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SocietyAnalysis

Problematic Women: A Woman’s Story of "Unwittingly" Furthering the Sexual Revolution

Kelsey Bolar / @kelseybolar / Lauren Evans / @laurenelizevans / May 28, 2020
Sue Ellen Browder sits at her kitchen table in Wyoming during an interview with The Daily Signal on an "Underreported" documentary. (Photo: Lauren Evans)
Sue Ellen Browder, author of “ ,” was a writer for Cosmopolitan magazine during the sexual revolution.

It was not until years later that she realized how the sexual revolution had strategically targeted the women’s movement to alter its message from female empowerment and opportunity to sexual freedom without morality.

Browder joins “Problematic Women” to tell her story in her own words. Also, be sure to check out The Daily Signal’s new telling the inside story of Browder’s work for Cosmo. See post #66 above.

Hold on. Hello?

Kelsey Bolar: Hello.

Evans: Welcome back. Former “Problematic Women” co-host and current senior policy analyst at [the Independent Women’s Forum], the one, the only, Kelsey Bolar.

Kelsey, I have to say, even though we aren’t physically together, it is so fun to have you back on the show.

Bolar: It is so great to be here. It’s weird, because in a way I feel like I never left. Part of the reason I didn’t want a big goodbye episode a couple months ago when I left my full-time role with Daily Signal is because I was very hopeful that a part-time contributorship was going to come through, because I could not leave you all.

I love our team at the Daily Signal, and I am honored and excited to share that I will continue to contribute and, hopefully, appear as a contributor on “Problematic Women” as well. So, you guys are not done with me yet.

Evans: I love it. I’m just so excited you’re back. So, Kelsey, we’re bringing you back on the show this week because we just released a documentary on one of our personal heroes, Sue Ellen Browder. To talk more about the documentary, we also have Sue herself. Welcome, Sue.

Sue Ellen Browder: Oh, it’s good to be here. Thank you.

Bolar: Sue Ellen Browder is an award-winning journalist who has appeared on “Oprah,” the “Today” show, and hundreds of other radio talk shows. Her work for 20 years as a writer for Cosmopolitan and other magazines has given her a lifetime of experience with the women’s movement as it unfolded in the media, both on the public stage and behind the scenes.

Sue speaks regularly to women’s groups around the country and was recently invited to participate in a panel on the status of women at the United Nations. Today, she lives a very different life than she did during her former Cosmopolitan days. She lives out in Wyoming, in a town that is so quiet and small that the [COVID-19] pandemic has hardly even touched them.

Sue, I’m so excited that you’re here. The first question is an easy one. How are you doing?

Browder: I’m doing absolutely fantastic. We’re in Wyoming. They’ve opened up the state quite a bit. We’re still having some social distancing, but we’ve had a full schedule of services all through all of this.

Bolar: Well, let’s talk about the documentary. It was inspired by your memoir, “Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women’s Movement.” The book has five stars on Amazon, in case anyone was wondering, and we kind of want to start from the beginning here. You’re from a small town in Iowa. You went to one of the most prestigious journalism schools. You wanted to be a writer. You landed at Cosmo, and what happened?

Browder: Well, I wanted to be a magazine writer. I actually majored in magazine writing. And then I went to Los Angeles for a year. Then we went to New York City, and I got a job at Cosmopolitan magazine.

Now, when I was at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I had chosen Cosmo as my magazine to investigate for one of our classes. We were supposed to look at a magazine and see what would you have to do to sell articles to this magazine? And when I looked at it, even then, when I was out in Missouri, I said, “These stories look like they’re made up.” They didn’t feel real. They were too pat.

>>>See the documentary about Sue Ellen Browder’s career at Cosmo:
And when I got on Cosmo, when I got on staff at Cosmo, I found out that that was accurate. These stories were made up. Helen Gurley Brown, who was the editor of Cosmo in those days, even had a list of rules on how to make up stories to sell the sexual revolution to young women.

Evans: So, that brings me into my next question. I wanted to ask about Helen Gurley Brown. You talk about her a lot in the book and what she taught you, and not in a good way, to write “fake news.” But you prefer a different term.

 

Part 2

Can you tell our listeners what that term is and how that has really affected society today?

Browder: Well, I said that we were writing propaganda, because propaganda, the definition of propaganda is half-truth, limited truth, and truth out of context. So, this is what we were promoting to young women.

There were lots of things that [we] were not allowed to say in the magazine. And then we made up a lot of stories about people. So, this was, this was propaganda, but you see, what people are calling “fake news” today, a lot of it is really the result of half-truths, selective truth, and truth out of context. So that’s the classic definition of propaganda.

Bolar: How was this propaganda used to hijack the women’s movement? Can you give us an idea also of the time period we’re talking about?

