The spiritual condition of America, politics, culture, and current events, analyzed through the lens of Scripture. Welcome to the Alex McFarland Show.
Perhaps in recent months you've heard in the news the phrase DEI, as in diversity, equity, inclusion, affirmative action, and just the idea that all viewpoints are equally valid and all lifestyles must be equally affirmed and even government subsidized. Hi, Alex McFarland here. We've got a great show today. Very, very important guest to listen to today, Dr. Carol Swain. I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Swain a couple of months ago, and she is an author. She's an expert on DEI and really the problem that that is in our culture.
And I have to say she has a fascinating story, and no kidding here, all seriousness may be the most impressive resume of any of the hundreds of people that I've had the honor of interviewing. Dr. Swain holds a PhD from UNC Chapel Hill in my home state of North Carolina, a master's from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where we did a conference. She was a tenured professor at Princeton and Vanderbilt. She was a professor of poli sci and law, and she is a sought-after cable news contributor, an expert voice.
In media we call it an SME, a subject matter expert, best-selling author, and national speaker. Dr. Swain is an award-winning political scientist cited three times in U.S. Supreme Court decisions and cases. She's authored books including The Adversity of Diversity and Countercultural Living, what Jesus has to say about life, marriage, race, gender, and materialism. And I am just profoundly honored to know this person. She has great intellect, but even greater is her heart, which she lives for Jesus Christ, and she is truly one of the most accomplished Americans that I've had the privilege of interviewing, and she's with us today. Dr. Carol Swain, thank you so much for making time to be with us on the program today. Well, it's an honor and a privilege, and you get to live in North Carolina, and I have fond memories of living in North Carolina.
While you were in Chapel Hill, I suppose, right? Well, I mean, it's just so beautiful. I love those pines. It is. You know, there's a poem called, here's to the land of the longleaf pine, the summer land where the sun doth shine, where the weak grow strong, and the strong grow great.
Here's to down home, the old North state. And that was always, you know, drilled into us as kids that we have a responsibility to do something with our life and with God's help to become great. I was told that in the fourth grade in a public school that we have an obligation to God to do something with our lives.
Now, you've done that like few people I've ever met, maybe like no one I've ever met. We're a culture today, though, where elementary school kids are not taught about God, not taught about morals and achievements. And I want to hear your story. How did God raise up Carol Swain?
And tell us about your journey, because it's going to inspire others on their journey. Well, first I want to say, when you talk about the children, the messages they get today are messages often about what you can't do because of your race or your social class, or you can go down the list because you're poor, what you can't do. In my day, those were not the messages. If there was an overriding message, it was if you work hard and get an education, you can make something out of yourself.
And so the emphasis was on what you could do and the messages about our country. I grew up, even though I was born and raised in the segregated South up until I had reached almost my teen years, segregated South. And I believed in America. I believed I lived in the greatest country in the world. And I was not taught racial hatred.
And I think it made all the difference in the world. And you were born in Virginia. I was born in Southwestern Virginia, a community called Chamblissburg. And I spent the early part of my life in a two room shack without any indoor plumbing. There was nine of us, nine children that lived in that house at the same time. And we all dropped out of school after the eighth grade. I married at age 16, not because I was pregnant, but to get away from home. Had my first child at age 17. And by the time I was 20 or 21, I had three small children and people entered my life.
I ended up getting a high school equivalency, went to a community college and got the first of five college and university degrees. I so admire your story. I really do. Because, folks, if you're just listening, Dr. Carol Swain is living proof of how, yes, the Lord, God does things, but you worked hard. I mean, you had to apply yourself.
And others can do that too. Dear listener, you can do this with God's help, just like Carol Swain did. How did the light bulb come on and education become a driving passion? Well, first of all, I want to say to people that are listening out there that I struggled with depression as a teen. And I went through a period when I did suicide gestures.
I'd take bottles of pills and, you know, I would tell someone and, you know, basically get rescued. And that's something that I had situational depression that the Lord delivered me from. But I had no idea that I would go to college and I would end up becoming a university professor and having the kind of life I did. But I can tell you that as a child, I always had a sense of urgency.
I felt like there was something I was supposed to do. And when I got to the community college, I chose that because I wanted to get a well-paying job. And my first degree is in business. I wanted to do commercial art.
I was told to be practical. I chose business, which was harder. It meant I had to take remedial math.
