The Megyn Kelly Show - Shelby and Eli Steele on Ferguson, Overcoming Obstacles and America ｜ Ep. 30

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00:00:31.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:33.160 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:42.040 Hey everyone, welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:44.520 I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:45.680 Today on the show, Shelby Steele and his son, Eli Steele.

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00:02:06.200 Shelby Steele is one of the smartest men in America.

00:02:09.840 He's a celebrated author.

00:02:11.800 He's written White Guilt.

00:02:13.800 He's written The Content of Our Character.

00:02:15.820 He's won the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Award.

00:02:21.300 He's a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

00:02:24.140 And he happens to be the writer and narrator of the new movie.

00:02:28.400 You can get it on Amazon now after some hullabaloo called What Killed Michael Brown.

00:02:35.620 His son Eli is an award-winning filmmaker and director.

00:02:39.360 And they worked in tandem on this project, which has not been without controversy or without a profound message.

00:02:46.520 And I think if you followed the BLM movement at all, what happened in Ferguson, Missouri five years ago with Michael Brown,

00:02:53.040 you're going to find their messaging and their hard look at what really was behind Michael Brown's circumstances

00:02:59.640 as he had that fatal confrontation with the officer that day.

00:03:04.280 Really fascinating.

00:03:05.160 It's raw, it's honest, it's provocative, and it's really telling.

00:03:10.160 Without further ado, Eli and Shelby Steele.

00:03:14.660 Thank you both so much for being here.

00:03:16.600 So, Shelby, this movie was so interesting to me because I covered this case wall-to-wall when I was on the air in the primetime at Fox News.

00:03:25.060 And if you looked at it from a lawyer's perspective, it had obvious problems right from the beginning.

00:03:29.800 And the hands-up, don't-shoot narrative was falling apart before our very eyes.

00:03:34.960 But so many in the media refused to acknowledge it until ultimately the lie was put to that story by none other than Eric Holder's Department of Justice

00:03:45.040 that came out and said it was a lie.

00:03:47.640 Michael Brown didn't have his hands up.

00:03:49.600 He wasn't saying don't shoot when he was shot by the police officer in that case.

00:03:55.080 And so I looked at this movie that you guys made, you and your son Eli, and thought, why now?

00:04:00.840 Why five years later go back to this?

00:04:03.300 Well, I think, you know, time offered some perspective so that we could – we were interested in the isolated story of what happened in Ferguson, Missouri.

00:04:16.800 But we were also interested in what it signified in terms of race relations in America on a broader level.

00:04:25.320 And so the five years intervening between when it actually happened and when we made the film was very – was comfortable.

00:04:35.300 People were – people had digested things by this time and had deeper thoughts than they might have had if we had started when the actual event took place.

00:04:49.840 So it gave us a perspective.

00:04:52.080 People were so willing to believe that story.

00:04:54.240 They wanted to believe the story that here is this 18-year-old man begging the police officer for his life and the white cop shot him down repeatedly and over his desperate pleas.

00:05:07.600 I'll never forget the shot on CNN with Sonny Hostin and Sally Cohn and a couple of others holding up signs that read, hands up, don't shoot, to show their disgust.

00:05:18.100 And if this had been an adjudication by a jury at that point, you could understand it.

00:05:22.600 But the case was very much in dispute.

00:05:25.540 And so that gesture was really inappropriate.

00:05:29.020 But it was – it indicated what much of the media was doing then and much of Ferguson was doing at the time, which was believing without evidence.

00:05:38.440 You talk in the movie about how there's a desire, there's a desire to believe because they're pursuing not actual truth, but poetic truth.

00:05:51.300 What does that mean?

00:05:52.660 Well, what it means is that in this instance, they're pursuing power.

00:05:58.740 And in many ways, this whole incident is really about power.

00:06:04.140 There is a need, a compulsion to believe this false narrative, this poetic truth, a truth manipulated to serve one's political, ideological goals.

00:06:22.900 And so that truth focuses on victimization of blacks.

00:06:30.000 And if you can somehow establish that blacks were victims of white racism, then power redounds to you. 0.78

00:06:38.820 And in American culture, the political left, the ideological left, is based almost entirely on the idea of black victimization. 0.66

00:06:51.220 Now, the environment also now is becoming a source of the same sort of thing.

00:06:59.640 But for the most part, black victimization is really pregnant with power. 0.99

00:07:06.820 And so this Ferguson, the shooting of one kid in Ferguson, Missouri, causes sort of worldwide ripples.

00:07:20.140 That same year in Chicago, 3,000 boys were shot.

00:07:24.040 700 were killed.

00:07:26.380 There was very little response at all.

00:07:29.080 There was no power there. 1.00

00:07:30.640 There had to be a white finger, a trigger finger, shooting and killing a black kid, usually a male, almost always a male. 1.00

00:07:42.620 Then we're duplicating all of American history. 0.99

00:07:45.320 We're able then to say that, you see, systemic racism is still with us.

00:07:51.980 This poor boy lost his life as a result of it.

00:07:55.700 And so people seize that and exploit that and make it, turn it into really enormous power, much bigger than we, than I think we realize sometimes.

00:08:09.220 Political correctness, the influence of the left in universities, now in corporations, the corporate world.

00:08:18.440 This is now a power that simply has to be contended, dealt with.

00:08:23.560 So there was a lot at stake in Ferguson and more than met the eye at the very beginning.

00:08:31.880 The film takes a hard look at Ferguson, which is an area right outside of St. Louis, looks at its history, looks at, because the question is that the movie is in search of an answer to the question, what killed Michael Brown?

00:08:46.080 And you make the assertion in the film that it's a film about a racist murder that was neither racist nor a murder.

00:08:55.340 So what what did kill Michael Brown?

00:08:57.800 And I thought it was interesting how you spent so much time on this, this public housing that was brought into the area in sort of what you call the post 1960s liberalism phase of our country's history.

00:09:09.520 Pruitt Igo and I wanted to ask you, Eli, as the filmmaker, why that was important, how you thought the public housing history in the area figured in to how Michael Brown died, why he died, since it obviously happened years and years before he was born.

00:09:27.760 And also to tell the audience, just so they understand that you are hearing impaired.

00:09:33.160 So you're you're we have some a setup where you can hear me and hopefully the audience will be able to understand you, even though we don't have a video.

00:09:41.360 So what are your thoughts on that?

00:09:42.740 Pruitt Igo and how that factors in.

00:09:44.900 Pruitt When you look back at history, you start to see that black people, when they came up during the Great Migration, beginning in 1900, were very aspirational. 0.99

00:09:57.720 I mean, you have to be very aspirational to leave a land that you've known your whole life for the challenge of movies in Northern City.

00:10:07.300 And these people really defeated, they were building up equity, they were building new lives.

00:10:14.900 And then we took all that away from them and moved them into housing projects.

00:10:20.000 When you take away equity from people, when you take away their responsibility, their freedom, and move them into housing projects, you rob the people of so much.

00:10:34.300 And then I'm giving you the very short version, then housing projects don't work.

00:10:40.840 You tear them down, we blow them up.

00:10:42.480 Well, what do you do with that population afterwards?

00:10:45.740 Michael Brown, all of these people, they have no idea why they are in the world that they are in.

00:10:51.560 And so that's why this story of Pruitt Igo is so important, because it's a lost history.

00:10:58.300 Pruitt Igo played a huge role in the black underclasses today. 0.96

00:11:02.860 Post-60s Pruitt Igo and liberalism, this desire to, quote, help.

00:11:10.080 But what you guys say in the film really created the ghettoization, this is what you say in the film, of black families creating, as you say, Eli, 0.86

00:11:18.360 the creation of a permanent black underclass that could never quite get out of, if not the actual buildings of the public housing, 0.75

00:11:29.740 the belief that they were incapable of lifting themselves up.

00:11:33.460 And I wonder, you know, as I'm watching the film, if you how much of this do you think still goes on today and influences cases like we saw over the summer?

