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- [Narrator] This is the story of the most cynical
political game in American history.
[upbeat music]
- The Democratic Party somehow has convinced Black people
that they're the good guys.
Republican Party, the party of Lincoln is perceived
to be the bad guys.
Nevermind the skanky history of a Democratic Party,
that was a party of slavery.
- [Narrator] This is the story of how the Democrats
came to rely completely on America's Black vote.
- He said, listen, I gotta give these niggers enough,
not too much, but enough
that I have them voting Democrat
for the next 200 years.
- [Narrator] It's the story of how the specter of racism
became a political weapon.
- The primary basis of the democratic party's
appeal to Black voters is the invocation of racism.
- If I tell you this is racist,
if I tell you that is racist, yeah,
I'm gonna get you emotional, I'm gonna get you to jump,
I'm gonna get you to skip.
- [Narrator] Of how the politics of race
are used to smear America's working class.
- The basket of deplorables, untouchable, racist bigots,
and the term simmering under the surface
when you hear these comments is white trash.
- [Narrator] Of how the Democrats,
once the party of segregation,
came to rely again on racial division.
- It's impossible to envision a world without race
for the Democratic party.
It's impossible to envision a world that gets beyond race
because their bread and butter and their bottom line,
they're raised on and everything that they're trying to do
depends upon people being kept in these boxes.
- The things that you guys are doing.
- [Narrator] It's about the Americans who are hitting back.
- Oh, but we Black.
You gonna tell me how to be Black, right?
You're a fraud, look at you.
These are frauds.
And now y'all got the audacity to say Black Lives Matter.
Y'all don't care about Black people.
- I don't find it satisfying to think of myself
as a Black person.
Well, I'm a father and a husband
and a bunch of other remarkable things.
And all of those things are far more important
to me than being Black.
- [Woman] Oh, wait,
I think they put your letter in the same one.
- [Woman 2] That's true.
- [Woman] Wait a minute. - [Woman 2] That's true.
- Yeah.
[laughing]
- [Narrator] Beverlyn Baidey has received a letter.
It says the New York City Police Department
is dropping charges against her.
- We gotta make sure that's the right.
That's the summon, yo.
- You know what?
- Go get the summons our your wallet.
- The NYPD has failed to file
a legally acceptable accusatory instrument with this court.
There is no need for you to return to court
on the summons number referenced above, that is crazy.
- Yes.
- That is crazy.
- [Narrator] Beverlyn has been arrested several times
at events organized by Black Lives Matter.
But she's not campaigning for Black Lives Matter.
Beverlyn is campaigning against them.
Left-wing activists have painted Black Lives Matter
in big yellow letters outside Trump Tower in New York.
They say Donald Trump is racist and they are calling
for the police to be defunded
because they say they too are racist.
- Okay, so Martin,
we're going to paint the Black Lives Matter mural
on Fifth Avenue Black.
You guys, we're here, just stay tuned.
Black Lives Matter, right?
- [Narrator] Bevelyn thinks that the left wing,
largely white supporters of Black Lives Matter,
have little connection with or understanding
of ordinary Black people.
- They say Black lives matter,
they say Black lives matter, right?
They don't care about Black lives.
- [Narrator] She says the left's theatrical crusade
against racism is nothing but a charade,
affront for promoting otherwise unpopular
left wing politics.
- Defund the police, defund the police,
defund the police, defund the police, defund the police.
[people shouting]
- Black lives matter is a demon, it's a devil.
- [Narrator] As for the campaign to defund the police,
Bevelyn grew up in a poor Black neighborhood.
She's been shot, she's been stabbed
and she and her friends, far from wanting fewer police,
would rather like more.
- They don't care.
Since I grew up in a hood, I need my police.
I need them to come my brothers from.
- But when you live, when you up in the,
you ain't seeing and police just cruise by
to make sure everything's okay.
You kind of tend to think, what's the point of the police?
But when you seeing shootings every day.
- Yes.
- And it's your own family members
either shooting at each other or getting shot at,
it's like, wait a minute.
Everybody knows in the hood if the police come,
that's when you come out.
When they leave, you leave.
Y'all want the Black cop to die.
Huh, huh?
Do Black Lives Matter when it's a Black cop, huh?
- [Narrator] According to the supporters
of Black Lives Matter, Black people live in fear
of white police and indeed white people in general,
all of whom are racist,
whether or not they realize it or admit it.
- I'm over here.
- [Narrator] But Beverlyn recalls her pleasant surprise
when she moved into a white neighborhood in Maine.
[person shouting]
- When I got to Maine, it's like, oh my God,
the whitest state in the world, it's just so white.
But I'ma tell you something right now about Maine.
Living in a predominantly white state,
I felt more safe than living in a predominantly Black state.
And I'm being honest.
I'm just keeping it 100.
When you live in predominantly Black communities,
don't pull up in a nice car.
Nine times outta 10 when you leave,
they clocking you, when you leave
and they gonna hit your crib, okay.
You moving to the white neighborhoods,
you get your packages, you call your neighbor.
I remember one time I thought I left my oven on.
I called my neighbor and say, hey, Carly,
could you go check and see if my oven's on?
Oh, sure, absolutely, I'll be over there right now.
[woman laughing]
She went over there so quick, make sure my oven was good.
Lock my door, lock your door, I'll lock it for you.
Listen, I'm be honest with you.
You not gonna really get this in a lot Black,
and I'm not saying all, I'm not saying all,
but I'm just saying.
- People are gonna listen to what you're saying right now
and take offense, but it is a fact.
- [Robert] This is president Ronald Reagan and myself.
- [Narrator] Robert Woodson,
is it veteran civil rights campaigner.
- [Robert] This is myself
with President Ford and Jimmy Carter.
- [Narrator] He spent his life working directly
with Black people in America's poorest inner city areas
to improve their lives and he's been recognized repeatedly
for his work.
- I was given the Presidential Award
and it was given in the Oval Office.
And this is my granddaughter who had to write an essay
and she wrote about the president's dog.
That's what impressed her most.
[man laughing]
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] Since the start of the 1960s,
he has witnessed the collapse of the Black family,
the rise of Black crime,
the dissent of poor Black neighborhoods
into terrifying lawlessness.
[sirens wailing]
But he refuses to accept that racism is the cause
and to prove it, he points to the history
of Black people in America.
- The Black on Black crime, high incarceration rates,
70% outta wedlock births.
A lot of naysayers try to suggest that that was attributed
to the legacy of slavery and discrimination.
That is just untrue, it's patently untrue.
[car beeping]
- [Narrator] Long after the end of slavery,
Black people in America were demonized, abused by employers,
turned away from restaurants and hotels,
excluded from schools and colleges
and denied equal protection under the law.
They were terrorized by murderous gangs
of hooded racist thugs, who themselves were protected
by racist cops, judges and politicians.
[crowd cheering]
And yet, despite all this,
in the decades that followed abolition,
Black people used what freedom they had
to transform their lives for the better.
- There were large numbers of Blacks
who were skilled craftsmen.
They were iron workers, they could work with leather.
They were carpenters.
And so these workers were in demand and wage rates
as a consequence soared.
- [Narrator] Black people worked hard and made money.
They bought their own homes,
built their own churches and schools.
[gentle music]
When racist shop owners refused to serve them,
they set up their own.
When racist employers refused to hire them,
they went into business themselves.
By 1910, even in the former slave state of North Carolina
and despite dreadful racism,
a quarter of Black households owned their own home,
a rate of home ownership, not far short of whites,
28% of businesses in the state were owned by Blacks,
including theaters, drug stores and real estate firms.
