The following is a rough transcript which has not been revised by The Jim Rutt Show or Pamela Denise Long. Please check with us before using any quotations from this transcript. Thank you.
Jim: Today’s guest is Pamela Denise Long. Though she goes by Denise. She is the principal project manager and implementation consultant at Youthcentrix. She holds an EDD in organizational development, an MS in Learning and Cognition, and a BHS in Allied Health. Denise is an award-winning business consultant for implementing trauma-informed diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism. She’s a seventh-generation American, a radical Republican and a media personality. Featured at Newsweek, Fox News and other media outlets. You can follow her on Twitter at @PDeniseLong or on LinkedIn at Pamela Denise Long. I’ve been following her on Twitter for quite a while. It’s got a quite interesting stream of ideas. Of course, at the moment, I’m on a six-month sabbatical away from all that social media nonsense.
Anyway, welcome Denise.
Denise: Hi, Jim. It’s good to be with you again. I’m so glad you follow me on Twitter. It’s going to be an interesting 10, 11 weeks at this point before election day.
Jim: Yeah. Frankly, I’m mostly off social media, so by design at this time so that I don’t have to roll around in it too much. Though I’ll confess, I do check in every two or three days, see if I got direct messages and such. And I will say I read a few of my messages and not too many. Anyway, Denise is a returning guest. She appeared on EP 196 in an episode titled Affirmative Action for Freedmen. And in fact, I suspect the term freedmen will come up in our discussion. It’s a term I have come to really like because it was an idea I had in my head, but I didn’t have a concise way of saying it. And I now started using it myself.
So Denise, maybe you could start the show off by explaining what you mean by freedman and why you think it’s an important distinction?
Denise: Yeah, I’m happy to do that. I wish that I had the wisdom to coin the expression, but it was actually the radical Republicans of the reconstruction era who applied this really ancient expression to the freed slaves and their descendants. The freedmen were those American Negroes who were emancipated from chattel slavery. There were also free Negroes in the nation at the time, Frederick Douglass, for example, who had been enslaved but fought his way literally to freeing himself. So both of those expressions are terms that can accurately describe the multi-generational founding Black population of the United States of America. And we apply that term today to the descendants of US slaves. So those folks who go back to the founding here.
Jim: Why is that an important distinction? Today in America we have people who are descendant, who have some or more ancestry from Africa, and many are freedmen but others aren’t.
Denise: It’s an important expression because we’re at this point in American history and our trajectory where when you’d said Black back in 1860, you were talking about people who were free Negroes and/or slaves. And so now with mass immigration where some potentially 20 plus percent of the black population in the United States are actually immigrants, it’s important to distinguish the fact that when we talk about the black stuff and the African-American stuff and the Black American stuff that’s on the books in legislation, judicial action, judicial decisions and executive orders, we’re talking about that enslaved population who is due the redress that’s for black people, but we don’t delineate who is black and what their lineage is. So the stuff that should be going to the descendants of US slaves is now going to anyone who can claim any measure of Blackness in the United States.
There’s even a story of a guy from India who shaved off his hair and pretended to be black in order to get into medical school. And of course now we have this huge conversation in the political arena about what does it mean to be black and why does it matter when it comes to our nation state and its obligations to that founding enslaved population?
Jim: In our previous conversation, it came up that in elite university affirmative action prior to the Supreme Court decision that outlawed that, something like 45, 50% of the beneficiaries of that affirmative action, which to my mind, the only morally proper purpose for that kind of affirmative action would be as recompense for 300 years or so of really shabby treatment of our black brothers and sisters. And half of that was going to people who were not freedmen, but were immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean, et cetera. Is that still what you think to be the case?
Denise: That has been the complaint for quite some time, and we’re seeing that the redress as well as the access and opportunities that should be conferred to the founding black population, R&D going to people who haven’t bore the burdens that warrant redress in the first place. So someone who comes from Nigeria and at the top of their game in Nigeria, no trauma, no Jim Crow, two parent households, parents who are both educated and all this stuff, a very un-Black American life, can come over here and of course do well because they haven’t borne the burdens and the access to those programs are designed to redress the burden.