00:11:45.620 George Floyd, Jacob Blake, and so on, because this is a problem that exists beyond Ferguson, Missouri, Shelby.

00:11:52.300 Pruitt Yes, it sure is.

00:11:55.520 It's a pattern that we fell into back in the mid-60s when all the civil rights legislation was passed.

00:12:04.560 And in effect, blacks became absolutely free at that point. 0.86

00:12:09.340 Obviously, there was racism that continued, but we were really granted freedom at that point.

00:12:16.220 A big event happened then that we have not dealt with yet in America, and we have not, I don't think, fully understood.

00:12:25.880 When a country confesses to having oppressed a people for four centuries in the most brutal instance of oppression in all of history,

00:12:38.760 and then finally in 1964, you pass a civil rights bill, you say, oh, we were wrong, we're sorry.

00:12:43.680 Pruitt That confession, and that's what I call it, the sort of great confession, put white America in a position,

00:12:54.340 was after you confess to a sin, you have to then redeem yourself from that sin.

00:13:00.020 And so white America was put in a position where it had to, where race was concerned, it had to redeem itself. 0.58

00:13:08.160 And we have been in that redemptive phase of race relations since the mid-60s, where the real focus,

00:13:18.240 we say, as we did in Pruitt-Igoe, we're going to save the lives of all these black people.

00:13:24.640 But we don't really look at them.

00:13:26.700 We don't really see them as human beings.

00:13:28.400 We're just going to save their lives because we want to be able to say we are redeemed of our collusion with racism.

00:13:37.680 It redeems white America. 0.83

00:13:40.220 It redeems the legitimacy of the democracy, of our government, to then begin to give things to blacks, all sorts of programs.

00:13:49.480 Great society, war on poverty, affirmative action, public housing, school busing, advanced welfare payments, so forth and so on.

00:13:58.340 Just give, give, give, not because we want to help black people, but because we want to redeem white people. 0.95

00:14:05.940 And so all of these policies then, in effect, exploited black people all over again.

00:14:14.160 Now we're using black people as evidence of white innocence of racism. 0.86

00:14:23.740 And so what President Johnson, who came up with a bunch of these programs, he was concerned really about preserving the moral legitimacy of the American democracy.

00:14:36.140 So he said, we've confessed, now what we have to do is redeem ourselves in order to be legitimate.

00:14:45.680 We have to help these people that we oppressed for so long.

00:14:50.940 And to this day, that's the psychology that pretty much controls race relations, relations between blacks and whites.

00:15:00.460 And so blacks now say, oh, you know what, our big thing, our source of power is the fact that we were victimized.

00:15:10.580 That's what gets us attention in the larger society.

00:15:14.360 That's what gets us social programs and racial preferences and universities and so forth.

00:15:22.800 Diversity, that's what gets us that, is our victimization. 1.00

00:15:26.580 And so what do we end up doing?

00:15:29.700 That becomes an incentive in black America for us to think of ourselves as victims. 0.83

00:15:37.980 And so we now, black America, after the 60s, has what I call a victim-focused identity. 0.92

00:15:46.120 If you want to make most blacks angry, tell them that they're not really victims. 1.00

00:15:50.780 That's, they'll go up for a lot of things, but that's where, that's where the foot goes down and, and the battle, and the battle begins. 0.98

00:16:00.060 You can't tell blacks that. 1.00

00:16:01.720 That's our identity.

00:16:03.020 That's our power in the world.

00:16:06.040 You, you take that away.

00:16:07.600 You say, we're not really a victim, that America's changed, that there's opportunity, that there's freedom everywhere.

00:16:13.920 So you, you say that, and you're going to make a lot of people outraged.

00:16:18.460 More with Shelby and Eli Steele in just a moment.

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00:18:07.020 There was this controversy from the Smithsonian sending out notification that words like

00:18:12.580 self-reliance are racist, that Blacks can identify with that. 1.00

00:18:17.900 And for you to assume they can, it means you are racist. 1.00

00:18:21.420 You are racist.

00:18:22.940 You say in the film that government and its policies have been an impediment 0.98

00:18:27.760 to Black progression because they've disbelieved in our agency.

00:18:34.940 I love the way you phrased that, that these programs disbelieve in Black agency.

00:18:41.080 I know people who defend the programs would say, no, they were simply trying to remove impediments

00:18:47.980 that made Black agency not enough, right? 0.97

00:18:52.420 That they couldn't get over some of these historical barriers to entry in areas like mortgages or banking

00:19:01.660 or universities or some corporate jobs without something to help even what had been an uneven playing field.

00:19:10.860 Right.

00:19:11.280 That was the presumption.

00:19:12.680 Yes.

00:19:13.460 So how do you factor that in?

00:19:15.180 That they like the folks who would be offended by what you said, saying we believe Blacks have agency,

00:19:22.800 but they were playing on an uneven playing field and we needed some government help to try to even it out

00:19:29.000 so we could play fair.

00:19:29.900 Well, what I would say, and I have the benefit of hindsight, 50 years of hindsight,

00:19:36.300 but what I would say is here's what's wrong with that.

00:19:42.700 You figured out that maybe they needed to be helped and have some barriers removed and so forth,

00:19:50.180 and certainly let's actually stop discrimination, stop redlining, stop all of that certainly must be done.

00:19:59.200 Where the failure was to actually see Black people as human beings, not as Black people, but as human beings.

00:20:08.580 Because you can't give human beings things like this without actually asking something of those human beings.

00:20:20.520 So the corruption of most of the racial reform that came out of the 60s was that it asked absolutely nothing of the people,

00:20:30.980 by way of development, of the people it claimed to help.

00:20:34.940 It therefore ended up oppressing them all over again.

00:20:38.580 And to this very day, we talk now at universities where, you know, political correctness and diversity,

00:20:48.540 and they're just consumed with this.

00:20:51.120 My response always is to students,

00:20:54.980 what is your grade point average?

00:20:59.540 Are you taking advantage of the racial preference you got?

00:21:03.520 Are you developing?

00:21:07.020 And one of the reasons these programs have all failed is because, again, they don't ask for anything in return.

00:21:14.940 They don't say, we will help you, but you have the agency over your own life.

00:21:20.400 Your fate is in your hands.

00:21:23.360 And if you don't do it, it won't happen.

00:21:26.620 No matter how we try to support you, no matter how many barriers we remove,

00:21:33.980 nothing will happen until you take responsibility for it.

00:21:38.380 And that was the evil of oppression for four centuries.

00:21:41.920 We didn't let you have agency over your own life.

00:21:45.520 The challenge now is we're giving it to you.

00:21:50.640 Make something of yourself.

00:21:52.600 Make something.

00:21:54.680 Join the modern world.

00:21:57.600 But you're the one who will have to do that.

00:22:01.020 And we still have not gotten to that point in terms of our racial reform in America.

00:22:07.700 We still, and again, this is what Ferguson, Missouri is all about.

00:22:12.340 Michael Brown's tragic story.

00:22:16.380 The idea of black agency was, in a sense, killed off by 50 years of this kind of liberalism.

00:22:24.300 So now to demand that blacks do something themselves, 0.99

00:22:28.640 boy, you'd be called a racist in a split second. 0.99

00:22:31.440 You'd be seen as an enemy. 0.99

00:22:33.580 When actually, that's exactly what blacks need to hear. 0.99

00:22:37.140 That's the rules everybody else has to live by. 0.86

00:22:40.380 Why not us?

00:22:41.940 How can we get ahead in the world if we don't do that?

00:22:45.400 The messaging has gone, not entirely, but largely the other way.

00:22:50.040 Just not long ago, Michelle Obama came out, and I'm quoting now.

00:22:55.440 She said, for all those tidy stories we tell ourselves about hard work and determination,

00:23:00.100 the reality in America is, quote, a lot more complicated.

00:23:04.520 Because for too many people in this country, no matter how hard they work, there are structural

00:23:11.180 barriers working against them.

00:23:13.700 Is that true?

