campus that day that a protest is being organized. And then another student forwarded me an email from the dean of students. And the student protest was against my bigotry and my hatred. And it was so interesting or ironic, I guess, because I had been the faculty member that had led a battle against the university between 2011 and 2013 for the Christian groups, for the Christian student organizations. I was the faculty advisor for three of those groups. The university adopted a policy that student organizations could not require their leaders to adhere to faith, any type of belief statements or codes of conduct. And for Christian organizations, you had to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior

to be a leader. That's kind of a thing. Yeah. And you also had to adhere to biblical standards. And so that meant that if you were a Christian leader, you were not, you were expected not to engage in fornication, you know, sex between two unmarried persons, adultery, and homosexuality. Those were things that they had scriptures in their constitutions and charters prohibiting that kind of behavior. Well, about 15 Christian groups at Vanderbilt University lost their student recognition.

We fought it. I mean, we fought it on Fox News. We had 34 members of Congress write a letter demanding that the Christian groups get their rights restored. So I had led the battle. I had written op-ed pieces, along with students. We had an army, and then they graduated. And the next generation comes in and they're getting woke and woke and more woke as the

generations go through. And I know this is a frustration of yours. I've heard you talk about it, but it's not just that they're obsessed with identity, you know, this new generation and the so-called wokesters. It's that they're obsessed with bashing America, with hating the country. But they are. That's not what you stand for. It started changing during the Obama administration. That's when I saw the university, you know, just go full-blown safe spaces, microaggressions, trigger warnings. And then finally, you know, they wanted us to identify our personal pronouns and ask people about their personal pronouns. All that

happened before I left academia. But going back to 2015, it started in January. And it was like, they had this rally to denounce my bigotry and hatred. And like, I was the person that had been the face of fighting for religious liberty for Christian groups. And, you know, they framed it as I hated Muslim students. And I've had Muslim students work for me. Never had a problem with Muslim students, never had a problem with LGBT students. I had so many students that came out, you know, in my classes and we talked about issues and they loved my book on, my book, The New White Nationalism in America, because I have a chapter on religion and I talk about homosexuality. and one of the things that I say about it is, you know, like the Bible. You know that that sexual sins, the way the Bible characterizes them, they characterizes them as sexual sins. And like I have a problem with people that focus on one to the exclusion of others, you know, and so

there should not be the standard where some are okay and some aren't coming from people within the Christian denomination. But I had great relationships with people in the gay community, but all of a sudden the gays and the Muslims and then the other students who were their comrades, they said, you know, that I was this threat to the campus. And it was so funny because, you know, all my students that have taken classes, I would say they all loved me and I loved them, but I was the professor that had the open door policy. They had my cell phone number. They had my home number. I had students come to me with all kinds of issues. If they were thinking about suicide, if they were pregnant, whatever was going on in their lives, they felt comfortable sharing with me the things that were taking place in their lives. And I wanted to be that professor who always had time for students who had the open door policy. And in my classrooms, it was like a free speech zone. I had it on, you know, on the syllabus, on the syllabi that they had entered a free speech zone. I gave myself

permission to speak. I gave them permission to speak. And and I had waiting lists for my courses, too. And and so it was not a student problem, but it was one that was created because they had targeted conservative professors who had tenure and they were determined that they would get something on us. Mm hmm. Yeah. I mean, rather than saying I understand this is what her religion says, and she's a faithful adherent to it. And she wants people who are joining a religious group, a Christian religious group, to be able to live up to the ideals set by the church. You don't have to join the group and you don't have to share the ideals. And you're not teaching those ideals in class from behind the lectern.

You're teaching political science. They object to your private, personal beliefs and your attempts to make space for students at the university who want to join a group based on their religious beliefs that line up with yours too. That's what happened, but that's not allowed. You're not allowed to have certain beliefs, nevermind openly express them, certainly in today's America and in 2015. But don't you think it's only gotten worse since 15? It has gotten worse. But I can tell you that the university never pressured me to leave. informing people that Professor Carol Swain didn't represent Vanderbilt, that Vanderbilt stood for free speech, diversity and inclusion or something like that.

