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Jan. 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
12:07
Why Discrimination is No Match For Hard Work | Larry Elder Show
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Hard work wins.
You get out of life what you put into it.
That's what my mother and father always taught me.
But we got an Epoch Times viewer who sent me this clip from a sitcom on ABC called Blackish.
Check it out.
Let's say they listen to the cops and get in the car.
Look what happened to Freddie Gray.
Yeah, and what if they make it all the way to the station?
You remember Sandra Bland?
And let's say they do make it to trial.
You see where that gets us?
Don't you get it, Bo?
The system is rigged against us.
Maybe it is, Dre.
But I don't want to feel like my kids are living in a world that is so flawed that they can't have any hope.
Oh, so you want to talk about hope, Bo?
Obama ran on hope.
Remember when he got elected and we felt like maybe just maybe we got out of that bad place and made it to a good place.
That the whole country was really ready to turn the corner.
You remember that amazing feeling we had during the inauguration?
I was sitting right next to you and we were so proud and we saw him.
Get out of that limo and walk alongside of it and wave to that crowd.
Tell me you weren't terrified when you saw that.
Tell me you weren't worried that someone was going to snatch that hope away from us like they always do.
That is the real world, Bo.
And our children need to know that that's the world that they live in.
Hmm.
So let's watch it.
See what they're going to say next.
My goodness.
Now, check out this scene from a movie called Menace to Society, where a high school teacher is dispensing advice to two students.
Being a black man in America isn't easy.
The hunt is on.
And you're the prey.
All I'm saying is, all I'm saying is, survive.
Wow.
To borrow the term from Joe Biden, That's malarkey.
Let me tell you a story.
I went to law school at University of Michigan, and I was visiting my aunt who lived in Detroit.
She and I were talking, and a neighbor knocked on the door.
She invited him in, and he sat down, and he started listening to my aunt and me talk about law school, about the classes I was taking, civil procedure, evidence, criminal practice, torts, and so forth.
And I looked up, and the man was crying.
He was about 30 years old.
I thought I had said something to offend him.
And I turned to him and I said, I'm sorry, did I say something that bothered you?
He goes, no, no, no, no.
I always wanted to go to law school.
I always wanted to be a lawyer.
But I got involved in jackassery and I messed up my time and messed up my energy and messed up my money and now I can't go.
And he was literally crying.
Put aside whether or not he was still old enough to go to law school, the point is he wasn't blaming the man.
He wasn't blaming racism.
He was blaming his own failure to take advantage of the opportunities he said that were in front of him.
I've often talked about the problem of the large number of kids raised without fathers.
70% of black kids now are raised without fathers, according to the CDC. About 50% of Hispanic kids are.
And about 25% of white kids are.
It is the number one social problem in our country.
But being raised without a father is not a death sentence.
Check out my own father.
My father was born in 1915.
To an illiterate mother, she can neither read, nor write, nor do math.
He doesn't even know his birthday because she couldn't write down his birthday in the Bible.
He wasn't born in a hospital.
He was born in the back of a room.
His mother had a series of boyfriends, each one more irresponsible than the one before.
She had a boyfriend named Elder.
That's how I got my last name.
He was in my dad's life the longest, but he too took off.
So one day, my dad is 13 years old.
He's coming home from school in Athens, Georgia.
And he's quarreling with his mom's then-boyfriend.
The mother sides with the boyfriend and throws my father out of the house, never to return.
He walks down the street, does anything he can do, ends up being a shoeshine boy, hotel valet.
Ultimately, he gets a job as a Pullman porter on the trains.
They were the largest private employer of blacks in those days.
He was able to travel all around the country And visited California and made a mental note that maybe someday I may relocate to California, which is why I ended up here.
Pearl Harbor.
My dad joined the Marines.
I asked him, why the Marines, dad?
And he gave two reasons.
People who are Marines know those reasons.
Number one, they go where the action is.
Number two, my dad said, I love those uniforms.
So my dad gets out of the war.
He was a cook in the war.
He was a staff sergeant.
My dad could look at a cake and tell you what's in it.
So he goes back to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he met and married my mom to get him a job as a short order cook.
And he's told repeatedly, we don't hire N-words.
Was told this over and over and over again.
He goes to an unemployment office.
The lady said, I'm sorry, you went through the wrong door.
My dad goes out to the hall.
He sees the door that says colored only.
He goes through that door to the very same lady who sent him out.
