Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the host of Pensive Politics, Christian Watson, to the newsmaker line
Leahy:Â We are joined on our newsmakers line now by our very good friend, Christian Watson.
Christian is a fledgling philosopher, he says, but also the spokesperson for Colors Us United. Christian, you have a fascinating oped at The Washington Times this morning. Good morning, Christian.
Watson:Â Good morning. How are you?
Leahy:Â I’m great. You are always a very interesting person, Christian, because you do have a take on the world that I think is not shared by many of the peers of your generation.
Liberals are redefining America by deconstructing the country you claim and everything else. Everything they say is about racism, racism, racism. Tell us about this article you wrote.
Watson: Well, yeah. So this article for The Washington Times where my basic contention is that and a lot of debates concerning race in America, a lot of people on the left will oftentimes talk about America as if its very core principle is racism.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, the founder of the 1619 Project, herself, said that slavery and racism were foundational to the founding of the United States.
And there are many people with this view. And this view is reflected in the debate about statues, which is what the article is about. And many people saying that we have to get rid of as Al Green the congressman in Texas, said, we have to get rid of racist geography and racist landmarks to make sure that we’re achieving racial justice.
This is less of a question about the use or the advocacy at certain landmarks or certain statues or if certain things should be named a certain way and more of a question about is the nature of the American experiment is good. Anyone who appreciates the country, regardless of their political affiliation, should stand up and say resoundingly yes.Â
Leahy:Â Geography is racist. I’ve seen this trope come up there for, I don’t know, last year or so. How exactly is geography racist?
Watson:Â So here’s the idea. The idea is that if something is named after a racist person or a racist event or something has a racially insensitive name, that name can cause some kind of trauma or some kind of reminiscing that is offensive to marginalized groups.
Therefore, that name needs to be taken away. This is why Al Green and his friends are like, we have to pull out all punches to get rid of racism in every single area.
What they want to do is they want to try to whitewash and redefine history as if certain things didn’t happen. And this is what intellectual revolutionaries do. Almost every political revolution, whether it was Lenin or whether it was Mao, had to do an intellectual revolution before they could implement their political ideas.
In the intellectual revolution and many of these political revolutions almost always involve especially in the case Lenin and Russia, changing the language to reflect the political subjective views of those who are in power and to get away from the sort of real, grounded aspects of reality.
I think that is what Al Green and the left are doing. They want to change the fact that, yes, there have been people in America who are racist. Yes, there have been things that have been named after people who may not be desirable.
But no, that does not mean that those things themselves are condemnable, nor does it mean that we should run away from our uncomfortable truths.
Uncomfortable truths tend to be the thing that saves us and gives us an actual lesson. But they went to whitewash history so the lesson is taught in their direction, not in the direction that will be good for the intellectual progression and healing of Americans.
Leahy: It’s interesting last night, I don’t know why, but I was channel flipping and I saw Robin DeAngelo on CSPAN, and it was very interesting because usually, I’ve been a big fan of CSPAN earlier in my life, but now we’ve seen so many lefties there promoting lefty ideology.
She has a new book out. Of course, she explored this concept of, ‘white fragility in 2018. In 2018, the book was White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism.
Her encore book, published just in June, is called Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. You know, I’m listening to this person, and I’m thinking this person is insane. Why do so many Fortune 500 companies pay her tens and thousands of dollars to spout this nonsense?
Watson:Â That’s an interesting question. There are a few things there. I know a lot of Fortune 500 companies are being corralled into a certain political sentiment by a very visible, active yet small part of the American population.
And that is a lot of people who are activists or who may be activist-minded in their political ideology, who reside on the coast, and who live in the urban centers where many corporations happen to conveniently be. And that assisted by the preponderance of government grants that have gone to DEI programs.
Leahy: DEI standing for?
Watson: Diversity, Equity, and inclusion.Â
Leahy:Â Oh yeah, that’s it. Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Watson:Â That is why when President Trump made that executive order which restricts critical race theory, it also targeted the funds for corporations who may have had government grants to do diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And that’s why so many Fortune 500 companies went crazy about it.
So I think there’s a lot of things going on. These perverse incentives and there is a sort of obedience to a single political perspective because corporations believe that if they don’t obey that perspective they will be boycotted, they’ll be charged with something, and they’ll shareholders will be upset and things of that sort. So it’s not anything genuine. It’s primarily them just trying to save face.
Leahy:Â Christian, let me ask you this. Growing up now – I’m 66 – and so when I grew up and I was looking for a job. No company was forcing me to be politically correct to get the job or to keep the job.
I’m hearing increasingly from young people, just recent college graduates that unless they toe the line on this white fragility junk and critical race theory and go through the training, they won’t even be able to get their jobs. Are you hearing that from young people?
Watson:Â Absolutely. So what happens in these environments is that when you have a corporate world that is subservient to these ideas, they have to make sure the people who run the corporate world, (i.e. the grunt workers) are often subservient or the entire thing falls apart.
So, of course. There is expected adherents and many companies to this kind of stuff, whether it’s in the form of implicit bias training, whether it’s in the form of racial reconciliation training or racial reconciliation seminar, whether it’s in the form of having a diversity coordinator on staff, which many businesses have now.
Yes. This thing is pervasive, and it is being coerced onto people. And so the thing is, though, people have to ask themselves questions. Even though you need your job and jobs are important and I get it because I worked many jobs in my very short time on this earth.
Even though you need all that stuff, is any position, any amount of money worth your principles and your conscience. Because if you don’t have your principles or your conscience, I don’t think you have very much to stand for in this life.
That’s a calculation that every young person, especially young persons who are just getting into the field has to make. Many of them stay quiet.
That’s a mistake, in my opinion. I think they should speak up in respectful ways that will hopefully challenge the work culture that this is creating.
Leahy:Â That’s a bit of a challenge, though, it seems to me, because for a kid trying to get started in a job, I mean, no offense to most kids, they don’t know anything about work. And so they’re put in a situation where they want to please their employer. And so you do the job somebody pays you to.
I think it’s a very difficult situation. How many employers, how many employment opportunities for a young person right now, Christian, allow them not to have to genuflect before this critical rate theory religion?
Watson:Â I think that there may be a lot of blue-collar work probably that doesn’t provide for it, although some of it does. The trucking industry is one of the few industries not impacted by diversity training.
Leahy:Â Which industry is that?
Watson:Â The trucking industry.
Leahy:Â I didn’t know that.
Watson: It’s been one of the few not impacted by the diversity, equity, and inclusion in industry. I do believe there was an incident with one of the major trucking organizations back recently, but it didn’t have much of an effect.
Leahy:Â Why is that with the trucking industry do you think?
Watson:Â Truck drivers do not require a college education. So I think that certain people may be less amenable to the ideas of diversity, equity, and inclusion because they didn’t have that sort of college background that makes it all makes sense.
And so those kinds of folks tend to be salt of the earth folks who just want to work just a picture of their families. And when your main desire is taking care of your family and just working and it’s not being an ideolog for a certain cause which many college students are trained to be through various programs, I think that you don’t have the foundation or the basis to become radicalized and become accepting of such ideas.
Leahy:Â Christian, I have learned something today. I appreciate that. And keep coming back with us. Will you, Christian?
Watson: Absolutely. Thanks so much.
Leahy: Christian Watson, a great young, and independent thinker.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Christian Watson” by Christian Watson.