So yes, I do believe that most of the people in Ivy League universities who are considered black are indeed not the founding Black American population.
Jim: And then hence the need for the term freedmen so that we can say that if we’re going to redress 300 years of shitstorm that was dumped on black people by white people mostly, then we should be targeting that redress to the freedmen population, not just to anybody who happens to have African ancestry.
Denise: Absolutely. And anyone who can code is black because recall, I said the Indian guy shaved off his hair and voila, he was suddenly black and nobody could tell the difference. And it’s really important, Jim, when we get into the politics of this as well, people talk about small government and how affirmative action and civil rights was supposed to fix everything. Well, the reality is in 1965, the Hart-Celler Immigration Act opened our borders and removed country quotas to the point where basically anybody could come into the United States. And what we’ve seen as a result of that is that the freedmen population, again, that founding black population who not only endured the 246 years of enslavement, but also the 100 years of Jim Crow that followed, we have been displaced in terms of political power, but also have been erased where anyone who looks black, who codes this black, can put on our ethnicity and get the redress that we deserve.
Jim: Yeah, an interesting thing was the election of Barack Obama, who I voted for enthusiastically. I liked him. I tried to make this point to people that with the American lens about race, people just couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. But I had done a little research on him and I said, “Barack Obama is not the descendant of slaves at all. He’s from the Luo people of East Africa.”And People don’t realize how big Africa is and how old it is. It’s the cradle of humanity. Humanity goes back there. There’s more diversity in Africa than there is in the rest of the world put together. People in Africa are very, very different. People in Southern Africa from Namibia are way more different than the people of Senegal than the people of Sicily are from the people of Norway. And most Americans don’t know that is Africa black.
Anyway, I was trying to educate people and I pointed out to them that Obama is from the Luo, people who are Nilotic, they’re the tall skinny herdsmen that you see, the Maasai warrior types. They’re all up and down the whole rift valley of East Africa.
Denise: Kenya in particular.
Jim: Yeah, in Kenya.
Denise: He’s referred to himself as the first Kenyan American president. And that would be a true description because his mother is actually a white American.
Jim: From the Midwest, right? The other thing I pointed out, the irony of all this, again, lost on most Americans, is that the Luo people are Nilotic. One of the big subdivisions of African ethnicity, while 99% of freedmen are Bantu. The Bantu and the Nilotic have been at the most extreme war for a thousand years. It even has a parallel in the biblical story of Cain and Able, which I’ll get to in a minute. The Nilotic peoples until very recently, and still many of them are, herdsmen. They have cattle, they have sheep, they have goats, etc, and that they’re herders.
While the Bantu people also very interesting, they independently invented iron about 1100 years ago. They come up with a new technique to make iron that was not the same as how iron was made in Europe or in Asia. And having that advantage of having iron when nobody else in Africa had it except as trade goods, small amounts as trade goods, they expanded very rapidly as farmers because they had steel implements to help them farm. And they were ferocious warriors because they had iron the other guys didn’t, and they expanded throughout much Africa. They collided with the Nilotics who were also great warrior peoples, and they fought very viciously.
And when I go back to Cain and Abel in the Bible, as it turns out, Cain was a farmer and Abel was a herder.
Denise: Well, look at that.
Jim: And so the Bantu-Nilotic conflict is an exact parallel of that conflict and some things that have made the news, the horrendous genocide in Rwanda. Hutus versus Tutsis. Well, guess what? The Hutus are Bantus and the Tutsis are Nilotic. These facts about the real ethnicities in Africa are completely lost on the American people. And the huge irony of the first Black American president being Nilotic in a country that’s 99% Bantu.
Denise: That is very, very intriguing. And I didn’t know most of what you said there in terms of the history of it. Of course, about Rwanda and the like. I think this is supposed to be the age of truth. Is it not? Where the things that have been obscured and shrouded are supposed to be revealed? And I’m seeing so much of that happening and I’m here for it. I think we have so many illusions about what has been and what is, and it’s time for us to get clear.