Browder: We’re talking about the early 1970s and the late 1960s. Propaganda was used to hijack the women’s movement, in that the women’s movement and the sexual revolution in those days were two radically separate movements.

Helen Gurley Brown would have loved for Cosmo to be part of the women’s movement, part of the feminist movement, but Betty Friedan, who had launched the women’s movement with her 1963 book, “The Feminine Mystique,” called Cosmo quite obscene and quite horrible. She was very much against the sexual revolution.

And then the women’s movement was all about empowerment of women in the workforce and in academia. So, how did those two get joined together? How did this false sexual revolution, which was made up entirely of lies in the beginning, these women weren’t, there weren’t that many women out there hopping into bed with every man they met and all of that stuff. How did those two get joined together?

Well, that was after I became a Catholic in 2003, a lot of my friends began to ask me that question, and I didn’t know the answer. So that’s when I started writing this book, “Subverted.” I started looking into it.

How did they get joined together? And the short answer is, that when Betty Friedan and the feminist movement accepted abortion as a necessary right for women, then Helen Gurley Brown at Cosmo said, “Yeah, we’re all for that. We’re all for that.” And the two got joined together in the minds of women and in the minds of the media and the minds of the world.

Evans: What were the consequences of that?

Browder: Well, the consequences have been terrible for women. Well, the thing that women are protesting today in the #MeToo movement is the result of that false joining of the sexual revolution with the feminist movement.

Women are now told that they if they want to be liberated, they have to be sexually liberated. They have to want sex with any man who asks. So, the two joined together. A woman who wants a good job and a good education shouldn’t have to sell her body to get that way. And she shouldn’t have to give it away either.

So, the two got joined together, and this is the very thing that the #MeToo movement is protesting. Even as they pretend that they’re supporting women when they’re supporting abortion.

Abortion is the kingpin here. You separate those two out, because that’s where you get into women’s sexuality, is with abortion. You separate those two out, and you’ve got an authentic feminism. That’s why I say that the pro-life movement is the authentic women’s movement of the 21st century.

Bolar: So many young women who are pro-life have a hard time identifying as a feminist, because they are worried about what that word has come to mean. What you’re really arguing is that there’s been a big revisionist history regarding the actual history of the women’s movement, which was the feminist movement, even before abortion was ever a part of it.

How did this happen? How did so many women, and men for that matter, come to buy into this fake history? And what can and should we do about it?

Browder: Well, there’s a chapter in my book on what happened in the Chinese Room of the Mayflower hotel on November 18th, 1967, in Washington, DC. And what happened that night, where there were only about 100 people in the room that night, it was the National Organization for Women’s second annual conference, and there was a vote.

They were votes taken that night, that day and night, on what women’s rights amounted to. There were only eight rights voted on that day and that night, and most of them are things we can all agree with. A woman should have equal pay for equal work. A woman should be able to go to law school and medical school, families should be able to deduct child care expenses from their income taxes.

There were only two rights [that] stirred up any controversy in that meeting. One was the Equal Rights Amendment. That’s now history, I hope. Some people are trying to bring it back.

The other, though, was the abortion right. And they fought over that until almost midnight that night. One-third of those women later walked out and resigned from NOW over the abortion vote. When it was settled, there were only 57 people in that room that voted to insert abortion into the feminist Bill of Rights, into the national organization’s Bill of Rights.

Once that happened, Betty Friedan, who was president at the time, came out and said she was speaking for all women everywhere, all women across America who wanted to go back, to get to go back, to college, who wanted to get into the workforce. All of these women, she was talking for millions of women.

She was only talking about 57 people in the Chinese Room that night.

And one-third of those women, as I say, walked out of NOW and later resigned from the organization over the abortion vote. And where did they go? These were pro-life feminists. Now these are fervent feminists. These are the founders of the feminist movement in the 1960s. So, these were fervent feminists. They walked out and resigned over the abortion vote.

And they went on to fight for lots of freedoms that now women have. They fought in the courts, these pro-life feminists fought in the courts to get help-wanted male and help-wanted female ads out of newspapers. They fought to allow a married woman to get credit in her own name. They fought for, in some states, for women to be able to serve on a jury. They fought so that women would not be fired for being pregnant. People forget that in those days, women were fired for being pregnant. I was fired for being pregnant.

So, you see, in some ways my generation might have bought into that, “Well, we need abortion to empower ourselves, because otherwise we’re going to be fired for being pregnant.” But it was a false empowerment. And the pro-life women’s movement knew that. And they still know that today.

Evans: It’s crazy for me and for Kelsey and women in our generation to think that it was even possible in this country to be fired for being pregnant. When we were doing research and trying to find footage, you can’t even find images of women pregnant back in the ’50s and ’60s, because it was so taboo.

Sue, why is it important for women who are pro-life, who don’t fit in this traditional feminist box, to identify with the feminist movement?

