(upbeat music) - [Reporter] Roots Race and Culture is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to Roots, Race and Culture.

Our new show on PBS, Utah, where we bring you into candid conversations about shared cultural experiences.

I'm Danor Gerald.

- Hey and I'm Lonzo Liggins.

According to the latest data from the Pew Research Center, roughly 80% of Black voters in America are registered Democrats.

Many Black Americans tend to shy away from Republicans.

However, over the last six years, black conservatism has garnered a lot of attention.

In a recent article for Newsweek it said the Republican National Committee expects a record number of Black nominees for the house, but there are some liberals who say Black conservatives are being used by White conservatives to weaken the Democratic Party and dismantle the strength of the black vote.

While there are some conservatives who say liberalism is destroying the Black community and conservatism is the answer to Black America's adversities.

While joining us to unpack this topic is James Evans and Cari Batholomew.

- Thank you for having me.

- Thank you for coming.

- Cari, tell us a little bit about yourself.

- Sure.

I moved here recently from Seattle Washington.

I thought that I would be seeking refuge in a red state.

I've been a conservative for a very very long time, and it's been interesting to see that things in this state are not the way that I thought they would be.

And so I find myself standing up to the plate and speaking out on behalf of Blexit and Utah Parents United and other parent groups.

- Awesome okay, great.

And then the legend James Evans, James tells about yourself.

- Yeah I don't know about legend, but yeah, so I was a former chair of the Utah Republican Party, served in the state Senate, first Black Republican to be elected to the Utah State Senate, and former military former captain in the US Air Force.

So I, after getting outta the military, I relocated to Utah, the very red state.

I hope it continues to be a red state.

Cari is pointing out some concerns, which we all have have, and hopefully we can make sure through these processes continue to educate voters, why conservative choices tend to be better choices.

- And you went to Tuskegee.

- Tuskegee graduate, yes.

- That's awesome, man.

I love that.

I love that so much.

- Yes right nice.

- We gotta jump right into this.

I think the first question we have to ask is what is the difference between Republican and Conservative?

- Well, Republican is a political party.

So you can be a conservative, as a conservative, you could be a Republican or a Democrat or libertarian.

Conservative is a philosophy, okay.

Tends to focus on traditional values, modest and government spending.

And as a philosophy, Republican is a political party and our ideals tend to align, but we do have Republicans that are moderate and also liberal.

On social issues they be more conservative on fiscal issues, just like you have some Democrats that are very conservative on social issues, but more liberal on fiscal issues.

So conservatism is a philosophy.

- I hear this term traditional values.

What does that mean?

- Yeah.

- Sure yeah.

I break it up a little simpler than that.

I think that there are Republicans and Democrats that pretty much share a line in their values.

And I would go as far as to say, it's the difference between populist and being kind of for the people, which I think the new kind of conservative movement is much more for the people.

We are much more of focused on just your everyday person.

Like what is the person at the grocery store going through?

What is the person at Walmart?

What is the parent?

What is the student going through?

And forever, that's been a Democrats have said that that is their line.

And it's really, I think there's a shift.

- Yeah.

I think that's important because to me, the value in the political process is all about, for the people, right?

By the people like the founding fathers, set things up so that people could have a voice.

That's like what America's all about.

So I really think that's a good thing to point out.

- But we have to make sure we understand the traditional values from the founders of this country is that the individual American is the sovereign.

- Yeah.

- Not the government.

And what has happened with the Democrat party in particular is that they believe in a larger government, which basically takes sovereignty away from the individual American and transfer that power to the government.

And so when you have a larger government, you're gonna have less freedom and fewer rights.

And so conservatives want to focus on making sure the individual American is the sovereign and has the authority.

And that is essentially what the founders of this country, that was their sole focus because they left Europe and they saw how corruption happens at the government level.

- Yeah.

- And we are starting to see that now because our government has gotten so massive that's where everyone is just upset.

And I can just point it out, big government, little people.

- Right.

- Big people, little government, it's that simple.

- And I want to get into that.

I really want get into that, the larger government question there.