- All the stores in the community we're owned by Blacks.
When we were denied access to hotels, we built our own.
There was a St. Charles in Chicago,
the St. Teresa in New York, The Waluhaje in Atlanta,
I can go on and on and on.
A little known fact,
there were 20 Blacks who were born slaves
who died millionaires.
- [Narrator] Black people built their own colleges.
By 1920, across America, there were more than 100 colleges
of higher education for Black people.
And no fewer than 15 Black universities.
[singing in foreign language]
- There was a thirst for education
and Blacks flocked to these schools.
- [Presenter] Here at Howard University,
located in Washington, DC.
This meteorology class teaches future flyers
celestial navigation.
Howard University Medical School has one of the country's
leading authorities on blood plasma.
- [Narrator] Far from it being impossible
to get into higher education, by the 1930s,
these 15 Black universities
were having to compete for Black students,
advertising the achievements of their alumni.
- [Announcer] The late George Washington, Carver,
honored in the chemistry of agriculture.
Law, elected judge of New York City court.
Medicine, leading New York city surgeon.
Education, principal of a New York City public school,
curator, Schomburg collection of literature,
international prize winning sculpture.
Explorer, financier and publisher,
men and women in every walk of life.
[upbeat music]
- [Narrator] By the 1940s,
Black businesses had grown spectacularly
in number and scale.
- I can give endless examples
of the kind of businesses they built.
- [Narrator 2] The late CC Spalding pioneered as founder
of the North Carolina Mutual,
the largest of Negro America's 58 insurance companies.
The Pittsburgh Courier, largest Negro newspaper in America
with a 300,000 circulation,
owner publisher, Mrs. Robert Van
and editor in chief Bill Nun,
oversees 16 different weekly editions.
The thousands of independent businesses
in every part of the country,
serving every imaginable want and need of the consumer
are the final gauge of prosperity and progress.
- [Narrator] Not every Black person went to university
or set up a business or even owned their own home.
But even in poorer Black communities,
there was self-reliance and ambition.
Walter Williams would go on to become
one of America's most distinguished economists,
but he started life in just such a neighborhood.
- I grew up in a very poor neighborhood in Philadelphia,
and Blacks were proud people, even poor people worked.
My stepfather used to say to me that any kind of a job
is better than begging and stealing.
He would say, look,
if you wanna be successful in this world,
you gotta come early and stay late.
That was the kind of philosophy that we got.
And we were poor.
- [Narrator] In Black neighborhoods across America,
church played a central part in communal life.
Marriage rates were high, divorce rates low,
and it was rare for a baby to be born out of wedlock.
- Between 1920 and 1940,
Black America had the highest marriage rate
of any other group in the country.
85% up until 1960 of Black families
had a man and a woman raising children.
- In 1938 to 1942, the Black illegitimacy rate
or out of wedlock birth rate if you prefer, was 10 to 11%.
[gentle music]
- Back in the day, Black people were Christian,
especially Black Americans, we were strong Christians,
everybody in the neighborhood
you knew, they basically family.
If a neighbor didn't have food,
they knew they could come to their neighbor say, hey,
listen, they'll send something over to feed the family.
There was a dependency on the community.
That was a true understanding of neighboring one another.
Grandma was the pillar in the community.
Fathers were fathers to the fatherless in the community.
- Elderly people could walk without fear
of being assaulted by their grandchildren.
- [Narrator] In the first half of the 20th century,
Black crime rates were far, far lower than they are today.
[gentle music]
In the 1920s, despite the racist judges,
juries and cops, eight out of 10 convicts
in America's prisons were white.
By the mid 20th century, Black people had achieved
truly astonishing progress since the dark days of slavery,
building communities that were self-reliant,
decent, proud, and ambitious.
- That's the reality of Black America prior to the 1960s.
That's the Black America that does not get much recognition.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] And all of this in the face
of the most ugly, pervasive racism.
- A lot of racism, man, a whole lot of it.
And yet people built homes and families.
They started businesses they strove to do as well
as they could under the circumstance.
And moreover, they created the foundation
for a movement that overturned the racism.
- Racism and the history
of discrimination in America is not responsible
for the conditions that we are witnessing today.
- [Narrator] But if not racism, then what?
How did the self-reliant, law abiding Black neighborhoods
of the first half of the 20th century
turn into the terrifying, lawless ghettos of today?
- Keep your hands where I can see them, come on out.
- [Narrator] To understand, it is necessary to delve
into the history of race in America
and tell perhaps the most extraordinary story
in American political history,
the transformation of the Democratic Party
from the party of slavery and segregation
into the party that claims to best represent Black America.
Early racist Hollywood epic, "Birth of a Nation",
depicts the American south on the eve of Civil War.
This was the time when Democrats
had a near monopoly of power in the Southern states,
the Southern Democrats defended slavery and later,
Jim Crow and segregation.
In their election posters, the Democrats declared themselves
to be the party of the white man.
The Republicans were mocked as the party of Black people.
The Democrats represented white supremacy.
The Republicans were the devils attempting to end slavery.
[gentle music]
In birth of a nation, the Northern Republican Yankees
who invade the south are reviled
for fighting alongside Black troops.
The good guys are the hooded Ku Klux Klan.
- Most Black people are completely unaware
that Democrats started the KKK.
the Ku Klux Klan is the organization that in the twenties,
had almost four or five million people.
It was started by Democrats and it used to be called
the terror wing of the Democratic party.
And the Democratic party voted against the 13th,
14th and 15th amendments, 13th amendment freed the slave.
The 14th amendment gave newly freed slaves citizenship,
and the 15th amendment,
at least on paper gave slaves the right to vote.
Democrats voted against all three of those things.
- [Narrator] By 1930, 21 Black people
had been elected to the US House of Representatives.
Every single one of them was a Republican.
- The first Republican Party in Texas was started
by Black people, not the Black Republican Party.
The Republican Party started by Black people.
- [Narrator] By the 1970s, only three Black people
had been elected to the Senate,
but all of them were Republican.
It was the Republican president, Eisenhower,
who passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957
in an effort to force Southern Democrats
to respect the voting rights of Black people.
- I propose to end segregation in the district of Columbia,
including the federal government
and any segregation in the armed forces.
- [Narrator] It was Eisenhower, the Republican,
who sent troops to enforce desegregation
in the Democrat dominated south.
[gentle music]
- [Man] On September 27th, 1957,
President Eisenhower sent 1000 men
of the United States Army to carry out the law.
The Supreme court of the United States had said,
the entire strength of the nation
may be used to enforce in any part of the land,
the security of all rights entrusted by the constitution.
And that included my rights
and the rights of eight other Negro Americans
who wanted to go to central high school
in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- The Democratic party
somehow has convinced Black people
that they're the good guys, Republican Party,
the party of Lincoln, is perceived to be the bad guys,
nevermind the shanky history of the Democratic Party.
That was a party of slavery.
- [Narrator] But by the end of the 1950s,
the racism of the Southern Democrats
was catching up with them.
America's Black population, which lived mainly in the south,
had grown in prosperity and confidence.
They were no longer willing to put up
with local Jim Crow laws designed to stop them from voting.
And when they won the vote, as they soon inevitably would,
they were unlikely to vote Democrat.
The leading Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, was a known bigot.
He had even voted against an anti-lynching bill,
but now he was worried.
These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days.
And that's a problem for us, since they've got something now
they've never had before, political pull,
we've got to give them a little something,
just enough to keep them quiet,
not enough to make a difference.
LBJ's plan for winning Black votes was ingenious.