And there was no shame in taking remedial math at the community college. I graduated in two years, the way you're supposed to. And I made the dean's list a couple of times. But when I applied for jobs in business, I was told that I needed a four-year degree. Well, I made a decision that I was going to become an honors student. And I purchased and checked books out of the library on how to make A's in college, how to take essay exams, how to do objective tests. And I ended up graduating from Roanoke College, magna cum laude, while working 40 hours a week, nights and weekends at the community college library. Amen. That is a blessing and, frankly, a great American story.
Now, we've got to take a brief break. Website. Where may people find your books?
Where may people follow you online? Well, there are a couple of websites. One is carolemswayne.com.
There's a book link there. And the one where I post most frequently materials for my media interviews is bethepeoplenews.com. Instead of we the people, it's bethepeoplenews.com. And I'm on X. My handle is at carolemswayne. And I'm on Instagram and Facebook.
Get her and choose social. We've got a brief break. More with our conversation with Dr. Carol Swain after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this.
Hi, Alex McFarland here. I want to make you aware of two really important speaking engagements in July of 2025. I'll be at the Cove, the Billy Graham Training Center, July 18th through 20th, teaching the book of Job. And then July 28th through August 1st with J. Warner Wallace, a week of apologetics with myself and Jim Wallace.
Go to the Cove dot org, the Cove dot org. And I hope to see you next summer. He's been called trusted, truthful and timely. Welcome back to The Alex McFarland Show. Welcome back to the program. Alex McFarland here when we talk about the gospel, the truth of God's Word impacting culture as the truth of God's Word impacts lives. Our guest today is Dr. Carol Swain, who I have such a love and respect for.
She is the author of The Adversity of Diversity. And I want to get to that and talk about DEI's inception and deceptions in our culture. But I want to again revisit your determination and accomplishments. Because Dr. Swain, if there's one thing people tell me on my travels, you know, people come to Christ and are saved. And that's wonderful.
And that's vitally important. But I've had so many people, probably from their thirties to their seventies, and they'll say, Oh, I could have been somebody, but it's too late for me. Oh, if I could only go back... I can speak to that.
Please. One thing, I never had a plan to become a university professor or a plan to become who I am today. And God put people in my life and they steered me. And sometimes it was circumstances because I was working in a nursing home. I've had real jobs. I've worked in a garment factory. I've sold things from door to door.
I've been a sales clerk. And so I've had menial jobs, but I wanted to become a nurse after working as a nurse's aide. I applied to nursing school.
I didn't get in. And I can see why I wasn't admitted, because when I dropped out of school in the ninth grade, I had completed the eighth. I had all F's. And I had all F's because there was so much going on in my personal life. I could not focus. I could not do academic work.
I was trying to survive. And so when they looked at that profile, of course I didn't get in. But that's a part of my story. Had I become a nurse, it would be a different story. That I would not be the person I am today. And what I discovered was that God had people, and they were not all Christian believers, and they certainly didn't look like me, who saw something in me and steered me and encouraged me. And I went through at a time at Ronald College, the professor who became my mentor, it turns out he was a Republican, but I was treated not, you know, lowered standards. People held me to high standards, and they encouraged me, and I rose to the occasion.
In fact, I hated affirmative action. I always wanted to prove what I could do. On your own merits.
Yes. I mean, I had a lot of confidence that I was smart. And so, you know, I wanted to prove something, and I did.
Let me ask you this, and I'm just going to be as personal and as honest as I can be. Whenever I'm watching the news, and I hear left-wing leaders say, you know, black children have to be given different concessions because they can't learn like the other children or can't read. I think that's very demeaning. That's also very new, because when I went to school and I started in segregated schools in the South, we were not told that at all. We were told the white kids had better books. And I thought because they had newer books, and for some reason I thought that whites were smarter than blacks. But when we integrated, I realized that I was smart in the black school, I was smart in the white school, and that it had nothing to do with skin color, how smart you were.
And so that was great that we had integration, but we did not get those messages. Our teachers in the black school held us to high standards. And when I did get my high school equivalency, math, I was in the lowest percentile, but everything else was like probably 98 percentile. I was at the top of the charts. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I got a good education in those segregated schools.
Yes. And telling the public that black or any ethnicity is inferior, that's ungodly. Well, it's coming from a lot of black leaders and people that have just given up on the poor, and it's easier to do that than to actually educate people. And we have some of the wrong teachers in the classroom.
