North Carolina’s Lt. Governor Mark Robinson joins the podcast this week to discuss critical race theory, combating ‘woke’ ideology in schools, and the Left’s belief that black Americans who are Republicans are “white supremacists.”
Mark Robinson is a native of Greensboro, NC, and a proud Army veteran who is serving as the 35th lieutenant governor of North Carolina. He is the first black American to hold the office and ran on the message of common-sense conservatism: protecting the life of the unborn, defending the 2nd Amendment, giving parents back control over their children’s education, standing up for law enforcement, addressing veterans’ care, and enacting election reform. He and his wife are blessed to have two children and two grandchildren.
TRANSCRIPT
Beverly Hallberg:
And welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and joining us today is Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina. He’s going to discuss critical race theory, combating woke ideology in schools, and the left’s belief that Black Americans who are Republicans are White supremacists and he’s also going to share his own personal story. But before we bring on the Lieutenant Governor, a reminder for our podcast listeners that we’ve expanded to video. If you’re watching us now, you already know where to find us but for our listeners, all you have to do is go to Independent Women Forum’s YouTube channel and subscribe. And, of course, you can still listen to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Acast.
Now for today’s guest: Mark Robinson is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina, and a proud Army veteran who is serving as the 35th lieutenant governor of North Carolina. He is the first Black American to hold the office and ran on the message of common-sense conservatism, which is protecting the life of the unborn, defending the Second Amendment, giving parents back control over their child’s education, standing up for law enforcement, addressing veterans’ cares and also enacting election reform. He and his wife are blessed to have two children and two grandchildren, and we are blessed to have you on She Thinks today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Mark Robinson:
Thank you for having me here. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so I just thought before we get into those really tough issues that we mentioned up top, I just love to hear a little bit about your early life. You’ve been very vocal just about how strong your mother was and she had that foundation of hard work. And I was wondering, did you always believe that you could achieve anything, that the American dream was always there for you?
Mark Robinson:
Well, actually when I was very young, I didn’t because the world seemed so closed off to me because we were poor and we’d lived in a neighborhood on the east side of Greensboro. The world seemed kind of closed off to me, but the older I got and the more I listened to my mom and listened to a lot of the people I was blessed to have contact with in my life who mentored me, people who taught me in school, people who told me that I had talents that I could take advantage of and saw people who looked like me and had backgrounds like me, who were succeeded in life, I began to realize that the world is open to everyone — in America, the world is open to everyone — and that I could achieve anything that I put my mind to, so by the time I got to high school, I was ready to take over the world.
Beverly Hallberg:
And you have; you became a household name in 2018 when you delivered this incredibly strong address to the Greensboro City Council. You were defending the Second Amendment, and this speech went viral and to date has been viewed over 200 million times. I want to play a clip of that and then I want to have you give a little bit of background about what took place. Let’s go ahead and roll that clip.
Mark Robinson:
I’ve heard a whole lot of people in here talking tonight about this group and that group and domestic violence and Blacks, these minorities and that minority. What I want to know is when are you all going to start standing up for the majority? And here’s who the majority is. I’m the majority. I’m a law-abiding citizen who’s never shot anybody, never committed a serious crime, never committed a felony. I’ve never done anything like that, but it seems like every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to blame, put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter’s feet. You want to put it at my feet, you want to turn around and restrict my right.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so take us back to that moment. That was roughly three years ago when you gave speech. At that point in time, did you have any idea that you’d be running for political office and be sitting here as the lieutenant governor of North Carolina?
Mark Robinson:
Actually, no. 20 minutes before that, I had no idea that I would even be speaking. I had not planned to speak at that meeting. I had not planned to speak at that meeting. I had resigned myself to simply go and listen and kind of support the people who I felt like would be standing up for our Second Amendment rights. But after I heard some of the things that were said during the meeting, I got extremely frustrated and I said, “I’ve got to say something.” And I guess the rest, they say, is history.
Beverly Hallberg:
And what led you then to run for office after this speech? Did everybody come up to you and say, “Please run for office”? Or did you just kind of have that in you where you realized I’m a powerful speaker, maybe I can use my platform to do something in addition to what I’m already doing?
Mark Robinson:
Well, after that speech, we received a ton of positive mail. All of the mail that we received was positive. Many of those folks were urging us to run for office, telling us they would support us. We had resigned not to do that. We said we were not going to run for office, but after people started to contact me and they said — they were talking to me about monetizing this speech and making money off of it — I really just don’t believe that God put me in the position to deliver that speech for the purposes of making money. I believe he did it for me to be able to help inspire people, to stand up for their rights and to make some changes. And we just thought about it and said, “What better way to make change than actually enter into the field of politics and try to make some solid changes for the people in North Carolina.” And so that’s what we decided to do.