- This administration today
declares unconditional war on poverty in America.
[audience clapping]
[upbeat music]
- [Narrator] Johnson launched his war on poverty in 1964
with a massive program of public spending,
much of it directed specifically
at America's Black communities.
- He implemented a war on poverty,
a program to help you guys, you've been through so much.
You've been through so much struggle,
even though his party, the blood is on his party's hands.
- [Narrator] The Democrats expanded welfare
and sent legions of government officials
into Black neighborhoods in particular,
going from door to door, offering welfare assistance.
- What these government workers did
was go out among poor Blacks and working class Blacks,
and actually recruit them into the welfare system.
You have a right to welfare.
After all, whites have taken from us
over the years to enslave,
therefore we have a right to reparations
and welfare is a form of reparations,
payment for past misdeeds on the part of whites.
- Welfare stepped into the picture and said,
I can get you an apartment, I can get you some money
at the beginning of the month,
you don't have to worry or struggle
about taking care of your kids.
It sounded beautiful, and people fell for it.
- As a consequence, we saw millions of Blacks
flooding into the welfare system
over the course of about four years.
- [Narrator] Johnson was convinced
he could buy the Black vote.
He even boasted "I'll have them niggers voting democratic
for 200 years."
- He was smart.
He said, listen, I gotta give these niggers enough,
not too much, but enough that I'll have them
voting Democrat for the next 200 years.
- [Narrator] As LBJ predicted,
his massive welfare spending spree
won the Democrats Black electoral support.
But as poorer Black people came to rely on welfare,
commentators noticed a subtle alteration
in the character of some Black neighborhoods.
- When you tell people that they had the right
to live at the expense of other people
that has lived through the government welfare programs,
then you're gonna expect a change in their behavior.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] In the decades after slavery,
Black people set up dozens of their own banks
and savings and loan companies,
Black people not only worked hard,
but prudently saved their money
to guard against possible troubles ahead.
But with the advent of welfare support,
it was no longer the same need to save against a rainy day,
nor was there the same urgency to find and keep a job.
- When you consider healthcare, housing aid, food stamps.
When you add up all of the array of services
that are offered to welfare recipients,
it made it much more profitable
for families to go on welfare than to work.
- [Narrator] But there was another change brought about
by welfare that would have a truly devastating effect
on the Black community.
And that wasn't people's attitude towards marriage
and having a baby.
Until the expansion of the welfare state,
in Black communities, it was considered shocking
to have a baby out of wedlock.
- You just couldn't do that.
You couldn't because it was shameful.
You couldn't afford it.
Number one, if people wasn't gonna just step in,
there wasn't a government to step in
and just pay for your mistakes.
If you had that baby, you were gonna take care of that baby.
Fathers would go to these men and with a shotgun,
like, listen, you gonna do right by my daughter.
And you are gonna take care of your baby
because it costs money.
- The two families would get together and they would have
what's called a shotgun wedding,
they would force the boy to marry the girl.
Now you may look at that and say, that's a bad thing.
But the point is, getting somebody pregnant
in those days was not only a moral crisis,
it was an economic crisis.
Who's gonna pay for it?
- [Narrator] But with the offer of welfare assistance,
the economic logic of teen pregnancy was turned on its head.
- A girl who gets pregnant will get food stamps,
will get AFDC, will get transportation vouchers.
What's called women, infant and children medical healthcare.
You add it all up.
And a woman with two children
makes more money than she would
if she worked a minimum wage job
in every single state in this union.
- What the welfare state says, look,
we will give you housing.
We will give you food stamps, we'll give you a stipend.
All you have to do is have a baby.
- [Narrator] Single mothers on welfare were now in effect,
married to the government.
As welfare worked its grim magic
in America's poorer Black neighborhoods,
the number of children born to single mothers
shot up at an incredible rate.
As early as the 1970s, the economist Thomas Sowell
was sounding the alarm.
- You make the following statement,
the current large and rising numbers
of female headed families among Blacks
is a modern phenomenon,
stemming from the era of the welfare state.
- Yes, it was rare,
particularly for teenage Black women
to have children with no man in the house,
one period, 3% of the Black families
were headed by teenage girls.
- And that figure is now over 50%.
- I don't know what the teenage girl percentage is,
but it's an awful lot higher than that.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] By the 1980s, there were scenes
that would've astonished previous generations.
High schools were forced to set up large nurseries
to accommodate the dozens of children
born to their students.
- [Man 2] Every year, one million
American teenagers become pregnant.
It's not uncommon for a large high school to have dozens
of girls who suddenly face the shock
of moving straight from childhood to motherhood.
- [Narrator] Across the Black community as a whole,
3/4 of all babies are now born to single mothers.
In the poorest neighborhoods,
the proportion is higher still.
- I lived in a housing project and we were the only kids
in their neighborhood who did not have a mother
and father in the house.
This is like during the 1940s and 1950s.
And today, if you go to the Richard Allen housing project
where I grew up, it would be exactly the opposite.
It would be rare to find a two parent family.
- A kid born during slavery
was more likely to be raised under a roof
with his biological mother and biological father than today.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] It's hard enough to bring up a child
with two parents, but when there's only one,
a young girl on her own with little money,
it can be lonely and desperate,
with many of the joys of motherhood emptied out.
- These young girls that end up being single mothers,
they're stuck with the baby.
And now the child looks like a burden to them,
more than a blessing.
[people chattering]
- [Narrator] To accommodate the exploding number
of single mothers
and children, large municipal housing blocks were built.
The children who lived in these blocks were far more likely
from an early age to be left on the streets, unaccompanied.
And it is life in these bleak neighborhoods
that will shape how they think and behave.
- You have a jungle where it is survival of the fittest,
and in that particular jungle, you have to be tough.
- Parents aren't around to monitor what's going on.
So if they look a little wimpy
or maybe he seems a little bit more like a dork,
his glasses are a little thicker than everybody else's,
the kids are gonna jump him.
- You have a bunch of young men
who are without direction, who have pent up anger
and frustration, you will be tested at some point.
- They sit slouching, chilling.
You know, I'm a gangster.
- The walk, the way they look, the swagger.
- This is how you be a man.
This is how you get respect, you walk around like this.
And if a dude look at you the wrong way,
you punch him in the face.
And so these men are trained.
These young boys are trained as a kid to do this.
- [Narrator] But the skills needed to survive the streets
are ill-suited to the classroom.
- These same young guys I would see in high school,
when it was time to do their work and engage in classwork,
they still were holding onto that demeanor of,
I'm a gangster, I'm tough.
So gangsters don't do homework,
gangsters don't read books,
gangsters don't care about what the teacher's saying.
They're twisting their dreads while the teacher's talking,
could care less what the teacher's saying,
not listening to anything.
- [Narrator] The children of single mothers
tend to do far worse at school.
They don't have hardworking parents
instilling ambition and setting them an example.
Their mothers are often too distracted
to take an eager interest in their schooling,
too tired to go over homework, too unknowledgeable to help.
- Having a father specifically present
improves grades, improves health,
decreases a female teenager's chances of getting pregnant,
decreases a young man's risk of going to prison and so on.
And this is becoming a growing problem
in the white community,
especially the poor white community.
Two parent Black families are substantially less likely
to be poor than single parent white families.
That is something that's simply unchallenged in the data
because two people are better than one.
It helps to have parents,
that is perhaps the greatest privilege,
quote, unquote, you can have.
- [Narrator] As if these disadvantages weren't enough,
single parents on welfare have no choice
but to send their children to government run schools,
where the standard of discipline
and teaching is often deplorably low.