Browder: I think it’s important because I say we need to take back the “F-word,” feminism, because it’s being used against us, if you will. People, women are standing up who are pro-abortion, who are standing up against, still to this day, pretending that they’re speaking for all liberated women, when in fact, the most liberated women are the pro-life women who are also including motherhood in their ambitions, if you will.

They want to be both mothers and have careers. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t. And if we don’t speak up and say, “We are the authentic feminists of the 21st century,” these other women, the propagandists, if you will, will continue to run the show, will continue to pretend to young women, deceiving young women, that they are speaking for all women in America, and they are not.

Evans: So, Sue, we just saw you last year, but so much has happened since we filmed. I’ve already joked, but Kelsey had a baby, there’s been a global pandemic, and you also wrote a book, “Sex and the Catholic Feminist: New Choices for a New Generation.” And I love this. Literally, the first sentence of the description says “it challenges the notion that you can’t be a feminist and believe in God.”

 

Part 3

So, this is so interesting. And it’s something that I wrestled with myself, personally. And I think we’ve touched on a little bit that society wants to put feminists and Christians into separate boxes. So, can you tell us a little bit about this new book and your inspiration for writing it?

Browder: Well, this book carries “Subverted” a little bit farther. It’s a small book, it’s only about a hundred pages. I wanted something that women could read very quickly and absorb the history of the women’s movement very quickly.

And what it does, is it shows that pro-life women, Christians, were the ones that started the feminist movement. Alice Paul, and a lot of those women that were with her were Christians that gave women the right to vote. So, the women’s movement from the beginning was a Christian movement.

It grew out of a desire for women’s dignity and respect. And it also, when Betty Friedan came along in the ’60s and started talking about feminism, what does she say feminism was really about? She says, “The core that feminism is about is a woman’s personhood.” And she said, “A woman’s personhood should not be limited.”

She made a mistake when she inserted abortion in the women’s movement. And she fought against that mistake for the rest of her life, but she didn’t realize what she’d done. She didn’t realize that she had joined the sexual revolution with the women’s movement.

Betty Friedan was not a Christian; she was an agnostic, and maybe even an atheist at the time that she wrote the book. So, but these women that walked out of the National Organization for Women meeting that night and went on to win all these rights were again, pro-life Christians. So, pro-life Christians have been in this movement all the time, and they are still there marching in the March for Life every year. They are still protesting what happened in that Chinese Room that night.

And we need to know what happened so we can tell it to others, and so we can straighten out the story. The narrative is totally wrong.

Evans: So, that book is called “Sex and the Catholic Feminist.” I want to know, is it just for Catholics or is it more for any pro-life woman of faith? And I’m curious, because I have a lot of pro-life friends who absolutely reject the label, feminism, as I mentioned earlier.

What would you recommend my generation says to them about why they should reconsider identifying with the “F-word” [feminism]?

Browder: Well, I think that was a big question there. It’s called, “Sex and the Catholic Feminist,” because it’s written, it’s published by Ignatius Press, which is a Catholic press. And we do take this completely through starting with feminism and what it was in the beginning, which was mostly non-Catholics that started—it was a Protestant movement in the early 1900s. But there were Catholics involved in it.

I mean, so, this is more of a Christian book than than just Catholics; not limited to just Catholics. But I do talk about John Paul II, who said we should create a new feminism, and that’s what this book is about.

What would that new feminism look like? Well, what it looks like is the pro-life movement of right now. This is the feminist movement. And when I spoke at the March for Life and the Pro-Life Summit in January, these women were on fire. They knew that they have the true empowerment of women, and they’re ready to speak up.

So, in some ways, I’m saying that these, the pro- life movement already is taking back the “F-word.” They’re already doing it, and we’re doing it big time.

Evans: So, Sue, one thing that you wrote about in your book and you spoke about in this documentary, is that abortion isn’t just something that you talk about, it’s something that you’ve lived through. How has that influenced your career and your life right now?

Browder: Well, as I say, I did have an abortion. I aborted my third child in the 1970s. Once I came into the Catholic Church, I didn’t actually think the Catholic Church would let me in, because I did that, but they did. And once I came into the Catholic Church, I went to confession, and I had a wonderful priest, and I got healed from that.

And once I got healed from that abortion to the point where I could talk about it, I realized there’s a lot of women hurting out there who are still hurting so much, they can’t talk about it. And I realized I had reached the point where I could, and it was time I needed to do that.

It’s this book, both of these books were written as penitence, if you will. I didn’t really want to tell my story when I first started, but the editor wanted that part of the story. And so my priest said, “Well, if you’re going to do it, do it as an ascetic exercise.”

In other words, don’t sit around and moan and groan and go back too deep and make it as bad … Don’t, don’t muck around in forever. But just constantly, just do it as an ascetic exercise and as a penance. And that’s what I did.

