CSPAN - Washington Journal Erec Smith

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April 7, 2025 14:11-14:56 - CSPAN

44:55

Washington Journal Erec Smith

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Main

peter slen

cspan 08:01

Appearances

brian lamb

cspan 00:32

pete hegseth

admin 00:54

yvette clarke

rep/d 01:00

Clips

bill gertz

00:07

Callers

angela in florida

callers 00:09

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Speaker	Time	Text
brian lamb ▲ ● ▼		Forgotten memoir of John Knox, a law clerk to former Justice James McReynolds, a native of Kentucky.
		Knox's year was the term beginning October 1936.
		In history, it is very rare that a law clerk at the Supreme Court has published an insider's view of the court or of a justice.
		Professor Hutchinson gives the background on where he found the memoir, which hadn't been published before.
		Justice McReynolds, as you will hear, was according to historians, arguably one of the most disagreeable justices ever to sit on the bench.
unidentified		An interview with University of Chicago law professor Dennis Hutchinson on the forgotten memoir of John Knox on this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb.
		BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
		C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
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		Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, we want to introduce you to Eric Smith.
		He's a research fellow with the Cato Institute.
		He's on the board of advisors for the Pro-Human Foundation, and he's a founder of a group called Free Black Thought.
		What is that?
unidentified		Free Black Thought is an organization, a nonprofit organization, that tries to platform black voices you wouldn't hear normally in the media.
		A lot of times you get the impression that black people are a monolith, right?
		Well, that is not true.
		And anybody who's left their house for more than five minutes would know that.
		But we seem to need this organization to platform those unorthodox, quote-unquote, voices.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What is an unorthodox point of view?
unidentified		One that doesn't align with what is currently called progressive politics.
		Some people say woke, right?
		I say politics-oriented and critical social justice.
		The idea that America is a place that is inherently anti-black, right?
		And the odds are against us from the jump.
		That's not the case as far as we're concerned.
		And we want to put things out there that show and prove the reasonable argument that that's not the case.
		So we have a journal, we have a podcast, we have a compendium, and we have a Twitter presence.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And you've written about being politically black.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What does that phrase mean?
unidentified		Well, what I just said, basically, politically black means that you are abiding by what's called critical social justice.
		There is an oppressor and oppress narrative that is running through America.
		And, you know, the idea that lived experience trumps reason and rationality.
		Those are just two of the tenets.
		The primary tenet is this.
		The question isn't, did racism happen, but how did it manifest in this situation?
		Which is to say, racism is always already happening.
		You just have to find it.
		And if you can't find it, it's because you're not educated enough.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And you disagree with that premise.
unidentified		Wholeheartedly.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		When you were testifying in Congress recently, you said, quote, contemporary DEI diversity, equity, inclusion is not an extension of the civil rights movement.
		It is undergirded by a quasi-Marxist ideology called critical social justice.
		Yes.
unidentified		Yes.
		Critical social justice is an umbrella term for a lot of things we've heard in the past few years.
		Critical race theory is under the umbrella of critical social justice, as is critical queer studies ability, things like that.
		The issue with this ideology is that it is inherently illiberal.
		Illiberal, meaning, you know, against free speech, against the primacy of reason, against the sovereignty of the individual.
		It's all about the group, one group pitted against the other.
		And this takes our eyes off of our own agency, right?
		Of the opportunities we have right now, of the fact that it's 2025 and not 1965, right?
		That's kind of a primary idea of this.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, the Congressional Black Caucus, which has been around for 50 or so years in Congress, is currently chaired by Yvette Clark of New York, Democrat from New York.
		And recently she spoke about DEI and the Trump administration's efforts in that regard.
		Here's what she had to say.
yvette clarke ▲ ● ▼		We cannot overstate the gravity of the moment that we're in.
		We cannot overstate the impact that Donald Trump's executive actions and policies will have on black communities.
		In particular, the mass firings and attacks on diversity in the federal government, an assault on black workers.
unidentified		One in five civil servants are black.