- In the city of Baltimore.
There are 13 high schools where not a single,
predominantly Black high schools, where not a single student
tests proficient in mathematics
and roughly 13% test proficient in reading.
The average Black kid who has a high school diploma
in his hand can read and write as well as the average
white sixth or seventh grader.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] Ill educated, unfamiliar with the demands
of work and with the general demeanor
of defensiveness and aggression,
all this leaves young adults
struggling to land and hold down a job.
- This demeanor, this image,
they were raised to have it as a kid.
And so now once they go out into the real world,
they still think this is appropriate.
This is the way to be.
Well, if I bring this being Black, I'm Black, yo, I'm tough.
That attitude alone is intimidating.
And any person in their right mind is gonna think,
I don't know if I wanna hire him, he might Rob me.
[woman laughing]
- [Man 3] These are the hardcore unemployed,
the high school dropouts who have seldom or never worked.
- Employers tell me, all they want is somebody
who can read, write and compute at grade level,
who'll show up, who be polite,
who knows how to respect authority,
and because of the breakdown of the family,
because of the welfare state,
because of the change of the norms,
many people simply cannot read, write,
compute at grade level, have an attitude.
They don't know how to behave and interact with people.
They don't know how to deal with a boss
in a respectful fashion, and as a result,
they're much more likely to be unemployed.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] If you can't get out of bed in the morning,
if you won't look people in the eye,
if you you say is hard for people to understand,
if you are habitually discourteous,
unwilling to please, slovenly and resentful,
if you can barely read or write,
if you dress and comport yourself like a street thug,
then even when there are plenty of jobs available,
it is unlikely that you will get one.
- That culture and how they raised
disqualifies them for mainstream American life.
Whether it's work, a normal relationship
with a healthy young woman,
a lot of what they do disqualifies them.
- The sad part is this, there is hope,
and there is a sense of pride
when you work for what you have, you value it more.
And that's being choked from Black community.
- [Narrator] Without a steady income,
young men are incapable and have no expectation
of supporting a family.
And so the welfare cycle continues, of men having children
that they will not pay for,
with women they will not live with or support.
- Now, if we take care of you, we your husband,
we your daddy, you can't have no other men in here
and you can't run the show,
but every month, we'll make sure you get that check
and your rent will be paid.
[birds chirping]
- It's not abnormal for you to be birthed outta wedlock.
It's not abnormal for a man to have multiple women,
a man not taking care of his responsibilities
is not as demonized or frowned upon culturally anymore.
- Hip hop is not rapping about going to school,
getting a master's degree, being successful,
raising your dad,
they're talking about twerking and slapping hoes.
So these guys are raised thinking, yeah,
we gonna be watching slap a hoe.
They're not thinking about getting an education
and being a man, that's the last thing on their mind.
[sirens whirring]
- [Man 4] We're in pursuit
of one of the young men that just ran.
- [Narrator] For young men in particular, without direction,
responsibilities or hope, crime is the alternative to work.
You don't have to talk properly or be polite
to be a drug dealer, in fact, it's a drawback.
- You're under arrest.
- If don't understand the concept of getting a proper job
or don't even know how to get a proper job,
you're gonna try to find a way to make money.
And in these neighborhoods,
a lot of times it's selling drugs.
- Drugs and money is what it's really about.
- [Man 5] Most of the drug dealers and gang thugs
have little education, don't have a job
and have a tough time making money the honest way.
- If you are raised in an environment where drug dealing
is normalized or where drug dealing is profitable,
then of course you're gonna sell drugs.
- It's quick money.
You don't have to work as hard and you get a lot of it.
- [Narrator] There are no legally enforceable contracts
between drug dealers.
Their deals are backed by the threat of violence,
in this world, brutality and murder
have become a necessary part of everyday life.
[sirens whirring]
- [Announcer 2] Two young men gunned down
at a Chicago strip mall.
The first two victims of a bloody and violent weekend.
One that's on nine people shot to death
and at least 60 others wounded.
- Success is how skilled you are at taking from others.
Success is dependent upon how tough you are.
- [Narrator] As a result of the social
and criminal chaos in America's welfare ghettos,
murder rates have soared.
- If you hear the gunfire
and we're in a community where kids know to duck and hide.
- [Announcer 3] This city is called
the poorest in the country.
And it has a murder rate to match.
Just 12 years old and shot to death
on the main streets of Camden, New Jersey.
- My son is going and he's not coming back.
- Oh, the murder rate is so high.
No wonder the cops are afraid when they stop a car
in one of these Black communities,
that the kid on the inside has a gun and is gonna kill him.
No wonder the cops are so quick in their own defense
sometimes to pull their gun into shoot.
- Stay in the car, stay in the car.
- They have to actually deal with violent people.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] Black people growing up
in the first half of the 20th century
faced great material challenges and terrible open racism,
but they worked and saved and married.
Young women were respected,
couples aspired to bring up children secure in their love,
who would get on in life and do better than their parents.
By contrast, in today's inner cities,
stable relationships are vanishingly rare,
and the destruction of the family has emptied out the lives
of the people who live here, creating neighborhoods,
which are squalid and frightening,
no wonder young men and women here
seem not to fear incarceration.
Freedom counts for little
when your life is a spiritual and moral vacuum.
- It's nonstop, I heard gunshots this morning.
- I don't feel safe at all.
[dramatic music]
- Going to jail back and forth.
I mean, killing and also watching brothers get killed.
I mean, it can take a toll on your life.
It can take a toll on your mind.
- [Narrator] For veteran civil rights campaigner,
Bob Woodson, this whole social catastrophe
is the inevitable, tragic consequence
of the welfare revolution.
- Welfare is a dagger in the soul of Black America.
It's been devastating.
- [Narrator] The irony is that the massive expansion
of the welfare state
was meant to lift people out of poverty.
And yet across the world,
wherever big welfare systems have been introduced,
the results are the same, a breakdown of the family,
the dissent of communities into violence and hopelessness,
and a whole class of people trapped in poverty.
- There are other people who sincerely believe
that if they will hand out things here and there,
that this will in fact benefit people,
again, looking at.
- [Interviewer] Your point is it doesn't.
- It doesn't, I haven't been able to find
a single country in the world
where the policies that are being advocated
for Blacks in the United States
have lifted any people out of poverty.
- We have spent 22 trillion in 50 years on programs
to aid the poor, that's more money
than it takes to buy
all of the agricultural land in the country.
More money that we've spent collectively on all of our wars.
And yet, the needle has barely moved on reducing poverty.
- We spent $20 trillion, T as in Tyrannosaurus,
over the last 50 years on the war on poverty
and poverty has won.
So it seems to me that if you're an intelligent,
bright person,
you would look yourself in the mirror and say,
I need to rethink my assumptions, but they can't.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] Although welfare
failed to lift people out of poverty,
it did what LBJ predicted, large numbers of Black people
came to depend not on themselves,
their families or their communities, but on the government.
And to keep the welfare taps turned on,
they voted Democratic.
- Lyndon B. Johnson was very smart.
He said it, it came to pass, homie dead and gone.
But what he said came to pass.
- The reality is, that has come to full fruition.
And for the most part, since 1964,
Blacks have voted anywhere between 80%,
all the way to 95% Democrat.
- Whether that uniqueness was there.
- [Narrator] For the Democrats,
welfare dependency was not a problem, on the contrary,
it was the very thing that won them votes.
- People vote for you when they think
that they can depend on you when they are dependent on you,
to the extent that people become self-reliant and can feel
they're perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.
