Carol Swain

 

Carol Swain, a black lawyer, and PhD of political science, inspires me. She narrated a video for Prager U on 1/11/21, entitled What I Can Teach You About Racism. She lectures that she practiced what she preaches, that she arose out of teenage motherhood, poverty, and Southern systemic racism to make it large in life, and if she can do it, any black youth or anyone else can do it. Anything else is a lie, period, and the Progressives are doing all youths, including black youth no favors, by telling them that, without being white with white privilege, those of intersectionalized, identity group backgrounds cannot make it in America today, that they cannot Horatio Alger their way to success. All gaslighting, brainwashing and bull-crap.

 

I took note on Swain’s short video and will respond to it.

 

Swain: “Let me tell you what I have achieved: I am a tenured, award-winning professor of political science at a leading university in the South. I grew up dirt poor in rural Virginia and had 3 kids by the age of 20.

 

I worked hard, not crazy hard 24 hours a day, but hard. I made good decisions—not brilliant 3-dimensional chess decisions—but good decisions.

 

I had help along the way and most of those that aided me were white. They did not do it because they had something to gain, but just because they were decent people.

 

But I was blessed in one crucial way. I was born in America, a land of true opportunity for anyone of any color. Where you start from does not determine where you end, and where you start from, well-off, does not determine where you end up at.

 

It all depends on your attitude, not your race, gender, or class. You determine where you end up in life."

 

My response: I love this smart, fine woman. If kids in America, of any color, class or gender would learn to individuate, to individual-live and work hard and make good decisions like impoverished young Carol Swain did, there would be almost no poverty in America, and the race-baiters and victimhood hustlers would go bankrupt and dry up and blow away.

 

With good values, a can-do-attitude of refusing to ever quit seeking to excel, being a proponent of large personal ambition and working hard to make it all happen, no one can be held down and back for very long, let alone being denied the kind of success that the impressive Swain has made a reality for her and her family.

 

The sky is the limit, or close thereunto. Sheer willpower, fierce self-discipline, unshakable self-confidence will self-propel the self-realizer forward to prosperity, promotion, and excellence.

 

Swain: “When I hear that talk about systemic racism being fed to young blacks, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. I want to laugh because it is nonsense. I want to cry because it is pushing down untold numbers of young blacks into self-pity and despair.

 

Instead of seizing amazing opportunities that America offers, they seize excuses for why they did not succeed.

 

I was born into a world where systemic racism was real, outright bigotry, back-of-the-bus real. Yes, racism shaped black experience, but it did not define it.”

 

My response: Define yourself, and let no one convince that you are not worthy of becoming or cannot become almost anything you want if you work hard enough and stay at it long enough.

 

Swain: “Change was in the air. Call it systemic reform. The civil rights movement was in its infancy. People of all races were fighting for civil rights. They believed in America and wanted to see it live up to its highest ideals manifested in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

 

Did I know Washington and Jefferson were slave owners. I likely didn’t think about it. We cannot judge men that lived 250 years ago by today’s moral standards.

 

I know that Jefferson wrote that all men were created equal, and that led to the ending of slavery. I know that Washington and the Founders risked everything to make my America possible. I feel grateful and proud of America. US is the greatest country in the world. I knew if I diligently pursued my ambition, I could leave the poverty of my early years behind, all that abuse and depression.

 

I am grateful that I was spared the life-sapping, negative messages about America crippling a generation of young people; they are poison.”

 

My response: Swain is fair: the Founders were not perfect men, and some were slave owners, but they fought for individual liberty in a constitutional republic with free enterprise and limited government, and that is a wonderful blessing for blacks and whites to be provided with opportunity to become prosperous and accomplished.

 

Those woke negative messages have taken down young blacks, but also many young whites—especially males—that required tough-love reassurance from Jordan Peterson to feel encouraged and worthy of growing up, getting married, having a good job, children, a career.

 

Swain: “These ideas are white privilege, whiteness as a form of property, unconscious racism, microaggressions, police have it out for blacks, reparations, and the United States was created to protect and promote slavery.

 

The young have been taught to reject the success principles that helped me and millions of others to escape lives of poverty.

 

These are not complicated ideas: work hard, learn from your mistakes, take personal responsibility for your actions.

 

When I decided to get my high school diploma, go to community college and then four additional degrees, I made it.

 

In graduate school, I was introduced to Academic theories of oppression suggesting that being black, poor, and female, I could not do what I had already done."

 

My response: What a fine woman. If this video, if viewed by young people, does not inspire them to manage themselves to success, then there is no hope for them.