yvette clarke ▲ ● ▼		For decades, federal jobs have provided a pathway to the middle class for many black Americans in the face of discrimination in the private sector.
unidentified		Y'all know your parents told you.
		Get educated, get a good government job.
		Hello?
yvette clarke ▲ ● ▼		The purge of the federal workforce is an attack on black jobs and an attempt to kick us out of the middle class.
unidentified		Cutting billions of dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and SNAP is truly just, it's a matter of life and death.
		These cuts will leave millions of black children, black families, black seniors, and people with disabilities vulnerable and without a lifeline.
		And the attacks on the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship, show all the direction Republicans would like to take our country.
yvette clarke ▲ ● ▼		We are at the bullseye, the bullseye of what's taking place.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Eric Smith of Free Black Thought, what's your reaction to what Congresswoman Clark had to say?
unidentified		Well, the first question I pose to her is a question that Trump often got several months ago.
		What's a black job?
		Apparently, she's saying it's a federal job.
		I think a black job is any job that a black person does.
		I have a black job, quote unquote, right?
		The idea that there is only one or two paths to success for black Americans is defeated thinking.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We're going to put the numbers up on the screen.
		You can tell we're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, and DEI initiatives and the Trump administration's plans to get rid of DEI initiatives, not only in the federal government, but across the country.
		Numbers are up on the screen.
		Go ahead and dial in.
		Divided by Republican, Democrat, and Independent.
		Mr. Smith, you identify DEI as an industry.
unidentified		Yes.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean by that?
unidentified		Well, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, as a matter of fact.
		There's a lot of money to be made in diversity trainings, implicit bio trainings, and things like that.
		The issue with something like this being an industry is that you need a reason for the industry, right?
		As bad as it sounds, doctors need illness, you know what I mean, or else it would not be necessary.
		A similar idea comes up with the diversity, equity, and inclusion.
		You need racism in order to justify this industry.
		So when racism isn't apparent, you have to say, well, you just don't see it, right?
		And I'm here to save the day.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Also wanted to ask you, how did you come to this point of view that you have?
unidentified		What aspect of the point of view?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What's your background?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Just as a founder of Free Black Thought and talking about being politically black and DEIs and industry?
unidentified		Yes.
		Well, that's a very long story.
		I'll try to truncate into a few seconds.
		I realized in my field of rhetoric and composition, I'm a former professor, that there was a lot of illiberal sentiment going on, a lot of brazen statements about how the point of education is to take down civil society, not to perpetuate it.
		I had an issue with this, and because I had that issue, I was attacked.
		And that opened my eyes to exactly how ingrained critical social justice is in academia.
		And then eventually I found out how much it was ingrained in other institutions.
		And I and several others decided to do something.
		So we started Free Black Thought.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you write that on the Cato Institute's website that you emailed a client, why is this, basically, when you were told when you were working in academe that you needed to stand up to X for racism reasons.
		And you said why.
		And what happened?
unidentified		Well, I mean, one of the things that was talked about is the idea that teaching standard English to black students was a form of racism, right?
		We're denying their African-American vernacular or something like that.
		When in reality, students are not paying tuition to not learn.
		They're there to learn the standard English, so they have that tool.
		However, learning that standard English would help them be successful and fulfilled in contemporary society.
		But these professors, many of them, not all of them, think that contemporary society is the problem.
		So there's a conflict of interest there that I think is not talked about enough.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Where'd you grow up?
unidentified		Mount Holly, New Jersey.
		Yes, about a half hour east of Philadelphia.
		So I'm a Philadelphia sports fan.
		Every sport, I bleed green, go Eagles.
		And I was raised in a predominantly white neighborhood.
		And that did a lot of things.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		You write that it was so white that you could be used as a landmark.
unidentified		Yes.
		Yes.
		If you're lost, take two blocks that way.
		You're going to see a black kid.
		Turn left.
		Yeah, that's how rare black eyes are.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And how did that impact who you are today?