To that extent, do you lose your hold on their votes?
One of the key ways of holding Blacks in slavery at low cost
was to keep the people dependent as much as possible,
dependence was seen as the key to holding the slaves down.
It's ironic that that same principle
comes up in the welfare state, 100 years later.
- [Narrator] The welfare revolution
won votes for the Democrats
and not just in the welfare ghettos,
the massive expansion of the welfare state
created a vast number of new jobs
in government administration,
greatly expanding America's public sector.
[whirring]
- [Person] This is the nerve center for paying cash benefits
to America's growing family
of 23 million social security beneficiaries.
[upbeat music]
- The great society programs
eventually became the middle class,
great society bureaucracy.
- [Narrator] America had once prided itself on a small,
efficient public administration,
but in the decade following LBJs welfare reforms,
several million new government jobs were created.
The millions who owed their jobs
to the expansion of the welfare state,
were obviously unwilling to blame welfare
for the chaos in America's inner cities.
In fact, to them, every social problem
merely served to justify an ever larger welfare state.
- We need more funding for this.
We need more funding for that.
We need to implement another program for this.
We need to implement another program for that.
- [Narrator] As one welfare program failed,
another one or two would soon replace it,
each time, further expanding government bureaucracy.
By 2019 in America,
there were twice as many people
employed in government as there were in manufacturing.
- Anyone who works for or is for big government
is never going to oppose big government.
They're gonna always push for the government
to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
- [Narrator] For the supporters of big government,
it was vital to deny and divert attention
from the poisonous effects of welfare.
The crisis in America's cities
had to be blamed on something else.
- If you worked for the welfare state,
if you believe in the so-called war on poverty,
it is awfully difficult for you to then look at the data
and say, oh my goodness, what have I done?
I have dismantled the nuclear intact family in this country.
They can't do that.
- However, those people in government
have a vested interest in not blaming the programs
that they're working for.
You can't blame the poverty on what you've done.
You have to blame it on something else.
You have to blame it on racism.
- [Narrator] Racism for the Democrats
provided the scapegoat to explain away
that toxic social effects of welfare.
- Racism is the reason why father's not in the family.
Racism is the reason why Black on Black crime
is happening in their own communities.
Racism is the reason why kids
are undereducated because of their schools.
Racism is the reason why Jenny got five kids
by four different men.
- [Narrator] To the Democrats,
the collapse of the Black family was not caused by welfare,
but was somehow the legacy of slavery.
When young Black men from broken families were sent to jail,
it was the fault of racist cops and judges.
When young Black people struggled to get a job
or to get into university,
it was blamed not on lousy government schools
that left them barely able to read and write,
but on the racial bigotry of college administrators
and employers.
To Civil Rights campaigner, Bob Woodson,
to blame racism for all these problems
is a flagrant act of political cynicism.
- The majority of the cities where you find
the greatest failures of low income Blacks
are cities that have been run by their own people.
Blacks dominate city council, the police department,
the courts, the education system in places like Chicago,
Washington, Trenton, Newark, Baltimore,
the majority of the teachers are Black.
The majority of the school boards are Black.
So the question is, if Blacks are running
where other Blacks are failing,
how can that be associated with racism?
- [Narrator] It is hard to see
how historic racism could have caused the explosion,
since the 1960s, of Black single parent families.
- If you look at fatherlessness in Black communities,
that is not a legacy of slavery,
the Black community had gotten the out of wedlock birth rate
down to about 10% in 1938, according to Walter Williams,
that's now 75%, 74.3%, okay.
That has absolutely nothing to do with historical racism.
- [Narrator] Likewise, if racism were to blame
for there being so many Black people in prison,
why was the Black prison population so much lower
in the first half of the 20th century,
when racism had been far worse?
- Black people take up 12% of the population,
but 50% of the crime, but that's because of racism.
It has nothing to do with the fact
that they actually breaking laws.
- Mass incarceration is to a large extent,
a result of mass crime.
If you look at US crime rates between 1963 and 1993,
crime increased about 560%, not just among Blacks,
but among Puerto Ricans, Italian Americans,
many other groups, Southern whites,
and all those groups went to prison nearly proportionately.
It is wildly unlikely that the recent surge in crime
is due to racism because obviously racism
has not dramatically increased.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] What's more, if it's racism
holding down poor Black people,
what can explain the remarkable success of poor Black people
who migrate to America from abroad?
- I think that immigrants to our country
who will come from countries without a welfare estate,
they have not developed a welfare mentality.
They get up and work and are successful.
- [Person 2] When Somali refugees
first arrived in Lewiston,
many found employment, or started businesses.
- [Narrator] Many Black and Asian immigrants to the US
come from countries where there's little
or no welfare, family stability,
and the work ethic are still strong.
And Black immigrants to America are more successful
even than white Americans.
- Black Caribbeans that have migrated
to United States and become American citizens,
they have a median income
that's slightly higher than Americans in general.
- First generation Blacks
of Caribbean and African ancestry,
they tend to do extremely well in this country
at every single income level,
at every single wealth level,
they tend to do extremely well,
not merely as compared to their Black counterparts,
but compared to virtually every other American group.
- One of the most successful groups in the USA
happens to be Black immigrants.
If you look at Nigerian Americans and Ghanaians
do just as well, West Indians do just as well.
I'm just picking the largest group here.
Nigerian Americans are the best educated group
in the country.
And with the household income of about $67,000 a year,
they slightly out earn whites.
They would dramatically out earn whites
except that so many of them
become fairly poorly paid teachers
and college professors, given all those degrees.
[people cheering]
- [Narrator] Although the Democrats
blame social problems on racism, they didn't feel the need
to identify actual racist individuals or acts of bigotry.
Instead, they pointed to statistics.
If there are proportionately more Black people in prison,
it must be racism.
If there are fewer Black people in Ivy League universities
or in jobs like accountancy, it must be down to racism.
This, they called systemic racism.
- We gotta tackle systemic racism.
- Systemic racism.
- Systemic racism in our country.
[phone ringing]
- [Narrator] For the Democrats,
fighting systemic racism naturally called
for yet more government intervention, jobs were created
in equality and inclusion and not just in government.
In response to affirmative action in other initiatives,
large companies and organizations
had to hire dedicated staff.
Consultancies sprang up, law firms began to specialize.
A sprawling diversity industry was created.
- Diversity is now what we refer to as the C level
in the business world.
IE it's a CEO or CFO level title,
CDO, Chief Diversity Officer.
It's hard to imagine a Fortune 500 corporation
that doesn't have a CDO.
And I think that anyone that didn't at this moment
would be a little bit nervous.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] With the rise of the diversity industry
came an ever-growing number of professionals
and organizations whose jobs
and funding depended on finding racism.
- If you are in the African American studies department
at a university,
it is in their best interest to constantly find racism.
You have a whole bunch of people, pundits on cable TV,
professors in college,
people that belong to organization like the NAACP.
It is in their best interest to see the world
through what I call race tenant glasses.
And that's what they do.
- The race grievance industry would have you believe
that Blacks get up
and think about nothing else except race.
- [Narrator] Those who make their living
in the diversity industry are understandably reluctant
to acknowledge any decline in racism.
- From any common sensical perspective,
if you have a large group of upper middle class people
whose salaries depend on identifying
and fighting a great deal of racism,
and these salaries can reach into the six figures,
they're unlikely to report that there's almost no racism.
- There is a whole big cottage industry for racism.
If racism went away, a lot of people would be unemployed.
