Delano Squires: The black community does not appreciate Booker T. like they should

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Get a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash offer 23. Delano Squires joins us now. Research fellow at the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion and the Family at the Heritage Foundation. Delano, welcome.

Thank you for having me. So, is this Trump's to lose? Are you one person that believes in the polls, what's happening right now? It certainly seems like it's Trump's to lose.

A sort of presumptive nominee who's this far ahead of the field. I can understand why he feels no need to debate. And it seems like a good portion of the conservative base has coalesced around him. So it seems like it's his to lose. We will see what the current court cases that are against him, you know, whether they have an effect. But if come next February, you know, the president is facing even more, excuse me, even more cases and or looks like he may be headed to federal prison.

That is going to open up some very interesting discussions in the conservative base. Do people let you believe that they're actually going to be doing that, possibly heading to federal prison, Trump? I mean, I've heard people who say that that he's going to be convicted.

I'm not following any of the cases close enough to know whether that's true, but it's certainly a possibility that is out there. So but again, the president is so far ahead in the polls that the former president seems like he has no need or desire to debate. And then plus, given his personality, if you put him on a debate stage, no one knows exactly what he will say. And I'm sure that would make his lawyers very, very, very nervous.

I get that sense. It's maybe happening now because today he had a pressure before his before his civil trial. He's going back on the stand December 12th.

So it's going to be interesting. How do you explain his surge when these cases started, when he was basically neck and neck with the Santas in 2022 after his midterms? I think people underestimate how popular Donald Trump is. He is one of the few presidential candidates that I can think of in history who had almost ubiquitous name recognition before he even entered his race. You know, he's extremely popular.

He was in 2016. He's only grown more popular among the conservative base. And I believe people, many of his supporters see the cases and charges against him as acts of persecution and have made them more resolute to support him moving forward. The last poll I saw said he's getting he got eight percent of the black vote, which is more than Mitt Romney and John McCain. The last poll I saw was up to 20 percent.

What's changed? In 2020, I think he got between 18 and 20 percent of the black male vote. And that was a significant number for Republicans. I think other black voters have become disillusioned with President Biden. I don't necessarily buy the take that Trump's criminal difficulties make him more appealing to black people because, you know, we have such hard times in the criminal justice system. I don't necessarily buy that. But I think a lot of people are drawn to his message. And I think that cuts across different ethnic groups. What do you think is his message? I mean, I felt the feeling that you're being attacked unjustly. Do people see eye to eye with that? Is that the way it's being interpreted?

I think part of it is that 91 charges, part of it could be that. But I think, for instance, if you look in a lot of cities in Chicago and New York immediately come to mind, there are growing numbers of black residents in those cities who are completely fed up with the current administration's immigration policies. And they see migrants coming from from Central and South America who are taking over school buildings.

I saw in Chicago they had some, you know, in a police station and they feel like their voting power is being diluted and they don't feel like their needs as citizens are being prioritized. What about you? How would you describe yourself politically?

It's a good question. I would describe myself as conservative. I'm a Christian first. I'm a Christian conservative.

And I think that modifier is extremely important. I'm not a mammon conservative, so I don't serve markets. I don't think corporations are our idols to be worshipped. But just personally and professionally, I'm the type of person that I will likely vote for whoever the most conservative candidate is that's left in the race. You know, I look at Allen West. I look at Senator Tim Scott. I look at Byron Donald's, Burgess Owens over the last few years.

Mia Love, too. And I see more and more African-Americans who seem to be more comfortable in the conservative lane after reading about Booker T. Washington and seeing what he did at the turn of the 20th century. That seems to be the way he was. As bad as his life was, he wanted to see his way through and make it better rather than condemn the situation.

How do I make it better? Is that your attitude? Very much so. And just like within the broader sort of conservative movement, even within sort of the slice that's black conservatism, that word means different things to different people. So there's some people who are much more on the economics and entrepreneurship side.

There's some people who are more socially conservative. For me, my foundations of conservatism, because I'm thinking about what is good to conserve, are faith and family. So that's why a lot of my work is around marriage, family, fatherhood, and faith. And then from there, you can build education, economics, prosperity. But I always start with sort of the same foundation. You know, what's kind of interesting is there's programs to help you and there's programs just to not get in your way.