I don't remember the exact wording, but it started with free speech. But Professor Swain has a right to her own opinion. That was always part of the statement. At some point, I guess I got tired of reading the statement. And the decision to leave academia had a lot to do with the reaction after I criticized Black Lives Matter in 2016. I had returned to teaching and I was on CNN debating Areva Martin. And I had gone to the Black Lives Matter website. And at that time, it was like, they weren't concealing their Marxism. There was very little about Blacks, but there was a lot

about the other things they stand for. And I was shocked. And so on the show, I said that they represented a destructive force in our society, that they were Marxists. And I encourage people to go to that website. And that set off an even greater firestorm because on the campus, I'd had problems with some groups, but not the Blacks. They had not been involved. And so once I criticized Black Lives Matter, I united the affinity groups on campus. Of course, because you're not entitled to your opinion, notwithstanding your history, notwithstanding the fact that you are a black woman who's made it in this world in America, you're not allowed to challenge that orthodoxy on BLM. And now, you know, and you're 100% right, their website,

they tried to scrub it in the wake of George Floyd. Too late, though, because we have the screen grabs talking about disrupting the nuclear family. They don't like the family with just the mom and the dad. They think that's somehow wrong. Very Marxist up and down the board. Now, state by state, they're being investigated for fraud. Their tax exempt status is getting pulled. There's a bunch of grifters running it left and right, including now we know in Boston, where this BLM leader, her name is Monica Cannon Grant, is now charged with fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud, along with her husband. They're saying that she used, she received over a million dollars that she received over a million

dollars in donations and it was supposed to be spent on people in need but she took much of it for herself and so did the husband and she paid her rent with it and she went to restaurants with it and she went on shopping sprees and to nail salons and was paying herself almost three thousand dollars a week in quote salary but lied about that to the feds and said she wasn't taking any salary. And so more and more we see stories like this, Carol. And that's why it's like, okay, the concept of Black Lives Mattering is something that is not controversial and virtually everyone would agree with. The organization BLM has proven to be deeply problematic, criminally, morally, and otherwise. I agree. And most people are not holding them accountable. And so you can go after this low level person in Boston. I want to know about the $60 million that they raised. Where is that money? How has it been spent? Will any of the top leaders be investigated and held accountable for money that may have been misappropriated? And then I want the

corporations that spent their shareholders' profits to make donations, virtue signaling to organizations like Black Lives Matter to stand up and confess that they made a mistake, that they threw their money, you know, towards a cause that was a losing cause, that was divisive, that could absolutely never bring about any type of reconciliation in the country because it's rooted in Marxism, just like critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. At one time, diversity, equity, and inclusion was a part of affirmative action. It had some constraints on it because it had to follow the civil rights laws and the constitution. And now CRT and diversity, equity, and inclusion, they're totally separated from our nation's history of embrace of anti-discrimination. And we know that

anti-discrimination and accommodations and protecting individuals. That's the law of the land, not what's taking place today in this country. What do you what you are actually somebody who has a master's in law from Yale. You're somebody who has been in the academic profession for most of her life. So when people say critical race theory is an obscure law school concept that's not being taught in K through 12. And this is a Republican boogeyman that has been made up to scare white parents into complaining and to end up pushing back on the school to not allow just actual American history to be taught. That's that's what we're told by the left. What do you say? Well, they're also saying that, oh, CRT, that's a course that's taught in law schools. Yes, CRT is a course that's taught at many colleges and universities, but CRT has also infiltrated just about every sector of our society. And what has happened is that people

who were steeped in critical race theory and Marxism, they have written children's books. And these children's books foster the idea that America is racist to the core. It's racism in its DNA. All white people are oppressors. All white people are guilty of racism. All minorities are victims. And it's not just the critical race theory that is most certainly being taught in schools, even down to kindergarten, in books. Even Black Lives Matter has an educational curriculum with many different books on topics like restorative justice, gender affirming, where they tell five-year-olds that they can choose their own sex, queer affirming, and all about race and victimization. It is in the schools, in the teaching materials, as well as in the books and videos and cartoons

that they have put together. You know, you have such a different view of all of this than, you know, sort of these young activists that we hear today on college campuses. And it got me to thinking when I was reading up on your writings and just some of your thoughts, what's really behind today's push? What's really behind the young people today leaning into these systemic racism claims and so on? And this was from, you wrote this, I think it was an op-ed that you submitted on Fox News. And you write, okay, here it is. Mostly, I think I was blessed in one critical way. I was born in America, a true land of opportunity for anyone of any color or background in this country,

