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Feb. 18, 2022 - Rudy Giuliani
59:58
Life as a Black Woman and Her Journey from Liberalism to Conservatism | Rudy Giuliani | Ep. 214
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Welcome, and welcome back to Rudy's Common Sense.
The episode today I think you're going to find really, really both interesting and very exciting.
We've talked about this issue in different ways many times, not just you and I, but it's being talked about, oh my goodness, I guess for a long time.
I've never really spoken to someone Who not only understands it better, but explains it better than Barbara.
And Barbara has written a book.
Here's the book.
I'm going to show it to you first, before we meet Barbara.
The book is Escaping the Racism of Low Expectations.
Barbara from Harlem.
You're going to find this book, number one, entertaining.
And number two, when you get into it, wise.
Wisdom.
Really, really strong wisdom.
And things we kind of know, But we don't understand it as completely as she does because she's lived it.
So let's begin.
This is Barbara from Harlem.
Barbara?
Yes.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, first of all, thank you so much for writing this.
This book is going to be a very, very consequential book.
By that I mean it's going to change people's minds and get people to look at things differently, which doesn't happen a lot.
True.
That's true.
And I'd say the reason for it is it comes from your own experiences, your unbelievable honesty, your direct honesty, and you're a damn good writer.
So first of all, tell us briefly, because this comes out of your life, what got Barbara To where she was when she started writing this book, and why did she think this book was necessary?
What got you there?
Well, I thought that people needed to know what was going on in our country.
What is so divisive that's been happening?
And I know from experience at the Democratic clubs that I was a member of, all they talked about was racism.
All they talked about was hatred.
They didn't talk about loving America for the opportunities that we have here.
And that really perturbed me and inspired me to write about my experiences and to let people know America is a beautiful country.
We're not perfect, but I wouldn't want to be anyplace else.
And what it really inspired me was my God, being faithful to God, my country.
I love America and my conscience.
I couldn't have a good, clear conscience and still be a part of a party That talk about America and hatred like they do.
So you, so now let's go back to the beginning, uh, when you were born and you've had, I think it'd be fair to say a lot of challenges in your life.
You've had a difficult life for a woman that is as happy as you are.
Every time, every time people meet you, they get happy from your demeanor and the way you are.
They would not have a sense of how many challenges you've had in your life.
But let's begin with the fact that you were born, you were born into a democratic family.
Well, the only thing I could hear about was the Democratic Party.
and into a situation where you must be, you don't even think about it, you're a Democrat.
So explain your background to us, where you were born, your mother and your father,
and some of the difficulties. Well, the only thing I could hear about was the Democratic Party.
And when I became 21, at that time you had to be 21 to register to vote, there was no discussion.
It was automatic that I would become a Democrat.
I was married at that time, and my husband was a Democrat.
His family, they were all Democrats.
So there was no discussion about anything else but being a Democrat.
Now, your father and mother were Democrats, right?
That's correct.
My father, my mother.
And your grandma, who had a big influence on you, which we'll get into, was a Democrat.
All wonderful people, particularly your grandma.
Wow.
Oh, she was fabulous, fabulous.
That's right.
And they were all Democrats.
I was surrounded by a sea of Democrats.
That was it.
That was it.
And what was the main, what was the main, the reason I want you to say this is, what was the main thing that they would say about the Democrat Party just over and over again?
They would say that the Republicans are for the rich.
Well, you know, that was said to me so often, Barbara, that in 1971 or 72, I can't remember when, I decided I didn't want to be a Democrat anymore because of the corruption.
I was a prosecutor, I was investigating corruption in the great society programs.
To me, the program I was looking at, poor people would get nothing.
Everybody was getting rich.
The Democrats, even a few Republicans, taking money out, taking money out.
So I said, I can't belong to this party.
It's a bull party.
And I went down, and there's the registration card.
I get a chance to change, right?
The parties are all listed, Democrat, Republican, independent, not independent, liberal, conservative.
I can't be a Republican, they're for the rich.
I can't be a Republican, they're for the rich.
So I made myself independent for a while.
It was only later when I worked in the Ford administration and I began to get Republican friends and we started talking and I found out they cared as much about the poor They volunteered for associations to help.
They seem to me to do more for the poor than my Democratic friends, who all assumed that because they were for the government helping the poor, they didn't have to do anything.
They didn't have to be part of a group that helped the homeless.
They didn't have to be part of a group that helped foster children.
And I sort of after about three years said to myself, I think the Republicans love the poor more.
So tell me what happened with you.
So you, you, uh, you went back in your early life, you went back and forth between Harlem and tell us where else.
And down South where my grandmother and my grandmother lives in Florida.
So, Was it a segregated community when you were younger?
I did a one-year elementary school.
I'm not sure if I was in the fourth or fifth grade down there.
I went to an all-black school.
