Carol Swain: Self
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Quotes
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Carol Swain : It's not every day I get a political prisoner in my office.
Dinesh D'Souza : For me, Carol, it's so strange because I've just seen a whole different America than I'm used to.
Carol Swain : Well you know, blacks have been used to oppression in America, and some of it has come from the Democratic party. And it's been hard for me to accept because I was a Democrat for most of my life.
Dinesh D'Souza : What made you change?
Carol Swain : It was a number of different things. Some of it had to do with becoming a Christian, and the other part had to do with me learning more about the history of the Democratic party and just seeing how they used blacks for their agenda.
Dinesh D'Souza : Carol, tell us a little about your life. You seem to be, your life has been a real success story.
Carol Swain : It is, and I believe so much in the American dream. I was one of 12 children born in the rural south in Virginia, my father had a 3rd grade education, my mother was a high school dropout, and they divorced, and so I had a stepfather, all of us dropped out of school after the 8th grade. I married at 16, had my first child at 17, and you know, according to sociological theories, I should've been on welfare, I should not have had a future. But I ended up getting a high school equivalency, going to community college and earning the first of five degrees. I became a tenure professor at Princeton, and then I was hired by Vanderbilt during a time when I was going through a religious type of transition. But when Vanderbilt hired me, they thought they were getting this hotshot Princeton professor, and they got someone who was a born again Christian, and it's been interesting ever since.
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Carol Swain : One heroine from that era was a black journalist named Ida B. Wells. Long before Rose Parks refused to sit in the backseat of a bus, Ida B. Wells refused to give up her first class train seat to a white man. The reason we don't hear more about this is because Ida B. Wells was a Republican. She worked for a Republican paper that denounced lynching.
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Dinesh D'Souza : [deleted scene] I want to name some people who have been involved in America's racial history, and I'd like you to tell me simply if they were Republicans or Democrats.
Carol Swain : Okay.
Dinesh D'Souza : Let's begin with the inventor of the Positive Good school of slavery, the idea that slavery was a good thing: Senator John C. Calhoun.
Carol Swain : Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about the guy who invented popular sovereignty, the idea that each state could decide for itself if it wanted slavery, yes or not: Stephen Douglas?
Carol Swain : Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about the writer of the Dred Scott decision, authorizing slavery and claiming that blacks have no rights that a white man ought to respect? Roger Tawney.
Carol Swain : That sounds like a Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, Nathan Bedford Forrest who was also a confederate general?
Carol Swain : Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about the great champions of segregation, the people who legislated 'separate but equal' and the Black Codes throughout the south?
Carol Swain : Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about Bull Connor, the famous or infamous sheriff who resisted the Civil Rights movement?
Carol Swain : Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about Arkansas governor, Orville Faubus, who shut the doors of the Arkansas schoolhouse, until federal troops had to come in to allow black students to get in the door?
Carol Swain : Democrat.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about George Wallace who said 'segregation now, segregation forever'?
Carol Swain : Democrat. They're all Democrats.
Dinesh D'Souza : Let's now talk about a few more figures in American history who resisted racial oppression. Abraham Lincoln.
Carol Swain : Republican.
Dinesh D'Souza : His Secretary of State, Seward?
Carol Swain : Republican.
Dinesh D'Souza : What about the two leading senators who championed the cause of abolitionism, Thaddeus Stevens and Sumner?
Carol Swain : Well they were Republicans.
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Dinesh D'Souza : [about Ida B. Wells] She made the remarkable statement that what blacks actually needed was Second Amendment rights.
Carol Swain : Throughout the south when they passed the Black Codes, they put in provisions that if you were black, you couldn't own a gun. So that means that the KKK rises up into your yard, you don't have anything to defend yourself with. So the Second Amendment was very important to blacks. It was something that she championed because she knew as long as they were unarmed, they would be prey to white racists.
Dinesh D'Souza : You're saying that early Democrat efforts to have gun control had a racist motive?
Carol Swain : Yes, almost everything they did had a racist motive.
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Dinesh D'Souza : Why were blacks such a threat to the Democratic party?
Carol Swain : Blacks were the majority in several southern states. They were able to send numerous people to the states' legislatures. They had 22 members elected to Congress. So this was a nightmare for the Democrats because all of sudden, they were being ruled by black Republicans and they reacted with brutality. The party had its own war machine and its target were blacks and white Republicans.