where you start your life does not determine where you end up. When I hear young blacks or anyone for that matter, talk about systemic racism. I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I want to laugh because it's such nonsense. I want to laugh because it's such nonsense. I want to cry because I know it's pushing untold numbers of young blacks into a dead end of self-pity and despair. Instead of seizing the amazing opportunities America offers them, they seize an excuse to explain why they're not succeeding. And Carol, it got me thinking, is it, you know, the young you who had these opportunities and people looking out for her and helping her like move up,

get better educated, make more money, get your own house. You know, the country's struggling a bit with that. The young generation today, we have a great job market, but there is sort of a general sense of malaise, I think, among young people for a lot of reasons. Some struggle to make a living wage. Some just feel totally disconnected from one another thanks to technology and the way we live now. And I do wonder if just the way we're living and the general malaise that these kids are feeling and, you know, in any other time frame in American history might have felt it if circumstances were this way, totally distracted, not seeing each other. Forget the COVID pandemic. I'm talking about technology pre that. They found a new thing to blame it on. You know what I mean? Like

now and just addressing the real stuff that's bombing everybody out, they're latching onto identity issues that are but a mirage. And that statement that you read is part of a PragerU video that was the transcript. And I think that if I had been a young person hearing the messages that we are disseminating so widely today, I don't know if that would have been a Carol Swain success story. Because I grew up believing in the American dream. I believe that I lived in the greatest country in the world. I believed in equal opportunity. I knew that I was smart and all I wanted was a chance to prove myself. And there are so many blacks that have been successful even before the affirmative action, even before affirmative action and the civil rights movement, you know, blacks coming out of slavery, they became millionaires.

And so there are so many black success stories, and I'm just one of many. And I don't think that, not sure that can happen today unless children have the right parents, because the attitudes they develop and, you know develop and what they see and what they're told by authority figures, that's going to impact them greatly. And I believe my reading Booker T. Washington's up from slavery as a child and growing up in the state where he was born, I think that that impacted my life. If he, you know, he could come from slavery. Certainly, you know, I can come from this poverty. We're sending our children the wrong messages. And we're not just harming black children.

We're harming white children. We're harming everybody. Right. I mean, if there's anyone who has cause to look back at her circumstances growing up and say, I really didn't have it so great. The country didn't exactly cut me the greatest breaks, you know, the Carol pre-age 18 or 19. It's you, but you've gone a totally different way. You've eschewed victimhood for all of your adult life so far as I can see and have a deep love for America. So I don't get it. You say that you have to have the right parents.

Was it your parents who instilled that in you when you were young? Was it just the opportunity? You know, I've heard you say before, it was a lot of white male conservatives who reached out and helped you. What do you think led to that love of country in you? I think it was school because, you know,

I was proud to be a Virginian because Virginia was the home of presidents. We had five presidents from Virginia. And so when I was taught history, it has some stuff about slavery in it. But mostly what we were taught was positive about our country. And I think the patriotism, you know, we did the Pledge of Allegiance every day. And so I think that what children are taught in school matters enormously. You know, we were taught, you know, that we were American citizens and that that was important.

And I'm struggling today, Megan, I'm really struggling because the America that I see today, I don't recognize this country. And I'm so afraid that I will become anti-American because if this is America, what I see taking place today when it comes to our civil rights and our civil liberties and the propaganda that I would associate, you know, with third world countries and, you know, all of these things. I don't recognize this country. Someone like me, I've always, you know, cherished the constitution and free speech and, you know, the freedom of religion, the freedom of assembly, and all of these things are being stripped away. And I always thought, you know, we could count on the Supreme Court. Well, we can't count on the Supreme Court because our justices have been educated in that system. I don't care if they come from the Ivy League and they call themselves conservative, they're not trustworthy. And I would much rather have a

Supreme Court that had justices that were selected from a wider range of schools, hoping that they would be educated, some of them to appreciate the Constitution. Yeah, that's the Biden, Joe Biden had an opportunity this past time around to nominate somebody who wasn't from the Yale, you know, Princeton, Harvard corridor, and he didn't do it. And we're getting, you know, a left wing ideologue, which comes really as no surprise to any of us. Well, he's, she's replacing somebody who was left wing for sure. I don't know if I'd call Breyer an ideologue. But in any event, yeah, the courts, I have been happy that they've been at least one last vestige where they're not totally wokefied. There still is the rule of law. But if you look at what's happening in law schools today, they're changing all of that.