I saw the fountains that said colored and said white, and I was told by my grandmother, you know, to get off the sidewalk if I Happened to be walking and a white person was walking.
I was supposed to get off the sidewalk.
Well, I never did that.
I never drink out of a fountain that said colored.
I drink out of the other one and I live to tell you about it.
Tell us the story.
It's about your mother, about how your mother handled it in restaurants.
This is, now you must have inherited this from mom.
So tell us, tell us what your mother used to do.
This is a fabulous story.
My mother spoke French fluently.
So when we traveled from New York to Florida, she would drive.
She would tell us before we went into the restaurant, don't say a word.
We would go in the restaurant in the front door, because at that time they had the rear entrance for black people.
We went into the front door.
My mother whipped out that French, pretended she didn't understand when they told her to go to the back.
We went right in.
She looked at the menu, pointed to this, to that.
They started apologizing to her.
Started fixing hamburgers.
They thought she was a foreigner.
They thought she was a foreigner.
How many of you, how many of you were, how old were you at the time?
There were five of you.
So how old, how old were these kids that came in?
I must've been about 10.
And so, was I 10?
No, I wasn't 10.
I must've been about eight, seven or eight.
And there were two under me, and there were two older than me.
So you did the same thing whenever you confronted, back of the bus, can't go to the counter, and what, nobody bothered you?
Nobody bothered me.
I always drank from the white fountain, like I didn't even, couldn't read.
And nobody bothered me, nobody said anything, nobody ever asked me to get off the sidewalk, and this was in Florida.
And was Florida bad?
I mean, we know about Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, but that northern part of Florida was really the same thing, right?
Yeah, well, it wasn't that bad because I'm still here.
So you think that same thing happening in some of those other states, it might have been more difficult?
It may have been.
Yeah, yeah, that's possible.
Like Mississippi and places like that.
Yes.
Yeah, well, you know, that's the beginning.
I imagine.
I don't want to get play psychiatrist.
I'm not.
But that's the beginning that built in you.
I'm not going to accept the way they categorize me.
Absolutely.
I'm going to categorize.
Your mom taught you a great lesson.
I'm going to I'm going to categorize myself.
Damn it.
I'm not going to let them categorize.
I did.
I know you did.
We're going to go on.
We're going to go on and they'll and they'll see that.
So so then all during that period, you were not particularly political, right?
No, I wasn't.
And your family for a period of time, when you first were growing up, sounded like a very, very strong family.
Your mom, your dad, when your dad worked, supported the family.
Your mom also had income.
So you lived, I guess, what you'd call middle class, upper middle class, a little bit life?
Yes, we did.
So how long did that last?
It lasted for quite a number of years.
Let's say I was about 11 years old when my father abandoned the family.
Did that happen suddenly, Barbara?
Well, it was building up to that.
They started fighting a lot.
You know, I remember my father taking a crowbar and hitting my mother in the face with it.
And how old were you then?
I must have been close to 10 years old.
But still, there were about eight or nine years without that.
Yes, there were.
We lived a wonderful middle class life.
The reason I'm pointing that out is that was probably very important because that's sort of the formative period that actually may be to five or six.
And even though it broke up and it was very heartbreaking, You developed in a very, very good nuclear, what we now call a nuclear family.
And then it broke up and then you had very hard times.
Very, very hard times.
Everything changed.
My brothers changed.
They became criminals.
Everything changed.
My mother was struggling just to pay $39 for rent.
We would hang on the stoop all night long because she was working at nights and everything changed.
Now tell us, I remember now, one of your brothers was extremely talented.
My brother was so brilliant, so smart, he had a photogenic memory.
I read from a book, I forgot the book right off the top of my head, and he could tell me what page and what paragraph it was on.
He was brilliant.
And what happened to him?
Well, after my father left the family, my brother became a criminal.
My brother started a gang called the Sportsmen.
He was the president.
It was fighting, it was looting, it was everything that it shouldn't have been.
My brother then turned to drugs.
Yeah.
And all of that brain went down the tubes.
He ended up dying in Sing Sing prison.
Okay, now.
Let's get to the point of the book.
A lot of people would categorize that as the result of slavery, the result of racism, the result of a society in which whites are systemically racist and blacks are victims.
Now, how did you see it then and how do you see it now?
What I saw then was that we needed our father.
And it was so heartbreaking for that marriage to disintegrate.
And our lives just changed so drastically in the wrong direction.
People want to blame other people for the woes that they encounter.
Racism was not the cause of my family breaking up.
It was selfishness.
And the victims during something like that are the children.
We were the victims of this breakdown and breakup.
And it reflected in our lives.
I became a very angry little girl.
This wonderful personality we see, which sounds like it's your core personality.
It changed, right?
I was a thug.
I used to love to fight.
They would pay me 50 cents and I would fight anybody for you.
Boys too?
Boys too.