But before we do, I wanna ask you a question and I wanna start with you on this one James.

Why is it that Black people are Democrats in this country?

Why is it the vast majority like I said roughly 80% of Black people are Democrats.

- Because I believe the Democrat Party back to Roosevelt focused on identity politics.

So they put all of their constituencies in boxes.

If you're a woman, if you're black, if you're Hispanic, then they focus us on what they think your needs are.

And Republicans don't like to put people in identity box.

It's just like, what do you believe?

I've always been asked as a Republican by other Republicans, tell me what you believe?

They want to know, are you liberal?

Are you moderate?

Are you conservative based on your values and your political philosophy?

They could care less about your skin color or your gender.

And that's the fundamental difference.

So when you have a party like the Democrat Party, and this is important to note, you can go back to FDR.

Did you know that that Black voters and Blacks that have to be very pragmatic?

They were in a party where the clan was the dominant force and the Democrat Party and Blacks joined the Democratic Party during that time.

So politics make strange bedfellows, doesn't it?

So the Democrats have always been very good at appealing to what they think the needs are of different constituencies, whether they deliver on it or not is another issue.

And Republicans have just focused on, these are our core values.

This is our political philosophy, we want a limited government, we want economic freedom, we want personal freedom, individual liberty, all of those sorts of things.

- So it sounds to me and just can consider me a layman, 'cause I don't really follow a lot of politics personally.

It sounds to me like what, what he's saying is that the Democrats were able to target different groups demographically and use that as their ability to pull people into their party versus the Republican philosophy.

They weren't necessarily saying, okay, how do we break out these cross sections and give them what they need so that they'll vote for us.

Is that... - Yes, but I think, excuse me, I think that a lot of that has to do with, with preconceived notions of what it is that African Americans or other identity politic groups need.

So for me, for an example, I became a conservative when I was 18 and I asked, I was in foster care and I asked my favorite teacher.

I said, "What political party should I be?"

And she goes, well, that's each easy, she's a White woman.

And she said, you're Black and you're poor you're a Democrat.

And just automatically assume that being black and poor meant that I always wanted to be that or that I always would be that was such that low expectations.

- Waow.

- And I feel like that is what has happened over and over and over again.

When I listen, it was awful.

- I mean, that's a horrible thing to say.

Like there's so many things not right about that.

- I was only 18 and I was just like, oh, okay.

And then I walked outta the room and I was like I don't wanna be poor forever.

So I guess I'm not a Democrat.

And that's the way that, that's the way that I looked at things.

But when you have these preconceived notions, when you go back to traditional values to assume that our preconceived notions are the same as what their ideas are, are not correct.

Like African Americans still.

- Right.

- Probably more so and I don't know the statistics on this, but probably more so than other racial groups.

We're still people of faith.

We're still people who lean a lot towards our Christian or Muslim background, right?

And to some of the things that they want to bring in that the Democrats wanna bring in that they're saying, like a man and a woman, it doesn't set well.

It's like what are you saying?

And to assume that you know, where we're coming from is going back to what James says, it's putting us in these boxes and you don't know us on an individual level.

- Right well I think like with a lot of Black Americans, I can't speak for all Black Americans, but I think when you look at the Republican or conservative parties today it fills from the outside looking in that there's hostility.

Okay.

When I see guys driving up and down the street with big American flags rolling up and down, and I see there's just a lot of hostility towards Black communities.

If I go onto Twitter, if I go Instagram and I start maybe arguing a point with someone who may or may not be a conservative may or may not be White or Black or whatever, instantaneously within a few exchanges, I'm getting these daggers thrown at me.

You, why don't you people do this?

Why don't you be there for your children?

Why don't you do?

It seems like there's a lot of hostility that's aimed at black people for voting Democrat.

When there may be legitimate reasons for Black people voting Democrat, like maybe that's a logical solution in their community.

Maybe someone in their community said, Hey, look, this is what we're gonna do for your community if you vote for us, they've given them those options.

But when you go online, it seems like you're getting attacked for being a Democrat.

And that may feel like a safe place.

I don't feel a lot of safety with conservatives right now.