They're insisting on a DEI agenda and commitment to it. And all those law students soon will be lawyers, and then judges, and then Supreme Court justices. And there's only one way to push back, and that's to fight. Carol's got thoughts on how. She's actually written them down, and you're going to want to hear them. That's where I will pick it up with her after this quick break. Carol, I know you wrote a book a couple years ago called abduction such a good title for what you were writing about the it's abduction how liberalism steals our children's hearts and minds 2016 and part of what you write about in there is this sort of new morality and how you know sex ed begins in kindergarten and music is constantly promoting, you know, over the top drug and alcohol

use, rape culture, all this. Like, I really think that stuff contributes to this overarching sense of malaise that I think young people today, yes, they feel depressed that they might not be able to get ahead as easily as the American dream promises, black or white. It's not that easy to get the house and the two-car garage and the 2.5 kids. But we're discouraging marriage. We're discouraging love of country. We're putting half-nude people on television for every sporting event. You can't watch the Super Bowl with your six, seven, or eight-year-old without covering his eyes repeatedly. You look around and the people that we revere are people who artificially inflate their boobs and their butts and put them on display 24 seven, as opposed to like CIA agents who helped get bin Laden. You know, we don't, it's just, it makes you feel

down. And you write about how our academic and other institutions are doing this on purpose. Yeah, you know, Megan, in 2016, when I wrote that book with Steve Fiesel, we were trying to alert parents to what was taking place in our public and also some of our private schools. Now they see it for themselves. But I do think that what is taking place in those schools is behind the rise in suicide rates among children.

And if you think about it, first graders now being exposed to ideas about sexuality and being told that they can change their sex, that they may not really be a little girl or little boy. These are things that no matter how hard it may have been in my life, I never had to question whether I was female. And I think that we sounded an alarm back then, but now parents post-pand know, they see all of this stuff. And that was the civil lining that came out of COVID. Yes, that's true. Parents are starting to wake up, but they're afraid. Carol, you know, this, we talk about it a lot on our show, very hard for parents to go into a school and say, why are you teaching my children that they are less than because of their white skin? Why are you teaching my child that he's less than because of his black skin? Because you're weak and disempowered is just as racist towards the black children as you're systemically racist and privileged when you say it to a white student who's, you know, right because of his or her immutable characteristics. And I can tell you, too, that, again, so Abduction, How Liberalism Steals Our Children's Hearts and Minds, that was published in 2016.

What happened, you know, with President Obama's safe school czar, I think his name was Kevin Jennings initially and then Arnie Duncan. I mean, they were the ones that really sexualized our children by getting that curriculum with the LGBT stuff into kindergarten, into those lower levels. And that's when I saw the dramatic change in academia. And for the activists, the progressive activists, they have gone into education, just like they infiltrated, you know, many different institutions, including, you know, the media and colleges and universities. They did it with an agenda. And I would say that even Christian colleges and universities and places like that, that there are very few, quote, safe places because they've all been infiltrated by people who have an agenda. And unfortunately, many of them are teaching in our schools and they're getting on TikTok and various outlets boasting about what they're doing to our children. I have to say, I don't let my kids use social media, but I don't let them do TikTok at all. And my daughter's begging me to let her get TikTok because all of her friends are on TikTok

and it's fun. And all she wants to do is the little dance videos. And I'm like, I don't care. Single tear, move on. And you know what? Life has gone on and she's just fine. You know, it's like parents need to be reminded. You say no you can be the mean parent and they're fine you know she's seen it her friends have it fine great why don't you enjoy your five minutes of looking at over your friend's shoulder that's all you're getting um i'm so proud of you to be able to do that because we need more currents that are you know standing up to their teenagers because, you know, you are entrusted with your child's, you know, life and wellbeing. And it is your job. They're your children. It's not the government's job to raise children. And so if more parents would do that at

home, but also band with other parents and push back, they would feel less fear because it's not one person. I don't care about upsetting her. I care about damaging her. That's what TikTok does. TikTok is a damaging app and so is all of social media. But for the parents, and we're dealing with this right now with a lot of our friends' schools, we left our schools in New York city because they were so over the top on the CRT and the trans stuff, Carol. But, um, you know, it creeps up everywhere and I have a lot of friends who are dealing with it in schools where they just don't know how to stop it. You know, the, the CRT agenda, what, what should they do?

I mean, I know it's outlined in your book, your, your most recent book, um, grassroots, you know, voting school boards. Like what what's the answer? I have, you know, this book, Black Eye for America, critical race theories burning down the house. It has two chapters on how to fight back strategies on fighting back. And there are 10 proposals for resisting CRT. First, you know, learn what it is, because if you don't know what it is and you talk with the average progressive, they're going to tell you that it's something that happens in colleges and universities. It's not happening in your school when it is. And so find out what it is, how it manifests itself so that you can respond.