Jim: And in this particular case, it’s an oversimplification, right? Your ancestries came from Africa, however they came here and whenever they came, interesting point about your Nigerians for instance, they’re now about the richest immigrant and best educated immigrant group in the United States. 70% are college grads and they’re a very elite population. And the idea of them getting redress programs that were supposed to be aimed at people who went through slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination even thereafter, it’s just like makes no sense, just because they happened to be from Africa.
Denise: Well, and it also makes no sense considering, when you talk about where the slave ships were filled, we’re talking about Nigeria. So there was this infamous at this point, I think op-ed for the New York Times or WaPo or New Yorker, I can’t remember which news magazine it was for, that was titled My Rich or Infamous Slave Trading Nigerian grandfather. So it’s insane that the descendants of slave traders would come to the United States. Of African slave traders, would come to the United States and reap the benefits of the descendants of the people that they traded into slavery.
Jim: I haven’t thought about that point. That makes the point even stronger, doesn’t it?
Denise: Yes, it does. Yes, it does.
Jim: Well, so anyway, with all that as background, the reason I reached out to Denise is, I thought you’d have something to say about the looks like Sherlock nomination of Kamala Harris. What is your reaction to that event in the news?
Denise: Kamala Harris is an interesting phenomenon and a metaphor for many things, political, in the United States, including what we just discussed, the idea of who is black and what does it mean when we ask that question, what is black and the like? And from the political standpoint, I am not surprised and had been saying for a while that Biden would actually step down. And I think whether it was planned or not, the way that his seeding the nomination to his, the obvious pick, which would be his vice president, who they’ve marketed as a black woman and an Asian woman from time to time as well, that he would advance her. Not surprised that that happened at all. Wise timing from a political perspective on actually making the announcement after Donald Trump, they’d already had the RNC, Trump had already picked his vice president, brilliant strategy on whose ever part, if it was strategy, a strategic to do it in that timing.
In regard to Kamala Harris though… And there’s this whole tutorial on how to say her name. She reminds me so much of Barack Obama. In that, both of her parents were immigrants. She was first generation born in the United States. She has citizenship through the Freedmen’s 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship. Original case law had made it clear that the 14th amendment was about free Negroes, Freedmen and their descendants. Not white people, not other people who try to get protections through the 14th amendment, but that’s how she has it. So she’s an anchor baby, is how we categorize that in reality being that having a child born in the territories of the United States, anchors the child and thus their parents to the United States and is access. She’s like Obama in that. She has a very international sort of upbringing, which is very not Black American. So she spent a good amount of time in India with her mother. She grew up from I think age 12 through high school in Canada. She speaks French fluently. She was in Montreal, and she was from a family that was pretty well-to-do.
I think her dad’s an economist, and her mom was a scientist that was recruited to Canada from India. So just an intriguing and very parallel, very similar upbringing to Barack Obama. And the question is, is Kamala Harris black? In the sense that we talk about being black in the United States of America.
Jim: And this is where distinctions are useful. Clearly she’s black. If by black you mean you have a significant percentage of ancestry that came from Africa. It appears about half.
Denise: Is that clear?
Jim: If you want to use the word black, I think that’s how most people use it. But most people don’t have the distinction between the freedmen and the bigger circle of all people of African ancestry and then a subset being those who are descendant from American slaves. So I don’t know what term I would use for the broader package. Well, there’s certainly a term. I think black is it, but we confuse freedmen and black. That’s the problem here. At least that’s my take on it.
Denise: I think there are two things that are happening. So one, when we say racially black, and we talk about a lot. So I’m super mindful of the context in which we are having this conversation. The fact that I’m a Black American woman, seventh gen, and you’re a white guy. And we’re talking about this woman who is… Her race is being questioned, and what does it mean to be black? I don’t know that Kamala has a lot “Of African ancestry.” Her dad is Indo-Jamaican. And so what is his family history? How much Jamaican, actual Jamaican does he have in his line? I don’t think he is an actual Rastafari, Jim. He’s not. He’s Indo-Jamaican.