00:23:14.480 Isn't that a horrible thing, a message to send to a young black kid now, trying to work his way into college or get ahead in life, 0.96

00:23:25.460 and you're going to basically tell him that no matter how hard he works, it's never going to pay off because he's black? 0.81

00:23:33.880 And you think you're a friend of the race because you're talking in this way? 1.00

00:23:38.000 You are as bad as any oppressor. 0.92

00:23:40.840 The segregationists, I grew up in the segregationist era. 0.97

00:23:44.860 They didn't doubt us in this way.

00:23:48.160 They didn't doubt our very spirit, tell us that we had a right to be irresponsible.

00:23:52.300 If Michelle Obama, God bless her, would really stop and think for a minute, the message that you just denunciated is meant for white people. 0.96

00:24:08.740 She wants white people to stay on the hook to black people. 0.99

00:24:12.420 That's all she cares about. 1.00

00:24:13.780 That's the black victim-focused identity. 0.99

00:24:19.360 As a black, I am a victim, and you owe me. 0.96

00:24:24.300 And that's the arrangement that Michelle Obama is trying to put forward. 0.98

00:24:32.040 Are we on the hook?

00:24:33.600 Aren't we still on the hook at all for what's happened in our past?

00:24:37.560 That's a very good question, and it needs to be discussed and debated.

00:24:42.780 But my point is that whether you are, whether whites are on the hook or not on the hook, the challenge for black Americans is development.

00:24:56.660 We're on the hook for development.

00:24:59.020 We have to become all the great things we said we were going to be if we were just set free.

00:25:06.140 That's our responsibility to history.

00:25:09.900 We have to become something.

00:25:11.620 We have to make something of ourselves.

00:25:14.000 Let's get specific on just one example.

00:25:15.660 Let's take Hollywood, an industry that's just sadly known for excluding blacks, both in acting roles and certainly in producing and directing roles.

00:25:26.660 And I think folks would say no amount of excellence is going to get any meaningful number of black Americans over those barriers because there is an inherent bias in the industry that doesn't want them there.

00:25:45.000 And without shaming them, calling them out for racism, demanding even quotas on certain roles or production jobs, nothing will change.

00:25:56.720 What do you think of that?

00:25:57.880 I think that that's a unique situation, Hollywood.

00:26:01.260 I have no doubt that there has been bias.

00:26:06.640 And more importantly, I think it should be fought tooth and nail.

00:26:14.080 Blacks should be absolutely outraged and should do everything in their power, whites as well, to find ways to end that kind of bias so that everybody has a fair chance and so forth. 0.94

00:26:27.380 That's one side of it. 0.96

00:26:57.680 Thing and I, this is something that's important for me and I want to have it.

00:27:01.860 Then you are, then it's on you, you and you make a movie.

00:27:06.280 You, uh, there'll be people who will be happy to fund and support you.

00:27:11.100 You get really good at filmmaking.

00:27:13.640 You enter the competition.

00:27:15.760 You make movies that everybody wants to see.

00:27:18.880 You come, in other words, you compete in that.

00:27:21.880 You don't sit on the sidelines and say, you guys are racist.

00:27:25.140 You make the best movie of the year.

00:27:27.920 Put all your energy there.

00:27:30.760 Uh, compete.

00:27:31.800 The minute you start to compete and you do well and you make a movie that's a hit, everybody in Hollywood is going to imitate you.

00:27:40.860 And pretty soon you look up and race won't be relevant.

00:27:43.740 It's not lost on me that when I'm, I'm sitting here talking to a black filmmaker, Eli Steele, who just made an amazing movie.

00:27:52.300 Eli, what are your thoughts on this, on barriers to entry that may, that may be racist and overcoming them?

00:27:58.660 Well, there are definitely barriers.

00:28:00.660 Um, I wrote about the, uh, the first, um, black jockeys that were on the Kentucky Derby in the 1870s, 1880s.

00:28:09.240 Well, we can't find a black actor that's small enough. 1.00

00:28:12.460 Black movies most sell, um, overseas, you know, Europeans won't watch black movies. 0.96

00:28:18.800 So you hear that over and over and over. 0.94

00:28:20.540 I also heard this from black people too, from black executives.

00:28:24.560 So it was not just white people.

00:28:27.700 And so you get all of it, but what my father's saying is very true because it's very difficult to hear all these suggestions.

00:28:35.220 You're trying to make a living.

00:28:36.680 You know, I got married, I had kids and I almost gave up filmmaking, but you know, I had too much love for it.

00:28:43.460 I've been wanting to do it since I was like 13 years old.

00:28:46.820 So I just run on the outside and carve my own path.

00:28:52.340 And here I am today.

00:28:55.020 So that's sort of what you have to do.

00:28:57.320 When the institution basically closes the door in your face, you either quit or you find another right.

00:29:05.040 Do you think you had an advantage in having a father who I presume was raising you with this notion of,

00:29:12.780 you're the captain of your ship, you?

00:29:16.180 Definitely.

00:29:16.840 But, you know, obviously we live in a very political world and I'm in a very liberal world.

00:29:21.700 So people found out who my father was.

00:29:23.620 It was definitely, you know, a barrier in many ways.

00:29:26.420 But there were many, many advantages, you know, um, you know, his love for me, his inspiration, his guidance,

00:29:33.800 the path that he carved, the path that he built upon, the path that his own father built.

00:29:40.200 Yeah, I am the beneficiary of all of that.

00:29:42.780 You make the film.

00:29:44.440 Your father, uh, Shelby, your dad was a bus driver.

00:29:48.880 Uh, you, you, you both make it in this world as, as men of color. 0.98

00:29:54.200 And you make this important film with your perspective on what led to the problems in Ferguson.

00:29:59.380 And in particular, this case, Michael Brown's death and Amazon, one of the biggest companies

00:30:05.540 in America promptly turns around and says, no, we don't want it.

00:30:10.200 Now, I understand they've ultimately reversed it after a lot of public pressure, but their

00:30:14.500 first response was, you don't get to put your film on Amazon because only some black voices 1.00

00:30:21.080 matter.

00:30:21.380 And if they happen to be right-leaning, they don't matter to us at all.

00:30:25.900 In fact, this is deemed defensive content.

00:30:27.960 We're not going to air it.

00:30:29.660 When you saw that, Shelby, were you surprised?

00:30:32.360 Well, yes and no.

00:30:33.360 You know, you, uh, you, you, I certainly on one level was not surprised.

00:30:37.880 I mean, I, I, I know the, the fascination with censorship that the big tech world, uh, has

00:30:44.940 these days, uh, but just to be rejected, the, the tone of the rejection email, uh, was really

00:30:55.000 hateful.

00:30:55.940 I mean, it was like, don't, uh, don't, uh, get, think you can resubmit this, uh, don't

00:31:03.180 change the title and try to resubmit it.

00:31:05.340 Don't call us up and ask what you can do to fix it.

00:31:08.400 Don't do this.

00:31:09.240 Don't do that.

00:31:10.660 Just evaporate, disappear.

00:31:14.040 Um, there was hate in that coming from a company, the size of Amazon to one little guy

00:31:21.500 out here trying to make a, um, a film. 0.99

00:31:24.800 He and his son, uh, seemed to me to ridiculous, a bit ridiculous. 0.79

00:31:30.080 Uh, it got, the story got picked up by the wall street journal, uh, did an editorial on 0.96

00:31:35.120 it and so forth.

00:31:36.580 Um, and so then out of the blue, we get a call from Amazon saying that they somehow

00:31:42.500 had made a mistake, uh, whatever that means, and that they would, uh, uh, be happy to start

00:31:50.220 streaming our film.

00:31:51.820 Uh, and so there we are, they have done that.

00:31:54.660 And, and, uh, I'm, I'm grateful that they made, they changed their mind.

00:31:58.440 They have a tremendous, huge, uh, platform for films.

00:32:02.720 Uh, it would have injured our, our film profoundly if they hadn't done that.