They attend it. They don't believe the students can learn. And there's no correlation between, for one thing, money spent and student achievement, but also having a teacher that looks like you and performing better. In fact, there was a study once that I read where it said that the best teacher sometimes for inner-city kids is an affluent white woman or someone who believes that they can learn. And it's the teacher qualities more than money. If you have a teacher, a teacher can go into a low-performing school and that one classroom is off the charts. It's because of the teacher and what they believe and how they talk to the students. And if you believe that students are stupid or they're incapable of learning, then they are not going to be able to learn.
How did you first become aware of what today we call DEI? Well, affirmative action was instituted by executive order. The first executive order was John Kennedy back in the 1960s, 1961. And that executive order probably was needed because it was before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There was some discrimination and it involved federal contractors. But when Johnson issued his executive order in 1965, that was a year after we had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination based on different factors including race, color, and national origin. That Johnson executive order was never passed by Congress. It was an executive order.
It could have been overturned by any president even though it wasn't. Diversity, that's when we first started talking about diversity. But initially the focus was on non-discrimination, equal opportunity, and outreach. And I would say that people like me benefited from an environment where there was an effort to identify talented minorities, talented women, talented people, and bring them into the system and give them an equal opportunity, which meant they hired you or they brought you into the school, but you had an equal opportunity to succeed or to fail because you could actually fail.
There was no equity, no equal outcomes. You had to prove yourself. And the outreach was, some of it was that jobs were advertised nationally. Up until that time, jobs were filled mostly by word of mouth.
You know someone, you call someone up. It was called the Old Boys Network or the Old Girls Network. The Good Old Boys Club. After the Civil Rights Act, jobs had to be advertised. And that opened doors for everyone, including white men.
So... But DEI, let's get to DEI. Yeah, for those that may not know, and I want you to help me adequately convey this, what is DEI? Well, you know, DEI started off initially as, okay, we want to diversify, bring in some different people. But then I say that DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion, became affirmative action on steroids. And affirmative action itself, you know, offered preferential treatment. It had things that seemingly violated the Equal Protection Clause and the Civil Rights Act.
I mean, I think it did violate it. But the country was willing to tolerate that because they were trying to, coming out from the riots of the 1960s, so people were willing to make those concessions. But with DEI, it became more and more extreme, and it really has Marxist roots. It's connected to the critical race theory that divides the world into oppressors, the white oppressors, and the oppressed. And the oppressed could be anyone of color, but also men can be oppressors of women. And so men were accused of having toxic masculinity and Christianity because Christianity has been the dominant religion in America. All of a sudden, it's like Christianity is oppressive, and the other religious groups, they are the oppressed.
And so all of these ideas have Marxist roots. But with diversity, equity, and inclusion, I would say that it gradually became more and more problematic. I saw dramatic changes during the Obama administration, especially the second term. And that's when it started seeping down into K through 12 critical race theory.
And the DEI, I mean, it just took off like lightning after George Floyd's death. And that's when you got so many companies hiring chief diversity officers and billions of dollars poured into sensitivity training and DEI. And the company, McKinsey & Company, they do consulting on a global scale. They produce studies telling corporate America that if they instituted DEI, that they were going to get all these financial rewards from having a more diversified workforce.
They would be able to compete better, sell more products. Well, we learned later that that was garbage, that they had really made those studies up to further the cause. And corporations on their own started to to wise up because there was no value added. And it was it created a lot of conflict, divisiveness.
And for myself, I knew that you could never bring reconciliation out of a conflict model. And during the summer of 2020, I just got a vision for unity training, which later became a company that I incorporated called Real Unity Training Solutions. And it became Real Unity Training Solutions because by the time that I incorporated in the fall of 2020 and the the spring of 2021, when I was trying to to trade market, there were 500 applications pending with the word unity in the name of these companies and they were doing regular DEI. And so I sort of rebranded my company as Real Capital Letters, Real Unity Training Solutions.
And so the DEI industry and it is an industry, a billion dollar industry. And guess what? The people that persist in it are really jeopardizing stockholders and their own legal standing because President Trump signed two executive orders, one ending DEI in federal programs and the other ending affirmative action. Sixty years of affirmative action. He issued an executive order on January 21st that overturned Johnson's executive order.