Didn't make any difference.
That's right.
I would go to Woolworths with my little 25, 50 cents or whatever.
And get myself some pretzels, get some potato chips, and a Pepsi-Cola.
That's how far a quarter would go, but I loved to fight because I was angry.
I was angry because of the disintegration of my family.
Did you know that at the time, or you were just angry?
No, I didn't know that.
Of course not.
You're too young to know it.
You were just angry.
But somehow, with all of that, you got a very good education.
As we go through it, we'll get to it later, like when you went to college and all those liberal professors had to give you an A. That must have killed them.
That must have absolutely killed them.
Must have killed them!
But now, all through this period, you were getting educated also.
Were you doing well in school?
Oh, very well.
I didn't have any problems in school, and I love school, based on when I first started school with my teacher, my first teacher, Ms.
DeFelice.
She loved me.
She was an Italian woman, and when I first started school, started under her, and she gave me a love for learning.
So when you look at what happened to your brother, your other brother, and many of the people around you, rather than seeing that as the result necessarily of racism, and you see that as the result of a dysfunctional family, And I guess I could ask you this.
I mean, a poor white family in a similar situation may very well have the same result.
I mean, they're all white.
We may forget it, but they're all white criminals.
Also, I put a lot of them in jail.
And do you know, a lot of them come out of the same situation.
They come out of a situation in which, well, let's take the mafia things.
The mafia, it's the father.
All these kids grow up, they adore the father.
The father is a cold-blooded murderer.
That's true.
And they follow him.
And they become cold-blooded murderers.
I mean, I did a piece with Michael Francis, who explains how he got himself in trouble because he... I wanted to be like dad.
So if there's a bad dad around, and there's no dad around, there's no one to discipline.
None.
No one.
No one.
And the mother's out there working, trying to earn a living.
So, we ran the street, we ran the street.
Now, what helped you was, you went and lived with your grandmother for a while, right?
Yes.
Now, where did she live?
In DeLand, Florida.
A little town in Central Florida.
And we got to know discipline, we got to know order, we got to know a different lifestyle there.
So she had the time because she wasn't under the stress.
Your mom had to work 24 hours a day, basically.
But her economic circumstances were much better.
She had a husband who worked as well, right?
And she had a normal structure, right?
Yes, and she had her own beauty business.
My grandfather was the first black sheriff of the land, Florida.
Plus, on the side, they acquired a lot of property in DeLand.
So they were very well-to-do.
And life down there was totally different from life in New York.
Tell us how.
Tell us how it was different.
It was structured.
We knew that we had certain chores to do.
We knew that when we came home from school, we had our homework to do.
We had a very structured life, and we knew that we couldn't stay up late Saturday night because we had to go to Sunday school and church on Sunday.
There was no discussion.
It was standard, and that's how we lived.
And that sort of reinforced what you had learned Back when you were very much younger in a nuclear family.
So, I mean, it is no secret that one of the main things you explain in the book is the importance of a nuclear, of a family with a mother, a father, a structure, and that if we're looking at the problems that we have, that has a lot more to do with it than something that happened 150 years ago.
You're right about that.
Absolutely.
You're right about that.
You're so right.
Racism is not our problem.
My father was an entrepreneur.
I never knew my father to work for anyone.
He always had crisp auto repairs.
He worked on cars.
My mother, she worked at the hospital, plus she did hair on the side.
And like I say, my grandmother and my grandfather were entrepreneurs and they worked.
So it was a different life with structure, Well, we're going to take a short break, and when we come back, I'm going to ask you about the first of, maybe the most critical seminal moment, the confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan.
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Welcome back to our interview with Barbara. I think you already see how scintillating
it is and how terrific, but now we're going to get to something that in the book is written
really well. And I think Barbara can describe this in a way you'll understand now how all
the changes happen.
Tell me about what you describe as this really critical moment in your thinking when you had, you knew who the Ku Klux Klan was, but was this your first confrontation directly with the Klan?
Absolutely, yes.
Tell us what happened.
Well, my brother and I went up to speak with this white man.
Where was this?
This was in DeLand, Florida.
Okay, and you were about how old?
Oh, I don't know.
I don't know.
Teenager?
No, no, I was a grown mother.
Okay, you were a mom, you were a grown mother, and your brother was a little older than you.
Well, he's a little younger.
A little younger, okay.
Yes, a little younger than I was, but we were grown.
We went to talk with him.
And when we walked up there, he says, um, I'm going to kill you black monkeys.
So he ran to his car.
We didn't know what he was doing.
You were going up to talk to him about?
About my son and his son.
Oh, I see.
There was a, there was like an altercation and you were actually taking the other boy's side.
You wanted your son to go apologize if it was necessary.
Yes.
Yes.
But he never let you get to that?
No.
He called us black monkeys.
He ran to his truck and he got his gun.