00:32:09.140 Um, and so I'm, I'm grateful for the way things turned out, but, um, it is obviously evidence

00:32:16.500 of a deep, deep problem, uh, that is now sort of in the news almost every day, the, uh, congressional

00:32:24.740 hearings and so forth.

00:32:26.740 Um, but we're happy to have, have, have, uh, slipped out of the noose at least for a minute.

00:32:33.220 It's crazy how they're cracking down on anything that isn't orthodox.

00:32:38.900 You know, we've seen this with Abigail Schreier's book that touches on, um, what she says is a,

00:32:44.640 is a contagion amongst some teenage girls when it comes to becoming trans and her book is

00:32:52.140 getting not reviewed, pulled off of shelves.

00:32:55.320 She had a problem with Amazon as well.

00:32:57.080 Um, the censorship that is being laid down against people who have unorthodox views is

00:33:04.040 scary to me.

00:33:05.280 It's, it's very contrary to sort of fundamental principles we have in this country of, you

00:33:11.680 know, speaking more, not less when you're on controversial subjects.

00:33:15.040 How much blowback have you gotten Shelby in being, you know, a heterodox black man for not 0.75

00:33:21.680 sort of towing the party line?

00:33:22.940 Cause you don't, you don't sound like, uh, Ta-Nehisi Coates.

00:33:26.300 You do not sound at all like Ibram X.

00:33:28.140 Kendi.

00:33:28.860 And I imagine that's posed some problems for you.

00:33:31.160 Uh, well, I can, uh, I'm used to it.

00:33:35.500 Uh, it's, it's been a while.

00:33:37.500 Uh, I, I, um, no longer surprised by it or, or, um, I'm kind of a known entity at this

00:33:45.720 point.

00:33:46.200 And, uh, so how many, how many names can you call me?

00:33:50.100 Um, it was difficult when my kids, for them and then when they were younger, uh, and they,

00:33:57.380 they paid a little price and in college and so forth, uh, by, for being my, uh, my children.

00:34:03.500 Um, so I've seen this, uh, for, for a long time.

00:34:08.960 Uh, but it's only made me, um, maybe more fervent in, in, uh, what, when the work I'm

00:34:15.440 doing and, uh, it's pushed me further than I thought I would be pushed.

00:34:20.820 And so I accept my fate, uh, and it's, it's, uh, it's, as I, as I sort of preach, it's,

00:34:30.840 it's in my hands and it's, uh, uh, it's up to me to make something of it.

00:34:35.980 There's some good parts to it, some, as well as, as, uh, as well as a bunch of flack that

00:34:40.760 one has to take.

00:34:42.580 Yeah.

00:34:42.700 It's crazy that you get bullied for having views that don't line up with the, with a

00:34:48.820 very large mass of people on the other side who are very well represented, their point

00:34:52.760 of view, they don't need one additional guy, but they're insecure.

00:34:57.620 They're insecure.

00:34:58.460 I think on a, on a, on a deep level and the anger, the, the, you know, as the object of

00:35:03.600 their anger, uh, it's, I obviously must really make them nervous.

00:35:09.240 They must know that something I'm saying has, has an element of truth in it.

00:35:14.640 And they're, they're afraid of that truth.

00:35:16.840 They're afraid at some point they'll be made accountable for that truth.

00:35:21.320 It'll catch up to them.

00:35:23.420 Uh, and so, you know, their energy goes into sort of, uh, punishing people like me.

00:35:29.760 Well, um, the, you know, that, that, that voice won't be still.

00:35:35.240 It'll, it'll always be here.

00:35:37.740 Uh, and, uh, uh, I'm, I feel very comfortable, um, where I'm in the position that I'm in.

00:35:45.540 For me, you know, this is an example of, you know, I come from, you know, Jewish people

00:35:51.000 and, you know, black people and, you know, the power to be always like assuring, they 0.93

00:35:57.060 always say, you're the good Negro or you're the bad Negro. 0.99

00:36:00.860 Well, in today's time, we are the bad Negroes. 0.98

00:36:04.500 We're not the good one. 0.93

00:36:06.040 Amazon was the good one.

00:36:08.020 So that's where the racism really comes from.

00:36:10.320 It's coming from the liberal.

00:36:12.300 It's coming more from right liberal. 0.89

00:36:13.860 They're picking and choosing which Negroes they want. 1.00

00:36:18.220 And that's why it's so dangerous in this world, because why do they have the power to decide

00:36:25.140 who is part of their amplified black voice platform?

00:36:29.640 And who are the good ones to get in?

00:36:32.220 And who are the ones to exclude it?

00:36:34.140 And the bigger question is, why are they excluding us?

00:36:37.500 Probably the easiest answer is because we point the finger right at them.

00:36:43.920 Coming up in just one moment, an incredible exchange between Eli, Shelby and yours truly.

00:36:51.520 This unfolded completely spontaneously.

00:36:54.880 And it was a beautiful and moving moment.

00:36:59.780 You got to stay tuned.

00:37:01.360 It has to do with Eli's hearing issue and some assumptions I made and others made.

00:37:09.560 And even Eli may have made about this process and how it might go.

00:37:14.720 And trust me, you're going to love it.

00:37:16.280 OK, I promise you that you will love it.

00:37:18.280 Trust me on that and stay tuned.

00:37:19.720 Before I get to that, though, let's talk about Pure Talk.

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00:38:38.320 And now before we get back to Shelby and Eli, I want to tell you, this is a feature we

00:38:41.600 call Real Talk, where we're talking about something going on in the news, or in this

00:38:45.840 case, it's going to be in my life.

00:38:47.140 So Thanksgiving is upon us.

00:38:49.080 As you know, the holiday season is officially here.

00:38:52.080 And I want to tell you about a tradition we do in my family that I love.

00:38:55.480 Maybe you guys know about this.

00:38:57.100 Maybe not.

00:38:57.680 But if not, listen up.

00:38:59.520 So it's always hard to get your kids talking right around the table.

00:39:02.780 And when it's Thanksgiving, you're with extended family and they want to hear about your

00:39:06.360 life and they want to hear about your kids' lives.

00:39:08.420 And of course, you're all six feet away and, you know, wearing your masks in between bites

00:39:11.760 and doing all this stuff.

00:39:13.940 But we play Rosebud Thorn.

00:39:17.460 And I highly recommend this.

00:39:18.620 We do it on birthdays and we do it on Thanksgiving usually, where you go around the table and

00:39:23.660 everybody offers their rose, their bud, and their thorn.

00:39:26.240 And the way it works is you look back at the past 12 months or whatever months and you

00:39:31.760 give your rose, which is the best thing that's happened to you.

00:39:35.260 And then you give your thorn, which is the worst thing that's happened to you.

00:39:40.240 You know, the thorn of your year that you wish had not occurred.

00:39:43.600 And then you give your bud for the upcoming year ahead.

00:39:47.340 You know, the thing you feel most hopeful about.

00:39:50.240 And my kids love playing it.

00:39:52.400 And it's been funny to listen to their rose and buds and thorns evolve over the years,

00:39:56.200 especially my little guy, Thatcher.

00:39:57.720 But they'll talk.

00:39:58.600 It'll get them chatting about what's important to them.

00:40:01.220 And then the rest of the family can weigh in.

00:40:02.880 It's a great conversation starter and I highly recommend it.

00:40:06.960 It's one of our family traditions, That and I Never Cook.

00:40:10.540 Those are our two traditions and I really highly recommend them.

00:40:16.760 And don't think it's because I now have dough because I've never cooked.

00:40:20.800 Even when I had no dough, I would scrimp together enough that I could just at least buy it at

00:40:27.280 the grocery store.

00:40:28.080 So all I'd have to do is reheat it.

00:40:29.560 But one time I cooked years ago, it's actually a funny story.

00:40:33.100 I'll tell it to you quickly.

00:40:34.140 But Doug and I were hosting John O'Hurley and Lisa O'Hurley.

00:40:36.660 You know, John O'Hurley from Seinfeld.

00:40:38.180 Elaine, Mr. Peterman.