unidentified		It made me a staunch individual because when I went to high school in that same region, the high school was much more diverse than my elementary school and middle school.
		And I thought I'd be finding my people and I wouldn't be such an outcast, right?
		No, I was also an outcast to them because I was too white, having grown up, you know, in a predominantly white neighborhood.
		So I had no click.
		And having no click, I was forced to embrace individuality, and I'm glad I did.
		Individuality and not group consciousness is the major unit in the society, and it should be.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Did you face racism being one of the few black kids in your youth?
unidentified		Oh, yes, definitely.
		And it was kind of a pastime to an extent.
		You know, some kids got together and played wiffle ball.
		They played soccer.
		These kids got together and messed with me.
		So that was not good, and I'm not happy about it.
		But again, I thought I'd find my place, you know, among other African Americans, and I did not.
		So right now, I am a staunch individualist, and I think I'll remain that way.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you think about what the Trump administration has proposed via executive orders mostly when it comes to DEI initiatives?
unidentified		I'm somewhat confused because in the first administration, Trump's first administration, he had a similar EO prohibiting discrimination in any way, race, sex.
		And he had a section that said, you know, here's what I'm not saying.
		You know, we're not saying you can't talk about race.
		We're not saying you can't teach these ideas.
		We're saying you can't coerce people and you can't put people in boxes that they don't want to be in.
		That caveat doesn't seem to be present in the current EOs, which is why diversity, equity, inclusion is being attacked from many different directions.
		It's not just attacking critical social justice, right?
		Also, people who are not doing critical social justice but are trying to do DEI the right way, the civil rights way, right?
		They're also being attacked too.
		And I think that's somewhat unfair, but it might be the cost of doing business here.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What's the civil rights way?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean by that?
unidentified		The civil rights way is DEI that's focused on classical liberal values.
		And what I mean by that is it focuses on individuality, the primacy of reason.
		It focuses on free speech, free association, all these different things.
		And it also focuses on colorblindness.
		Now, in contemporary DEI, the kind undergirded by critical social justice, colorblindness is a bad thing because it's seen as not seeing somebody's race and therefore not seeing that person's struggles.
		As if you know a person's struggles just by looking at them.
		The civil rights movement of the 60s did not do that.
		It did the total opposite.
		Judge me by my character, my merits, and not by my skin color.
		That's been flipped right now.
		And I think that's the problem.
		And I'm glad the Trump administration is doing something about it.
		But I want to acknowledge that there are people out there who do not abide by critical social justice and are trying to do things the king way.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, throughout the government, DEI has become something that the Trump administration wants to remove.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Here's what Pete Hegseth, the DOD secretary, had to say about it.
bill gertz ▲ ● ▼		On the counter diversity, equity, inclusion, what's your assessment now three months in and trying to undo a lot of those programs?
pete hegseth ▲ ● ▼		My assessment is the DOD will be merit-based and colorblind.
		You will be judged based on how good you are at your job.
		Full stop.
		That's it.
		And so getting rid of diversity, equity, inclusion, DEI, getting rid of different standards was fundamental to getting back to basics.
		And that's what I, when I get a chance to talk to commanders here, that's what I emphasize.
		We're getting back to basics.
		Standards at every level need to be adhered to.
		And that's at a baseline.
		And when you talk to soldiers, you talk to Marines, they get it.
		They get it.
		They've seen the standards slide under the previous administration.
		They watched, you know, in many different ways how it eroded or quotas were being met or different aspects had to be, boxes had to be checked.
		Not anymore.
		The only box that gets checked in this Defense Department is lethality and your ability to do your job.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Back to Eric Smith of the Cato Institute.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What did you think of what he had to say?
unidentified		I agree with it to a large extent.
		Obviously, you have to take into consideration the struggles people might have had because of their race or their sex or something like that.
		But ultimately, we should hire people.
		We should promote people based on their merits and what they can do, how they can do the job and things like that.
		I'm not saying that there aren't issues.