I didn't see any of this because I'm walking to my car.
After he said that, I was leaving.
My brother and I were leaving.
Next thing I know, him and my brother are tussling.
I hear a gun go off.
So my brother yells at me.
He says, get your gun, sis.
He shot me.
So I started running for my car because my gun was in the glove compartment.
So the guy turned, his name was Ralph.
Ralph turned and he shot me.
Where?
In my leg.
Okay.
But I still made it to my car.
I still got my gun and I retrieved it.
I clicked the trigger.
The first chamber had a blank in it.
So I clicked that, then I clicked it, and I shot him as he was getting ready to shoot my brother again.
And where did you hit him?
I shot him in the back on his shoulder.
Okay.
So he turned back at me and he shot me again.
Did you get hit?
I got hit.
Where?
In my leg, my other leg.
Oh, God.
God was good to me because he was aiming that Glock at my vital organ.
He had a Glock?
Yes, he did.
That's a hell of a weapon.
And I had a .22 with hollow points in them.
Okay.
And you knew how to shoot?
Yes, I did.
Being in Florida.
I was better with a rifle, but I could shoot with a pistol also.
Had you been hunting and stuff like that?
Yes.
Yeah, okay.
When I was younger, my father used to take me hunting.
Right.
So, now what happened?
Because this gets really interesting.
So, then he turned around and shot me again.
So, I shot him again.
Did you hit him?
I ran to the back of his truck when my brother was crouched down.
I gave my brother my gun.
And my mother was driving up.
So I asked my mother.
I didn't say it as nice as I'm going to say it now.
This is the same mom who did the French accent?
This is the same mother.
She lived there.
She's a hell of a mom.
So I was asking her for the shotgun.
I thought she had a shotgun in her trunk.
What'd she say?
She didn't have it.
Ralph McGee, Ralph was his name.
He didn't know that she didn't have it.
So Ralph said, I give, I give.
When he saw the third, when he saw mom show up, he gave up?
Yes, he gave up.
He figured three on one, he was finished.
He figured he was just going to shoot you and you're going to go away.
Or maybe even threaten you with being shot and you'd go away.
He didn't count on Barbara.
No, he didn't.
So by that time, then the police showed up and, you know, I went to the hospital.
We all went to the hospital.
Now, but you were the only one that eventually was dismissed.
But let's, I mean, let's be fair here.
This was racism because you were the only one, you were the only one charged.
This guy, Ralph, this guy, Ralph, who started the whole thing.
He wasn't charged.
You were charged and then it was dismissed because it was so confused or?
Like I told the judge, I wouldn't go to somebody's house to shoot them and leave my gun in the car.
You're a good lawyer, Barbara.
That didn't make any sense.
You didn't need, where was this, in Florida?
This was in Florida.
So you didn't need Cousin Vinny for this one?
No, I didn't.
Nobody wanted to touch me.
You did this yourself?
Yes, I did.
And the judge was okay with it?
Yes, he was.
I didn't go to jail, I didn't go to prison, and he was white and I was black.
Everybody in the town, black people, were afraid to even talk to me because I shot a white man.
So then the Ku Klux Klan started calling me, telling me... Oh yeah, I remember that.
I remember that from the book.
They started harassing you, yeah.
Yes, they did, but that didn't last too long.
Tell me what you did.
Well, I armed myself.
I had guns in the bathroom, a gun in the bathroom, a gun in the living room.
You know, I got some guns, and I told them to bring it on.
Tell them what you said.
You have it in the book.
You have an expression.
I used to pray.
I'd say, Dear Lord, if I have to die, please let me kill two.
And you'd tell them that on the telephone?
Yes.
When they called, you said you would tell them that on the telephone?
I told them I was going to kill them.
And then they, how long did this last before the bullies gave up?
It didn't even last a month.
They gave up on me.
Which gives you a sense of what big bullies they are, right?
They were bullies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But a lot of people don't realize that.
They get frightened.
I mean, not everybody's Barbara.
Total bullies.
I had my children trained.
I told them, and when I tell you to get the floor, hit the floor.
See, I think the reason this is important, Barbara, and why this book is so important, there could be black people who would write a similar book, and maybe they grew up in an atmosphere that was truly middle class, upper middle class, and they never really experienced much racism.
They experienced affirmative action instead, or how they would treat it in some ways like special.
And then they'd say, well, there's no racism.
But you encountered the worst kind.
You had both.
You had both in your life.
You had the benefits of a middle class, upper middle class situation.
And then you saw the worst of it when mom, when, when your father left and you were in dire poverty.
And so you can, you had something to compare and a very good mind.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Yes.
So now, how did your political change and political development occur?
Well, to be honest with you, you are the impetus.
Because I have to tell you, I didn't I didn't remember that.
And I didn't know that until I read this book and I read it yesterday.
And I had a couple of things going on that were not very pleasant.