Beverly Hallberg:
And something that you did here was speak up. And something that we have seen in the past year has been people of all walks of life speaking up at school board meetings, parents who never thought that they were going to get in front of a crowd, in front of a school board and share their opinions. Do you think that there is a ground swelling of Americans who are willing to speak up because they’re so concerned about what’s taking place? Similar to what you found, you felt that things were not going the way they ought to be. You needed to speak up. Is that what you’re seeing from Americans?
Mark Robinson:
Absolutely. And we need to see even more of it because that is the American way. The very founding of our country did not start with the shot heard around the world. The founding of this nation, the fight for our independence, so to speak, started in taverns and in homes and in businesses where people talked about the ideas of liberty and the ideas of independence and the ideas of being able to have a free nation separate from Great Britain. It started with a conversation. It started with people who were bold enough to stand up in their homes and in churches and their businesses and declare that they wanted their freedom. And it’s been that way ever since.
Our government is structured, it’s of the people, by the people, for the people. And we are the people. And if our voices are not being heard in the halls of our government, it’s going to be less than. And right now I would submit to you that our government is less than. It is off of its mission. And the reason why it’s off is because we have not been speaking up, but we are starting to see that change in North Carolina. We certainly saw it change in Virginia and we’re seeing it change all across the nation, and that’s a very good thing.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I’m glad you brought up for Virginia because I wanted to get your feedback, your insight on what the criticisms have been for the new lieutenant governor of Virginia, Winsome Sears. She is the first female lieutenant governor, the first Black lieutenant governor in Virginia, and she has gotten a lot of racial things said about her. I want us to play a clip here. This is an example of Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC earlier this month, and he had a one-on-one with Joy Reid, and this is what he had to say about the election of Winsome Sears.
Michael Eric Dyson:
You are doing what all political figures must do, make choices. The problem is here, they want White supremacy by ventriloquist effect. There is a Black mouth moving but a White idea through the running on the runway of the tongue of a figure who justifies and legitimates the White supremacist practices.
Beverly Hallberg:
Tell me, what do you think when you hear that?
Mark Robinson:
I’m just going to be completely honest with you, a clown like this fellow Dyson, I don’t listen to anything that he says because everything that’s filtered through his mouth is nothing but a bunch of bigotry. Instead of celebrating Virginia having a first Black female lieutenant governor, he denigrates it because this person is against his political ideology. And not only is he denigrating, he denigrates it with falsehoods. Winsome Sears is entitled to our own opinion just like anyone else is. And to say that her ideas because she holds them are White ideas are ridiculous. The foolishness that comes out of some of these media outlets, the racism that comes out of some of these media outlets, it’s just absolutely mind-numbing. I’ve seen it countless times in the past and we’re going to continue to see it until we push back on these folks and tell them we’re not going to tolerate it.
Beverly Hallberg:
And so let me talk.
Mark Robinson:
Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Beverly Hallberg:
No, I’m sorry. I would just say, so pushing back, what is your advice to people on the right way to push back against this?
Mark Robinson:
I think once we hear those things, we need to speak up against them in the most peaceful and demonstrative way possible. A person who would say that because a Black person has ideas that are contrary to the way they believe, to say that that person is a ventriloquist dummy, it’s not only is it shocking, it actually goes against their own thinking because these are the folks who will tell you that folks are entitled to their own opinions, should be able to speak up and express their own opinions but when they do, and they don’t line up with theirs, then all of a sudden that person is less than. And so we’ve got to stand up and push back against them and not be afraid to speak up and push back against them.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I wish I could say that clip is an isolated situation but, as you have been saying, it is something that is growing across the country, and we are seeing this within schools, critical race theory. And we’ve also heard the narrative that critical race theory is not actually being taught in schools. When you hear somebody say that, what do you say in response?
Mark Robinson:
What I say in response: if it’s not being taught in schools, why are you so vehemently against us trying to ban it? It’s the same thing that I got when I started our task force here in North Carolina about indoctrination in our schools. First, they told us it was a figment of our imagination. Then when we collected data and proved that it was true, they said it was a conspiracy-driven issue. Now that we’ve presented materials that are pornographic in our schools, they choose to ignore us and say that we’re overreacting.
The simple fact of the matter is we know this. We know that critical race theory exists. We know what it is. We know it is a style of teaching where it’s is intricate. It’s weaved into the teaching. It’s not necessarily a course, but it’s a way of thinking that’s weaved into education. We’ve learned how to spot it and we need to root it out and we need to get rid of it. Those folks who are standing against us always want to say that it’s not being taught. But again, if it’s not being taught, why are you so vehemently against our efforts to get rid of it?