		I'm saying that the issues should be taken care of long before somebody gets into a job interview or something like that.
		Outreach programs to middle schools and high schools, for example.
		They're working very well.
		The Hidden Genius program, which is focused on STEM, goes into black communities and shows students what it means to be a chemistry major, what it means to be an engineer or something like that.
		It gets them started early so that by the time they're in college, it's not a kosher shock or something like that.
		The Take Charge program in Minnesota, started by Kendall Qualls, something similar.
		These things are happening, and nobody is saying racism doesn't exist.
		They are saying that the current ways of dealing with it are flawed.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Front page of the Washington Post this morning, I don't know if you've seen this or not, but the National Park Service has removed Harriet Tubman from the website.
		It edits the history exhibits.
		She has been removed, as you can see here.
		We'll show you the original up here in the red.
		Move up a little further.
		Great.
		That was the original from the website.
		I am the conductor of the Underground Railroad, and it has her name, of course.
		And then now you come down, here's what the green is, and this is the new website.
		What do you think about removing Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service on the Underground Railroad?
unidentified		I don't understand why it was necessary to do that.
		And this is, again, the downside of getting rid of DEI.
		Some things that shouldn't be attacked are being attacked.
		And things like this, to be frank, are happening all over the country.
		In South York County right now, there was a black chemist who was going to visit the school district and talk to the students about chemistry, all students.
		It would have been wonderful.
		That visit was canceled because of fear that she might talk about political issues.
		So there is such a thing as this going too far.
		The Harriet Tubman thing is one.
		That example from York County is another.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And I think at DOD, they had taken down the Tuskegee Airmen at one point.
		Yes.
		Have been reinstituted.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		Perhaps that will happen with Harriet Tubman, too.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's take some calls.
		Eric Smith is our guest.
		Free Black Thought is his organization, as is the Cato Institute, plus a group called Pro-Human Foundation.
		Foundation, what is that?
unidentified		I'm on the board of that foundation.
		And what it does is, well, it's pro-human.
		It embraces merit and colorblindness as opposed to lived experience and centering color as the primary marker of identity.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Let's talk to Tim in New York, Independent Line.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Tim, go ahead, please.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen.
		Chief, I don't know where to begin.
		I've been following politics for quite a long time.
		I guess the days of Watergate got me interested in it.
		But I got to tell you, if I was a black man, I would be insulted.
		I mean, there are so many black people in history, you just named a couple, who made it possible for you to be where you are, to get an education, to vote, and then you join the Cato Institute, which basically wants to have a plan to rewrite the Constitution, which is in line with what Project 2025 wants to do.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Tim, are you white?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		You black?
unidentified		I'm white.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Maybe I'm not allowed to confront this situation, but I'm just asking Mr. Smith.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, you are here on C-SPAN.
		That's fine.
		We'll get an answer from our guest here in just a second, but Tim is rather appalled for you.
unidentified		So many things to say in response to Tim.
		First of all, I have written about a concept called prescriptive racism, which is basically telling black people how to be black, right?
		And that has risen in recent years to the point where white people are telling me how to be black, right?
		As we just heard.
		And I forget the name of the caller already.
		Tim.
		Tim brings up how historical figures have made it possible for me to be here.
		I'm doing this because of historical figures.
		They went through things I can't possibly imagine.
		Not just slavery, but also Jim Crow.
		My parents went through things I can't possibly imagine to give me the life that I have right now.
		For me to sit here and pretend that it's as bad as it was for them is an insult to them.
		Because of them, I'm here and I have the agency to succeed on my own merits because of them.
		So when somebody says, oh, well, black people, you need our help.
		The world's against you.
		I say, I can do it myself.
		Thank you very much.
		In fact, you might need my help in some ways.
		So I really resent what Tim said.
		That's another form of prescriptive racism.
		And I think I am making my ancestors proud.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Tell us about your parents.