Bolar: Well, the way you talked about it in your book, you handled it with such grace, and I highly recommend any woman who’s struggling with an issue like that read it and read your experience of coming out on the other side, which is very inspirational to see the way you are healed from it.

But in addition to having an abortion, you’ve also had two children. You’re a mother yourself. I’m a new mom. I have a baby girl who’s eight months old.

Browder: Yes, you do.

Bolar: One of the themes you talk about regarding feminism is motherhood, and how true feminists shouldn’t have to choose between their career and being a mom.

Browder: That’s right.

Bolar: Obviously easier said than done. But I’m curious what your advice is for young women, like me, who quite honestly are struggling with balancing careers and our desires for motherhood. And also young women who might be listening to this and hope in the next couple of years, they might be faced with this beautiful, but at times stressful, decision.

Browder: Well, it’s a stressful decision because of that false feminism. We didn’t go far enough. I call it “Reclaim the F-word,” go out there and say, “I’m a mother. And I need my rights in the workplace as well. I don’t need to be able to choose.”

You are already one of the new, young feminists. You will figure it out. You’re all very bright. I’m not leading a new feminist movement here. You are. And that’s in my book, the last thing I say to you, and I’ll read it. This is in “Sex and the Catholic Feminist.” We’re going to go right to the jugular here, “In the inspiring words of St. John Henry Newman, God has a good for you to accomplish, and he will not cast you aside. What are you going to do?”

Bolar: Well, I certainly appreciate that advice. And I think it’s a heavy burden to carry, but I do agree that myself and other colleagues are forging a new path [forward].

Browder: You are. You are.

Bolar: I mean, look at us right now in a global pandemic. We’re all realizing that it is possible to work from home. I have my husband holding the baby right next door, but it is nice to figure out these new options that technology makes it easier to do.

But there’s no easy answers, but I agree that it is really up to this generation of young mothers to advocate for themselves and find a way to not compromise their desires for motherhood or their careers.

Browder: That’s right. That’s right. And once you realize you don’t have to split the two in two, I mean, I did it by working at home. I’m a writer, so I worked at home and raised my children, and my husband was also a writer, so we stayed at home and raised the children together. That worked out very, very well.

More people can do that now. You’ve got homeschooling, who knows, but you’ll figure it out. You’re very bright. You’re very educated. You’re very talented. And you can do this.

Evans: I agree. Kelsey is very bright and very talented, and she can do it. Well, Sue, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. I know Kelsey and I were just so excited to have you on the show. I really implore our listeners to go out, buy “Subverted,” read it once, read it again.

The documentary will be in the show notes. It’ll also be on the Daily Signal’s Facebook and YouTube. And Sue, can you give our listeners information or where they can go ahead and buy “Sex and the Catholic Feminist”?

Browder: That one, I think you’re best going to [catholic.market]. The reason why, that’s instead of Amazon, because they keep running out of books. Every time we do a podcast or something, they run out of books.

So, go to [[url]https://catholic.market/topics/marriage-family/sex-and-the-catholic-feminist/], because you can get it cheaper, and you can get several copies and give them out to your friends. If you get a few of them, it gets cheaper as you go along. And I think I’m going to get 25. You can get it for [$7], which is half price. So, catholic.store is the best place to go.

Evans: Awesome. Well, everybody go do that. Thanks again, Sue. It’s a pleasure.

 

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It’s Time for an Honest Conversation About Race in America

Virginia Allen / @Virginia_Allen5 / June 02, 2020 / 175 Comments

Tom Bernard cleans the front of his damaged shop June 1, 2020, in Minneapolis after protests over George Floyd's death. (Photo: Kerem Yucel/AFP/Getty Images)
In the midst of outrage and shock over the death of George Floyd, many Americans want to respond in a way that will bring about positive change—"they just don’t know how." That statement is pure BS. Everyone knows how to get along, but since the leftists politicize EVERYTHING, there will never be any peace as long as there are leftists who want to take away your freedoms, because they know how to dictate everything that you are allowed to do.

Once you give in to the leftists (who NEVER compromise) then the leftists expect you to give in to their next demand, and giving in to that
demand leads to you giving in to the next demand....until you finally get over being stupid and realize that the leftists have NEVER given in to ANYTHING!

Why don't the leftists ever offer any compromise FIRST and ALWAYS demand that it be YOU who must continue to bend to their will?
Why is it that leftists MUST ALWAYS be dictators, and as long as we elect them, we give them the power to be dictators again
for four more years.

When you finally get smarter and quit voting for the democrats who want to be dictators and to manage every phase of your life, and when you no longer have any freedom left, YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO VOTE TO GET YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS BACK!