I do see some solutions that I like, but I don't know if I feel safety.

What do you guys think about that?

- Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because how do you know that those were even conservatives or Republicans that responded to you?

- Because they said they were.

- Oh, okay.

They said that they were okay.

Well, I mean, we won't go into how the left can pretend conservatives just to attack, to keep you focused on being a Democrat, but Democrat, not that you're a Democrat, but I'm saying the generic Democrat.

- No, no, no, no.

- But let me make this point.

The part of when you asked the question about Blacks being Democrats, the being a Democrat has become a part of the Black culture.

And that's rooted in the fact that the Black church has been a place for social change.

And so Democrat politicians would always show up.

And so, and imagine a young child in church listening to the preacher, and then there's a Democrat politician and their mind are gonna start melding these things.

And that's why so many Blacks feel like somehow it's a sin or to not be a Democrat.

So it's so cynical at its nature that, and the Democratic Party knew what they were doing when they adopted this strategy.

So they have socialized Blacks into being Democrat.

So when you put solutions on the table, you can literally put a solution on the table and it's a conservative solution.

But if you say it's by the Democrats, a Black would say they support it, but it when they learn it's from a Republican and they don't support it.

So it's a visceral level that we have to get to.

So your sense about safety Republicans tend to say what we need to hear.

And Democrats tend to say what we want to hear.

We want to be validated, we want people to, it's like, no, sometimes you have to have the hard truth.

I value my parents for always telling me what I needed to hear more than what I wanted to hear and my friends that do that.

And that's what you have to do.

And that's the fundamental difference I think, between Republican and Democrat.

- I wanted to ask-- - There, when you were talking about using the church for political things, the first thing that came to my mind was this idea of separation of church and state, right?

Which I mean, that may not be the same type of thing, but that's what it made me think about.

So that's interesting.

- Well, I wanted to go back to your, like the flag.

I I don't feel unsafe by the flag, like-- - It's, I don't feel unsafe by it.

It just feels very hostile.

Right?

- A again, I, no, I'm sorry.

When people say right, I always feel like you want me to agree, but I can't agree with that because when I, I work for charter and we say our pledge of allegiance every single day and it's injustice for all.

And I take that exactly as it's meant to be.

I take that as every single person, every single identity that you fit in, including the African Americans.

So I find it extremely disheartening that so many people would feel like America is not for them.

And where were we taught that?

Because I think that's ultimately what comes down to why we tend to be Democrats.

We were taught to be Democrats.

We were told whether or not the idea was whether or not that that idea was something that had good intentions or whether or not 'cause sometimes I feel like it was from the plantation to, oh, you are a victim and we need to take care of you.

- I wanna stop.

- Am sorry - I wanna get on that victim thing, but I want to go to the solutions.

You mentioned solutions James.

You had written in an article that you think a lot of the solutions are in the, a Black or in economics in the Black community.

What do you two see as solutions to some of the problems in African American communities around the country?

- We can just follow.

We, I mean, we have some great examples that we can follow first.

We can go back to our history.

And when slavery ended in 1865, from 1865 to 1910, Blacks accumulated 10 million acres of land in the United States.

Okay.

- And how many acres had Whites accumulated?

- Well, no, I'm only talking about what Blacks accumulated because the population would've been a lot smaller.

Okay.

So, but I'm gonna compare that to today.

So from 1865 to 1910 Blacks accumulated actually, actually I think it was 19.8 million acres and today Blacks owned less than 10 million acres.

So you have to ask yourself, how were Blacks able to accumulate that amount of land during that time where there were two things that were, that happened.

Number one, government was much smaller so you had individuals just doing commerce.

The only color that tends to matter and the private sector is green.

You have something to sell.

I have something I wanna buy and vice versa.

So that kind of, you have to say, well then maybe society wasn't what we thought it was after slavery.

And but more importantly, it was Blacks that knew that they had to go out and do it.

There was no other option.

- Sure.

- And as that mindset that we have to get back to our ancestors has showed us this over and over and over again, even though yes, as government got larger and opposition became more organized, by people misusing government, because every time in our, every, I would say disadvantage that you have seen in the Black community, through the Black Wall Street riots, Jim Crow and all of that, it has been because of a misuse of government power.