unidentified		My parents met in high school in Milwaukee.
		Most of my family is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
		And my dad entered the Army and traveled all over the place.
		I was born after two Vietnam tours.
		I was conceived between them.
		So if one of those bullets would have hit, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.
		And they struggled a lot to give us the lives we had and the opportunities we had.
		For me to say, oh, forget about those opportunities.
		I'm going to pretend that things are so awful that I can't possibly succeed.
		That is an insult to my parents.
		I will never do that.
		You know what I'm going to do to honor my parents?
		I'm going to succeed.
		I'm going to succeed mightily.
		And I'm not going to be stopped, Tim.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Where'd you go to school?
unidentified		College or Earth Science College, Small Liberal Arts School in the Philadelphia area.
unidentified		I went to graduate school at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where I got a master's and PhD in rhetorical theory.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		What exactly is rhetorical theory?
unidentified		It's the study of effective communication.
		Aristotle's definition is kind of the standard, although that's being attacked right now because he's a dead white male.
		But his definition is rhetoric is the ability in any given situation to discern the available means of persuasion.
		So if I'm talking to you, I would do well to know who you are, what your interests are, things like that, so I can make references that you would understand, as opposed to references that you might not understand because of who you are, right?
		So that's a very simple explanation of it.
		Course, you can scale it to societies, nations, ethnicities, and how they understand and talk about the world and things like that.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Did you enjoy teaching at York?
unidentified		Yes.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And York PA or York NJ?
unidentified		York PA.
		Yes, York College of Pennsylvania.
		I did enjoy it very much.
		And when I complain about academia, I'm not complaining about my immediate experiences there.
		I'm complaining about my field at large.
		I'm complaining about the humanities at large who seem to have lost their way and have become less educational units than activist units.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Next call for Eric Smith comes from Nicole in Maryland, Independent Line.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Where in Maryland are you, Nicole?
unidentified		Brooklyn Park.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Please go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, so it might be a question leading into a statement or a statement leading to a question, but here it goes.
		Education has always been based on zip code.
		You had a better result when school choice was allowing you to live in one area and go to school in another, which allowed you to separate from your environment you lived in and study in one you could equip yourself to be at least a blue-collar in any industry.
		Lastly, I think with the new restructure of the human services, which usually handle disability cases, it seems like that should be a better result and equip states and schools with straight communication from the science world of that diagnosis of that development and how you can equip that and incorporate that in schools in any environment so that all can thrive.
		And then lastly, with everything that's going on, I'm glad that the gentleman, Mr. Smith, was saying it's not a black and white issue.
		I think that's what got our country here after the new deal of Roosevelt with using immigrants to get that change, that money up into Social Security, and they wasn't going to get, but it was helpful to our community then exporting them back out.
		It's the same thing that's different day.
		I just hope that moving forward, and I end it here.
		I hope that moving forward, we do, we just allow a matrix to be examined from a smaller scale to make a big impact, especially in the court systems.
		We have so many people that are being tried with not the facts just to get grants to say war on drugs or war on.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Nicole, we're going to leave it there.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for sharing your point of view, Eric Smith.
unidentified		Well, there was a lot said there.
		I will hone in on school choice.
		I'm a big fan of that and charter schools as well.
		And a great example of how that can benefit minority students is Ian Rowe, who's running charter schools in Brooklyn.
		I'm sorry, the Bronx in New York, Vertex Charter Schools.
		And it serves predominantly black and Latino students, and they are thriving.
		Why?
		Because he explicitly states that he's not doing the current DEI thing.
		He's not doing the victimhood thing.
		He's not doing the us versus them thing.
		He's doing the personal agency thing.
		And he's doing the citizenship and the civil society thing.
		And these students are thriving.
		So it is possible.
		Charter schools are wonderful.