YOU ONLY VOTE ONCE FOR A LIFELONG DICTATOR!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Sophia Nelson, commentator and author of the book “E Pluribus One: Reclaiming Our Founders’ Vision for a United America,”
----------------------------------

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>
-----------------------------------

Virginia Allen: I am joined by Sophia Nelson, commentator and author of several books, including her latest, “

E Pluribus One: Reclaiming Our Founders’ Vision for a United America

E Pluribus One: Reclaiming Our Founders’ Vision for a United America

.” Sophia, thank you so much for your time today.

Sophia Nelson: Oh, it’s my pleasure to be with you, and I’m looking forward to our discussion.

Allen: Me too, me too. Now, Sophia, that vision of a United America is really currently being tested in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Can you take just a moment and remind us of that vision that the Founding Fathers had for a united nation?

Nelson: Yes, I think that’s a great way to open, particularly, in a moment like this, and be clear we’re in a moment, and we’re in a very American moment.

I’m an optimist, even in a dark moment like this. America has been here before, and the whole intent of my book “E Pluribus One,” where I translated the word “unum” into “one,” is based on our motto.

1780, Charles Thompson is tasked by Sam Adams, cousin to John Adams, to come up with a national motto, and he comes up with e pluribus unum—out of many, one.

Now, you have to put it into context, right? Because think back to 1780, we have now won our independence. We are a new nation, and we have 13 colonies at the time, 13 individual states. And none of them agree on a whole lot of anything.

I mean, if you think, again, Massachusetts and Virginia agreed on everything or Rhode Island and South Carolina agreed, they didn’t. And yet they were in agreement in their purpose of unity.

I think that what we’ve lost in this moment is that we are under some mistaken belief that we all have to agree, that we all have to see the world the same, or even experience it the same, and we don’t, because that’s not reality.

What we have to get back to is understanding that we are Americans first. And … a moment like this I have never seen in my lifetime, and I am in my early 50s, I regret to say, but I am, and I have never seen a moment [like this] in my lifetime.

My parents are classic baby boomers, grew up in the civil rights era. Mother from the West Coast, father from the East Coast, very different experiences growing up.

But I listened to their stories and I still have a grandmother who’s alive at 90 who went through all of this—I mean, World War II, she’s seen it all. She’s seen the movement, the marches, and she’s still someone that I talk to about this [regularly].

They experienced something very different than those of us who were born after, like, let’s say, late ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and beyond. We’ve had relative peace, we’ve had relative privilege, we’ve had relative success, and not a lot of conflict, but here comes this moment.

I’ve never seen anything like this before in terms of what I like to say, my white brothers and sisters, those who are my neighbors, my friends, even family members, because—and lest people forget black and white people get married in this country—we have relatives that are a part of our family, they may look different but they are.

I’ve never seen a moment where white citizens are equally outraged and upset, like really upset. This one struck a nerve here that I think is going to end up unifying us.

 

Part 2

What we have to remember is sometimes we fight, sometimes we disagree, but when Americans sense that something’s not just and not fair, harking back to Dr. [Martin Luther King Jr.] and the civil rights era, when people saw what happened at Selma on the bridge, it changed and shifted the country because people saw people peacefully walking across the bridge, being hosed, being beat, having dogs sicced on them, and people … like Viola Liuzzo, who was one of the white women who went down to help and was murdered by some Klansmen while she was driving civil rights workers.

So, this moment is one of those moments where we have to look at ourselves and say, who are we? And we’re Americans, and when we get our ire up—and right now there are peaceful protests, but there are also those who are rioting and not doing the right thing.

I want to just say to them that rioting isn’t going to get you what you want. That’s not who you want to be. Protest is who we are as Americans. That’s what we do. We march, we have the Boston Tea Party, which some would argue was a riot, and sometimes we have to get attention.

So, I just think that what I was trying to say in my book is that the Founding Fathers, with all of their flaws—and they had many, slavery was a part of our beginning.

And as you can see, we’re dealing with that right now in the 21st century. Don’t forget, America started [in] 1607 here in Virginia. 1619, the first slaves arrived. So fast forward 400 years later, Virginia, we’re still talking about this. So we’ve got work to do, but the reminder is, what they wanted us never to forget is that we are one America.

That’s why [Abraham] Lincoln saved the Union at all costs, because had we lost the Civil War, had the Union lost, we would be a nation split in two, South and North. And I don’t know what would have happened with westward expansion. All of that would have been in jeopardy. We wouldn’t be the country that we are now.

So unity of purpose is what I think people have to focus on. Not that we always agree, not that we always are going to like the same things, but that when we know something is not American, when we know it’s not right, we know it’s not who we are, we buck up against it and we challenge it. And that’s what’s happening right now, and that makes me proud.

Allen: I want to talk more about the power of this moment that you brought up because I think that’s so significant. We’ve never quite seen something like this, where it is just, like you say, it’s hitting a nerve deep within people that’s causing a response to George Floyd’s death, a death that never should have happened. What was your first response when you learned of Floyd’s death and saw the video?