- I think that racism's being constantly resurrected,
resuscitated by people who benefit
from accusations of racial discrimination.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] It was the job of the diversity industry
to find racism.
And so they found it
in places no one before had thought of looking.
- As traditional racism almost fades away,
you've seen the redefinition of racism
to mean something very different
from what we've always thought of it as being.
- [Narrator] Among the new forms of racism
is cultural appropriation.
If a German Pope visits Mexico,
it's deemed to be racist for him to wear a sombrero,
no matter how much it seems to delight the crowd.
[upbeat music]
In a bizarre echo of segregation, it is now forbidden
to copy or adopt the styles of a different culture.
- If cultural appropriation were a valid idea,
I couldn't wear pants and shoes.
Most of the civilized
African people's preferred robes and sandals.
- I play piano, is that a European instrument,
did I culturally appropriate that?
Is Wynton Marsalis a cultural appropriator,
'cause he plays a trumpet, a European instrument.
- If there's a Caucasian, you can't for example,
in good conscience,
make Mexican or Asian food or dance to hip hop beats
or learn certain aspects of a foreign language.
It is a legitimate question.
It becomes a legitimate question,
what advantage does diversity provide?
Aren't I now just surrounded by strangers
that often seem angry at me.
- [Narrator] To some, the left is guilty
of trivializing racism.
There are still racists in America
and countless acts of real racial bigotry,
but to constantly find racism where there is none,
to denounce people as racist who are not,
to frivolously and casually use racism
is a cheap political slur, does nothing to expose,
but can rather conceal genuine bigotry.
- All that does is cause people to become more cynical
when people argue that there is serious racism,
and of course there's racism in America.
This is a country with 300 million people.
8% of Americans believe Elvis is still alive.
I don't know what to tell you.
There's some idiots in this country.
- [Narrator] But there was another reason
why race and racism became so important to the Democrats.
The Democrats had long posed as the party
of the working man, but LBJs reforms
proved to be deeply unpopular
among America's broader working class.
In the election that followed,
support for the Democrats from America's white working class
collapsed spectacularly, to just 35%.
Working class people it seemed
were closer to the world of welfare
and better understood what it did.
[audience cheering]
Their views were articulated by a rising star
in the Republican Party, the former actor, Ronald Reagan.
- The working men and women of this nation
voted against taxing themselves
to provide a standard of living for others
that was often more than they could afford
for their own families.
They voted against the idea that government
must always grow larger and more costly and powerful.
- Ordinary, working class Americans
that are not recipients of government large S,
do not believe that their salvation comes
with paying higher taxes for bigger government
that can regulate their lives even more.
- Responsibility for lending a helping hand
to those who through no fault of their own
couldn't find work.
We should help them to help themselves.
And that's all that most people want,
is a helping hand when they need it
until they can get back on their feet.
Man is a creature of the spirit and filling his belly
doesn't make up for emptying his soul of self-reliance.
The welfare burden is 10 times as big
as it was in the dark days of the Depression,
institutionalizing poverty for millions of our people.
Welfare as we know it in America,
is a colossal and almost complete failure.
A hopeless end to the road.
[audience clapping]
- [Narrator] Ronald Reagan was swept to power
on a tide of working class support.
Of those who voted firm for president,
70% had no college degree.
- Working class Americans, they have become more
and more Republican
in their voting patterns and their ideology.
- If you know someone's race and income,
you very, very likely know who they're voting for.
88% of African Americans vote for the Democrats.
70% of working class, white Christians,
if not more vote for the Republicans.
- At one time, the Democrat party
was seen as the party of the working men
and the Republican party was seen as the party
of the country club, but that has been reversed.
[car beeping]
- [Narrator] The Democrats are shocked
that working class Americans
do not want higher taxes and more regulation.
This working class rejection of socialism is embarrassing.
How can they explain it?
Racism once again has come to the rescue.
Working class people vote Republican
because they are ignorant bigots.
- I believe it was Barack Obama
who said, those bitter folk up there in the hills,
clinging to their guns and their Bibles
to dismiss a substantial chunk of the country,
to dismiss most of my friend's parents in Kentucky.
Hillary Clinton said that I believe 47%
of Donald Trump's supporters fell into what she called
the basket of deplorables,
untouchable, racist, bigots,
and the term simmering under the surface
when you hear these comments is white trash.
- [Narrator] It is a remarkable historical fact,
too often overlooked, that most white Americans
vote Republican and not just in the last election,
in every single US presidential election since the 1960s,
the Republicans won the votes
of the majority of white Americans.
[person knocking]
- Sir, are you registered vote?
- Nope.
- Signature here.
- [Narrator] For more than half a century,
the Democrats would've failed to get a single president
in the white house without the Black vote.
- I'm not gonna let you die.
- Okay.
- If the Democrats ever stopped consistently winning
at least 65% of the Black vote,
they would cease to win elections.
- The African American community in South Carolina
can make a judgment about who the next president
of United States is gonna be.
- The Democrat party, not only depend
on getting a majority of African American votes,
they are absolutely dependent on getting a super majority,
a near monopoly of the Black vote.
- The vote is in your hands.
Not a joke, you can control this outcome.
- If a Republican Party can get 20% of the Black vote,
then the Democratic Party does not only lose an election,
but it becomes an existential crisis.
- If more than 1/3 of Black people stopped voting
for the Democrats, the Democrats wouldn't win any elections.
And politicians and academics are very aware of this
on the left, and it is in my opinion, one of the reasons,
probably the primary reason for the constant,
consistent focus on race.
- [Narrator] For the Democratic Party, highlighting race
as one of the main political issues in America
is not just useful.
It has become essential to its survival.
- Race still plays a significant role
in determining who gets ahead in America
and who gets left behind.
- [Narrator] The Democrats have come to rely heavily
on the specter of racial prejudice
to drive Black voters to the polls.
- The primary basis of the USA democratic parties
appeal to Black voters is the invocation of racism.
- Racism.
- Racism in this country.
- Oh, because you're Black, if I tell you this is racist,
if I tell you that is racist,
then oh yeah, I'm gonna get you emotional.
I'm gonna get you to jump, I'm gonna get you to skip.
- One should not be subjected
to the indignity of being told to get on your knees
and put your hands behind your head,
simply because you are walking while Black.
- You're seeing 90% Black voting patterns for the Democrats
because of, they gonna put you back in chains.
One of our political parties has managed to convince
a great percentage of the African American population
that the other party's run by the Klan,
which historically has been the opposite of the truth
by the way.
- [Narrator] It would be a disaster for the Democrats
if Black Americans woke up one morning
and decided they were just Americans.
To keep Black people voting as a block,
they must be encouraged to continue to see themselves
as a distinct racial group,
at odds with the rest of America.
[people shouting]
- Progressives, socialists,
Democrats have a direct investment
in making minorities believe that racism is pervasive,
that Blacks and Hispanics have no opportunity
to advance in society because of racism,
that a colorblind society
does not exist and can never exist.
- It's impossible to envision a world
without race for the Democratic Party.
For such people, it's impossible to envision a world
that gets beyond race
because they're bread and butter and their bottom line,
they raise on and everything that they're trying to do
depends upon people being kept in these boxes.
[people chattering]
- [Narrator] That the specter of racism is so useful,
even necessary for the Democrats
perhaps explains why on the left,
it has become routine to accuse people of being racist,
indiscriminately and casually.
- It's just gonna always be they're racist, racist, racist,
racist, racist, everything's racist.
- [Narrator] America allegations of racism
have reached almost hysterical levels
in American universities.
- The modern campus is one of the most tolerant,
woke environments ever designed by human beings.