It seems like a lot of programs were created reportedly to help and they seem to hurt. And when the president of the United States said, you know, what do you have to lose? People go, that's not a program. Don't say that.

A lot of people didn't reject that statement. And I know this very well because before coming to Heritage Foundation, I worked almost 15 years in local government in Washington, D.C. Not federal, but local government. I did all sorts of public-facing jobs, tech classes for kids, for ex-offenders, for adults, and then my last year in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. So I've seen the way government programs, some can help people, but many also can hurt people because they condition people to become dependent on elected officials and unelected bureaucrats. So for me, much of my conservatism is not answering the question or asking the question, what are you going to do for me?

It's asking the question, what are you going to stop doing to me? In the, with the headline, I'm helping you. Correct.

Correct. I'll give you a perfect example. Just cuts across the board, particularly in city centers. The way that the left stands behind sort of the K through 12 public education establishment, particularly teachers unions, and they say, we need to fully fund schools. And Randy Weingarten says, if we fund all the schools fully, we're going to raise results. But you can't find many Democrats who will support education savings accounts, universal school choice, school vouchers. Even some don't even like charter schools. And they will consign their voters, largely black and Hispanic, largely low income, to schools where one percent of kids can read or do math at grade level. Now, their children will never go into those schools unless they're doing a service project that they can put on the Ivy League application.

But they have no problem taking votes from from black and Hispanic voters. And they're turning around and saying, we're going to fight against the schools that you all need in order for your kids to achieve a better life. So what you're saying, by the way, I'm talking to Delano Squires, who's a research fellow at the DeVos Center, and also he was with the Heritage Foundation, Delano. So, for example, if people really cared about results, they look at charter schools and it's a longer day, oftentimes more discipline, harder workload, sometimes uniforms. And the demands are greater.

Sometimes the travel is even greater. But the results are there. So if you say I'm going for minority, I want to help minorities, you cannot say school choice. You are against school choice. Those two don't gel.

Absolutely. And it's funny, I mean, I grew up in Queens and I can I don't know anybody who had a longer commute than I had. It was an hour and 45 minutes on two buses within my same borough. So where'd you go? Cardozo High School.

OK. Yeah. So so charter school now, when I was a teenager, charters were I mean, it wasn't a thing, you know, back in the late 90s, early 2000s. But now, again, being a D.C., roughly about 45 percent of D.C. kids go to charter school. So they have grown in popularity.

And, you know, they want them, but they got green lighters to do more. But there's a huge slowdown right now. Yes.

With this governor not doing it, not funding it. Yes. And it was the same when de Blasio was here and he was standing.

He was the worst. Right. Again, Success Academy and other charters that wanted to expand.

And you have waiting lists, thousands of people long because the parents want that education and want opportunities for their kids. So the debate that was that I have in the book, Teddy and Booker T. has been W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. And by W.E.B. Du Bois' primary complaint about Booker T. was too compliant.

He was too accommodating. But he says, no, no, I got a school in the south, segregated south, where there's a poll taxes and there's lynchings and there's Jim Crow. I'm looking to make it better and educate people.

Fifteen hundred at a time and give them life skills and trade as well as academics. And where do you fall? Someone who's practical, even though there were things wrong around him.

I have to pick my fights or a guy like W.E.B. Du Bois, who's a highly educated guy who formed the NAACP. So they're both highly educated.

Of course, of course. Booker T. Washington went to Hampton University. I'm the type of person where I'm hesitant to judge too harshly the men and women who came before me with with today's current state, which everybody was like that. So so I understand why both of them were making the arguments that they were making. Now, to me, I'm very much in the mold of Booker T. Washington.

I'm a cast down your bucket where you are. I'm a person who believes in industrial education. And it wasn't as if Booker T. Washington wasn't teaching his students. He was just teaching his students a different range of skills. They were literally building Tuskegee Institute as they were learning.

Even made the bricks. Correct. Correct.

