Carol Swain defines Critical Race Theory as a white supremacist framework dividing Americans into oppressors and the oppressed, contradicting Christianity and civil rights laws. She recounts being labeled an SPLC apologist in 2009 for criticizing their mission creep, a badge she wears to advocate for universal rights. Tracing CRT's rise to post-Obama era and George Floyd's death, Swain details her journey from rejected Princeton Democrat to conservative Christian, arguing that shifting terminology masks a Marxist agenda while she remains unapologetically accepted by diverse communities despite left-wing attacks. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, yeah, and so I sort of said that, and Mission Creep.
I accused them of having Mission Creep, and maybe three months later, I pick up my newspaper in Nashville, and there's a front page article that I'm an apologist for white supremacy.
This was in 2009.
Most people didn't know who I was.
And so, all over, you know, black media, people were discussing me, and there was nothing I could do about it until James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal did a 2,000-word article defending me in defense of Carol Swain.
But I was the first black American to be called a white supremacist sympathizer, I believe.
Being a black, white supremacist, I wore that proudly because that means that I recognize the civil rights of all people, including white people, who are also protected by civil rights laws.
All right, so let's do some 101 stuff here, because you're an academic at heart.
Let's do some basic definitions.
What is critical race theory?
My audience knows it, but give me something that we can clip, put on Twitter, and every time somebody says, you guys don't know what critical race theory is, we can put it out there.
I knew that the cultural Marxism ...was becoming a danger in 2012.
And this was after, you know, this was during President Obama's second term.
And so he was the one that really energized it.
And for many Americans, many parents, you know, after George Floyd's death, and after the riots, and corporations started pouring money into diversity, equity, inclusion, and CRT, that's when they became aware of what was being taught in the classroom.
So they are latecomers.
This has been going on for a long time and my greatest regret is during the time I was teaching at Princeton, I was not paying enough attention to what was taking place around me.
I was a congressional scholar.
I was very much focused on Congress and what was taking place on the national scene, but I wasn't paying attention to all those seminars and speakers about CRT and of post-modernism, not realizing how it was going to impact
our lives today.
And I wish I had paid more attention.
But after President Obama was elected and started his second term, that's when I started
to really dig into Marxism, cultural Marxism in particular.
And CRT is one of many different Marxist theories because, you know, you have critical queer
theory, critical feminist theory, critical gender theory, and it's all impacting our
But we're focused on CRT because it's taking all the air out of the room.
I almost hate to ask you this question because I've asked it to a lot of my black conservative friends, but just on a personal note, when you come to these conservative conferences and they say all the bad stuff about you, not the conservatives, I mean all the lefties say, oh, sell out, all the nonsense, just on a personal note, how do you deal with that nonsense?
Because I think a lot of people in their own personal lives are worried about it.
And I wrote a book called Black Faces, Black Interests, Representation of African Americans in Congress.
And it argued that political party was more important than the race of the representatives.
As long as blacks held the views they did, they'd best be represented by Democrats.
Consequently, it didn't make sense to draw a majority black district because majority black districts elected more Republicans.
That got me labeled as a conservative.
I never got invited to the Clinton White House.
And they started calling me a sellout back then.
And back then, I had not had my Christian conversion experience.
I thought I was a good Democrat.
They totally rejected me.
And I found that progressive faculty members, including a well-known conservative who's at Harvard now, that was at Princeton, who saw herself as the champion of black people, Uh, she actually worked against my appointment because she said I was not the right kind of black person for Princeton.
And, um, it was like, because I had come, you know, from poverty, I was a high school dropout, 1 of 12, married at 16, GED, uh, community college before I went on to get four other I had a non-traditional background.
My undergraduate degree, the professor who became my mentor and my friend and all of this stuff like that, he was a Republican, but when I started the college, the black students who always Meet other black students, to warn them about who the racist professors are.
They told me he was a racist professor, but I had this weird personality.
Like if someone tells me not to do something, I'll do it.
But it was 2009 before I officially became a Republican, but I started becoming conservative after my Christian conversion experience in 2000.
I was in my 40s, and I can tell people, you know, wherever you are on life's journey, I was on a journey, you know, searching, trying to figure out my place in the world because I've never really fit.
Like, the left may attack me, but I'm accustomed to that.
I'm telling you that I feel the love when I go into black communities.
I feel the love from black youth.
I'm not a person that's being harassed or rejected by black people.
I may be rejected by black elites, but they've always treated me that way, so I mean, I don't care about them.
I care about the American people, and I don't identify as Black.
I don't identify as white either.
I identify as Christian.
I identify as conservative.
Republican is further down.
And black is further down because God created one race, the human race.
I believe that we all, brothers and sisters, you know, whether you're Jewish or you're a Christian or Muslim or whatever you are, I believe there's one divinely human race.