Jim: Okay. I had not done that last bit of research. It’s news to me. That’s useful information.
Denise: So Kamala is more Indian than she is Jamaican. And even with that Jamaican, is that Black Jamaican, Rasta Jamaican? Or is that because I was born in Jamaica, I’m Jamaican?
Jim: It’s like Elon Musk being the richest African-American, right?
Denise: Hello. Right. Something like that. Yeah, exactly that. Because, no.
Jim: On the other hand, it is pretty clear that Kamala chose to identify as black more relatively young age, and she did go to Howard University, the Harvard of the historical black colleges and universities. So I do think… What’s your reaction to the fact that she has taken some serious life actions to identify with the black part of her heritage, whatever percentage it happens to be?
Denise: I don’t begrudge a person wanting to find their racial identity and what it means. So we have to realize, I don’t remember exactly how old Kamala is, but she’s…
Jim: 59, I think.
Denise: Yeah. So she’s many years older than I am. I don’t begrudge her wanting to hang with black people, because we’re amazing. But I also, and I think at the time where she was coming of age, the concepts about racial identity, and again, what it means to be black and who is black and what does it mean when you’re biracial and you don’t quite fit in, because she doesn’t look like a white woman, even though her mother’s birth certificate or whatever says white or whatever. And so there’s this complexity that’s happening around the times that she was identifying racially. So I don’t begrudge her that. I think the bigger question for me is, what does it mean from a political policy perspective when one’s internal racial identity conundrums and questioning and all of that stuff, does it influence how they show up from a public policy perspective?
So she has both an immigrant background and a non-Black-American Freedman background and a biracial background. And I think there were complexities for her related to those things. So to what extent does that affect her ability to speak assertively, confidently and with her whole chest as the people say, in the interest of the American Freedman, or do some parts of her upbringing and her political party prevent her from providing specific public policy and acknowledgement of the Freedman and the nation’s obligations to us? Because she is fumbled bad when she was running for president. When asked about reparation, for example, and a few other things.
Jim: All right, well, don’t you give us your thoughts about all that.
Denise: When she was being interviewed by TheGriot, they asked her, “What are your thoughts on reparation?” She went into, “As Democrats often do, this whole litany of the history of, well, we had 246 years of slavery followed by a 100 years of Jim Crow, followed by lynching and yada, yada, yada”, all the things that we learned in fifth grade social studies. But then she got into this point, and I don’t beat her up about this as much as some people do, but she got into this point where she says, basically whatever we do for black people is going to benefit everybody. So I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m going to do something that only benefits black people. No. And the attitude around it was little stank. But then when she gets in front of other audiences, including people of Jewish descent, Hispanics, lesbian, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and immigrants, she is very specific to put their whole name and only them.
There’s no black and brown, there’s no LGBTQ and freedmen. It’s only that population she’s speaking to. She can say that she’s going to do something specific for them. But when it comes to the American freedmen, it’s mealy mouth and it’s, “Well, let me find a way to massage this”, whatever. And the Black American community has taken great exception to her unwillingness, inability to speak directly to the freedmen about public policy redress. And I think that’s one of the reasons why there are some people… You’re not on social media, so you maybe haven’t seen this trend, but there are black folk who are taking pictures of themselves saying, “I am a Black American man or Black American woman of descendant of US slaves, and I’m never going to vote for Kamala Harris.”
Because specifically of that type of video that she put out. And also, I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a mass shooting at, I believe it was a workplace involving Asian Americans right after Biden and Harris were elected, and both Biden and Harris showed up to that environment. And her Asian-American-ness was emphasized at that point in time. So there’s this thing that they do where she’s Asian sometimes and then she’s black when she needs to be, that I think has become offensive to the Black American community, because it feels like usury of black race and cosplaying, as the people like to say, putting on our ethnicity in order to use and leverage our ethnicity rather than serving us and our interest.