And I read it and it made me feel.
I have to thank you very much.
I am so flattered and honored and humbled and my goodness, well, go ahead, explain it.
This is not why I asked you to be on the show, but it is part of the story.
Well, you know, like I said, I was a member of several Democratic parties.
You were very active.
Very, very active.
Very active.
But I knew within my heart that you would make a better mayor than David Dinkins.
David Dinkins was the first African-American, first black mayor of New York.
He beat me in 1989.
And this was the re-election.
This was a re-election After the city had experienced a great deal of crime and riots and things like that.
So what happened?
So, you know, I started working with the gentleman that was in, in Harlem Fields.
You remember him?
I do.
I started working with him and he introduced us to you and I made up my mind.
I was going to do everything that I could to help you become mayor.
Now in Harlem, people gotta go back.
This is a while back, and we've changed a little since then.
That was a heck of a decision to make in Harlem at that time.
Here you had the first black mayor.
I think there was a sense, even in the black community, of disappointment.
He didn't produce what people thought he would.
But still, there was this tremendous loyalty to him.
How did you have the courage to do that?
My conscience.
I have to be happy with my conscience.
I couldn't do something just because it was expected.
I had to do what I thought was right.
And what was your analysis at the time?
What got you to that position that I'm going to be for the white guy instead of the black guy?
Well, I was sick and tired of all of the clubs always talking about racism, always talking about slave owners that have long since answered to God for what they did.
Plus the word of God is more important than what these people were saying.
In other words, love your neighbor.
I can't hate people just because of the color of their skin.
I'm not made that way.
And I thank God that I'm not.
It's the character.
And I knew that I loved America.
I love New York.
You would be a better mayor And we were successful in having even leaders from Harlem come up, meet you, greet you, etc.
No, you were very, very successful.
I remember my then wife went to a rally and she came back enormously impressed.
By you, by the Reverend, and then by the people.
She said, my goodness, these people don't like the idea that press tried to create was everybody in Harlem hated me.
And she said, these people don't hate you.
They they they they hope that you're going to be successful.
And they they want.
They want more police.
Even more than you do.
Amen.
Amen.
So that moved you over to Republican.
That moved me over to doing what's best for my country.
Okay.
So then, tell me how you look at the, how that changed your view of the issues that exist.
Let's start with welfare and the Democrat reliance on welfare and the fact that Biden has now built it into, I don't even know if we are in a socialist country right now.
I mean, this is such a disaster.
This is a total American disgrace.
What happened at that election is not acceptable.
And what he's doing, defunding the black colleges and all of that.
I hope that particularly blacks who voted for this disaster are realizing what a terrible mistake they've made being loyal to a party that doesn't even respect the sovereignty of the United States of America.
That's really powerful.
You note in the book that I did welfare to work.
So when I did that, basically I required people who could to work for welfare.
And the liberal newspapers, particularly the Times, attacked me as a racist.
Now I didn't just apply it to black people, I applied it to everybody.
And, but I also thought I was doing, I was doing a good thing.
I was giving help to give them the work ethic.
A lot of people were very upset at the time.
But now, last couple of years, and Maria, my partner, Dr. Maria Ryan, is very noticeable as she sees this.
A lot of people come up to me, white and black, and thank me for that.
They come up to me and tell me, thank you for making me work because it got it back into my life.
Amen.
Amen.
And that is missing from all of these Biden things where all this money he's given away, there's no requirement for work.
You're absolutely right.
And it's a disgrace.
And you can actually make more on welfare than working.
I mean, that has to hurt the black community tremendously.
Oh my goodness, very much so.
And unemployment is up in the black community.
But I told blacks before the election, if you elect this man who believes in open borders, watch out for the jobs.
Watch out for your apartments because you'll see fewer and fewer.
And it's all coming to life.
Now, how knowledgeable would you say are the majority of blacks about the fact that under Trump, there was more employment, record numbers of employment, record wages, and that's all dropped?
Do people see the difference?
Well, a lot of them don't because they don't hear anything except CNN and MSNBC.
And even what they're told when they go to church.
So a lot of them are very ignorant of the truth.
Now, some of them will not even take it if you try to give them the truth.
They'll shut you down or walk away.
But those who are receptive to truth, they're shocked.
They don't even know that the party that they've been supporting believes in killing babies even after they're born.
Now that was an important part of your metamorphosis and your change.
Particularly, you were a very big supporter of Jesse Jackson.
And I don't think people remember that for a long time, Jesse Jackson was a real, I would call him a pro-life warrior.
I mean, not just he was pro-life because of his religion, but he made it, he was very articulate, and even people who disagreed with him, like conservatives who disagreed with him on other things, had great respect for him for that.
Now, and tell us what happened, and this I think had a big impact on you, because you had so much respect for him.
