FRANKLIN, Tennessee — Quisha King, a former regional engagement coordinator for Black Voices for Trump, said she was once liberal, but the writings of conservative black economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams helped steer her on a different path.
King said her community could not access Sowell or Williams.
“Their books blew my mind,” King told an audience at The Factory in Franklin on Friday.
King was one of three panelists who spoke at a program titled Black Conservatives and Race in America.
After much introspection, King said she realized her values were more in sync with the Republican Party.
“I was struggling with all of this new information. I was sitting on my couch one day, and I heard a woman of Christian faith. God spoke to my heart and told me that my skin color had become an idol in my life. That moment was so transformative. It changed my life because I [once] saw everything through being black. Everything,” King said.
“It trumped my faith. It trumped my voting. It trumped everything. Everything had to be seen through blackness. God, in his gentle, loving but very firm way let me know that was an offense to him. That’s because I should have been living my life through the eyes of Christ, not through how much melanin he happened to give me.”
Another panelist, former Nashville mayoral candidate Carol Swain, said her Christian conversion helped her overcome her shyness. She said she became increasingly more conservative — and increasingly more vocal.
The third panelist, Robert L. Woodson, Sr., founded the Washington, D.C.-based Woodson Center in the early 1980s. That organization helps residents of low-income neighborhoods.
Woodson is also a former civil rights activist.
“America and the Civil Rights Movement became part of a race grievance industry. They became elected officials running these cities and spent $22 trillion on poverty programs. That is more money than it takes to buy all the agricultural land. More money than we have spent on all our wars. Seventy cents of every dollar over those 50 years didn’t go to the poor. It went to those who served the poor,” Woodson told the audience.
“They asked not which problems are solvable but which ones are fundable? We created a commodity out of poor people, and now we have created a commodity out of white guilt. Right now, white guilt is what people are peddling.”
Woodson went on to say that two groups of people drive today’s race narrative.
“They are the guilty, self-flagellating whites who seek absolution for crimes they never committed and the guilty, entitled rich blacks who are seeking absolution for injustices they never suffered,” Woodson said.
Robin Steenman, who founded the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, moderated Friday’s event.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Great article!