Jim: This is an interesting question. It’s in a question that’s going to keep coming up more and more and more as we become a multiracial society. The intermarriage rates between the races now is pretty high. Between Asians and whites, it’s a third. Between Hispanics and whites, it’s a third. Between Blacks and whites, I think it’s about 13 or 15%, but increasing. And eventually, the future of America is beige. And this ability for anyone to say that they’re purebred anything, will be fairly much a thing of the past, just as I love to point this out, people forget this or don’t know because they’re too young, god damn it. I’m old enough that my father could… I’m an old dude, I’m 70. I heard this from my father who grew up in inner city Patterson, New Jersey, when it was a patchwork of ethnicities. He was in the Irish neighborhood and there was an Italian neighborhood and there was a Greek neighborhood. And he said, literally, you could get your kicked by being in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time by other white people.
And my crotch of the old grandmother banned her son from her house for 20 years for marrying an Italian woman, even though she was a good Catholic, just like granny was. But an Italian. [inaudible 00:22:15]. And today, the white people are all so mixed up. The idea of getting your kicked you’re in an Italian neighborhood instead of an Irish neighborhood is laughable. And I foresee the day when that will be the case with race in America, that everybody will be a bit of this and a bit of that. And just like white people sit around and occasionally we’ll talk about their ancestry. Mine’s totally mixed up. It’s Irish, German, Polish, Norwegian, English, Scottish, and 1% that no one quite knows what the hell it is. And we’ll all be that way, but it’ll be race instead of ethnicity. And so maybe what she’s going through is just the first stages of this beigeification of America, and maybe we should have more sympathy for her.
Denise: Well, I don’t really know how to address that. Here’s what I would say is, most Black Americans… When I say Black American, I’m talking about Freedmen, the descendants of US slaves are already mixed. I have 13% European DNA, and I know that I have some European ancestors. I also have Native American ancestry proven by family records, but also by genetics. Even Korean and a few other things as well. So we’ve always been mixed up and we’ve always known about that mixing. And really what it gets down to is, we’re not necessarily focusing on you’re not us. And we don’t like you because you’re not us. What we’re really talking about is, when it is about fairness and equity and the delivery of the nation’s obligations to the proper people, to whom they should go. It’s really about resources. That’s it and that’s all. We have embraced people. The Black American community have embraced people of all races and all ethnicities.
But when it gets down to the politics of public policy and access to an opportunity, there are only so many positions at universities. There are only so many jobs that are being offered. It’s really getting down to a competition of resources for people who shouldn’t be competing with the Negro Freedmen anyway in the first place.
Jim: That’s the state of play today. But we’re in a transition period where come back at a 100 years and we’ll all be all mixed up. And will it even make sense to say that someone is a Freedman when they’re, let’s say a quarter or an eighth of Freedman ancestry.
Denise: Catch me in a 100 years, because right now I have been here again, seven plus generations since the 1700s. And as far as I can tell from the paperwork, I don’t have any immigrant ancestry that is not white. So I have white ancestors, but that is it. And there are only a few of them. So in a 100 years, if we focus on fully delivering on the post-Civil war social contract, and affirmative action as John F. Kennedy originally intended it in 1968, we will be further along in our nation and maybe we won’t need to look at lineage. But if we do, then we still should. If we do need it, we should use it. And I’d love to see Lineage take a more forward seat for the next a 100 years. Maybe we can get further along.
Jim: Okay. Another thing I’m going to ask you, this is kind of interesting. When you look at the people of African ancestry who have risen to top positions, surprisingly high percentage of them are non-Freedmen. And I think of Harris, Obama and Colin Powell as three examples. Of course there’s also been a number of people of Freedmen ancestry, Doug Wilder here in our state of Virginia. First black governor. Condoleezza Rice, first black, I think first woman secretary of state. And of course, one of my heroes, Clarence Thomas. I’ve read his memoirs, and it’s an amazingly invigorating story about someone who overcame deep deprivation to rise to one of the highest positions in America. What is it you think about? Why is that seeming differential that versus 20% of the population, in fact, by when they were coming up, it might’ve been 10% of the population yet, so many more of these people of non-Freedmen background seem to reach the highest levels in our society?