And so CRT is a course that's taught at many colleges, universities, elite high schools, but it's also a worldview that's racist. It's very destructive and it has been disseminated down through K through 12 education in the form of books and videos and various teaching materials that are pushing an agenda. So know what it is. And then I think one of the strongest things that we can do is challenge the legality and constitutionality of CRT because its form in many workplaces, as well as in the educational realm, it often runs counter to our civil rights laws that protect white people as well as other racial and ethnic groups. And the equal protection clause. I mean, the law of the land is the law of the land. And I think white people need to learn

how to document. Like racial and ethnic minorities, you know, we are sort of primed to look for discrimination. Sometimes even when it's not there, we look for it and we find it because we think it's there. But when discrimination is taking place, you need to document who said it, where, if you can get a video, but white people need to start thinking as minorities, because in many parts of the country, you are a minority. And by 2047, whites will be a minority in this country. And Generation Z is already a white minority group. And so begin to document, you are protected by the laws of the land. So organizing the grassroots coalitions, building coalitions across racial, ethnic, and partisan lines. And what happened in Virginia

with that election, you saw Democrats and Republicans and independents coming together because they love their children. Most people don't want CRT or any of those Marxist critical theories taught to their children. Doesn't matter which political party. And so if it's taking place in your school, it's affecting a lot of other parents. And so I think that parents need to just band together and and exercise their rights. And many people are running for the school board, and they are also running for local election. I mean, that's one of the biggest things that people can do. There are multiple strategies that can be used. I talk about those. And educating church leaders. The church in America is in dire straits. In many churches,

they've been infiltrated by social justice warriors and they have pastors that are more interested in social justice than biblical justice. And I think that has to do with them not actually

knowing the difference. And I think that you can educate them. There are lots of materials to educate your pastor and we link to some of those sources. That's good. I like what you said, though. I just want to remind people, when you get the critical race theory as an obscure theory taught in law school, that's a very good, succinct, easy-to-remember response. It's also a worldview that's made its way into textbooks, children's books, and teachings, and it needs to stop. It definitely does, because it's harming all of our children, not just white children who are bullied and shamed. And if it's not right to do to a racial and ethnic minority, then it's also

not right to do to a white child. And we reached a consensus in the 1960s about how people ought to be treated, that they ought not to be discriminated against because of the color of their skin or their national origin. It applies to everyone. And so if we would follow the golden rule to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, we would make a lot of progress when it comes to race relations and this moment that we are in in American history. There are other proposals here, but mostly some of the things the political left does, we should do the same thing. We can bring pressure to bear on corporations. Many people are stockholders. We can stand up to big tech. We're doing some of that. And we also need to monitor our state and local governments because our tax dollars should not be used to discriminate against one group of citizens, any group of citizens. And so it's being used to support CRT and DEI, that's discrimination. And so my book, Black Eye for America, it has those two chapters on how to fight back. It also has a glossary because they keep changing the terms. And CRT doesn't always call itself CRT. Sometimes it calls itself culturally competent learning. It calls itself social justice. It calls itself equity. And sometimes it's masquerading as civil rights. So you have to know what it is. And we have resources. It's at our old school, it called itself

Courageous Conversations with Glenn Singleton's group, where he, you know, you'd be encouraged to go to his little weekend seminar and the white people weren't allowed to say anything. They were supposed to just

listen to grievance, say absolutely nothing. And then at the end of like the three days, they were allowed to say, you know, their thoughts. And God forbid their thoughts were anything other than I'm sorry,

because they'd get shamed. I mean,, white parents would come out of there traumatized. And these are white liberals who are very inclined to say yes to white privilege and all that stuff, just beaten down and alarmed. And I remember looking at them thinking, they're creating racists. That's what they're doing in there. This is a racism creation seminar. But they're teaching self-hatred to white children. And with the social emotional learning that a lot of schools have adopted, where you get graded on your empathy and your compassion and all of this, your emotions, you get graded on that. If you don't have the proper reaction and demeanor in response to the propaganda, you can be punished by your teacher who is in a position to grade you based on whether or not you're responding appropriately. That is insane. I mean, I was just saying when you're talking

about that, I realize we're talking about in response to difference and cultural differences and racial different, but like when you think about, think about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who would you say has more empathy off the top of your head? Well, I think even if you love Trump, you might say, okay, he's not, maybe he's not the most empathetic person on earth. Joe Biden, he had, you know, the son and the wife who died and the whole like very sad. He's an empathetic guy. Who would you? So he would probably beat Trump on that little test. He'd probably get higher marks than Trump on that little test. Who would you want in charge right now with Ukraine? Right. Who is more likely to avoid World War Three, Trump or Joe Biden?