We have, we found out that Jesse Jackson was lying about seniors having to eat Cat food and dog food.
That was a lie.
Because my daughter and I went door-to-door, and I didn't see anyone eating cat food or dog food, which is as expensive as tuna fish.
You know?
So... I mean, why would they eat that and not get a can of tuna?
But at any rate... The other thing you've got, Barbara, you've got a great sense of practicality.
And a great sense of humor.
So you see through the bull.
Boom!
Right away, you see there.
Because Jesse Jackson made this statement that things are so bad that black people are now eating dog food.
Right?
Yes.
We fell for it until we started thinking.
You know, my grandmother, my mother used to say, use your head for more than a hat rack.
Use your head.
I'm going to recommend to people watching this, you got to write a few of these things down.
Use your head instead of a hat rack.
This is good stuff to tell your children, right?
That is because that stuck with me.
I realized that Jesse Jackson was lying.
And and then then all of a sudden you see he forgot about life is sacred.
Life is precious.
They bought him out.
He's a paid for pimp.
That's all he is.
They brought him out like it was 1988, 1989, when he was running for president, and he realized, and it actually got serious then.
The first time, he sort of was running just for the point, but in 88 or so, it started to get serious, and he figured he'd never get that core vote, women's vote, on the Democrat side that's very, very, I'd say they're almost obsessively pro-choice.
I mean, it is even choice.
It's like they get pretty close to killing babies.
I mean, you go you go into the eighth and ninth month, they almost killed.
And then they had a they had a governor last year, Northam, who basically said after the baby comes out, you get a little time to think about it.
And that's like murdering an infant.
It's murder.
It's murder.
So when Jesse did that, you realized that whole religious thing and all of that was just a bunch of A bunch of nothing.
Nothing.
He was a phony.
And then how in the world can you be so pro-life and then all of a sudden you're pro-choice?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He went from one extreme.
He wasn't just pro-life.
He was very pro-life.
And then he wasn't just pro-choice.
He was very pro-choice.
Yeah.
And pro-what's unnatural.
Like, you know, male and male marrying and things like that.
He thinks that he can come out... I call him Sly Jackson.
Sly Jackson?
That's what I call him.
Sly Jackson and... Sly Jackson.
He thinks that he has a silver tongue and he can say anything and we'll believe it.
Now, you also became a talk radio star.
Tell us how that happened.
Tell us how that happened.
Well, I used to call into the talk shows.
Which one?
Mostly Mark Levin.
Mark Levin and Diamond too, right?
Oh, Jay Diamond was the first one.
Jay Diamond is the one who gave me the name Barbara from Harlem.
That's right.
That's right.
I kind of remember this.
And Levin, you really developed a great relationship with because he really is so smart and you are.
I mean, you had like an intellectual, you would have an intellectual discussion, not one of these crazy things where you called up and you yelled at him and he yelled at you.
And because there was a lot of talk radio back then that was like that.
A lot of it.
Yeah.
That's your conversations with Jay Diamond and with the great one.
I would call them intellectual.
Very intellectual.
And you know, Mark Levin is such a sweet man.
When my son passed away in 2008, I got a call from Mark Levin.
He's a good man and the reason he sustains all that he's been through is because he really believes it.
Yes.
Yes.
I really believe that.
I mean, I have great admiration for, I have great admiration for him too.
So, so as a result of that, now you've, you've really helped to educate the black community on things that they need to know, but everybody, not just the black community.
Now tell us about your return to college because your experiences in college in the book here, when you describe it with the professors and, um, It's fabulous!
And you know, we all know a little bit of this because I remember even when my son and daughter, and they go back like 10 years ago when they were in college, one went to Duke and one went to Harvard.
And there was a lot of stuff going on even then.
My son had a lot of professors, particularly in history and political science, who were Yeah, anti-Bush, anti-Republican.
I work for Ronald Reagan and his picture's all over our house.
So my son grew up worshiping him.
So when they started in with Reagan was terrible and my son would get up and argue that he was the greatest president in the 20th century and all.
So there was some of that going on then, but you describe it beautifully.
Tell us how you went back to college and a few of the confrontations with the, what do you call them?
Woke professors?
No, you had another word for them.
I'll remember it.
I'll remember it.
Well, I only went back because my daughter, Miss Diamond, I call her BB Diamond.
Right.
She said, Mama, you should get a college education.
So I went and signed up at the college that my deceased son graduated from because he didn't like the school at all.
So I've just wanted to see for myself why he didn't like it.
For that reason?
Well, I didn't know why my son didn't like it, but you know what he would tell us?
My son was a patriot.
My son loved America.
And that agenda It's anti-American.
Almost every class you go to, it's about America being imperialistic, America being racist.
That's what they teach up there.
Right.
So I had fun with their leftists.
They were leftists.
They weren't liberals.
They were leftists.
That was David?
Your son, David?