00:40:40.120 He came and she came and their son.

00:40:43.320 And we tried to cook, Doug and I.

00:40:44.740 And long story short, we started a big fire.

00:40:47.640 And the turkey container, the tray, it opened up.

00:40:52.540 It leaked.

00:40:53.420 The grease went all over the oven.

00:40:55.320 A fire started.

00:40:56.300 We managed to put out the fire.

00:40:57.580 The turkey was extremely dry.

00:40:59.820 We were taking it out of the oven.

00:41:01.280 There's still some like juice in the tray.

00:41:04.440 And it got on my dog, who thankfully was a Shih Tzu.

00:41:07.220 So he's covered in hair.

00:41:08.040 He didn't feel anything.

00:41:08.780 But then the other Shih Tzu was just licking that Shih Tzu all day long because he was covered

00:41:12.520 in turkey grease.

00:41:14.500 Then we realized halfway through the dinner, this is on Thanksgiving Day, that we had left

00:41:18.180 two of the bags at the grocery store when we bought the Thanksgiving fixings.

00:41:22.740 We took two and we left two.

00:41:24.140 So we didn't have anything.

00:41:25.360 Really, all we had was the turkey.

00:41:27.120 We had some stuffing.

00:41:29.420 And that was pretty much it.

00:41:30.440 We didn't have green beans, mashed potato.

00:41:31.780 We had nothing.

00:41:32.460 And we didn't have gravy.

00:41:34.000 So now I've got a very dry turkey and no gravy, people.

00:41:37.240 So what am I going to do?

00:41:38.280 And I'm not exactly like, let me fix it myself.

00:41:40.200 I'll just whip something up kind of person.

00:41:42.120 So Doug went out to the Duane Reade, which is the grocery or the drugstore here in New

00:41:45.880 York.

00:41:46.300 He gets one of those little packs.

00:41:47.500 There's only one left.

00:41:49.320 It's like the dry crystals of gravy.

00:41:51.940 He brings it back home.

00:41:53.540 I follow the directions.

00:41:54.900 Exactly, people.

00:41:55.880 Exactly.

00:41:56.520 I start stirring.

00:41:57.380 It's like this huge bowl of soup when I started that looked brown.

00:42:01.040 I just keep stirring, keep stirring as it tells me to.

00:42:03.160 And it's getting smaller and smaller.

00:42:05.660 Now it is getting thicker.

00:42:06.620 That's good.

00:42:07.140 Starting to resemble gravy.

00:42:08.960 Tiny.

00:42:09.500 And I was like, well, I don't need to have gravy as it gets smaller.

00:42:13.000 I'm like, well, Doug doesn't need to have gravy smaller.

00:42:16.060 And I'm like, well, Lisa's probably not going to have gravy.

00:42:19.640 Tiny.

00:42:20.460 And finally, I'm like, okay, John, here is your thimble full of gravy for your

00:42:26.800 burnt, extremely dry turkey.

00:42:31.320 I remember when the smoke started billowing out of the kitchen.

00:42:35.520 At one point, John yelled, we've got John George on speed done, which is this fancy restaurant

00:42:40.360 here in New York.

00:42:41.140 I'm like, I've got this.

00:42:42.100 I've got this.

00:42:43.080 But they were dear friends.

00:42:44.580 They never complained.

00:42:46.180 We've had many other Thanksgivings with them after that.

00:42:49.280 To their credit, they gave us another choice, but it was pre-agreed that I would order the

00:42:52.920 food, which I do.

00:42:55.000 So those are my recommendations.

00:42:56.700 Order.

00:42:57.780 Outsource.

00:42:58.380 If you're not really a chef like me and Rose Bud Thorne.

00:43:03.100 Okay.

00:43:03.720 Without further ado, back to Shelby and Eli.

00:43:06.600 Enjoy this.

00:43:07.200 You point out in the film that Blacks were doing okay when it comes to finding housing

00:43:16.620 and independence between the 40s and the 60s, that their numbers were moving up and in the

00:43:21.960 right direction.

00:43:22.520 And then came the Great Society, and then came the housing projects, and then came the

00:43:26.920 no man in the house rule that related to welfare.

00:43:30.960 And things really started to shift another way.

00:43:33.220 And there's really not been a lot of responsibility taken for that.

00:43:38.480 It's I know it's considered verboten to even talk about in some circles.

00:43:43.360 But your whole point is that white guilt has led to some really bad decision making that

00:43:49.940 is, in essence, dehumanizing of Blacks and their agency that only sees skin color and 0.82

00:43:55.780 is paternalistic, that paternalistic attitude.

00:43:58.580 That's the number one thing I feel when I see the messages coming in the schools these

00:44:05.400 days, in corporate America, which is basically, you know, the white man needs to help the Black 1.00

00:44:11.800 man. 0.99

00:44:12.640 The white man's the oppressor of the Black man. 1.00

00:44:15.120 And somehow the Black man is powerless. 1.00

00:44:17.500 It's all up to the white man to either shut up, get out of the way, pave the way, apologize 0.99

00:44:24.280 for having been in the way. 0.96

00:44:26.000 And to me, it just feels insulting.

00:44:29.600 I'm insulted on behalf of my Black friends that I'm supposed to look at them like this.

00:44:34.320 And I supposedly have all the power, Shelby.

00:44:37.940 Exactly.

00:44:39.040 Yeah, it's horrible because it basically says white supremacy is good because these are all 0.98

00:44:48.720 white supremacists who believe in the agency of white people and disbelieve in the agency 0.99

00:44:54.960 of Black people. 0.98

00:44:56.780 And so they're basically saying, we're the superior race. 0.99

00:45:01.380 And gosh, we abused you for so long.

00:45:04.020 And now we're going to, we want to, we don't want to abuse you anymore.

00:45:08.280 So we're going to give you this and push you into that program and push you down this street

00:45:12.800 and up that one and we're going to, we're going to agent you out of your despair, your

00:45:18.980 despondency, your weakness, your, we're going to, we're going to get you over the problem

00:45:25.380 of your inferiority because we are superior.

00:45:30.580 We see things you don't see.

00:45:32.740 We know the world better than you know it.

00:45:35.720 And we're going to, therefore we're going to, we're going to agent you into a, into a better

00:45:41.220 world.

00:45:41.660 Now, so is that ugly?

00:45:45.340 Uh, and we've had 50, 60 years of this now, when I was growing up in the era of actual

00:45:53.700 segregation, there was no black underclass didn't exist. 0.51

00:46:00.680 We were all poor.

00:46:02.480 Um, we were discriminated against in every single area of life day in and day out.

00:46:09.000 Um, and yet we somehow, we somehow came, we were still the agents of our fate.

00:46:16.460 My father couldn't stand the idea of public housing.

00:46:20.460 Uh, they, my, they bought these ramshackle houses.

00:46:24.120 They, my mother and father rebuilt them.

00:46:27.120 They had a little equity built, uh, to bought another house, did the same thing.

00:46:33.320 Everybody in my neighborhood lived that way.

00:46:35.840 Uh, then of course, here comes public housing, here comes welfare, here comes this.

00:46:41.280 And, uh, the oppression of white supremacy continues under the flag now of white innocence.

00:46:51.460 We're going to repress you now in the name of our innocence. 0.98

00:46:56.740 And my anger with blacks is like, hello, how long are we going to take this? 1.00

00:47:03.960 We need to say, don't you dare give us reparations. 0.99

00:47:10.100 Don't you dare think you can buy our dignity with a few bucks.

00:47:15.800 Don't you dare think you can come up with another gimcrack program and that that's going to somehow

00:47:22.960 make you, uh, not racist and you're, and you're, and you're innocent. 0.92

00:47:28.600 And blacks will get ahead when we take that attitude. 1.00

00:47:32.160 We, we take our fate back out of other people's hands.

00:47:35.820 How did things get to the point of being anti-American in their messaging?

00:47:41.200 You know, you point out in the film that Martin Luther King Jr.