I think I've seen the polls. It's not my it's not my belief. The American people believe that Trump would not have gotten us into this mess, that Vladimir Putin wouldn't have done this under President Trump. Empathy is not the be all and end all. It depends. You're going into a therapist, maybe president of the United States, future leaders, maybe not. Why are we prizing it universally amongst all children when people are different? Some people are more empathetic than others, and that's fine. I can tell you that one area for a Donald Trump when he hits hands down is empathy for working class people and poor people. And in my experiences with him, he's always been supportive, encouraging, and this whole idea that the left would call him a racist. I don't think the man has a racist bone in his body and not called Joe Biden, who has a history of racism.

He gets a free pass. And that angers me that the political left, if you are white liberal, you can say anything you want to say to a person like me. It's never racist. I mean, that's the double standard. Whereas if you're conservative, you're constantly going to be dismissed and called a white supremacist because they've redefined white supremacy so that all white people are considered white supremacists rather than those who think that they are superior to racial and ethnic minorities. And when you see the hate crime hoaxes like Smollett, you see so many of these hate crime hoaxes because there's not enough real hate crime out there in the world that has diminished. So people have to invent it. And so- It's almost like there's a presumption of white supremacy against all white people,

and you may be able to get yourself out of it. You can get out of a white supremacy jail free card. If you prove that you're a woke progressive, who's willing to pledge total fealty to the woke movement, but anything short of that, you're stuck in white supremacy prison. You still can get in white supremacy prison because I know some whites that have checked all the boxes. They've done everything right. But when it was expedient, they also got dismissed as racist because if you're white, you could never defend yourself against the accusation that you are racist because they would say it's in your DNA, it's permanent. And so you have to constantly meet whatever change in standard they put out there.

Yeah, it's a never-ending process. So Carol, I only have a couple of minutes left and I wanted to ask you this question. You talked about it, I think, in the Prager University video about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the founders and so on. But you can take it wherever you want to take it. But my question to you is why, as somebody who co-chaired the 1776 Commission, what do you love about America? I used to love the fact that it was a land of opportunity and that a person, you know, could start at the bottom. And, you know, it was just, I love the fact that we were compassionate, we cared about people in other nations. And I love the fact that we were compassionate. We cared about people in other nations.

And I love the fact that there was opportunity. Again, you could start at the bottom, and I felt like that there were no limits. And America has been good to me and my children. And I see so many other people that have been able to take advantage of the best of America. But I fear that that's not going to be open for people today because their minds have been poisoned. And when I'm talking about the detrimental things that are taking place today, it's not just harming racial and ethnic minorities, it's harming everyone's child. And I believe that the America that I grew up in, the America I love, no longer exists. I don't know if we can turn things around,

but right now I don't recognize this country. I feel like we've been ruled by China. I do want to say to the audience, Carol said before, as somebody who comes of academia, don't feel like you have to send your kid to college in order for them to get the head. I do want to say to the audience, Carol said before, as somebody who comes of academia, don't feel like you have to send your kid to college in order for them to get the head. I know you're big on entrepreneurship, trade schools. And if you decide to send your kid to college, do your homework on where you're sending them. Even sending them to a Christian college doesn't guarantee they're not going to be faced with a bunch of left wing indoctrination. So keep your eyes open and make the effort. It's not easy. It requires homework, staying on top of what your kids are taught K through 12, staying on top of the college options. But it's your kid and it's our country and it's

worth it. Carol, thank you so much for telling your story. I want to tell everybody that her latest book, again, is called Black Eye for America, How Critical Race Theory is Burning Down the House. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I want to tell you that tomorrow on the show, back by popular demand, Dr. Laura. That episode did so well. Everybody loved her.

She's coming back. Can't wait. And then I want to tell you that we have a special double episode Monday and Tuesday of next week. I'm not going to tell you who it is yet. I'll tell you tomorrow. It's a big name. You're going to want to hear it. Subscribe in the meantime so you don't miss it. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

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