And he understood that there were great lessons in that moral lessons, lessons in industry and thrift and hard work. So I'm a person who thinks that he is his or his reputation is not nearly where it should be within the black community. Correct. Within the black community. That doesn't mean that Du Bois didn't have points. And I think that it's hard to be a full citizen when you don't have voting rights, when you don't have equal protection under the law.

But I think it is a mistake to believe that political representation can bring you anything approaching social or economic equality in this country. As crazy as it was back there, Frederick Douglass escapes to freedom and Booker T. Washington, born a slave. They both love the country. Right. And they want to make it better. Can we can we learn from that?

Absolutely. And I wrote a piece a number of years ago contrasting the sort of anti-racism, quote unquote, of Ibram Kendi and Frederick Douglass. And one of the things that I said is that both Douglass wielded a rhetorical blade that was meant to prune, not to destroy. And people like Kendi, for them, everything is is the language of destruction, deconstruct, decolonize, destroy, dismantle, because those are the people that think our country is is inherently evil from from, you know, root to fruit.

And we need a new founding, a new anthem, a new flag. And what they want is massive social upheaval. Now, they don't mind being paid very handsomely. Now, the anti-capitalist money is gone, by the way. Correct.

But they will take all of your donations. So so I think there's something to be learned in the lesson of Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass. So you have a couple more minutes around. Absolutely.

OK, good. And then we have Eric Prince at the bottom of the hour. There's something going on right on Venezuela's doorstep that should concern all of us.

Don't move. Brian Kilmitio. I'm Dana Perino. Join me for my brand new podcast, Perino on Politics, as we analyze the twenty twenty four election cycle. Make sure you subscribe to this series on Fox News podcast dot com or wherever you download podcast and leave me a rating and review. Information you want.

Truth you demand. This is the Brian Kilmit show. Delano Squire is still here for a couple more minutes. Research fellow over at the Heritage Foundation with the DeVos Center for Life, Religion and Family. Delano, one thing that I don't go heavily into in the book, Teddy and Booker T. What you think is important is his partnership with Julian Rosenwald, a founder of Sears.

Correct. And they worked together to create, I think, over 5000 schools across the south to educate African-Americans. Oftentimes with those schools were started with money from ex-slaves.

And I think, you know, probably over four million dollars of donations from the community. So it's one of those things where you can't get around to education is one of the most important tools to upper mobility. So I always hear people, I'd love to get the black vote. But Republicans and Democrats, men and women want to get the black vote. What is the key to the black vote? You can't generalize. I get it.

Right. But what do people want to hear? What don't they want to hear? So for me, I think of a couple of things. I think of the home, the schoolhouse and the state house.

All right. I think about family, education and law, particularly public safety. And many black voters don't feel safe in their own communities and are looking for politicians to address that.

Particularly anyone who lives anywhere near the city. Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, D.C. Also, obviously, black voters are interested in an economy and an economy that's working for them. And also, I think education is one of the most important and critical ways to reach black voters, as it is with any other vote. So the school choice would do that.

The other thing would do, you have to support law enforcement to do that. Correct. Can that be a double edged sword? Can that be the wrong message?

It certainly can. And one of the big parts that people will talk about in terms of getting the black vote is the fact that black conservatives for well over 30 years have been maligned and disregarded. I mean, Hakeem Jeffries, when he was in college, was calling Clarence Thomas a house Negro. So one of the things that we have to be honest about is the sort of low social value that being a black conservative has within the larger black community. If you can attack someone like Tony Dungy, who's pro-life, pro-fatherhood, pro-marriage and liken him to a white supremacist for talking at a March for Life rally, which a black journalist in the Washington polls actually did do, you know that anybody else, whether it's Tim Scott or Byron McDonald.

The country's doomed. And he's adopted by 12 different black kids. Exactly. Foster kids.

And sometimes full-time adoption. Right. One of the finest Americans you will ever meet. Absolutely. Great coach.

That too. All the fame. Any really good broadcaster. Delano Squires, thanks so much. Great to know you. Thank you for having me. And thanks so much for reading Teddy and Booker T. Thank you for having me. All right, listen. And by the way, I hope to see everybody in Dayton on Friday, Saturday in Kentucky, Sunday in Charlotte, North Carolina. Go to briankillme.com and just get your reservation. Eric Prince coming up next, a story you have to hear.