Nelson: Regrettably—and I suspect if you were to talk to [Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James], and Kay wrote a wonderful piece for Fox that we all read that was powerful. She didn’t mince words.

[If] you were to talk to any black person, you know what they’re going to tell you? They weren’t shocked. Appalled, yes. Shocked, no. Where our white citizens, they’re both shocked and appalled.

And I say that because before we lost George Floyd, we lost Breonna Taylor, the EMT worker in Kentucky, we lost Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, jogging. We lost before that. We could go through anyone from Philando Castile to Trayvon Martin to … we can keep running down the names and it’ll be a long list. Tamir Rice.

So this happens often, tragically, and for the black community. And I was saying … on a radio show this morning on NPR … that I got the talk when my dad bought me a car.

I was 16, and before he gave me the keys, [he] sat me down and explained the rules, which are, if you get stopped by the police, here’s what you do: You don’t say anything smart. Your hands are visible. Make sure you have your license and registration. If you have a problem, you call me. Back then we didn’t have cellphones, we had to use a pay phone.

 

Part 3

I remember that vividly. My brother got the same talk when he got a car. And so to this day, my brother, who’s a grown man with children, I will check on him and make sure, particularly during times like this, “Hey, you be careful. I don’t want you doing X, Y, Z.” And he laughs because I’m his big sister, but it’s not funny. But he thinks it’s pretty amazing that at this stage of our lives, I’m still tracking his whereabouts like that.

That’s very common in our families and in our communities. Kay talked about this in her piece.

So I think that for me, my reaction was very different. Appalled, disgusted. I think what really affects us, though, Virginia, all of us, is it hits our humanity.

And what we all don’t understand as human beings is, wait a minute, this is a person. And why didn’t those other police officers do something because they had the power to tackle the guy, say, “Hey, you’re being excessive,” or, “Man, you need to leave him alone.” They had the power to stop that and they did nothing.

And others were filming it, and you can argue they were doing something by filming it. But I’m concerned about the callousness that we have as a culture. We’ve become a very coarse culture. We don’t value life, and that starts all the way from the beginning of life to the end of life.

We don’t value life in the 21st century the way we did when I was coming up, or when my parents or grandparents were coming up. And there was a difference in knowing right and wrong in that, “Hey, I’m not going to watch something like this go down. I’m either going to get involved or I’m going to get help.”

And I think that’s what really has disturbed all of us, that this was videotaped and the rest of us watched it. We were all witnesses to a murder. And I think that’s what has everybody a little bit messed up.

Allen: Yeah, I know. Thank you for bringing up Kay Coles James’ op-ed, we’ll be sure to link that for our listeners because it is so well articulated. Exactly what you’re saying.

And you know, Sophia, I’m having that same response that I think so many people are. I’m a white female and I’m trying to discern, what should my response be in this situation? And I’ve received emails from other people asking that question, saying, “I’m a white American, but I’m obviously strongly against racism. I condemn racism. I want to do something. What can I do?”

What is your response to that question?

Nelson: Well, it’s a great question. And I’ll say a couple things about that. One, thank you. I did a post on my Facebook page and I think Rob [Bluey], who’s one of your colleagues, … kind of re-posted it and took some parts of it on something he did on the podcast website and we can link that as well, so people can see it.

But one of the things I did is I wrote an open letter to everybody on my page who’s one of my white friends, or close friends, family, whatever. My nieces are biracial. They have a white mother and a black father. And so it’s very close.

And I wanted to say to my friends, that one, you don’t have to apologize to me, so stop sending me texts and DMs like you’re doing to all your black friends because you didn’t do this. That’s No. 1.

No. 2, white guilt is not what we need right now, this moment. What we need are allies, what we need are good people to stand up and say, “OK, let me examine my day-to-day life and my interactions. Do I have friends of color? Do I have coffee with them? Do I know them in the workplace? Am I making sure that I’m inclusive of other opinions, lenses, thoughts?”

It’s the little things that may sound trite, but the way we’re going to get through this—I brought up one of my favorite quotes from the Plessy v. Ferguson case that Justice [Lewis] Powell quotes in the Bakke case.

Way down in the ’70s, you have a case that legalized segregation, and then you have a case dealing with affirmative action, and Justice Powell quoting [Chief] Justice [Roger] Taney says, “We must first be color conscious before we can be color blind.”

It’s one of my favorite lines because it’s what’s going to get us through. We have to stop saying these silly things like, “I’m color blind.” No, you’re not. I’m not. We all see color. We all see gender. It’s the first thing we see when we walk into a room, it just is. And it’s OK.

The question becomes, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to find ways to understand, have courageous conversations about the things we’re afraid of, the stereotypes?