		I think we need more of them.
		I think it's the way forward.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Donald Trump, during February Black History Month, had a large group of conservative black leaders and citizens at the White House.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Were you part of that group?
unidentified		No.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Are you a supporter of Donald Trump?
unidentified		I support actions and not necessarily people or administrations.
		So whether I voted for an administration or not, I will judge them on their actions.
		And there are many times where a president I voted for did not do things quite well, and I was very vocal about it to my friends and family, of course.
		But I was very vocal about it.
		I like the idea of revamping the Department of Education.
		Some of those things can go other places.
		And I think the state should have more say in what's going on.
		I like that.
		I like the prohibition of DEI to an extent.
		It may go a little too far, as we talked about a little bit earlier, but we need to get the critical social justice out of higher ed pedagogy and secondary pedagogy, really.
		So these things I like.
		Fortunately for me, the things that I'm not super keen about are things that are not in my wheelhouse.
		So, you know, it doesn't matter anyway.
		I don't know.
		I'm not a professional.
		I'll leave that to the professionals.
		But what I do know about education, civil discourse, DEI, it's mostly good, a little bad.
		You could do some revision on those EOs.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Sean in Texas texts into you.
		He's an independent.
		I just learned about free black thought, but isn't providing a platform for black viewpoints not in and of itself a form of equity?
		Question mark.
		Is your point of view against DEI being a government mandate versus DEI in general?
unidentified		I'm against government mandating many things, and DEI is one of them.
		The point of free black thought is not so much equity, right, as it is, you know, getting people to know that there's more than just one voice, you know, coming from black Americans.
		That's really the gist of it.
		And we are founded in classical liberal values, as I talked about before.
		And we want to put the individuality and colorblindness back into DEI, right?
		So DEI in that sense is not something I'm against.
		DEI in the critical social justice sense, I am against.
		And that doesn't belong anywhere, whether it's the federal government, education, churches, whatever.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Rhonda, New Jersey, Democrat, good morning to you.
		Rhonda, you with us?
		All right, let's move on.
		Believe it or not, another Rhonda in Pennsylvania, a Republican.
		Rhonda in Pennsylvania, Republican, go ahead.
unidentified		Hello.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
		Just two thoughts here.
		Well, actually, one's a statement.
		I agree with your guess that, like, the school system definitely needs redone.
		The more money they spend, kids still can't read.
angela in florida ▲ ● ▼		The reason I called in is the previous caller talking to the guests down like he should be ashamed of himself because he thinks for himself.
unidentified		I thought it was disgusting before he even said anything.
		I'm glad he said something, your guess.
		I'm a white woman, and I just think everybody should think for theirself.
		And I just want to call Maylian because it really upset me, like, that you would put someone in a category like that and just treat them like that.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		I think she's thank you, Rhonda.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		I think she's referencing back to Tim, our earlier caller from New York.
unidentified		The infamous Tim.
unidentified		Yes, he's really making a name for himself these days.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Aaron is calling from New York, Democrat.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Aaron.
unidentified		Good morning, guys.
		How are you?
		Thanks for my call.
		I've been around for a long while.
		I'm retired.
		Have kids, and I've been on this planet for a good while.
		And my point is to everyone in this country: there is no such thing as a race.
		The only race of people that I'm familiar with since I've been on this planet has been humans.
		No one else.
		When you categorize yourself and have you thinking that somehow there's something wrong with you, then that's a problem.
		We all came from each other.
		Anything white are considered white.
		Always have to go through a process to become that way.
		We are family on this planet as human beings.
		And first there was affirmative action that didn't work.
		Now there's DEI.
		And I want to remind everyone who's listening, I was commenting: DEI is the entire planet.
		We can't get away from DEI.
		It's diversity, equity, and inclusion.
		So if you're not going to include everybody, you should put up a sign like they have in South Africa back in the days, or in this country, as a matter of fact, that says white only.
		And then you can take the list of these so-called people that you put on your job application.