My son, David.
My son, David.
Didn't like the college, and now I realize why.
Because if you go there as a minority and you can read and write and do math, they don't like you.
They want blacks to come in there so mentally and scholastically crippled that they want victims.
And my son could read, my son could write, and write good papers and all of that.
But at any rate, every class that I went to, and I'm trying to find an exception to it, they talked about how bad America was.
This was, this college you identify as Bethune-Cookman College, it's now... No, no, no.
Bethune-Cookman, that was, I started there in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Right.
But I went to the College of New Rochelle in New York.
Okay.
Catholic College.
Yes.
Okay.
And it was so humiliating because they had us study.
I went there for religious courses and they had us studying the philosophers, Karl Marx, all of these things.
And they talked so bad about America.
I had one, what was it?
Criminal justice professor from Nigeria.
Right.
And he talked about America so badly.
That every day I wore a scarf that said, God Bless America, and I wore an American flag on my lapel.
And he was teaching American criminal justice.
He had come to America, he was a taxi driver for a while, and then he became a professor of criminal justice.
Studying for his doctorate.
So I had to tell him, I said, listen, as long as I'm in this class, you will not tell these minority students that they can't make it in America.
Why are you here?
And you came here voluntarily.
And if you don't like it here, pack your bags, I will help you and go back to Nigeria.
Did you say this to him personally or in the class?
I told it to him in his face.
And then he said, Aren't you the oldest one in here?
I said, hold that thought.
I went right down to the Dean.
Told the Dean I thought that was age discrimination.
We went right back up.
That's my Barbara.
I had him apologizing left and right and I told him don't mess with my grade because I'll take you to court.
So the bottom line is He stopped all of this Bash America while I was in there.
My final grade from him was an A+.
And he got so nervous when he talked to me.
He started saying, Allah, Allah.
Was he a Muslim?
I mean, by religion?
Must have been.
I told him, I said, that's another thing.
I said, you came to a country founded on Judeo-Christian values.
Here it is, you call it Allah.
Allah can't help you.
Just go on and teach the class.
Didn't you do an analysis of the history of Islam based on the Quran?
Was that the class in which you did that?
No, that was another class.
I forgot what class it was, but it was another class.
And what you did was you pointed out quite correctly all of the militaristic and the idea that the religion was a warrior religion and that Muhammad spread the faith not by preaching like Saint Paul and Saint Peter and eventually Martin Luther King Jr.
He spread the faith with armies.
Yes.
Yeah.
And there was a black woman who was a Muslim And she got very upset with my report, but it was accurate.
And like I told her, I said, well, some people are worshipping the devil and don't even know it.
Right.
And she got very quiet, left me alone.
That class, I think, was experience, learning, and identity.
I think that was it.
That's what it was.
And you also did a piece there that questioned Malcolm X. Oh, definitely.
Which must have been like, Malcolm X, I think a lot of people get Malcolm X confused with Martin Luther King Jr.
And they think he was the same, you know, non-violence, but he was the antithesis of Martin Luther King Jr.
I used to hear him on 125th Street when I was younger.
He'd be on a box talking about Christianity and he'd target people coming out of church.
This is on page 169 of your book to 170 people should read this because he had a history of being anti-christian but but including direct attacks on the Christian Church and on Jesus and and he stationed himself right outside of churches and he described it as the white man's religion.
That's what he did.
And I heard that from his mouth.
And also, you had some issues with Maya Angelou.
Oh, definitely.
Who was like a saint among these people.
And her problem was she came from a broken home.
It wasn't a white man.
They want to blame the white man for everything.
So in her writings, she describes her conditions, her poverty conditions, as the result of racism.
And you believe her problems were based on?
Falsehoods.
Broken home.
And then she went and stayed with, I think it was her uncles or whatever.
But I mean, it was a dysfunctional childhood.
That's what it was.
And then here's what I think is so relevant to today.
You also studied Marx.
Yes.
And how was Marx presented?
By the professor.
And how did you come up with the alternative?
I mean, this is really hard to do when you're just a student.
How did you come up with the alternative?
Just explain to me how Marx fit into it.
Well, you know what I tried to do?
I had to pray a lot going to that school.
I asked God to help me read every word that I need to read.
And God did that.
Because Marx was nothing but a liar.
He was a loafer, and he wasn't somebody – he was, because he got his money from his friend.
And his friend Ingalls, his family owned a mill.
So that was capitalism.
So he was the beginning of the long line of communist phonies, which includes now that Patrisse Cullors, who ran Black Lives Matter, and she took off with millions, right?
They all become wealthy.
They all become wealthy off of other people's sweat and tears or their good hearts.
So you were quite aware then, right from the very beginning, that Black Lives Matter is really formed by Marxists.
It is.
That's all it is.
It's godless also.
You do a great analysis of what's called Black Theology of Liberation.