It has never individual Americans, White Americans.

They can never do it by themselves.

They've always had to use government.

So we have to understand that government, the misuse of government power is our greatest threat.

And what Democrats want us to focus on is that it's individual White Americans and it's not, it's where go where Democrats focus.

They want more government.

And when you have more government, you're gonna have more problems because you're gonna have the misuse of government power.

So what blacks have to recognize is that we have to economically cooperate.

But step number one is that we have to recognize, we must do it.

No one else is gonna do it for us.

- Right right.

Okay.

- Okay.

- That's interesting.

- Go ahead, Cari.

- Yeah I think that we need to champion education again when after BLM and they made so much money, I was like, okay, where's those charter schools, where are these lifting of our black children?

Because we've taught our black children that to succeed is whiteness.

This is a problem.

I feel like this solution is teaching them that, hey, there's amazing books out there.

They don't all to be about, Some kind of studies, they don't all have to be some kind of ethnic studies.

They can be an amazing book, that can be classical literature.

These things are cool.

And we need to turn it back and turn our kids into that achieving is awesome.

We need to go to our prisons and we need to have options for these people when they get out of prison that you don't have to go to do fast food or you don't have to go back and repeat a crime again.

Instead here's other options for you.

I wondered, well, where are our junior tech colleges?

Like, why don't we have these things?

'Cause these would be solutions.

Instead we, the flip side of that is let's lower the bar so that black and brown kids can compete.

That's the Democrat side.

The conservative side is no we want them all to have a seat at the great table.

We want them all to have the best, most powerful education.

We want them all to have the best chance at succeeding in life.

- So you think that I just wanna make sure I'm getting this right.

So you think that the answer to the issues in the community would be education and also... - Economic liberation.

- But how do how do you speak to the masses of the black population and say this is how it needs to be done.

And it seems to me kind of odd that we would be the only community that wouldn't require any government because I look and I see people in particular white communities using government all the time, I see them using government right now for critical race theory, to be able to get their, to be able to get those laws passed, to be, have that outlaw.

- Right.

- So I feel like what's happened a lot of times is that we're telling the black community, do it on your own, even though we don't do it on our own.

- But now that what I'm saying.

- But you have to have a government to be able to take care of 'cause there's obviously the law enforcement issue that's happening.

'Cause there's crime, that's happening.

Not every black person's out there committing crime.

- Right.

- A small percentage of black people commit crime.

So you have to tackle that issue in black communities first.

And then you gotta tackle the, how we're gonna get jobs and how we're gonna revitalize the communities as well.

We've been able to do that in this country.

I mean, look at what happened with the new deal.

I know that's a controversial topic, but that was big government and it worked.

That was a larger government solution that happened to help out America after.

- It helped out white America.

- Right.

- Blacks were not part of it.

- It helped America, it was a government solution though.

- No, it was a government solution for White America.

And this is the point that I keep saying is that the government will never make us economically successful.

- Oh no no, I'm not saying that at all, - Their job is to make sure that that we are treated within the bounds of the law.

If we are transgress against that, then the law will come and protect us.

And make sure.

- Like an ideal government.

- That's what the government's supposed to be.

And so we can't look to government for our economic liberation.

That's not going to happen, if they can just make sure society, we are treated fairly in society on our own devices we can lift ourselves up because we have done that over and over and over again.

- Absolutely.

- We have one point, there are 42 million Blacks in America.

Our collective GDP, if you want to use that term is 1.5 trillion dollars.

So we would be larger than Canada.

Okay.

- Absolutely.

- So the resources are there.

We just have to decouple ourself from this victim mentality that the Democrat Party has basically thrusted upon us and say that somehow we have to look to others for our salvation.

And it's like, we're happy to partner and have allies, great but it has to be on an agenda that will lift us up and not someone else's agenda of saying, we'll come help you, but we need you to do the following.

It's like, no, what we need to do is to make sure that that each child can have two parents, that we can have safe neighborhoods, that we have the opportunity to engage in commerce, create our own businesses.