00:47:45.840 Had a very different message that, that the civil rights movement wanted into America.

00:47:51.740 This is how you put it in the film.

00:47:53.360 And, and the BLM protests want to dismantle America as it stands now. 0.95

00:48:00.060 And you have a soundbite in there from somebody saying it is time to end the American experience.

00:48:04.680 So how did we cross over from, you know, black protesters willing to. 1.00

00:48:10.400 We keep paying that. 0.77

00:48:11.700 We keep paying off for that.

00:48:13.440 They say these outrageous things.

00:48:15.000 They hate America.

00:48:15.860 America's got it.

00:48:16.560 We've got to break it down and rebuild it.

00:48:19.880 And they keep getting, they get money in universities.

00:48:23.940 They get tenured positions.

00:48:26.640 They get, uh, uh, jobs and, and HR departments and corporations.

00:48:33.420 Um, millions of people are now financially supported by this, by this argument that, that America's

00:48:40.240 evil, so there's money in it, there's profit in it.

00:48:45.600 Um, if you, if you say that America is not evil, that this is, this country has made more

00:48:53.220 moral progress in the last 50 years than any country in human history.

00:48:57.700 If you say that, uh, then you're a racist, you're a bigot.

00:49:07.240 Well, it's, it's, you know, what's the way out of this double bind?

00:49:12.760 Uh, the way out of it is that people are going to have to find some courage to stand up to

00:49:17.340 this.

00:49:17.660 And it's going to be, it's going to be a fight because we've, we've, the, the other

00:49:24.500 side is entrenched at this point.

00:49:27.680 Um, and, uh, the, the truth is isolated and seen as dangerous and, and so forth.

00:49:34.700 So it's going to take, it's going to take a lot of courage, but there's no other way.

00:49:40.120 I think the anti-racism, uh, movement of today is to be part of the anti-American, um, labor

00:49:49.860 in the air today, because when you reduce people to, uh, ways to skin color, you're going

00:49:57.720 against the American principle, which segregation is there, which labor is there.

00:50:03.440 You're kind of continuing that trend.

00:50:05.180 And now everybody kind of thinks that anti-racism is new today.

00:50:10.280 No, it's not.

00:50:11.520 We did this back in, um, in the seventies with affirmative action.

00:50:16.240 If you remember, affirmative action's original purpose was to go into impoverished, into the 0.95

00:50:23.960 black underclass, basically better school, better teachers, lift these people up after 0.96

00:50:30.140 segregation, after all the, after centuries of, uh, of oppression.

00:50:34.020 And lift them up, believe in these people.

00:50:36.760 These people can do it. 0.98

00:50:38.660 Well, what happened was we were not populating college campuses with black people bashing up. 0.90

00:50:45.520 So we turned from that original purpose of affirmative action to racial prefacing. 0.92

00:50:51.400 We started to racially engineer people into college campuses.

00:50:56.300 That is anti-racism.

00:50:58.960 That's the, I mean, we've already been doing this for years, for decades.

00:51:02.000 And you should see what, it has not produced the level of equity that these people on the

00:51:09.900 left want.

00:51:10.820 And the question is why?

00:51:12.580 You can't racially engineer people.

00:51:15.640 And Royce, when you turn people into skin color and racially engineer them, you can't 0.99

00:51:21.480 turn around and say, okay, now believe in America.

00:51:24.840 You've been putting the wrong values on them.

00:51:27.280 And that's the biggest mistake that we've made.

00:51:30.620 Anti-racism really, really separates us from America.

00:51:36.600 You know, you mentioned Eric Holder earlier.

00:51:39.080 And he's somebody who continues to see disparities almost solely through the eyes of race.

00:51:47.800 We saw that during Obama's presidency.

00:51:50.240 He was sent to Ferguson.

00:51:52.940 The Department of Justice looked into Michael Brown's shooting.

00:51:56.240 Even Eric Holder's Justice Department had to conclude, based on the eyewitness testimony

00:52:01.780 from the witnesses there, who, the vast majority of whom were black, that the hands up, don't

00:52:08.420 shoot narrative was a lie and that Officer Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown,

00:52:14.660 who had attacked him once and appeared to be trying to attack him a second time.

00:52:17.960 However, he was sure to condemn the Ferguson Police Department as a group in his report.

00:52:28.120 And one of the things he touched on that you mentioned in the movie is, for example, traffic

00:52:33.680 stops saying 67 percent of the population of Ferguson is black.

00:52:37.560 85 percent of the traffic stops are of blacks saying there is no other explanation for this 1.00

00:52:42.920 disparity than implicit racial bias.

00:52:46.100 That is what we hear today.

00:52:48.800 We hear it about corporate America.

00:52:50.520 We still hear it about universities.

00:52:52.020 We hear it about, of course, police and blacks when it comes to traffic stops, pullovers, stops 1.00

00:52:59.520 and certainly shootings that have been in the news.

00:53:03.820 So was Eric Holder onto something, Shelby?

00:53:07.900 Did he have a point at all about the traffic stops?

00:53:10.600 No, not really.

00:53:11.400 He had 95 percent of the people who live in and around Ferguson are black.

00:53:20.140 So if you had, you know, 87 percent that you were ticketed, 87 percent blacks, then it's 0.94

00:53:27.960 a black world there.

00:53:29.420 As one person, one woman we interviewed who's married to a policeman, they ranked the policeman

00:53:38.680 how many tickets they give.

00:53:40.120 The guy who wins in the Ferguson, the police department is giving out the most tickets is 0.94

00:53:45.760 black. 0.91

00:53:48.120 It's a way of life there.

00:53:50.300 And that there is some racial animus behind it.

00:53:56.460 Holder doesn't, offers no support for that whatsoever.

00:54:01.080 If you're going to give out tickets, and of course, what happened is because of Holder's

00:54:06.200 report, Ferguson stopped giving out tickets for a while.

00:54:10.840 Of course, speeding went up.

00:54:12.920 Crime has gone up.

00:54:14.000 Triples in many cases in Ferguson.

00:54:16.300 Ferguson, they just basically gave the town over to the criminals.

00:54:23.420 Well, the whole idea of disparity, if there's a disparity, then we say it must be because

00:54:31.340 of racism.

00:54:33.060 And that's proof that there's racism.

00:54:35.720 Well, the big obvious elephant in the room there is you're talking about a people that

00:54:42.080 were oppressed for four centuries.

00:54:44.540 Suddenly, they kind of, they get a, at least a gesture toward freedom in the 60s.

00:54:53.220 Four centuries of oppression is going to bring, is going to cause a deep problem of underdevelopment.

00:55:03.380 These people are not going to have the same levels of development as other people.

00:55:08.720 There are going to be disparities all over the place.

00:55:10.980 It's going to take generations for that disparity to disappear.

00:55:18.980 Also, blacks have to now figure out this, you know, we have a huge problem in underdevelopment.

00:55:28.980 It's so, it intimidates us so much, it scares us so much, that we keep running back to racism

00:55:36.780 and saying, oh, that's our problem.

00:55:38.560 If we can just get rid of racism, then, oh, we'll be, we'll be equal.

00:55:43.280 There'll be no disparities anymore.

00:55:45.300 We'll all be the same.

00:55:46.600 Well, that's, if your child is going to preschool or kindergarten and doesn't know their letters

00:55:56.280 and doesn't know their alphabet and you've never read stories to them, you've done nothing

00:56:00.760 to them, then right away, you're perpetuating a problem of underdevelopment.

00:56:07.660 We know that if kids by the fourth grade, if they can't read at that point, then the life

00:56:13.780 ahead is not, does not bode well for their, their future.

00:56:17.980 Um, because that group does not appreciate yet the extraordinary importance of, of intellectual

00:56:27.560 academic development in young people.

00:56:31.680 And that groups that do thrive in America, just absolutely thrive groups that don't,

00:56:38.580 whether it's, it's, uh, people in Appalachia or people in Harlem, they suffer.

00:56:44.260 Well, that's exactly right.