		You can remove the list and base that on only qualification.
		I'm more than qualified for a lot of things that I've done, a job in my life, but no one sees my resume until they sit down and talk to me.
		So I would love to have this conversation.
		I can casually walk down the street with no care in the world and have a cup of coffee and don't have people bump me and do this and call me the N-word, but they have no idea my education level and how impactful I am if they can just sit down and talk to me as a human being.
		And that's our problem.
		Until we solve that problem, we're always going to keep digging ourselves in our hole and keep moving back and back, which does not make any sense.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Aaron, we got your point.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Just for edification, do you experience incidences of racism on a regular basis?
unidentified		Oh, my goodness.
		Where do I start?
		I went to Massachusetts in a pretty good school.
		I worked my ass off.
		Excuse my language.
		I can have conversation with everyone, my professor, all of this.
		But when it comes down to me having a conversation with some of the people who somehow think that I wasn't that insightful until they start talking to me, then they realize that I'm not a dumbass.
		They resort to that, you know, that whole, oh, you're a black guy, you're this, you're that.
		That's the out.
		That's their out for people who can't deal with people like me and who are challenged for people like me.
		Because if you level the playing field, trust me, we can go and get ours.
		And I want to remind everyone, Jackie Robinson, that did a lot for who we are in this country, and I'm proud of that.
		And let's also talk about Jesse Owens.
		Let's bring that man up for change and just him alone.
		So imagine if we had this level playing field that we're fighting so much to get.
		Imagine if all of the stuff was equal for everybody in this country.
		Where would we be?
		And where would it be as black people, as colored people, as native?
		Where would we be at this point as a country if we have level the playing field?
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, Karen, before we let you go, I want to show you this one article.
		This is on Breitbart this morning.
		New York State Education Department refuses to eliminate its DEI practices.
		What do you think about that?
unidentified		I think it's excellent, but we should stop using the word DEI because diversity, equity, and inclusion should not be, that's exactly what it is.
		It's exactly that for all the masses of people in different countries and different culture that comes into all of our education system.
		Every one of us.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, sir.
		We're going to leave it there.
		Aaron, Eric Smith, should Aaron be a member of Free Black Thought, listening to him?
unidentified		Anybody can be a member of Free Black Thought Thought.
unidentified		Right.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		But when you hear him, what do you hear?
unidentified		I hear somebody with a viewpoint that is nuanced to a large degree, and that can be part of the marketplace of ideas.
		What we embrace at Free Black Thought is a variety of viewpoints.
		We never say, oh, you're wrong or you're right or you shouldn't be saying that thing.
		We want everybody to have a voice so that we can scrutinize ideas and find the best ones.
		This is what the marketplace of idea is all about.
		It's not a perfect metaphor, but it's pretty good for explaining what civil discourse and civil society are.
		So I feel that way about his membership in Free Black Thought.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		James is calling in from Ohio, a Democrat.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		James, where in Ohio are you?
unidentified		I'm in Akron, Ohio.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		All right, please go ahead, sir.
unidentified		I'm just wondering, I know the young man's at the Cato Institute.
		I'm much older than him, and I understand that.
		But I have concerns with people that I know he's trying to right a wrong or make a situation work out, but Cato Institution and the institutions like that that are primarily right-leaning, they are doing underhanded things to disallow everybody from voting.
		I mean, black people and poor white people as well, but mainly black people.
		And I'm just wondering.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		James, you're saying that the Cato Institute is actively preventing people of color from voting?
unidentified		In the thing, if you read the things that they put out from their individual writers or whomever, they are things like, well, for instance, okay, trying to get voting rights for people to have IDs, certain IDs.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Well, ID.
		And I, thank you.
		We'll get a response from Mr. Smith, but I would also note to you that in Wisconsin, they elected the liberal Supreme Court justice, but they also voted overwhelmingly for voter ID laws as well in that state.
unidentified		Right.
		It's a mistake to think that somebody is purely in this box or this box.
		You can have some conservative views, some liberal views.