And yet, accusations of racism are almost constant.
- [Narrator] For the democratic left,
the accusation of racism has become a political weapon.
[gentle music]
- Today, the term racism
is used to describe any incident involving any element
of bias or potential bias
that irritates someone on the left.
- [Narrator] The left's feverish crusade
against racism has instilled in its supporters
a furious self-righteousness.
It's used to justify a witch hunt of their opponents,
who are hounded and vilified.
That enunciation of racist is now an instrument of terror
for the left, used to dismiss and discredit
those who don't agree with them.
[people shouting]
- The term racist is very often applied
to normal, mainstream tax paying citizens
who are just a bit less woke
than the median on a college campus,
which it's not especially difficult to be.
- [Narrator] Black people meanwhile,
have been worn to look for racism everywhere, in every look
and gesture, in every encounter with their workmates
and fellow Americans,
to be wary of indirect, unconscious or implied racism.
They are told that all white people are racist,
whether or not they act that way
or imagine themselves to be, but for ordinary people
in their everyday lives, to be unfairly accused
of being racist is upsetting and frightening.
This can create barriers
between people, of paranoia and apprehension.
- This idea that there are bigots everywhere,
and they're waiting for you complicates normal interactions
between Black and white people
to a pretty remarkable degree.
- It becomes more difficult to strike up a relationship,
a genuine, deep relationship
with people who are of different racial groups.
I can't be totally honest with you because I worry
that if I say the wrong thing at the wrong moment,
perhaps with the wrong inflection,
that this might be interpreted as something hostile.
- People are walking on eggshells
because of all of this nonsense
about cultural appropriation, about microaggression,
about the assumption that racism
remains a major problem in America.
- America's long struggle with race is far from finished.
- Every single opportunity
that you have to interact with people socially,
you find reasons to confirm this ready made narrative
that you have in your head,
that you are going to be discriminated against.
- [Narrator] But according to the critics,
the democratic left cynical relentless focus on race
and racism is not just divisive.
For Black people, it is also profoundly demoralizing.
- If you are coaching a team and you say to your players,
they're bigger than we are,
they beat us three times before, they outweigh us.
So get out there and do your best and try not to get killed.
[man laughing]
How motivated would you be
to get out on that team and compete?
- The worst thing you could say
to a young Black child is that there is racism
pervasive everywhere, under every carpet,
under every table, around every corner.
So that kid goes around in life believing
they've got no opportunity to succeed.
- You're Black, so they already think this about you.
They already think that about you.
So these kids come into this world thinking,
they don't like me 'cause I'm Black, so basically,
if every single card is dealt against you
and you don't know a way out, you don't care.
- Why try to do better when you imagine
that no matter what you do, there are forces out there,
malevolent forces that are working against you.
- Economic barriers, health barriers, education barriers.
- That takes a pretty serious toll
I think on anyone's self-confidence.
- Telling people and convincing them they are victim
paralyzes them and prevents them
from ever doing anything to elevate themselves.
- Simply being told that your society is racist,
day in and day out, leads to depression,
leads to under performance and perhaps most dramatically,
it leads to hatred of your society.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] But perhaps the greatest damage done
by the left's obsessive focus on race
is that it has diverted attention from the real cause
of the social crisis
in America's poorest Black neighborhoods,
leaving those communities in a perpetual state of despair.
Deeply shocking too to professor Glenn Lowry,
is the way the left uses the excuse of racism
to disguise the abject failure
of government schools to provide even the most basic level
of education to many Black children.
- A moral catastrophe as well if I may just say,
it's not just a policy failure,
there's a moral problem here that these high minded people
who sit up on high and say that they're doing
the right thing by rooting out discrimination,
when in fact they're looking the other way
while the human development of African American children
is not being advanced, are actually ethically wrong.
That's just wrong about the policy.
They're on the wrong side of history.
They're on the wrong side
of doing what's right for our people.
- [Narrator] But today's so-called anti-racism movement
has a problem.
Its promotion of transgender politics,
its distaste for consumer society.
Its obsession with climate change
plays well with university students,
but less well with many ordinary Black Americans.
- It's important, especially for white people
to show up into fight against fascism.
- [Narrator] At supposedly anti-racist protests,
it is striking how few Black people there are.
In the so-called race riot in Minneapolis,
85% of the protesters were white.
In the supposed race riot in Los Angeles,
only 3% of those taking part were Black.
- One of the most ridiculous things
I've ever seen was the mob during the Minneapolis riots,
following the death of George Floyd,
that must have been 75 to 80% white bunch of white thugs,
frankly burning down the city's traditional Black
and Asian business district,
late street, while chanting, Black lives Matter.
It was literally surreal.
- Me and my sisters and my brothers
and my mom have been out in our business
for the past four nights asking people,
this is Black owned business, please don't destroy this.
This is a minority business, olease don't do this to us.
- What's your name Ma'am?
- Beverlyn.
- [Narrator] Beverlyn Baity and her friends
have decided to confront some of BLM's white supporters.
- And the things that you guys are doing,
terrorizing and shutting down a business
is not in representation of Black people.
When this cause is over and Black people
still gotta walk these streets and live in this neighborhood
with that hovering over their head, that gray cloud,
that in the name of Black Lives Matter,
people neighborhoods was terrorized.
We look bad.
- Do you inherently find the phrase,
Black Lives Matter offensive or bothersome?
- Let me tell you something.
I got a gun wound in my leg, I got cuts in my back.
I got a felony, been to jail, okay.
I got cousins who was locked up 26 years.
You wanna talk about Black life,
I'm really from the hood, really from the hood.
So let me make something very clear.
Let me make something very clear.
And a lot of the things I dealt with oppression
came from my own people.
Now I'm not saying that police are innocent,
but at the end of the day,
our own people are terrorizing us too.
On top of that, the number one killer of African,
they don't wanna hear it, this is the problem.
They don't wanna hear the truth because they're ignorant.
They wanna be stuck in that same box.
- [Narrator] To Beverly,
randomly smashing up businesses has nothing to do
with fighting racism.
She believes the anti-racism rhetoric of Black Lives Matter
is nothing but a cynical ploy
to make their otherwise unpopular anti-capitalist politics
seem more noble and virtuous.
- [Woman] Mister, stop pushing me away, stop.
- [Man 6] I'm not.
- Stop, I'm standing because these punks
have been terrorizing everybody
in the name of Black people.
They're punks, they're punks.
None of y'all in the ghetto, none of y'all in the hood.
Oh, oh, but we Black.
You gonna tell me how to be Black, right?
You're a fraud, look at you.
These are frauds.
These are people that are Democrats,
Democrats ain't nothing but Dixie cracks.
Let me tell you something.
A Democrat been a racist from the beginning.
All they did was hire a new face of a new form of KKK
to come and oppress people, to make them vote Democrat
when the reality is they're racist,
they ain't nothing but Dixie cracks in a new outfit.
Dixie cracks.
Y'all the same Democrat party
who been terrorizing Black people from the beginning.
And now y'all got the audacity to say Black Lives Matter.
Y'all don't care about Black people.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] Many people who genuinely hate the idea
of racism feel that they must pay lip service
to Black Lives Matter.
Many individuals and organizations feel intimidated
into supporting BLM for fear of being denounced.
But according to Bevelyn,
taking the knee and bowing to the cause
of Black Lives Matter
represents nothing more than a submission
to the politics and authority of the American left,
which is perhaps why more people are now refusing to do it.
- Why do it, why take the knee?
Who are you bowing to?