00:56:45.040 Lower, lower socioeconomic status and poor academic performance are obviously intimately linked,

00:56:50.760 but the, but, and on the first part of the argument, I think some folks will be asking,

00:56:55.240 right.

00:56:56.040 So given that disparity, given that 400 year history, why not create racial preferences at

00:57:02.480 the university level?

00:57:03.440 I realized that it could create some problems for black students who otherwise wouldn't be

00:57:07.720 admitted to an institution, but it, it helps them create connections that'll help them for

00:57:13.040 life.

00:57:14.460 When you do that, you create an incentive to those students by saying your races, what got

00:57:19.340 you here, not you, not your hard work, your talent, uh, your development, but your race. 0.98

00:57:30.500 But if you are back in the same old swamp, but wait, but if history is, this is the, the

00:57:38.720 call come up.

00:57:39.620 This is the Kamala Harris argument that she put out in that little cartoon before the election,

00:57:44.240 that if the black person is starting, uh, 50 yards behind the white person at the beginning

00:57:51.020 of the race, shouldn't society do something to help the black person get a little closer to the

00:57:58.080 starting line when, you know, the, the, the race is begun.

00:58:02.040 That's, that's the argument behind racial preferences and so on.

00:58:05.260 They should cheer them on and say, you, you gotta, you, you, but, you know, you're going to have

00:58:10.980 to work a little harder to get up to the, to the, to become competitive.

00:58:17.280 Uh, the reality is that you're not, we're profoundly sorry for that, but right now what

00:58:23.240 you need is development.

00:58:24.380 You need to make sure you're, your children, when they go to school are really, really ready

00:58:30.160 to learn that you're pressuring those schools to really demand something from them, that you

00:58:36.760 are putting yourself not at the mercy of white people, but into competition with the white 0.68

00:58:42.380 people.

00:58:44.300 As my father used to say to me back in the, in the sixties, don't go into a class the first

00:58:50.100 day of class and say, well, I want to do as well as, uh, the, the, the, any of the other

00:58:55.040 black in the class, there'll be one or two go in there and say, you want to, you want to

00:58:59.720 beat the number one guy or gal, whoever it is, go for, go for the, the whole, well, that's

00:59:07.100 what we need.

00:59:08.020 We don't need any more paternalism.

00:59:12.000 And, and, uh, remember I say in that film, race is always a means to power. 0.83

00:59:17.360 It's always a corruption.

00:59:18.920 Affirmative action has ruined two or three generations of blacks invested them in the 0.99

00:59:25.500 idea that their race, their victimization is their power, not their talent.

00:59:31.620 America has just simply got to stop doing that.

00:59:35.060 Stop rewarding this, this victim focused identity where no matter how high I climb in society, I'm

00:59:41.660 Michelle Obama.

00:59:43.080 I cry the blues.

00:59:46.220 Why not?

00:59:47.180 You, you got to be the first lady in the United States. 1.00

00:59:50.260 Why not celebrate that?

00:59:51.900 Why not, why not show us all the, the, the, the, uh, turns in your life where you, where

01:00:00.060 you did well and you advanced and you moved ahead because you were in charge of your own

01:00:05.080 fate.

01:00:07.360 Become a positive example. 0.99

01:00:09.660 She's basically cheerleading, asking blacks to cry the blues and beg from whites. 1.00

01:00:16.360 It's a tragedy. 0.97

01:00:17.480 This, this symbiosis between black and white America where white America wants so much to 0.54

01:00:25.080 be innocent of racism is so plagued with the charge, the accusation of racism, uh, that

01:00:32.700 it just doesn't, it, it, it, it's a white America is in a kind of racial anguish, but they

01:00:39.900 keep making the same mistake.

01:00:41.680 They keep thinking about their anguish rather than the, the problems of, of, a group of

01:00:47.180 people who've been held down for four centuries.

01:00:52.720 It's, it's a lot easier to work to actually, to actually say the blacks reality. 0.65

01:00:58.740 Reality is you are literally underdeveloped. 0.97

01:01:03.620 That's, that is, that is a profound, that's, that's horrible.

01:01:07.000 Now you must be developed.

01:01:10.180 We will be on the sidelines cheering you on, but we will never lower the standards to let

01:01:16.260 you in because the minute we do that, we give you an investment.

01:01:20.220 Your power is more your color than your character.

01:01:24.940 It's a corruption.

01:01:27.160 It'll, it'll bring you down.

01:01:28.640 Um, let's, let's, let's, you, you, you beat, you beat the best on their own terms.

01:01:35.820 You become American.

01:01:37.280 You don't put America down.

01:01:38.680 You become America.

01:01:40.980 You join rather than, than alienate yourself.

01:01:47.040 Can I ask Eli to weigh in?

01:01:49.160 No, I want, I want to get, I want to get Eli into this because I think I'm thinking about

01:01:52.940 you and being a man of color, being a man who's hearing impaired, um, obviously you've

01:01:59.740 had a fair amount to deal with in your own life.

01:02:03.080 You don't seem to come from somebody who believes in seeing oneself as a victim.

01:02:08.820 So how do you, how did you, how'd you get here?

01:02:12.160 How important was attitude and state of mind to your success? 0.97

01:02:17.020 It was basically either you stink or you swim.

01:02:19.780 Um, I grew up in a time, I was born in a time, uh, where technology was, um, improving.

01:02:28.340 However, technology may give you more hearing.

01:02:31.900 It may give you more, um, that, but it does not erase the barriers.

01:02:37.020 So in every situation I walk into, you know, I'm only, I'm the only deaf person in the room.

01:02:43.380 I'm the, um, I'm always behind the starting line.

01:02:46.160 I'm always having issues.

01:02:47.080 Like even on this phone call, I'm saying, well, is there going to be video on this?

01:02:51.440 And then, okay, there's no video.

01:02:52.760 Okay.

01:02:52.980 So I have to listen the whole time.

01:02:55.280 So the burden is always going to be on me.

01:02:58.440 And I don't mind that because if the burden is on me and I make it happen, then that's

01:03:07.020 the most empowering thing that we can do.

01:03:09.280 The fact that I can sit here and listen for one hour without any video, without any lip

01:03:15.940 reading, it's a big achievement for me.

01:03:18.660 It may not be for other people, but it is for me.

01:03:21.500 It gives me power.

01:03:22.940 It gives me belief in myself.

01:03:25.660 Nobody else can give that to me.

01:03:28.840 And that's a very simple lesson that we're staying here.

01:03:32.620 The government can't give you that.

01:03:34.720 Technology can't give you that.

01:03:36.160 You, your individual, by taking on the challenges of life, why is it up, and taking them on

01:03:45.420 and to see it, making a film.

01:03:47.960 I had somebody ask me the other day, you're deaf.

01:03:51.900 How can you make a film?

01:03:54.000 You've never been around deaf people or anything like that.

01:03:56.600 And I was just kind of like, oh, I just made a film.

01:03:59.860 Like, it's just part of who I am.

01:04:02.480 And so that's where the real power comes from.

01:04:06.060 Is it fair?

01:04:07.140 If you wish that you could have it easy, of course.

01:04:11.340 It's not going to be fair.

01:04:12.320 I'm going to be wiped out after the conversation because I could pay so much attention.

01:04:17.320 But I wouldn't have it any other way.

01:04:19.160 And so that's what's so important is that we need to really understand that even somebody

01:04:26.640 who is in the Black underclasses, somebody who is profoundly deaf, born deaf like me,

01:04:32.080 has enormous power.

01:04:34.360 And it is that power that we need to nurture.

01:04:37.820 We need to cheer on, as my dad did.

01:04:42.400 And America would be a much better country for that.

01:04:44.680 So, Eli, you're going to make me emotional here.

01:04:50.980 Right.

01:04:51.640 To hear you say that is so uplifting.

01:04:55.700 I want to make a confession to you in response to your honesty, which is when we were talking

01:05:01.960 about booking you and your dad, we discussed the fact that you're hearing impaired and how

01:05:06.920 will the audience be able to understand you since we don't have video and we can't put

01:05:12.240 words up for them to follow if if they can't understand.

