Author and all-star panelist Dr. Carol M. Swain joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to introduce listeners to her brand-new book: The Adversity of Diversity: How Real Unity Training can Promote Healing in a Post-Affirmative Action World.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy: 7:18 AM; in studio, the executive director of Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, Aaron Gulbransen; and our very good friend, all-star panelist friend – longtime friend – former Vanderbilt professor, esteemed colleague, Carol Swain.
Good morning, Carol.
Carol Swain: Good morning. Always. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Michael Patrick Leahy: It’s always great to see you. You have a new book out?
Carol Swain: I do. And the official release state is today and the title is, The Adversity of Diversity: How Real Unity Training can Promote Healing in a Post-Affirmative Action World.
Michael Patrick Leahy: What a great title – and so needed. Alan Dershowitz wrote the foreword on this.
Carol Swain: He did, and I should mention that my friend Mike Towle is the collaborator. So he, I had a co-author with the book because we had to get it out very quickly. And the book is important.
You know I have – I can say this, even though I wrote it – because I anticipated the fall of Affirmative Action.
I felt that it had to go because it violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution and our 1964 Civil Rights Act, and DEI and CRT had pushed it to the point that I was sort of like on pins and needles waiting for the Supreme Court decision in the Harvard and North Carolina higher education cases because I knew that if the Supreme Court did not strike down race-based college admissions, that the DEI and CRT regime that had gotten so aggressive against whites and Asians, that there was no stopping it.
If they had allowed that to stand, that would be no end to what is taking place today.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, I think you used the right phrase, the “DEI regime.” And they’re out there in full force.
Alan Dershowitz said about your book: “On the heels of the Supreme Court decision declaring race-based Affirmative Action in higher education, unconstitutional, Swain’s The Adversity of Diversity puts forth a compelling case for questioning the entire diversity equity and inclusion – DEI – industry that has departed from any integrationist goals.”
Carol Swain: That’s absolutely true. And our book also really examines ESG, the environmental social governance that’s being pushed by the World Economic Forum.
It’s a part of globalism.
That’s one of the reasons that the corporations were so aggressive doing LGBT week and just pushing this not only on corporations, but on other organizations.
But when it comes to corporations, just like China’s social credit system, they evaluate companies based on how many people they have in certain slots. So they are bean counters in corporations who want to look good, so then they go out and they push the DEI trying to outdo each other, and that’s how we ended up with Dylan Mulvaney and just various personalities getting big contracts because of the ESG.
So the book talks about the ESG and I also address the question that’s always thrown at me because I’m black, which is, ‘You benefited from Affirmative Action and now you’re trying to take it away.’
And I can attest to the fact that, hey, I was born in ’54, the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.
And so all of my adult life, I have been around Affirmative Action.
But I can tell you that initially it was about outreach, recruitment, non-discrimination, equal opportunity. And so I benefited from the fact that I grew up at a time when there were people looking for talented minorities and so, I took advantage of opportunities to go to a community college.
Anyone can go to a community college. You don’t even have to have a high school diploma to go to a community college. So I started at a community college, but I was able to propel myself and be an honor student; graduated magna cum laude from Roanoke College, working full time.
And so what I believe benefited me and other minorities who worked hard.
Is the opportunity to compete but you could fail. I had an equal opportunity to succeed or fail.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well, yeah. And what’s interesting, Carol, is you were 10 years old when the Civil Rights Act was passed, but it took a period of time for all of these programs to be kind of operational throughout the country, right?
If you look at the general argument of systemic racism – the claim that the United States is systemically racist – from a legal perspective, that’s not been the case since what, probably 1970, when all the other related legislation was passed.
Carol Swain: Well, you know, Johnson was the one that set up EEOC by executive order.
Affirmative Action never was passed as a law that passed by both Houses of Congress and signed by the president. It was executive orders.
And the first executive order was John F. Kennedy, and then Lyndon Johnson; and then Richard Nixon had his own executive order. And one of the things that’s very interesting is that it was a Republican – Richard Nixon – that really introduced us to quotas through his Philadelphia Plan.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Now, The Adversity of Diversity – I love that title, by the way.
That’s very clever – The Adversity of Diversity – this book is available as we speak on Amazon.
Been on a few kerfuffles with Amazon, I think; haven’t there?
Carol Swain: Plenty. And I would urge listeners to purchase the book from Barnes and Noble or an independent bookstore because with Amazon, you know, it’s great.
It’s easy to get an Amazon book delivered, but they have a war against conservatives – and whether it’s Glen Beck or Mark Levin, or anyone, or me, they’re throttling our books and they’re not putting them up very quickly. And, and in my case, they were not allowing reviews until I screamed really loud on social media – and I’m good at screaming on social media.
Michael Patrick Leahy: I was about to add.
Carol Swain: And so last night, late last night, I noticed they had lifted the ban.
Michael Patrick Leahy: Well keep screaming on social media, Carol.
Hey, when we come back, we’ve got more with Carol Swain, the author of the new book, The Adversity of Diversity. Go to Barnes and Noble and get it.
Back after this.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio or Spotify.
Photos “‘The Adversity of Diversity’ Book Art” and “Carol Swain” by Carol Swain.