I bow, I'm not racist, for you to do it,
you're basically telling these Democrats,
you submit to their agenda and you bow to their agenda.
That's what you do when you bow,
you're bowing to these Democrat, I will never bow
and I'll encourage anybody else, don't bow.
- [Narrator] In the run up
to the last presidential election,
the fury of BLM's white activists reach new heights,
violently denouncing all supporters
of Donald Trump as racist bigots.
[people shouting]
But could this hysteria reflect a nervous suspicion
on the left, that it's grip on Black America is waning?
- [Woman 3] At this lunch table
in Charlotte, North Carolina,
there's unabashed support for president Donald Trump.
- He's delivered on quite a few of the promises
that he's made, but nobody wants to admit that.
- In the 2020 election,
there was a notable swing from Democrat to Republican
among Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters.
- I love this guy right here.
- Amen.
- That dream has to be kept alive
for each and every one of you as well.
- [Narrator] When it comes to education,
it appears the grip of the left
on the Black community is slipping.
For decades, the democratic left
has defended shockingly bad government schools,
but Black parents are waking up to what's happening,
instead of wasting their taxes
and throwing away their children's futures
in these failed schools,
they are demanding vouchers to send their children
to far better privately run charter schools.
- Teachers union public employees
don't want the competition
from these private charter schools
and therefore Black Lives Matter
doesn't like charter schools and therefore the NAACP
doesn't like charter schools, but guess what?
Black parents like charter schools.
- We're trying to protest to get more charter schools going,
which I think is a whole lot better than the public schools.
They challenge kids more.
[people cheering]
- If you look at poles in the inner city,
Black parents and brown parents
overwhelmingly want the ability to take their kid
out of an underperforming government school
and put their kid into a better school.
The Democratic Party that supposedly is pro-Black
and pro brown is opposed to that.
- [Reporter] Charter school supporters
say the all choice system is working.
The city has gone from having 78 failing schools
to only nine.
- In New York city, where they have a voucher program,
four times as many parents are trying to get in it
as there our seats available, that's how popular it is.
- What matter today is, you know, I want the school
to give opportunity to parents,
and other children who want to have good education.
That's why I'm here today.
- These are parents who are saying,
we want education for our children.
Nothing could be more important it seems to me
in terms of dealing with racial inequality
in the United States.
- [Narrator] In other ways too, it seems the radical left
is simply out of touch with the values
of ordinary Black people.
- Blacks are very religious as a population
within the American context,
a lot of Black people are against abortion.
Try to find an African American public figure
who speaks for life and not for abortion.
I'm not taking a position here myself personally
about the issue, I'm just saying,
they go to storefront churches and beat tambourines.
They roll around on the floor
and the holy ghost one is possessing them.
They preach these fiery sermons
and they sing these beautiful hymns.
These are African American religious people.
They read their Bible and they believe it.
They pray, I'm talking about real people.
I see nothing representing their cultural value,
orientation and the expressions in the public arena
of African American politicians, it's a scandal.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] The spectra of racism
serves many purposes for the democratic left.
It diverts attention from the social chaos
caused by welfare and the failure of government schools.
It is used to intimidate and silence their opponents,
to demonize ordinary Americans who vote against them
and to justify more government interference in our lives.
And it is used to frighten and cajole Black Americans
into voting democratic, without which the democrats
would struggle ever to achieve power.
But critics of the democratic left
believe that history is against them.
That the game they're playing of racial division
and mistrust is doomed to fail.
- Obama said that racism is in America's DNA.
Racism is in America's DNA in the 1950s.
If you ask a white person,
would you ever vote for a Black person for president?
No matter how well qualified the number saying yes
were in the single digits.
Obama could not become president
if in fact racism were in America's DNA.
- The United States is quite possibly the least racist
along with the UK, white majority country
in the modern world and racism by any real definition
of that term has been in substantial decline
for quite some time.
- Among regular Americans,
we are probably more integrated and have a desire
to be integrated more now than ever in our history.
- Despite all this human cry about racism
and institutional racism and structural racism
and systemic racism,
people are getting along quite well in America.
The best way an anthropologist will tell you to determine
whether or not people are getting together,
getting along is interracial marriage.
And interracial marriage in America is booming
- [Narrator] Today, one in five marriages in America
is between people considered
to be from different racial backgrounds.
- The Black, white intermarriage rates are up.
Now I think something like 15% of Black men
who are married are married to a white woman.
- Usually you just like stick the knife in it.
- [Narrator] Ex cop, Brandon Tatum and his wife Coreen,
are among the millions for whom race didn't matter.
- So we met on Instagram.
She saw me on Fox News and said,
this is the most handsome man I've ever seen in my life.
[woman laughing]
He's a great catch.
And let me follow him on social media.
- He wishes, that's not how it went.
- And I thought she was a troll.
I thought she was a troll
because this incredibly beautiful woman,
maybe this is a fake account, somebody stole it.
And they just posting pictures of a random woman
and they're stalking me, but it was like an epiphany.
It was like, this is your wife.
- Yeah.
- And the logistics part of it is the only reason
it took so long for us to get married.
'Cause I had to save up for red and ring
and all that other stuff.
So other than that, we could have been married right away.
- Yeah, I hate that people are so obsessed with race
that character, interests,
commonalities don't matter and that skin color comes first.
Where to me, they're the ones screaming anti-racist
but their whole message is racist.
- If you are Black, you're white, none of that matters.
We're all Americans,
let's listen to what Martin Luther King said.
Let's judge people based on character
and not the color of their skin.
We are all united in the United States of America.
We are all partners in this.
We are a melting pot of assimilation
that have made us the greatest country on planet earth.
- I wanna say to my fellow African Americans
here in the 21st century, we're already home.
This is where we're going to take our stand
and make our lives, here.
We couldn't possibly be in a better place.
I wanna say, not withstanding, I'm not a Pollyanna.
It's not like I'm unaware that there are racial problems
and issues and frustrations that are going on out there.
But really, if we adopt this stance
of withdrawal and turning our back
on our own country, of contempt for its values,
of a sense of permanent alienation,
we'll be handicapping ourselves.
It's gratuitous, it's unnecessary, stop it.
[gentle music]
- [Narrator] In the fluid, mobile 21st century,
in the age of the internet,
individuals are less and less forced to identify
with a particular culture or group,
just because of the color of their skin
or by accident of birth.
- All of the various technologies
we have at our disposal now
are empowering individuals to find communities
that are perhaps very specific to them personally,
that they have these unique interests
and they can find people
that share those interests and those people unsurprisingly
in many cases, don't happen to look like them.
- [Narrator] Finally, people are beginning to challenge
the very division of Americans into Black and white.
These are labels that date back to the days of slavery.
Their use in ordinary life seems increasingly outdated,
irrelevant and offensive.
The time surely has come to move on.
- I don't find it satisfying
to think of myself as a Black person.
I'm an individual, I'm Camille, I'm a father and a husband
and a bunch of other remarkable things.
And all of those things are far more important
to me than being Black.
- When people talk about Black culture,
I have no idea what they're talking about.
I don't even know what that means.
Tiger Woods was the top golfer in this country for a while.
He's a person of color.
I thought golf was a white sport,
Eminem for a while was a top rapper in the country.
I thought rapper was a Black art form.
I mean, this is America, you can be what you wanna be.
You can embrace what you wanna embrace.
You can pursue what you wanna pursue.
So the idea that there's a Black culture,
I don't even know what that means, I'm an American.
- I am not African.
I am 100% American, my culture is American.
There is nothing African about me.
I don't even, I'm American, period.
[gentle music]