Burgess Owens, former NFL star and author of the book Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps, joined The Glenn Beck Program on Friday to address the current state of race relations across America and what role, if any, the NAACP has played.
Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:
GLENN: Burgess Owens is an NFL legend and the author of a book Liberalism: Or How to Turn Good Men Into Whiners, Weenies, and Wimps. And really tells it like it is and is a good friend of the program.
Hello, Burgess, how are you, sir?
BURGESS: Glenn, good talking with you again, my friend. Looking forward to our discussion today for sure.
GLENN: I want to talk to you a little bit about what's happening on the streets of North Carolina, what's happening on the streets of Tulsa. But first, your thoughts on Betty Shelby, the police officer being charged with manslaughter in the first degree.
BURGESS: You know, I haven't had a chance to get any real information on what's happening there, what's happening in Tulsa. So I'm just going to -- I'm going to hold off and make my decision on my conclusion on that until I can get a little more information. I do have a very strong impression about Charlotte. I'd love to talk to you about that.
GLENN: Well, hang on just a second, I've understood from the alt-right, that we're now living in a post-fact world and that's a good thing. I mean, you should be able to comment without facts, Burgess.
All right. So let's talk about -- let's talk about Charlotte. Because yesterday afternoon, I saw a press conference with the NAACP. And the NAACP was there in Charleston, South Carolina. Kind of trying to whip things up, when there was a shooting -- oh, no, no. South Carolina, when they were trying to whip up the -- after the shooting in the church.
JEFFY: Right.
GLENN: Remember when we went?
PAT: Charleston, yeah.
GLENN: And they were doing the same thing. Yeah, in Charleston. And now, in Charlotte, yesterday, they were doing the same in North Carolina. Can you comment a little bit on the NAACP?
BURGESS: Yeah, well, the NAACP, you have to understand, they're not trying to find justice. They're not trying to find fairness or even bring American people together. They have one issue and one thing that they're after right now. At the end of the day, they are shameless in breeding black voters. They want to get the black community up in arms and angry, more hopeless than they've already made them, so they go out and vote in November. At the end of the day, that is their goal.
It didn't matter what happened. In this case, here's a black man, a black policeman, who shot a black man with an armed -- a firearm. You have black police chief. You have a white Democrat mayor. All that is a perfect scenario for our affirmative action community that we have today. But yet it all takes in our community today, six weeks out, is for some black person to get shot. It doesn't matter why. Is to have the NAACP and their group trying to get in and rev up their voters.
GLENN: You've talked about the history of the NAACP that I don't think most people know. You talk about it in your book. And it's fascinating.
BURGESS: Yeah, it is -- the an interesting process when you understand the stealth that's been going on in our nation for a long, long time.
For those who are just hearing for the first time, the NAACP, back in 1910, when it was formed, was not formed by black people. It was formed by 21 white, socialist, atheist, Marxist, race-control Democrats. It was an environment at the time -- keep in mind, during that time, the race -- the black race was one of the most competitive, industrious, patriotic, Republican communities in our country.
And so in order to get into that community to do the things they needed to do, to take us down the route they have, they needed to use stealth, and they needed to use the face of another black person, W.E. DeBois, who is also a socialist and communist.
And that is actually what is happening today. It's a playbook they've used for a long time.
Today, they use the black BET to message out anti-police, anti-white messaging. And keep in mind, look at the people that are making the biggest noise. I can guarantee that they always have the same source: Black Entertainment Television, which is actually owned by white liberal Democrats, the Blackstones and Viacom, who have been messaging the black community for a long, long time to get them where they are today.
GLENN: So let me ask you about this: Here we have this police officer in Tulsa, who is first degree manslaughter. Going to be charged with that. And I don't know the situation anymore than anybody else does. I think every single shooting should be looked into.
BURGESS: Yes.
GLENN: But we also know black officers are much more likely to shoot and discharge their firearm than a white officer is. And we also know there has been an increase of, what is it? A 20 percent increase of violence and killings of -- of officers in the last year. And nobody seems to pay attention to that.
What you have is a situation to where the -- the officers -- black and white -- are going to be paralyzed with fear of doing anything, or they're going to get in trouble. And here's where I think the black community loses. If I'm a -- if I'm a cop and I'm called into a predominantly black neighborhood and, you know, there's something -- gunfire or something else. I'm thinking I'm saying, "I'm not going. I'm not going." Or if I go, I'm staying way away from this, because I don't want to be involved. I'm going to lose in this.
BURGESS: Well, you know, Glenn, the thing is, when you look at who has been hurt by this whole process, it is the black community. Not only -- and it's in a couple of ways. Not only for those innocent black -- those in the community that really do need the help and support. Because not only are the criminals -- the criminal element being empowered, encouraged. But you have again -- in this case, you have policemen who really want to do the right thing, but are afraid of not being backed up, not going in.
It is really a shame to see this dual process of division. And it comes down to one simple thing: This is why it's so devious, what's happening now.