Beverly Hallberg:
And when you think about how race is taught in schools, let’s say, go back to slavery, going back to the Civil War, do you think education in the past already did a sufficient job of talking about racial issues? Or are there things that we can learn that we need to implement into today? Or were we already doing a good job?
Mark Robinson:
I would submit to you that we already were. I can remember back in the eighties when I was first learning in school about the Civil War — and I had a very good teacher, an individual named Mr. Richard Sisk — and I distinctly remember him saying in class one day that slavery wasn’t a White issue or Black issue, it was a human issue and that slavery was ended by good people of all colors. And that’s something that I remembered all of my life and that’s something I still believe in to this day. Look, we have got some terrible things in our past. We have the institution of slavery. We have a long history in the past of not treating women fairly, but when you go back and you look at every problem that we’ve ever faced in this nation, we have tackled those issues and defeated those issues.
And here’s how we did it: we did it together as Americans, not White Americans, not Black Americans, but good people of all stripes, of all colors coming together to defeat the evils that this country has faced. And that’s what we need to be teaching our children in schools. We don’t need to be trying to divide them. We need to bring them together under that solemn unifier, which is we have defeated our problems together. We defeated slavery together. We defeated Jim Crow together. We defeated the unfair treatment of women together and we will continue to fight bigotry together if we remain unified. We can’t do it if we’re separate, and CRT will take us backwards, not forwards.
Beverly Hallberg:
And it’s not just CRT. We also know that this woke ideology has already permeated business. I’m sure you see that in North Carolina on a regular basis. What have been your efforts when it comes to this push to identify people based on race and gender versus merit and who they are?
Mark Robinson:
It’s going to bring a lot of misery to businesses. It’s going to degenerate our society if we allow it to continue, it’s going to degenerate our military if we allow it to continue. We have got to get back to looking at work ethic, to looking at who’s qualified, to looking at the best candidate, not the color of their skin, not their gender. We’ve got to look at who’s best for the job and decide by those standards. If we don’t do that, we’re going to pay dearly in the workplace and we’re going to pay dearly in our military and in other places. We’ve got to get back to those standards and we’ve got to get our young people to understand that as well and I think for the most part they do.
Beverly Hallberg:
And I know you’re able to meet with people in the state of North Carolina on a regular basis and talk to them about these important issues. I know that we hear one thing in the news, and sometimes it just seems so dire that we’re falling behind, there’s no way we can get back to the America that we do know can create the American dream for everyone. But do you see a different side talking to people day in and day out without the lens of the media? Do you find that more people are in agreement than, instead of dividing people, we actually need to come together?
Mark Robinson:
Absolutely. I absolutely believe that in my travels here and my experience so far as lieutenant governor. I see that people every day, more and more people are waking up. They’re realizing that the mass media is not our friends. They’re realizing that the extreme leftists are not our friends. They’re not people who want the best for us. They simply want to be the elites who rule from on high while the rest of us scramble for existence. More Americans are waking up to see this, and the tide is turning. Virginia was just a tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
I believe you’re going to see Virginia all over this country come 2022 because Americans are now seeing the dreadful effects of leftist policy. They’re seeing the invasion at our border. They saw the debacle in Afghanistan. They see the rising gas prices because we left being energy independent and are now back to being dependent on those who hate us across the globe for energy. They’re seeing all these things. They’re seeing these high prices in the grocery store because the bad decisions that are being made by the Biden administration and they are ready and ripe for a change, and I think in 2022, you’re going to see it all across the country.
Beverly Hallberg:
And final question for you before we go, just curious, what are some specific things that you are working on in your home state of North Carolina?
Mark Robinson:
Well, we’re still working hard on the issue of education. Right now what we’re focused on, we want to take a deep dive into how some of this pornographic material has gotten into our school system and we want to start holding people accountable for allowing those materials to be in our schools. We want our governor and our attorney general to either stand up for this stuff or stand with it, whichever way, we need to know where they are on this because we’re going to continue to fight to make sure our children are safe. South Carolina has already joined in this fight. Texas has now joined in this fight and we hope other states will as well. Along with that, we’re also going to start fighting to try to spread economic opportunity all across the state of North Carolina. North Carolina is an absolutely wonderful state but we can do so many things so much better and we’re planning on making some moves to do that as well. Look for big things to be coming out of our office and look for some big things to be happening in North Carolina leading up to 2022.
Beverly Hallberg:
Well, as a recent resident of South Carolina, I appreciate a sister state joining us and helping in this fight. We so appreciate all that you’re doing. There are definitely big fights ahead, and we appreciate you joining us on She Thinks. Lieutenant governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, thank you so much.
Mark Robinson:
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
Beverly Hallberg:
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