Denise: Yeah. No, this is a great question. I think a couple of things, and let me try to remember the two of them or try to keep my mind focused on the two of them. One, I think it’s the times in which we’re living in the 1900s where we started to count such things about the first. And that’s when immigration became a thing. No black people or people who looked African were migrating to the United States prior to 1900 because slavery happening. Wasn’t nobody trying to willingly get into that. And so when you look at that, when you break that out and look at the first, what you’ll see is, there were quite a few. The Republican Party for example, and the elected officials who came out of slavery, who became elected officials in the United States, in the Republican Party, there were plenty of freedmen, literal freedmen who were slaves, but then became elected officials and free Negroes who were actual firsts in that way.
When you think about Frederick Douglass and the like, when you look at the 1900s, where people… And this has come out where Robin DiAngelo actually said this, and I just tweeted about it. She made it very clear that she found, even within herself that she preferred interacting with immigrants, because there was no sense of animus there. They hadn’t had any national entanglements, racial entanglements, where you’re wondering, “Does this person like white people? Do they have a resentment toward me?” That kind of stuff. So there’s a tension between Black Americans and White Americans that I think sometimes white people prefer immigrants and immigrants come with a freer spirit. They don’t have all the baggage that we have, because the problems that present the relational issues haven’t been fully addressed. So what we’ve been calling for in the Black American community is, I’m not interested, and I don’t know any black people who are interested in hating white people who are interested in holding resentments to our countrymen.
What we would like is for white people to acknowledge the reality of not just the history, but also the ways in which those things still exist. Those problems still exist and get about the business of actually ameliorating them, get about the business of addressing them. So to your point, in the 100 years, not needing to look at lineage, maybe we’ll get there if we get real about where we’ve been and where we currently are as well.
Jim: Makes sense. Now, let’s talk about a person who’s a blend of the two. Hakeem Jeffries, the first person of African ancestry to be minority leader. And if his party wins the majority speaker of the house, I went and did look him up. Hakeem Jeffries, curious name. He’s three quarters Freedman ancestry and one quarter Cape Verde Island ancestry, which is an island right off the coast of Africa, settled by African people. What does your lens say about Hakeem Jeffries?
Denise: I’ve seen some of what Hakeem Jeffries has stated and put out, and I’ve seen some of his speeches and the like. Again, I don’t begrudge a person for their ancestry. I think the question for me becomes, do you, or Westmore, for example, who’s also well respected, very, very charismatic speaker, really focused on changing outcomes in Baltimore and in Maryland for black people broadly speaking, does any part of someone who is bi-ethnic or multi-ethnic when it comes to black, being black or of African descent, does any part of their bi-ethnicity or their multi-ethnicity prevent them from acknowledging and redressing the obligations owed to the freedmen? If any part of your history, your social network, your family keeps you from acknowledging the fact that the descendants of US slaves are in the United States and still have obligations owed to us, then you’re a problem. Not because I begrudge your ethnicity, but because your ethnicity and your loyalty to your immigrant class prevents you from redressing the very people, whose legacy made it possible for you to be here and have those accolades that you just mentioned. The first of this and the first of that.
Jim: Got it. All right. Well, let’s move towards the obvious punchline here. Are you going to vote for Kamala?
Denise: So here is what I have stated. I have literally advocated with the Trump campaign directly. I shared information with stakeholders in DeSantis’s campaign and even pushed for the same kind of information to the Biden-Harris campaign. I am interested in specific policies that benefit Americans first. And if I get that from Harris, who would be basically continuing the Biden platform, so she’s not quite an incumbent. She’s a promoted incumbent, I guess, I don’t know, then that’s great. If Trump finally delivers on the conversations that we had last year, that’s great. If not, I’m open. I’m open. I’m even open to voting for Robert Kennedy. Do I think he stands a chance of actually winning numerically? I don’t know about that. I am happy to see that the Trump campaign is speaking about lineage. I want to see some platinum public policy about the lineage of American freedmen. So convince me, Courtney, I’m willing to vote. I’m registered and I’m going to show up.