Look, I’ll be honest—and I’ve seen a lot of African American leaders on national TV, myself included, who’ve all said, when we’re conditioned to be afraid of large black men, if I’m in an elevator and a large black man gets on and it’s just me and him, my fear of stereotype, that man can be dressed in a suit, whatever.

So it’s not just white people that have these fears because we all get bombarded with stereotypes. And there are stereotypes about black women, right? We’re all angry. Didn’t you know?

So if you buy into these stereotypes, it’s how you perceive people and see them, and then that’s how you’re going to engage them.

What you can do is what we see people doing all over this country right now.

White police officers, and God bless our police officers, this has to be a tough moment for them because they’re really seen as villains right now.

I mean, we’ve all watched the videos in places like Philadelphia and other cities all around where police have literally been beat up by citizens, beating them with signs, on their bicycles, violent.

And then the police officers are engaging back, and it’s a mess because there is this righteous anger that has met this unrighteous group of people who I don’t think are protesters at all. They’re agitators who come in to take advantage of a very difficult moment we’re having.

So we’ve all got to get smart enough when we look at what people are doing, particularly white citizens, they’ve been engaged in peaceful protests.

My pastor who’s white, of a major church here in Virginia, gave an amazing message today, I was so proud of him. And we have a diverse church. He’s a white pastor with a church that has 30% black and brown in it, which is rare in America. Most churches are still very segregated in 2021. That’s just a fact.

So, … he said, “I don’t get it because I live as a white man, but I can pray with you, talk with you, protest with you. I can do whatever we need to do to make sure that this never happens again.”

And I think it’s things like that that simply say, “We get it. We’re awake. Oh, my God, like, everything you’ve been trying to tell us, that’s really your reality.”
-----------------------------------------------

I think when people feel heard—what did Dr. King say? Riot is the language of the unheard. And so when people get angry …

Remember Rodney King? I’m old enough to remember that, I was just starting law school that year. And you know, I remember Jack Kemp, who you know is a hero of mine, rolling up the sleeves. He’s [housing and urban development] secretary, he goes down to LA. He takes President [George] Herbert Walker Bush with him, and they meet and they engage and they talk and they listen. And Kemp’s out throwing the football with the young kids in the street and he’s comfortable.

And it was great to see a Republican conservative be able to do that. God, I wish we had Jack Kemp right now because we need him.

But the point is that that’s how we get through, and that’s how we fix this. We talk, we listen, we cry. We lean in, we stop judging. We stop telling people what their experiences are. We stop telling them what their experiences aren’t, and we just listen and we try to do better.

And then there has to be systemic change in the structure of how we police in this country, how we do a lot of things in this country. That’s why we keep ending up back here, Virginia, because we keep putting Band-Aids on this gaping wound that’s 400 years old.

 

Part 4

We’re not fixing the wound. We’re not cleaning it out, letting it have sunlight, and letting it heal so that the wound is healed. That’s why we keep ending up back here.

If we don’t get it right this time, tragically, we’ll end up right back here again, give it a year, give it two. We’ll end up right back here again.

Allen: Yeah. You mentioned and spoke to that need for courageous conversations, and you spoke to that on your Facebook post as well that you referred to. We’re on just a really basic level for the average person listening who has African American friends, maybe has some African American family members, where can they begin those courageous conversations with people right in their community? How can they do that?

Nelson: Yeah. I mean, we’ve been having them here in my neighborhood in Leesburg, where I live, and I acknowledge this. I live in an upper-middle class, well-to-do community. We’re probably one of the few black families here.

Our neighbors are not just our neighbors, they’re truly our friends. And in a couple of cases, they’re more like family. And even though we don’t look the same, we have talked about this.

Again, I have been surprised pleasantly about the outreach of my white neighbors. They don’t like this. They’re upset about it and they want to talk about it. And they’re asking what to do, just like you just did. And they look to me as someone who’s out there.

I was on CNN on Saturday talking about this, and we got a lot of response because what I’m asking people to do is to become color conscious and to understand that this country has a history and that the way we’re going to fix it is we have to really talk about it.

So, it doesn’t have to be deep. It just has to be listening and asking some basic questions, like, “What is it like? What do you experience? And what things do I need to be mindful of when I’m at work, or when I’m, whatever? Help me understand what maybe I can’t see.”

There’s this big discussion, as you know, Virginia, online about particularly what happened in Central Park with Amy Cooper. And the young man who was … bird watching, the young black man, and she’s calling 911 on him and telling him she’s going to get him in trouble, and he hasn’t done anything wrong. She’s dragging her dog. She clearly is in some type of crisis as a human being, No. 1.

No. 2, though, it’s things like that. Here’s a woman who it turns out was a Hillary Clinton supporter, and I bring that up for a reason, on purpose, in that her politics are more liberal. Whereas people would have thought someone that would do that, the stereotype would be … that she’s some type of rabid conservative, crazy lady. That’s not the case.