There are three things that free slaves did, right out the that, they bought land, they built churches and they built schools for their kids.

Okay.

Those three things right there.

- My grandfather was one of the first black educators at a black school in Mississippi.

So principal of that school.

So I can definitely attest to that.

Even though conservatives isn't necessarily a unique fight in Utah as these brothers, this brother and sister are showing us, we did find a place that is unique and interesting.

Twisted Roots is a local business that offers an eclectic shopping experience with an owner who says that Teranga not politics can help bring people together.

So let's watch and find out what he means by that.

Check this out.

(upbeat music) - My name is Ibou Fall, owner of Twisted Roots.

I am originally from Senegal, West Africa.

This is kind of a world market.

Luckily we are offering a bunch of stuff.

That's for everyone.

We have stuff from Senegal.

We have stuff from the Caribbean countries.

We have stuff from US.

Every year I go home and pick out stuff that are from that represent me.

Senegal is on the coast.

So we have that island vibe, even though it's not quite an island.

- We feel that in here I could that.

- We do live that lifestyle.

There's a term we have that's called teranga.

- Teranga.

- Yes which means welcoming.

- Welcoming.

- You know how you deal with people, how you welcome people into your culture, how you take care of them, how you host them, how you accommodate, how you feed them, you entertain them.

That's the assumption that we use in our country.

That's one of our grades.

- When you moved here, did you have any cultural shocks or anything that was difficult to overcome.

- Difficult, but yeah, but still, possible to overcome, yes.

That was 20 years ago, the state was pretty, homogenous, right?

And as we went, more people are moving in I've got so many friends.

(upbeat music) Utah is a growing place.

It's a growing state and you have people coming from everywhere now.

So it's getting more richer as far as diversity now.

- What do you want people to walk away with when they come into your store?

- Well, I want them to leave the African experience when they come in here, I want the minute they step in, they get this great welcome, right?

And they feel comfortable.

A lot of people never seen a store like this.

So I want them to give us a chance and the best way to do it is to accommodate them, bring 'em in and welcome them and make 'em feel comfortable.

And ask us question about, what they think about our store.

My contribution in the culture in Utah is being here and making sure this business survives and is here for a long term.

- [Man] Teranga.

- Wow, wow I love that place.

It was a good spot.

So we want you guys to stick around because we want to talk more about this subject in our podcast and it is, I'm really getting into this conversation quite a bit.

I wanna have you guys get some of your final thoughts before wrap up.

Let's start with you Cari.

- Sure.

- It's about 30 seconds.

- Absolutely.

I think that the most important thing that, that people need to realize if we're going to survive and if we do consider ourselves all like true Americans who love this country is that we need to see ourselves as individuals.

I think that we need to be more about the individual and less about the collective, because the collective stops us being able to think for ourselves and thinking for ourselves is how we rise.

- Yeah James.

- Yeah, absolutely agree with that.

And with respect to race, I think it, our discussion needs to be more nuanced now, it's not so much about a skin color as it is a culture.

And perfect example is Nigerians are black, I'm black.

But when you look at the earning power of Nigerians, they rank at the top per capita income.

So it cannot be that racism is stopping them.

It has to be something rooted in their culture about their desire to succeed.

I truly understand why we are where we are in America as Black Americans given our history.

So that's why I think the conservative solution is what Cari pointed out when we think critically individually and not get in the way of ourselves by first believing that, you know I can do this or I'm gonna try.

So my grandma used to say nothing beats a failure but a try.

So all you have to do is try.

- I love that.

- Great, all right.

Well, this has been an enlightening and informative show.

We want to thank our guests for coming in and putting up with us.

Next week we'll be talking about one of Utah's forgotten historical groups.

The Buffalo Soldiers find out how an international song by Bob Marley was partly inspired by soldiers that were stationed right here in Utah.

You do not wanna miss that show.

All right guys, we are out.

(upbeat music) - [Reporter] Roots, Race and Culture is made possible in part by the contributions to PBS Utah from viewers like you.

Thank you.

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