Jim: All right. From my perspective, at least that’s an improvement from last time we talked when you were a pretty strong Trumper. I still think Trump is a totally reprehensible character and people ask me about it. Well, what about his views on this and that? Yes, there are some things I agree with Trump more, maybe even a few more than the other side, but I have views on policy on both sides. But to my mind, he is a moral monstrosity. If he applied for a job in the mail room of one of my companies, I would not hire him.
Denise: Wow.
Jim: And if I would not hire a guy to work in the mail room, why the hell should I hire him to be President of the United States? So I’m glad that you’re at least open to voting the other way.
Denise: Oh, yeah. And frankly, I always have been open. I did not envision, and I’m not confident now that the Democrats will be willing and able to speak to the stuff that we just talked about. Lineage specificity, immigration moderation, so that it’s more sensible because just letting people walk into the country is insane. And it is a national security risk, those types of things. I also, as I talked about before, I do not support the trans agenda where just because somebody, for whatever reason, reason of their own creation decides that they’re a woman, they get to go into women’s spaces and kickbox women and do all the things. So I am looking for more sensible policy. Now what does concern me is Project 2025. And I did an annotated reading of Project 2025, December through January. So there were five Twitter spaces that I held where we read an annotated version of that from beginning to end.
So when it comes to Trump, what concerns me is that, even though he is touting Agenda 47 as his actual agenda, the reality is that the very people who created, that masterminded it, who laid out the aspects of Project 2025 are also going to be the people who are helping to implement his campaign. So those thoughts, those ideas, those leanings aren’t going to go away. Do I want those people in power? And the answer is, hell no. And then in addition to that, I am concerned about Trump appointing, so-called Conservative, who I call Confederate Judges. What I do not need is people on the bench, who are going to undermine the legacy of the descendants of US slaves like John Roberts saying, for example, we no longer need the Voting Rights Act and whatnot for Southern states to submit their changes to election law, to the federal government because state’s rights have always been geared toward undermining civil rights for Negroes.
So Trump has a long way to go to convince me to vote for him. And so far he’s failing at that because of his own words. So maybe it’s the lesser of two evils for me this election.
Jim: Well, I’m glad to hear that. I do remember you were quite strong for Trump last time we chatted, and I was going, “She seems like a smart lady, but how come she can’t see through that turd?”
Denise: When did we have our last conversation, Jim?
Jim: August 24th, 2023.
Denise: August 24th, 2023. I was literally in conversation with the Trump campaign, and they were very open to what I was saying. And I have been saying the same thing. The three point plan to Unite America, relaunching the Freedmen’s Bureau immigration moderation, making sure that our education system produces citizens who can make the poetry on paper, real life ethos and milieu of the nation. They aren’t doing that now. And in his own words, he’s convinced me that they’re not going to. He could change his mind because Kamala Harris has thrown a whole wrench in their whole plan. But it is one thing to promise it. It’s another thing to actually deliver.
Jim: Got it. That’s very well said. As we know, politicians are great at promising things.
Denise: Yeah, absolutely.
Jim: Not so good at delivering. We have, at least in my lifetime now, 60 years of politicians saying one thing and doing another. All right, any final thoughts?
Denise: Yeah. One of the things I’ve been delighted about, Jim, and I’m so glad we had this conversation, is there was a poll that just came out where it showed that there’s been a change in just a few months that increasing number of Black Americans plan to actually show up to the polls and vote. It increased from like 58% to like 74%. I’m thrilled to see that. I think every American needs to be registered to vote, and every American needs to show up and decide actively, who do you want to lead our nation at this critical, critical time in national security and evolution of, are we going to be a United States? Are we going to be a United Nation, or are we going to continue to let the extremists on the left and the right derail the evolution of our country? So I’d love to talk to you again after the election. I’m sure there’ll be a lot to say.
Jim: Well, I want to thank Pamela Denise Long for yet another extremely interesting conversation. Let’s book that. Let’s have a conversation sometime after the election and get your thoughts on what happened. And I also want to find out who you actually voted for.
Denise: And I will tell you for sure, let’s do it.
Jim: All righty.