		And I think one of the biggest falsehoods in the current culture war is the idea that anti-DEI sentiment is only coming from the right.
		It's coming from the left as well.
		Traditional liberals do not like this stuff.
		Why?
		Because it demonizes critical inquiry.
		It demonizes critiquing anybody who is black or minority or something like that, which is the opposite of critical thinking.
		So there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who don't like this stuff.
		And as you just said, I mean, there are whole states who can say, we want this, but we also want this.
		You know, that's a human experience.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Steve, New York City, or New York, I should say, Republican.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Steve.
unidentified		Good morning.
		I'm a black man, and I'm listening to this brother here speak.
		And the other day, C-SPAN had the man on from the Heritage Foundation, a Cuban, speaking against DEI.
		His job, him having his job is DEI.
		You're speaking for the Cato Institute, a white institution.
		You having your job is DEI.
		The opposition to MLK, the people who were busting heads on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they weren't liberals who wanted to get along.
		They were the same white conservative movement that you speak of and speak for.
		So I don't think black people should be given anything, but you're a black man sitting here speaking against the people who gave their lives for you to be in the position that you're in currently.
		Now, the Heritage Foundation, they'll tried out a Cuban to speak against black and white issues in America when that Cuban and his family had no dog in the fight between black people and white people.
		And I don't think black people and white people should be segregated or enemies just because of their skin color.
		But black people have been given unfair treatment simply because of their skin color.
		And you sit here and you speak for the same people that you said made a sport out of being racist to you.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Steve, we're going to leave it there.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		We're going to get a response from our guest, Eric Smith.
unidentified		It's amazing what people think about the Cato Institute and what we are.
		His description couldn't be further from my experience in that institution.
		Regarding being a black person who is speaking out against DEI, again, I'm not speaking out against diversity, equity, and inclusion in the original meanings of those words.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And how do you define it again?
unidentified		Diversity, equity, inclusion.
		Yes.
		The problematic version is critical social justice.
		It's undergirded by a critical social justice ideology that necessarily puts minorities as victims and white people as oppressors, period, right?
		And that racism is never going away.
		It's here to stay.
		We just have to accept that.
		I'm not down with that at all.
		And when he calls me a DEI hire, I'm wondering why he thinks that.
		It seems to be also racist to think that the only reason I got my job is because of DEI.
		That's also racist.
		I got my job because I'm good.
		I got my job because I'm smart and I know what I'm talking about.
		Period.
		So that right there was a racist statement from somebody accusing me of not respecting my ancestors and things like that.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		And he went back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama talking about the civil rights movement in the 60s.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		So saying that you're standing on their shoulders.
unidentified		Right.
		And I acknowledge that because I'm standing on my shoulders, I'm saying, standing on their shoulders, I'm saying what I'm saying.
		That's precisely why I'm saying what I'm saying.
		They went through things that we can't imagine.
		So somebody who is black today, who has all these advantages and opportunities, to sit there and think and talk like they have as bad as those people did on that bridge, right?
		I think that's the insult.
		Because of what they did for me, I'm going to make them proud.
		And I'm going to do whatever it takes to succeed.
		And if you're in my way, that's a problem.
		But if you're not my way, it's not a problem.
peter slen ▲ ● ▼		Eric Smith is a research fellow with the Cato Institute.
		He's on the board of advisors for the Pro-Human Foundation.
		He is the founder of Free Black Thought, co-founder and co-editor.
		And that is an active website that people can go to.
		He's testified in front of Congress.
		And if you want to read more of what he's written, go to the Cato Institute and type in Eric Smith.
		We appreciate your time here on the Washington Journal.
unidentified		Later today, Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Jamie Raskin lead a discussion on the Trump administration's policy agenda and its impact on the rule of law with testimony from former Justice Department attorneys.
		That's live at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3.
		Also on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org.
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