And so companies and organizations and schools, if they continue with diversity, equity and inclusion, they are opening themselves up to lawsuits because it clearly violates the Constitution and the civil rights laws of our land. We've got to take a brief break. Alex McFarland here with our very special guest, Dr. Carol Swain, talking, yes, about DEI, but even more importantly, about truth for all of our lives. Stay tuned.
We're back after this. Fox News and CNN call Alex McFarland a religion and culture expert. Stay tuned for more of his teaching and commentary after this. You know, prayer is the nerve that moves the muscle of God. Hi, Alex McFarland here encouraging you to download our free PDF of 31 Days of Prayer for Our Nation. Discover how consistent prayer can transform your heart and our nation. These are times of uncertainty. People need hope and specific prayers get specific answers. So go to Alex McFarland dot com and download the free PDF of prayer.
And I challenge you to make this next 31 days a time of powerful prayer. He's been called trusted, truthful and timely. Welcome back to the Alex McFarland show. Welcome back to the program.
We'll resume our conversation with Dr. Carol Swain in just a moment. I want to remind everybody, we have our speaker series coming up. You know, we do events all over the country. We're on in all 50 states. But in the summer of 25, we have a speaker series in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Conversations That Matter.
And May 4th is coming up soon. Our first speaker, Dinesh D'Souza. The American political landscape trumps first 100 days.
What is the future of politics in America? And so you can go to my website, Alex McFarland dot com, to register and attend the speaker series. Please pray and please promote. And we've also got Charlie Kirk coming and Lauren Green, our colleague from Fox News. And seven summer youth camps.
So much going on. And I want to remind you that this program, our conferences, our camps, our publishing, our events, we're on seven days a week. Your prayers and support make this possible. So for your involvement in what we're doing to touch the country for the gospel, I thank you. And also being used by God to touch millions of lives is Dr. Carol Swain. And for one thing, thank you for being with us here at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. You know, before the break, you were talking about 60 years of affirmative action being overturned.
I've heard about this my entire life. Let me ask you this, as far as you're aware, what's been the reaction for those that are in, like you said, the DEI industry? What's been the reaction of the ending of affirmative action?
Well, if you look at the national conversation, it's almost as if no one noticed that. We hear them talking about DEI and there have been corporations like Target and I believe Apple that say that they're going to persist with DEI. But actually they are opening themselves up to suits from the shareholders because there will be lawsuits.
And those lawsuits will be won by the people that are challenging what they're doing. And I don't think it's sunk in. I don't think people really realize what happened.
And I'm thinking, why are we talking about DEI when the big story is that 60 years of affirmative action, that there was finally a president that reversed that executive order that Johnson did in 1965. That's the story. But it's like the whole world missed it. Yeah. And it's a big story. It's a huge story. Trump in his inauguration speech on January 20 of 2025, he said this country is going to be a meritocracy. In other words.
He certainly did. Yeah. And there's something else that people are missing. And I've been planning to write an opinion piece. And since I've been talking about it in the media, someone else might write my opinion piece. But what's happening with Doge in Washington and the cutbacks will have implications for the Democratic Party and for blacks in particular, because the Democrats have used government jobs as a form of patronage. And disproportionately, a lot of the people that are holding those jobs, like 40 percent of the post office are black people. And so it's going to have some create some pain among black people that were formerly employed. And I think that the changes will be good. But in a short time, people can expect there's going to be some disruption.
There will be. And I think that it's important for people to know that if they are talented, if they have good skills, if they are children of God, they will get another job and will probably be a whole lot better than the one they had. Well said. Do you think that, like you said, patronage, overcompensation and white guilt, do you think some of what we've done that has really resulted in government waste? And I frankly- I think a lot of it is just raw politics that you go back to Boss Tweed and the patronage system. And that's what has taken place. And I don't believe that there's been this deep concern about black America.
The policies we have had in America have not been policies that empowered people. The messages that have been sent to communities and not messages that make people better off. It's messages that cause people to leave, lose hope.
Yeah. And so I think that good can come out of this. And I was very encouraged in the last election that so many people were willing, you know, to do something very different, to vote for a different political party or to make changes in their lives that they are beginning to see. And when I think as a spiritual person about what's taking place in America, it has been as if a large percentage of the population has been blinded. So they've been under the spirit of deception.
I think that that spirit of deception is losing its grip. I would agree. And I would say that the monopoly the Democrat Party has had on the black vote, that grip, too, is being broken. Would you agree?