That’s a really good point because it shows that none of us are immune from this. None of us. I have prejudices as a black woman, things I have to work on, we all do.

So the only way we fix them is we confront them, and we sit down as we’ve been doing all weekend here in my neighborhood. People are usually quiet, shy. I’ve got an FBI agent on one side of me, a CIA agent [on] the other. I mean, we’ve got a lot of government people here and we’ve all been talking about this and they’re all pretty upset about it and they don’t want to ever see it again.

And they’re asking, “What do I tell my kids?” Because, you know, the kids are seeing it, right? And so it all starts with the people … and that’s how you’re going to fix it. You’ve got to be willing to talk to the people you know, and not just be polite and engaged in this kind of … you know how we gloss over things, and we don’t really want to talk about them? And we all do this all the time. We’re going to have to come up with a better way, because again, this is going to keep coming up.

You know, let me finish with this point, I don’t want people to think that only in moments like this, where we see a violent death of another human being, that that is the definition of racism. That is an extreme definition of racism. One that is rare and wicked and awful, but there are other forms that are equally dangerous to us, but I’m seeing the images, again, I’m looking at white police officers take a knee.

Colin Kaepernick caught a lot of heat for what he did. People didn’t like it. And now everybody’s taking a knee.

So sometimes it takes somebody to say, “Hey, is this right?” And I’m going to kneel in reverence and respect. I’m not going to burn up anything. I’m not going to tear down any buildings. I’m not going to be violent. I’m going to respectfully say, “We need to address this.” And I see that happening now.

That’s the upside of this. That it’s still rough, but the history of America is rough. We fought our Civil War in part over race. Think about that—600,000 dead, both sides, Union and Confederate troops. That’s the price we paid to make this a more perfect union.

Allen: To our parents and our grandparents listening, you talk about having that conversation. What advice would you give them? Whether black or white, as they’re watching the news and they’re thinking, “Gosh, how do I talk to my kids? How do I talk to my grandkids about this?”

Nelson: I think that particularly those who are the greatest generation that are still with us, again, I have a grandmother that’s 90, and I know that not a lot of that generation is still with us, but I think that one of the most wonderful things you can do when you’re a grandparent, whether you’re in your 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, is sit with your grandchildren and talk to them about the world you lived in.

Talk about the Great War, talk about how America liberated, talk about D-Day. Talk about the things that you saw that really make you proud to be a part of this country. I think [that] is a very good thing just to instill that patriotism and love of country in them.

And then I think, when it comes to race, particularly, my parents were baby boomers and their granddaughters are millennials, very different.

Like the #OKboomer hashtag, the millennials are not nuts about the baby boomers and vice versa. They’re not really liking each other a whole lot. We got to work with them. And that’s my point.

It’s a dialogue that needs to take place. It’s generational, but I think that you can talk about race and you can talk about this by simply making it—I want to be careful how I say this, because this absolutely is about race, and we all agree.

However, … I wanted to make it more about being a decent human being, decent human beings, Christians, people who say they love God, we don’t kill other people. We don’t curse other people. We don’t violate other people. We don’t discriminate against other people.

I think when you can get to that core code, to borrow a word, a code that you live by, that’s what I think is missing, Virginia, in this generation.

We’ve done the wrong thing with the young people. They’ve learned to ghost, unfriend, cut off, delete, block. That’s their language. And they video everything. Everything’s on a video. So I think that we’ve erred in setting an example of how to communicate, how to have conversation, which is not texting. Texting is not talking, young people. I know you don’t know this, but it’s true.

And you know, you need to have a verbal dialogue like we’re doing right now. We’re having a conversation. You listen, you speak, you speak, you listen. And I think when we can get back to those core values—and again, this is not Republican, Democrat, liberal, it’s human, it’s American. Let’s be human. Let’s treat each other with respect and decency.

If we can operate from that place, that’s when we turn the corner, because isn’t that what this is really about at the end of the day? Isn’t racism about your utter lack of respect for somebody that doesn’t look like you or is not the same as you? Isn’t that really what it’s about?

Allen: Yeah, Sophia, thank you.

Nelson: All right. My pleasure.

Allen: I want to circle back before I let you go. Your book “E Pluribus One: Reclaiming our Founders’ Vision for a United America,” it’s so relevant right now. Tell us where we can find that book.

Nelson: You can find it everywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble. Hachette is the publisher, biggest publisher in the world. You can get it anywhere. You can go directly there, sometimes they have specials.

You know, just quickly, I was telling my publisher how I wished that I had written that book right now and not three years ago because, wow, is it needed now. So they’re expecting a resurgence, it’s been selling out. So thank you for mentioning it. And you can go to the website, epluribus.one and check it out. We’ve got a whole website. Everything is there for you.

Allen: Thank you so much, Sophia. We really, really appreciate your time today and just your insight and your wisdom on this topic.