Dennis Prager Show - PragerU Changes Minds: "I Was Completely Indoctrinated by the Left"
Aired: 2021-02-11
Duration: 07:03


=== Raised on the Left (07:03) ===

[00:00:00]  Remarkable young woman, 20 years old, Amala Ekpunobi.
[00:00:04]  She's a member of Prager Force.
[00:00:06]  She actually spoke to the board of directors of Prager University at a board meeting this week.
[00:00:13]  And we're very, very happy we found you and happy you found us.
[00:00:19]  We'll get to that in a moment.
[00:00:21]  So just to recap...
[00:00:23]  Amala is the daughter of a Nigerian father and American white mother.
[00:00:31]  And they separated when she was six.
[00:00:34]  And that's the personal story in a nutshell.
[00:00:38]  Her mother was, as a result of college, she became a person of the left.
[00:00:45]  So were you raised, you were raised on the left?
[00:00:49]  Absolutely.
[00:00:54]  When you were 15, was there a voice in you saying, is this all correct, or you pretty much believed it?
[00:01:02]  When I was 15, I was completely indoctrinated by the left.
[00:01:06]  You could not reach me if you jumped in my head and gave me your own ideas.
[00:01:11]  I was, like I said, extremely angry.
[00:01:14]  Anybody who wanted to pick a fight with me, I was there to argue, and I was there to spout the talking points and the buzzwords.
[00:01:21]  Well, here's a question I don't know if you're asked often.
[00:01:25]  Did you buy the line that being a person of color, you were persecuted?
[00:01:33]  Absolutely.
[00:01:34]  And it was ingrained into me from a very young age, actually.
[00:01:39]  So growing up with my mother, I... So you grew up thinking pretty much America is systemically racist?
[00:01:47]  Yes.
[00:01:47]  And had it in for you?
[00:01:49]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:01:51]  If I'd have asked you when you were 15, so how has America's systemic racism and the universality of white...
[00:02:03]  Prejudice against blacks.
[00:02:05]  How has that actually affected you?
[00:02:07]  What would you have answered?
[00:02:09]  I would not have had an answer.
[00:02:12]  I don't think any of them.
[00:02:14]  Them meaning people of color who believe.
[00:02:17]  People of color on the left.
[00:02:19]  And whites on the left don't either.
[00:02:22]  It's the greatest lie and it's backed up with nothing.
[00:02:27]  It's backed up with studies.
[00:02:29]  It is.
[00:02:30]  But not real life.
[00:02:31]  It is somewhat of a...
[00:02:33]  You'll find this of interest, I think.
[00:02:37]  I've been doing radio for 35 years, and I have a lot of black listeners, which I'm delighted to say.
[00:02:45]  And every so often, I will get a call about, Dennis, you don't know what it is to walk in a black person's shoes.
[00:02:52]  I don't know what it is to walk in my wife's shoes.
[00:02:54]  I'm not being cute.
[00:02:55]  No one knows what it's like to walk in anybody else's shoes.
[00:02:58]  That's the human condition.
[00:03:01]  The caller doesn't know what it's like to walk in my shoes.
[00:03:04]  All right.
[00:03:05]  So I say, okay, and if I walked in your shoes, what would I experience?
[00:03:10]  Well, tell you the truth, every day I experience racism.
[00:03:15]  So I've had an answer for 35 years, and it's an honest answer.
[00:03:20]  Okay, if it happens every day, what happened today?
[00:03:24]  And then they say, well, day's not over.
[00:03:28]  Okay, what happened yesterday?
[00:03:30]  Because yesterday is over.
[00:03:32]  And I've never in 35 years gotten a response from someone claiming to experience racism every day.
[00:03:44]  So you wouldn't have had an answer at 15?
[00:03:46]  I would not have had an answer.
[00:03:47]  And it's funny enough, I grew up in a very conservative, mostly white area in Central Florida, and I was extremely successful.
[00:03:54]  I was top of my class.
[00:03:55]  I graduated valedictorian.
[00:03:57]  And you still would have come up to me and asked me about it, and I would have said that America was systemically racist, even though I had not experienced any of it.
[00:04:04]  And that's how corrupt our media is.
[00:04:06]  That's how corrupt our schooling system is.
[00:04:08]  And their influence is very strong, especially with young people.
[00:04:13]  God, I love her.
[00:04:14]  I do.
[00:04:15]  What am I going to tell you?
[00:04:16]  Thank you.
[00:04:17]  So, what happened?
[00:04:20]  Did you wake up one day?
[00:04:22]  Was there a theophany?
[00:04:24]  Did you have a burning bush like Moses?
[00:04:26]  What happened?
[00:04:27]  So what happened for me was I graduated at 17. I wasn't too keen on going straight into college, and I started working for my mother's organization as a youth organizer.
[00:04:36]  And for me, my target audience was anybody from the age of 13 to 18, so I would travel around to schools and find their democratic clubs or their left-leaning students, and I would talk to them about coming and working for the organization.
[00:04:50]  And that involved going to our education seminars, getting involved with protests, going around and canvassing and doorknob.
[00:04:58]  And I put myself in a position where I was a role model to young people and they had plenty of questions for me and they were questions that I could not answer.
[00:05:07]  And I went to my superiors and I asked these questions and I saw a lot of hate and I got a lot of hate in return.
[00:05:14]  So I had to go out and seek my own answers and that's how I came to be a conservative.
[00:05:21]  Can you give an example?
[00:05:23]  Do you remember what some of those questions might have been?
[00:05:27]  So a lot of it was, what can I do as a person to stop this racism?
[00:05:33]  And can you give me examples of numbers and things like that that can...
[00:05:39]  That I can prove to people that this is happening in America.
[00:05:42]  They wanted proof of what I was saying, that America is systemically racist, that we are oppressed, that we live in a patriarchal society.
[00:05:49]  And I could not provide that proof to these young children.
[00:05:53]  Well, the left would give a standard answer, for example, the disproportionate number of blacks in prison.
[00:05:59]  So, would you have an answer to that?
[00:06:03]  In other words, at 17, would that have...
[00:06:10]  At 17, that would have convinced me.
[00:06:13]  Hook, line, and sinker, I would have believed it.
[00:06:15]  Well, you're only 20, so we're talking about a recent change.
[00:06:18]  Yes.
[00:06:18]  So, it was that you started asking questions?
[00:06:23]  Yes.
[00:06:23]  So, I... I experienced a lot of hate working for the left.
[00:06:28]  I realized I was a very angry person.
[00:06:30]  When I went into work each day, it felt like, okay, there are things you can and cannot say.
[00:06:35]  We need to stick in that.
[00:06:36]  You have to agree with everything on all sides of the spectrum or you're not with us.
[00:06:40]  And there was a lot of hate, particularly for white people.
[00:06:43]  And I had spoken with a supervisor and I said, you know, I'm half white.
[00:06:48]  Am I supposed to hate that half of me?
[00:06:50]  Am I supposed to hate the family?
[00:06:52]  Okay, so let me just say the day you asked that, it was over.
[00:06:55]  That is why they don't want five-minute videos.
[00:06:59]  It doesn't take long to burst the leftist bubble.