I would agree. And black men have sort of been leading the way because they were the first ones to break away. And I think that's probably for a variety of reasons. But if black men, you know, become stronger as they are becoming strong and they begin to lead their families and to push back and black women begin to follow them in larger numbers, you're going to get the transformation that's needed in the black communities. But the other thing that worries me about black communities is that there is a crime problem. A lot of white people don't call it out because they are afraid. But everyone sees it.
It's the 500 pound gorilla in the room. I think that we all need to call it out and address it directly. And what would be the appropriate call out and addressing of it? I think that you have true equality when everyone's held to the same standards and you don't make excuses for anyone. And the excuses that have been done, I think, to really hold blacks in bondage is to say, oh, well, this is happening because of slavery.
You know, something happened 400 years ago is affecting black people today. And so judges have some judges have been more lenient. They've not held people to the same standards.
They've allowed people that have committed crimes to go out and commit more crimes until it reaches the point where they have to do something. I think if you start nipping it in the bud and holding people to the same standards and they get the signal, whether it's the signal that you're not protected because you belong to a particular group anymore, that you can lose your job just like everyone else can lose their job. You're not insulated from layoffs. You're not insulated from being fired. You have to meet these high standards. Behavior will follow. Yeah, exactly. I 1000 percent agree.
You know, you're you're always so inspiring to speak with. We're almost out of time. I want to ask you a twofold question. We're in some ways, many people say a divided nation. The degree to which we're divided, I think probably varies in different localities. But do you have hope that we will be a united nation?
I don't think we're a divided nation. I think that the election results showed that a majority of Americans wanted something different. And I believe if you survey people today and ask, is the country moving in the right direction? You're going to find more people finally saying the country is moving in the right direction. And there was a Harvard study about Doge and the cutbacks and holding these agencies accountable. The majority of Americans want the corruption to end.
They want the waste, you know, to be exposed. They want accountability. So I think that the divisions that we perceive is because they are very visible people. You know, whether they're members of Congress or in the media or university professors that speak the language of division.
Yeah. And it comes from the Marxist training. They don't represent the American people. I think across race, across religion, across all of the different regions, factors, that we are more unified than people think.
I would agree. And I think some make a cottage industry out of people being divided. They have a minority and they have the microphone. But it's an illusion. We're not as divided. Amen. You know, we mere mortals have to live within our own means. It's only right that our government should live within its means as well, operate within its means.
A final word. Professor, give us a homework assignment for those that care about God and country and care about truth and every life achieving all that we possibly can, a call to action. Well, I wrote a book that was published in 2011 called Be the People, a call to reclaim America's faith and promise. And one of the things I argued in that book is that there are certain things that every American needs to know. And one was the Constitution, the Bill of Rights needed to be memorized, the Declaration of Independence.
And I said the Ten Commandments. And the book has a chapter about America's religious foundations. And I think that the unifying principles in that book, the majority of Americans still say they believe in God and the majority are still Christian. But a lot of people don't know the tenets of that religion.
They don't know about America's Judeo-Christian roots because it wasn't taught to them. And I think that those documents are important. And I think that book that was published in 2011, Be the People, a call to reclaim America's faith and promise. And it's called Be the People because the preamble is talking about we the people. Well, it's a call for the we the people to be the people who stand up to reclaim, you know, our nation and our way of life. And I think that to do that, we have to have some shared knowledge and understanding.
And it can start with those documents. You inspire me to want to do that. God's blessings to you. carolmswayne.com is the website. I encourage you to seek out her books, familiarize yourself with the great work she's doing. And you also mentioned bethepeople.com. Well, bethepeoplenews.com.
But before bethepeoplenews.com existed, my book, Be the People, a call to reclaim America's faith and promise, was published in 2011. Wonderful. We're out of time. We'll visit again soon, I hope.
In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for Dr. Swain's appearances in the media. Keep her in your prayers. Stay strong. Be bold. Stand for truth. Alex McFarland ministries are made possible through the prayers and financial support of partners like you for over 20 years. This ministry has been bringing individuals into a personal relationship with Christ and has been equipping people to stand strong for truth. Learn more and donate securely online at alexmcfarland.com. You may also reach us by calling 1-877-YES-GOD and the number one. That's 1-877-YES-GOD1. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you again on the next edition of the Alex McFarland Show.