01:05:17.120 And I said, are we putting him in an uncomfortable position because he he can't see me either.

01:05:23.740 And in the end, we said, let's let's let him decide.

01:05:27.580 Right.

01:05:27.700 Like if he'll tell us if he's not comfortable with this and we'll go from there.

01:05:32.220 And so to hear you say it, it is a challenge, you willingly met it, knowing it might be hard

01:05:40.500 and that now having accomplished it, you feel better about yourself.

01:05:45.520 You feel stronger.

01:05:46.480 You feel more confident.

01:05:48.040 It's just a microcosm of what else is possible for anyone feeling disadvantaged.

01:05:53.920 Right.

01:05:54.400 That's like you've inspired me.

01:05:56.660 You've inspired me not to be paternalistic, not to not to assume someone else can't and

01:06:01.420 that I have to be the savior.

01:06:02.740 I, I love what you said.

01:06:06.080 Thank you.

01:06:07.100 And I really do appreciate the fact that you gave me the chance.

01:06:12.140 I think this, um, uh, since you've been doing the publishing sheet for the film, I've had

01:06:17.440 about four people pull out, uh, because I was there.

01:06:21.280 So I really appreciate you giving me that chance.

01:06:23.700 And that's just the way you give me the chance, give everybody the chance, let them think

01:06:28.460 or fly.

01:06:29.680 And that's all we can do.

01:06:32.340 Oh my God.

01:06:33.040 I got, now I got tears in my eyes.

01:06:34.520 Yeah, you got me.

01:06:36.560 Cause I, I, well, you know, what can I say?

01:06:40.520 Uh, I'm so proud.

01:06:42.120 Um, but it's important.

01:06:44.680 This young man, uh, he, well, I'll just say he, he had the worst, uh, and, um, uh,

01:06:53.460 what's the test that they measure your hearing in, in Santa Clara County, you know, huge County,

01:06:59.460 which is now Silicon Valley.

01:07:00.800 He had the worst audiogram of any kid in the history of that County.

01:07:06.120 You can shoot a gun off and he couldn't hear. 0.75

01:07:09.120 So we're not talking about somebody who's just a little bit deaf.

01:07:12.520 Um, there's nobody else, uh, in America that I'm aware of with the degree of hearing loss

01:07:21.100 that he has, who functions like he does.

01:07:24.420 Um, and he's never given himself an excuse.

01:07:28.860 Uh, he puts himself in every situation and, and phases it down.

01:07:33.960 Uh, he's a very rare, uh, young man.

01:07:38.860 I'm very proud of him.

01:07:39.860 Um, wow.

01:07:42.100 You know, look, can I ask you, cause I didn't actually ask this question, Eli, how are you

01:07:47.620 hearing me?

01:07:48.340 How can you hear me?

01:07:49.880 Um, about, um, in 2000, I got what's called a cochlear implant.

01:07:55.740 And, um, it's basically an electrode that they put into the cochlear of your ear and, uh,

01:08:02.420 before that I had hearing aids.

01:08:04.140 And the hearing aid gave me about 15% of what you may hear.

01:08:11.260 So I think that's a testament to my parents because it took about, I was, um, dying, I was

01:08:17.660 just deaf when I was about one, from one until about four.

01:08:22.740 Despite, you know, uh, school therapy and this therapy, I never said a word.

01:08:29.020 Uh, people call my parents abusive for not putting me into sign language.

01:08:35.500 They kept the faith and eventually I said my first word.

01:08:39.940 And from then on, I was on my way.

01:08:43.240 And in 2000, I got the cochlear implant.

01:08:46.220 It gave me about 80% of what you hear.

01:08:50.720 It's amazing.

01:08:51.640 I mean, amazing the fact that I could do this phone call.

01:08:54.200 I could have not done, you know, in 1999.

01:08:58.920 So I am very blessed to live in a world where technology, all of that stuff needs to be possible.

01:09:05.700 Possible.

01:09:06.860 Mm-hmm.

01:09:07.580 It's, it's miraculous.

01:09:09.660 I, I, it makes me want to circle back to something you said earlier, Shelby, which is

01:09:14.280 the willingness to fight, you know, to fight for yourself, to fight for what you know, you

01:09:19.900 believe in, what you can do.

01:09:22.420 And I think, gosh, this is a situation for so many Americans right now who are not swallowing

01:09:29.140 this divisive rhetoric.

01:09:30.760 We're being fed by BLM and Robin DiAngelo and corporate America.

01:09:36.300 That's making us all believe we all come down to our pigmentation.

01:09:39.760 And yet people are afraid.

01:09:43.300 They, they are afraid to speak up.

01:09:45.880 So what, what do they do?

01:09:49.020 That's the power.

01:09:50.100 Um, well, again, I, my parents were, met and married in the civil rights movement.

01:09:56.660 I grew up in the civil rights movement.

01:09:59.060 Uh, you know, King was a kind of new count.

01:10:01.580 Johnny come lately in my family.

01:10:03.540 Um, and so one of the things that I learned in blacks were very reluctant in the fifties 0.99

01:10:11.140 to go with, in the civil rights, my father would have to really knock on people's doors

01:10:16.380 to get them to come out and demonstrate.

01:10:18.940 And, and, uh, they would, uh, they would tell him he was just a troublemaker and, and, and

01:10:25.440 so forth, what I learned in the civil rights movement is that the only thing that ever really brings

01:10:32.000 change for the better is when people find their courage to, to say, uh, and be accountable for what they truly believe.

01:10:44.740 And the civil rights movement was a, uh, a high moment in human affairs of the American people

01:10:52.860 came to a point where they, they said, okay, segregation is wrong, period.

01:11:00.560 Uh, whatever that consequence that brings, it, it just brings, but we're no longer going to deny it.

01:11:06.340 We're going to have the courage to stand because before that, if you protested, you were an outsider, a radical, a troublemaker, and so forth.

01:11:14.740 Uh, but people found the courage.

01:11:17.440 White America today has pretty much lost its moral courage, its moral authority. 0.89

01:11:26.080 And it gives over to these complaints of, uh, of victimization way too easily and never asks anything in return.

01:11:38.420 Well, there's going to come a point where, where I think the masses of people of Americans,

01:11:43.520 black, white, and otherwise are going to become tired of this and find the courage to say so and act on it.

01:11:51.820 I don't think we're going to keep getting away with this.

01:11:54.660 Things that people are bound to, as time moves on to find their confidence and hold America accountable.

01:12:04.180 If you want to, if you find yourself in a situation where you are in any way playing around with lowering a standard to accommodate some demand from a minority group that's claiming victimization,

01:12:17.880 and you give in to that, then you give in to that, then you can't complain.

01:12:22.180 That's weakness.

01:12:23.680 People have got to stand up and say, I love you.

01:12:27.980 I wish you the very best.

01:12:30.100 You're, we're all Americans.

01:12:31.460 We're all in it together.

01:12:32.680 We all live by the same standards.

01:12:34.580 If I lowered the standards, I'd be saying, you're not a real American. 1.00

01:12:39.960 I'd be, I'd be humiliating you. 0.95

01:12:43.400 Then I'd be a racist, but I'm not a racist.

01:12:47.880 Uh, I know you can compete in the same level everybody else competes.

01:12:53.040 Um, when people finally have the courage to enforce that, we'll, we'll all be better off.

01:12:59.540 Shelby and Eli Steele, thank you so much for being here.

01:13:04.700 Well, thank you so much for having us.

01:13:06.520 It was a pleasure.

01:13:08.400 Thank you very much for having us.

01:13:09.700 We really enjoyed it.

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01:13:42.340 She is a neuroscientist who is basically forced out of her chosen profession.

01:13:47.640 She studies, uh, gender, sex, all, all of it.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - November 27, 2020

Shelby and Eli Steele on Ferguson, Overcoming Obstacles and America ｜ Ep. 30

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