We have a president who's been president for eight years. We have the second black attorney general after eight years. And it's interesting that the message that's being given to everybody -- America, is that the black race is truly inept. The black race cannot on its own stand up and best the black -- the white race, who has been their oppressors for 150 years. And this is why, when we disconnect ourselves from our past, our history, you have a narrative, in which now we are sitting back as victims, supposedly waiting for politicians and white legislators to give us the right and the power to do what every other culture has done in this country. That is to rise up, become the best we can be, and develop great successful people to lead status.
GLENN: You know, Burgess, we were doing -- we're talking to Burgess Owens. He's the author of Liberalism. We were talking about families and the destruction of families. We were doing a serial on it. And the black family was, you know, by 1960, the strongest family unit in the country. Now it is by far the weakest.
And the turning point, strangely, seems to be the Johnson administration and the Great Society. Have you ever done any research -- because we -- this piqued my interest.
Gee, that seems strange. And wait a minute, Johnson was a huge progressive racist. I wonder who wrote the Great Society bill. I wonder if there were these racist progressives in there that wrote this maybe even intentionally to tear the black family apart, knowing that it would disintegrate. Do you think there's anything to that?
BURGESS: Glenn, I'll tell you. It's interesting because I've done my history and done some research. At every point along the last 100 years -- and keep in mind, when I talk about the hundred years since 1865, the black race was doing so well. In other words, we were --
GLENN: Yep.
BURGESS: Again, we had 50 percent of black Americans that were part of the middle class. We had a the highest percentage of entrepreneurs. All those things. We had the strongest commitment to marriage.
Every single facet of change happened because of Democratic policies. Whether it was the Davis-Bacon Act, which took the entrepreneurs out of the marketplace, with the high unemployment or minimum wage now that keeps young teenagers from actually ever getting experience and work.
Look at those -- those young people who are rioting, looting, and stealing, think about it. You're looking at young men who are not working, who have no hopes -- have not been educated. Have no hopes of working. They're all walking around with their pants down to their knees, and they're upset because they can't get ahead or they don't have an opportunity. That's been all accomplished through a change of self-perception through the white liberals at BET and the policies of liberals that have stopped this from moving forward, like we had in the early '60s.
GLENN: We have something going on, the Ferguson effect. I mean, if it -- do you believe, Burgess, that if the president would have come out and said, "Hey, we're going to look into Ferguson. I'm not going to comment on this. But stop the rioting that's -- you're burning down your own city. Stop it." If he came out strong, do you think we would be in the situation we are in right now?
BURGESS: I'd say, Glenn -- we can look back in history and look at a man who had the greatest opportunity in the history of mankind to bring our country together.
The reason why white Americans and blacks voted for this man was because of the promise of getting past race.
We have never been more divided. More -- we're now turning black people into racists. Unapologetic racists.
And when you start to do that -- first of all, the blessings that go with anyone who has that kind of spirit goes away, very big time. And we cannot have conversations -- real reasonable conversations about how to get past this, until we get past the judgment that we now have of color. And we've got even worse than that -- we're now judging people based on the color of the uniform they're wearing.
GLENN: Yeah.
BURGESS: Now blue is becoming a racist call. That's how we've gone.
GLENN: But I'm looking at the Ferguson effect, which says now, since Ferguson, murders in the 50 biggest cities in the US have spiked 17 percent in the black community, as a result of cops being unwilling or reluctant to go in and police neighborhoods because of the fear of being labeled a racist. 17 percent jump in -- in murders in those communities.
That is a -- the liberals have been the champion of those who are crying racism.
BURGESS: Well, the thing you want to add to that -- and you're absolutely right. This is common sense. In all of us -- when we do our job, at the end of the day, we want to be with our family. We don't want to go into any situation or we come out with not good a chance of coming out alive. At the end of the day, we're dealing with a empathy-free liberalism does not care about the end result. It just cares about stealings and its goals. And, at the end of the day, we have more blacks now being hurt in so many different ways. And this has been the history of the Democratic Party. And so I -- I really do hope -- and this is where I think we have a conversation now, that as a total country, blacks and whites, we really start to look and hold these people accountable who have overseen the black misery that has happened over the last decades now.
GLENN: Burgess Owens, Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men Into Whiners, Weenies, and Wimps. Thanks so much for being on us, Burgess. Appreciate it.
BURGESS: Thank you, Glenn. Look forward to the opportunity to talk more as we move this thing forward.
GLENN: You bet.
Featured Image: Charlotte NAACP President Corine Mack, left, and Pastor Charles Jacobs pray where a man was shot the night before outside of the Omni Hotel September 22, 2016 in Charlotte, NC. Protests began on Tuesday night following the fatal shooting of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott at an apartment complex near UNC Charlotte. A state of emergency was declared overnight in Charlotte and a midnight curfew was imposed by mayor Jennifer Roberts. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)