Elder Statesman

He was a promising young lawyer when he quit to stat a business. It thrived. So he sold it, moved across the country, and became Los Angeles's most controversial talk radio host. When Larry Elder talks about opportunity, people listen.

Nick Gillespie & Steve Kurtz from the April 1996 issue

(Page 3 of 6)

Elder: So what? Frankly, people choose to live where they're comfortable. I mean, if the housing patterns were a result of discrimination on the part of real estate agents then that's one thing. But I see no evidence of that. Most of my friends who live in the Baldwin Hills and View Park areas of Los Angeles--which are predominantly black bourgeois areas--chose to live there because they want to live with other black people.

Reason: So you don't think there is redlining in real estate and bank loans?

Elder: It's crap, nonsense. Does redlining exist in the sense that there are certain geographical areas where insurers are less likely to insure, or people are less likely to live or invest in? Yeah, but there are also economic reasons for that. When you burn down your neighborhood, that's going to make insurance companies a little skittish. When [Rep.] Maxine Waters [D-Calif.], having witnessed a conflagration, refers to it as an "uprising" or "rebellion," rather than as a riot, and I'm in an insurance company and I'm listening to this, I'm a little concerned.

When I talk about blacks and whites getting along well, I'm talking about interaction. Is there a gap between the way blacks view America and the way whites view America? Absolutely. A huge gap. That's the significance of the O.J. Simpson trial. It shows how very differently blacks view the amount, extent, and intensity of racism in the country. I was struck by a Times Mirror poll that asked blacks to respond yes or no to the following question: In America, if you are willing to work hard, you can prosper. It was something like that. Blacks earning $50,000 a year or more said no to that proposition more frequently than did lower-class whites.

Reason: What explains that?

Elder: What explains it is a seething feeling that is fanned by black leadership that the system is rigged--"They're out to get you"--the great white oppressors lurk in the corner and will strike you down when they have an opportunity. That's the way a lot of blacks feel and it cuts across economic class. Blacks for the most part believe that racism remains a huge problem in America, that America remains corrupt, and the criminal justice system remains corrupt.

Reason: But didn't the O.J. Simpson trial show there are racist, incompetent cops?

Elder: Are there racist cops? Yeah. Are they pervasive? Not even close. Who's the bigger danger to blacks: the vicious minority of young black punks and thugs that terrorize the overwhelming majority of law-abiding innocent people in the inner city or the Mark Fuhrmans of the world? The burglar bars on every third house in the inner city aren't to keep Mark Fuhrman away.

Reason: But what about racism? What about something like the Denny's case, in which black Secret Servicemen were refused service?

Elder: A guy called me up the other day on the show. He was a black guy, owns his own business, and he flies first class all the time. On three occasions while flying, he feels he was a victim of discrimination. I say, "Tell me about one instance, sir." "Well, the plane was overbooked," he says. "A stewardess came up to me and she said, 'Sorry, sir, let me see your ticket.' I showed her my ticket, it was seat four, and she said, 'Well, this gentleman has seat number four.' She asked me to give it up." I asked the caller, "Did you give it up?" He said no. So he didn't give it up anyway. That was his evidence of discrimination while flying first class. I said, "Well, how do you know what went on in the stewardess's mind? Maybe she saw somebody who was less likely to give her a hard time, maybe because you're soft spoken, maybe because you're diminutive. I don't know. You don't know."

But let's assume that it was racism. I asked the caller, "How many years have you had your business?" "Seven years." "You fly first class all the time." "Yeah." "How many times would you say you fly a year?" "Three times, four times, a month." "So we're talking about 30-40 times a year, times seven. So you've flown first class 300 times and you've named three incidents that have happened to you that you think are racist. So 297 times nothing happened." So what are we talking about here--or when you mention the Denny's thing? How many times do you suppose the Secret Service agents have gone into a restaurant in their lives, how many times have they been refused a seat? So, it happens one time. These guys are probably 40 years old. So we go to war for that? I mean, I don't get it.

The other part of the equation is black paranoia, which is rampant in this country. Maya Angelou was interviewed on David Frost and she said that she's an avid Jeopardy! watcher, as am I. She said that she watched Jeopardy! and, in the last two years, she hasn't see a black person on it. I watch it and I've seen a number of blacks. Not commensurate with the population of blacks, but certainly a number of blacks, and a black kid almost won the teen tournament. So she's just flat out wrong. More important is the implication that Alex Trebek and the boys are some- how conspiring to prevent qualified black applicants from getting on Jeopardy!, even though we know that Wheel of Fortune, which is produced by the same people, has lots of black people on it. It's just absurd. As I say on the air, another chapter of the continuing saga called In Search of the Great White Oppressor.

That rhetoric has got to stop, the constant search for the great white oppressor has got to stop. A lot of this anger coming from inner-city blacks stems from a prevailing theory that the greater society not only doesn't even care about blacks, but actively seeks to hurt them. When Maxine Waters calls the L.A. riots an uprising; when she says, "no justice, no peace"; when Jesse Jackson suggests that the difference between crack and powder is evidence of a racist criminal justice system; when Al Sharpton stands up before the Million Man March and says that O.J. is "home" now and that there are hundreds and thousands of black people behind bars and we can't rest until they are home, too; when people like Maya Angelou make the remarks she made about Jeopardy!; when people like Bill Cosby suggests that he "has a feeling" that AIDS is part of the plot to exterminate the black race--my point is that nothing's going to change much until black leaders stop such reckless, careless, conspiratorial nonsense. Say you're a 9- or 10-year-old kid who wants to study and you just now hear Bill Cosby say that AIDS is a government plot against blacks, or Al Sharpton say that black people are thrown in prison for no apparent reason, or you hear that Alex Trebek discriminates against qualified applicants for Jeopardy!, you're going to figure, what's the point?

Reason: You're skeptical of the very notion of "black leaders," aren't you?

Elder: Yeah, the whole thing is kind of condescending. As I've said on air, who is the German-American leader? Who is the Italian-American leader--in the sense of having a point of view, a perspective advocating a set of policies that are going to be beneficial to that group? When Antonin Scalia was nominated for the Supreme Court, there were lots of articles about how proud Italian Americans were of him. But with blacks, it's always like, "Here is a savior, here is somebody who is going to really set the record straight." Jesse Jackson is perceived as a savior. Al Sharpton is perceived as somebody who is down with us, out for us, backing us up.