My dad came home to my mom and said, this is BS. I'm going to California to Los Angeles, and I'm going to get me a job as a cook.
My dad comes out to LA, walks around for two days.
He's told, I'm sorry, you have no references, which is California's way of saying the same thing as he was told in Tennessee.
They were just a little more polite about it.
My dad closed the unemployment office, this time just one door.
He asked the lady if she has anything.
She says no.
My dad says, what time do you open?
She says 8.
What time do you close?
She said 5.
My dad says, I'll be here at 8.
I'll stay till 5 until I have a job.
My dad literally went there for a day and a half until she finally called him up.
She said, I have something.
I'm not sure you're going to want it.
My dad said, I'm sure I'm going to want it.
What is it?
She says, it's a job cleaning toilets.
My dad took that job at Nabisco Brand Bread for 10 years cleaning toilets, took a second job with a company called Barber and Breads, also cleaning toilets, cooked for a family on the weekend to get additional money, and went to night school two or three nights a week to get his GED. The man never slept.
But my father, born in Athens, Georgia, 1915, Jim Crow, and got kicked out of the house close to the beginning of the Great Depression, he told my brothers and me the following, hard work wins.
You get out of life what you put into it.
You cannot control the outcome, but you are 100% in control of the effort.
And before you whine and moan about what somebody said to you or did to you, my dad said, go to the nearest mirror, look at it, and ask yourself, what could I have done to change the outcome?
And finally, my father said this, no matter how hard you work, how good you are, sooner or later, bad things will happen to you.
How you respond to those bad things, my dad said, will tell your mother and me if we raised a man.
You know, to act like America is the same as it used to be is an insult to all the men and women who really went through serious, demeaning, debilitating racism.
People like Hall of Famer Hank Aaron.
He wrote a book called I Had a Hammer.
He said when he was in the Sally League, the Southern League, around the same time Jackie Robinson was breaking the modern major leagues, He was facing serious discrimination.
The newspapers wouldn't even print the pictures of the ballplayers.
If you were caught out at night, you could be arrested.
Don't even think about trying to flag a cab.
That's what people like Hank Aaron and Bob Gibson went through, which explains why Bob Gibson said at the beginning of his career he was so angry.
Well, anger came from racism.
Of course it did.
But racism was a way of life.
That it was stuff that I had to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
I didn't every once in a while go somewhere and all of a sudden there it was.
No, it was there and it followed me all the way through my childhood and not just through the childhood, through the first part of my major league career.
It was there.
How many of the young blacks preaching and teaching about racism in America experienced anything like Bob Gibson?
Answer, none.
And it is an insult to that generation to act as if the obstacles facing your generation are just as serious.
They are not.
Finally, I got a lovely letter from someone who asked me whether or not I was an athlete growing up.
Well, if you consider two years in the Little League to be athletic, then I guess I was.
I wasn't that good.
They had me in right field where they put kids if they don't want the ball to come near them because most kids are right-handed and hit the ball to left field.
So there I am in right field, and there is a meeting on the mound.
And it went on and on and on.
And I'm in right field.
I decided to go in and find out what they were talking about.
So I get halfway there, and our coach, Mr.
Cooper, says, Elder, what are you doing?
And I said, I wanted to find out what you guys were talking about.
He said, get your black butt back out in the outfield and don't be so exuberant.
I said, what does exuberant mean?
He said, look it up!
Now, fast forward.
The great Elderski gets to throw out the first pitch at Dodger Stadium.
But before I show it to you, I want to show you the first pitch by 50 Cent and John Wall, the former number one pick from the NBA. You tell me who kept it real.
Well, that is 50 Cent.
Curtis Jackson.
Curtis Jackson.
And his first pitch was not great.
Just a bit outside.
What can you say?
You think he opened up a little early?
Yeah.
Look at that French shoulder?
It's good.
He never had a choice between playing for the Mets or being a rapper.
It's time for today's ceremonial first pitch.
To do the honors, we welcome an L.A. native who is known as the Sage of South Central.
He's a best-selling author and radio talk show host that can currently be heard Monday through Friday mornings from 9 a.m. until noon on 790 KVC.
Please welcome Larry Elder.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Oh, the warming up?
I don't think they do that, my friend.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I appreciate you.
Ste-rike!
Right over the plate!
And did I mention that John Wall was the number one draft pick for the NBA? They should have picked me!
I'm Larry Elder, and this has been the Larry Elder Show for Epoch Times.
I will see you next time.
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