Which begins with James H. Cone, and you go through their distortion of religion.
Total distortion!
But in addition to the, I mean, Marx and Engels, and then Black Lives Matter, which has two big targets, God and the family.
The second thing may be just as important, they want to break up the family.
Yes.
Including, they want to do just the opposite of what your life teaches us.
They want to get the father out.
And they'd even like to get the mother out and have the state take care of the kid.
So how does that, I mean, there isn't a sensible person going back to 30 years ago that wouldn't say that one of the things that should happen in the poor black community, because this isn't going on in the middle class and upper middle class black community, is the father should I'm thinking of the black celebrities who try to foster fathers and train fathers.
How do they come up with this idea that there shouldn't be fathers?
They are in a place that is so dark, Mayor, that we can't even begin to imagine how their minds can wander there.
They're really blinded.
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Blinded by what?
Blinded by darkness.
Blinded by demonic thoughts.
Blinded by just common sense.
When you reject God totally, you are wandering around in a big hole that you don't know up, you don't know down, you don't know around or anything.
And by the grace of God, I'm working on another book.
Oh, good!
I'm working on a book that's gonna be for these young women to consider some things even before they become a parent.
Well, one of the things you recommend here is that somebody should do a history of the United States about slavery that's a fair history, that explains how slavery started a long time before America.
We did do it, and it was very bad that we did it, but we also ended it.
And from the very beginning, there were white Americans and black Americans who were very much against it.
It was never like accepted by everybody.
I mean, there were abolitionists back during the revolution.
And more than any other country, like even African countries, some of them maintained slavery much longer than America.
Some may even have it today.
That's right.
And the thing about it, you know, I think I put it in the book that God allowed it.
Out of something evil came something good.
That's why I have that chapter in here.
Thank God for slavery.
Yeah, I'm not going to tell people about that chapter because they got to read this book, but you're going to be on again.
We're going to go into because, you know, the things that you're talking about here, like you also go into crime and how you have to deal with crime and These crazy prosecutors who let everybody out.
But the fact is, you give it a very, very interesting and easy to understand intellectual background that explains it.
So you're a great, great treasure, Barbara.
Thank you so much, Mayor.
Thank you.
I recommend this to everyone.
If you're a conservative, you're going to love it.
If you're a moderate or independent, it's going to help.
And if you're a left-wing crazy, you have to have guts to read it.
You have to have guts to read this, but it'll challenge you.
Please, read it, and then send me your comments on it.
If you don't find this a fabulous book, no matter who you are, then there's something wrong with you.
Yeah!
Thank you, Barbara.
We need you.
Thank you very much, Barbara, for giving us so much time.
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Well, I hope you found it as scintillating and interesting as I did.
Barbara is an exceptional person.
You can see the personality, right?
I mean, you can see that happy, open, winning personality, which really draws you to her.
But I think you might not realize how well-written this book is.
This is a very solid piece of scholarship among everything else.
It begins, as I said to her, somewhat slowly.
The first two or three chapters give you kind of a background in her life, and they're very good and they're very interesting.
But when you get to the third and fourth chapter, then you go right to the end.
I mean, you get riveted by it.
And the explanations of her confrontations with the professors explain so much of what we're dealing with today.
Explanation of some of the early leaders in the civil rights movement.
After Martin Luther King, how they took it off away from you judge someone by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
They changed it to judging people by the color of their skin.
So she explains how an honest, intellectually honest, moral black woman, you know, saw through this.
And I didn't get a chance to do the excellent chapter that's done on education and the need for and the need for choice in education.
But there are a number of things here that are that are.
But the main thing about this book is it shows you that the main narrative that the Democrat Party uses now is racism, is The main reason that all of our problems in society exist, and it all comes from slavery, and they don't want slavery to end.
And the reality is, she's saying, if you do that to people, then mentally and emotionally, and in many cases, you destroy people.
Because they become victims, and they think they're entitled, and they don't become the kind of contributing members of society they can become.
If you give them a chance to incorporate and to bring in their lives the special values of America, they after all have made us the most successful country on earth with our mistakes and our terrible things we did and everything else.
I mean, she points out, for example, all these people from Africa are coming to America This terrible, systemic, racist America.
She would say, Professor from Nigeria, why'd you come to America?
What are you doing here?
You like it here, right?
How bad can it be?
It was a great honor for me to present this.
I did not do it because of what she says about me in the book.
I didn't know it until yesterday when I finally finished the book.
It's in the middle of the book here.
And I'll tell you, when I got to About page 50, 55, where she's talking about Dr. Martin Luther King.
I just couldn't stop.
I stayed up basically until I read the whole thing.
Get it, Escaping the Racism of Low Expectations, Barbara from Harlem.
You won't regret it, and you'll learn a lot.
Thank you, and we'll be back with another podcast in a few days.
God bless America.
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