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Today, I have the privilege of welcoming back an award-winning filmmaker, writer, and storyteller who has spent his career tackling some of the most complex and controversial issues of our time. Eli Steele is known for films like How Jack Became Black, What’s Bugging Seth, and most recently, What Killed Michael Brown?—a powerful and thought-provoking documentary he produced with his father, Shelby Steele. He also shares his insights on his Man of Steele Substack, where he continues challenging narratives and pushing for deeper discussions on race, identity, and the American experience.
In this conversation, Eli and I dive into one of the most pressing issues facing our country today—the growing desire for revenge in our political and cultural landscape. Too often, we see frustration turning into retribution, but where does that really lead us? Do we move forward as a nation by tearing each other down, or is there a better path—one rooted in accountability, responsibility, and reconciliation?
We’ll talk about how history has shaped the current racial and political climate, why the victimhood mentality is so destructive, and how the cycle of revenge only deepens division. Through the powerful Tar Baby analogy, we’ll explore how getting stuck in anger and resentment holds us back from real progress. And of course, we’ll discuss the importance of civic engagement, education, and personal responsibility in rebuilding our communities and strengthening America.
This is a conversation about moving beyond identity politics, beyond blame, and beyond the toxic cycles that keep us from truly thriving. It’s about building, not destroying. So stick around for another fantastic DTH conversation with my friend, Eli Steele.
Eli Steele is an award-winning filmmaker and “What Killed Michael Brown?” marks his first professional collaboration with his father, Shelby Steele. A graduate of Claremont McKenna College and Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy, Steele’s career highlights include “How Jack Became Black,” “What’s Bugging Seth,” winner of ten film festivals, and “Katrina,” an MTV Network pilot which won him the Breakthrough Filmmakers Award. Steele has written for publications ranging from LA Times to Commentary Magazine.
Website: https://www.manofsteeleproductions.com/
Connect with Eli Steele on (X): @Hebro_Steele
What have you done today to make your life a better life? What have you done today to make the world a better place? The world is a better place if we are better people. That begins with each of us as individuals. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you’ve got. Make each and every day the day that you want it to be!
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I look forward to hearing from you!
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (00:02.056)
Eli Steele, welcome back to the D-Rate the Hate podcast, my friend. So, so great to see you again. So, so thanks, man.
Eli Steele (00:09.816)
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be back.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (00:13.642)
Yeah, I, you know, I've been looking forward to, to getting you back on and, and, it was a few weeks ago. I saw that you had, well, obviously, I mean, to state the obvious, there's a lot going on right now, right? It, the, ever since, Donald Trump took office again, in, in January, the, the, the media cycle, the news cycle has not been able to keep up.
Everything's been happening at a breakneck pace. half the people don't know what's going on in the other half are, you know, there's people pissed off. There's people that extremely happy. There's, there's this whole range of emotions, whole range of things that are going on Eli. And, and, you know, one of the things that, that, that you've written amongst so many things that you've written, in the, the past couple months.
That stood out to me and I wanted to you know have that conversation Which is why I asked you to visit with me again today is this Made the statement conservatives all over the place right now both publicly and privately That you've heard you've seen There are many of them that are screaming We want revenge against the left. There's there's this this feeling of angst
there for the things that they've seen happen over the past several years. And there's a want and a desire on the part of many to get revenge, to get retribution. And you had said something that stood out to me, because it's something I agree with, right off the bat.
He said, do you want revenge or do you want a better America? Because the two are different things. And that's where I want to start our conversation today, Eli, because I think, I think it's an incredibly important statement and it's, it's something that has to, people need to really reckon with that question. So do you want a better America or do you want, do you want revenge or do you want a better America? Because the two are, in my opinion, two different things. So let's start there.
Eli Steele (02:39.31)
Yeah, I'll probably just start off by saying I do understand the desire for revenge. I do understand the desire for retribution.
I mean, my family went through being canceled in the early, early 90s, probably around 1990, 1991. A lot of people think that this whole war started the last four or five years since George Floyd. Not always been going on since the 70s since the late 60s. I mean, we just think about how long Thomas Thoreau has been around.
I think he published his first book on Black education in 1975, which made a lot of the same points that we're making today. So, yes, it's not fun to be canceled. It's not fun to have my father basically lost his job. We lost every family, every friend.
But we never, my father, to his credit, never stopped revenge. He never, I mean, I never ever heard him, you know, I mean, he would just be more disappointed. But his thing was, you know, I'm gonna move forward, I'm gonna find a way forward. And he did. And he actually, it just gave him a better sense of reality, a better sense of what was going on if he had been consumed by hatred.
If you have been obsessed with, oh, I've lost my job. If you've just been lucky, you end up lucky backwards because you're letting that revenge consume you. And so he refused to allow that to happen. I don't know how much time we have, but actually, while I was talking, there's actually a great Black American folk, folk tale.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (04:24.588)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Eli Steele (04:46.392)
They call the Tar Baby, you know, actually a Tar. And so when I say Tar Baby, people think of the racist connotation, a black dog dressed up as Tar. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not the real story. The real story is that there is this Tar Baby, you're covering Tar. She's happy to be black, but you're covering Tar. And so the Tar Baby represents that one problem that bothers you. And the Tar Baby comes to you and says, hey.
You ain't nothing. You're just a piece of crap. You're but anything. And so you get mad. You say, And then you hit the toy baby. Your hand gets stuck. And then you get more mad. And you're like, I'm going take out this toy baby and I'm to kill him. You hit with the other hand, you get stuck. You kick him with your foot, you get stuck. The other foot gets stuck. So the metaphor of the whole story obviously is...
you know, hatred, revenge, all of that. What people have done to you, no matter how bad it is, it is a toy baby. It's how you want to live your life. You can beat that toy baby up, but that toy baby won't because that toy baby just sucked you down to it. And so people think that, and so I, now, I think that's the power of the story because that story of the story that my father at least took to his heart.
And even me, I've lost job opportunities. I've had things happen because of my politics. I really policy shift, but shift my refusal to go along with the racial.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (06:28.268)
Sure, sure.
Eli Steele (06:29.162)
I'll trust you for every word. So I think that's why I and so I understand that. Now, be clear on that, there is a big difference between accountability and revenge. And the left has put a lot of, you know,
we will call it race-based policy into the Bush. President Biden put DEI on the Bush. He even created what's called within the agencies to make sure that every government agency was following the DEI principle. So they did this. And so the question is, yes, we need to remove this. Yes, we need to get rid of all of that. Yes, we need that kind of accountability.
But that's different than, okay, let's go out for people, let's get some revenge, let's get some stuff like that. Because when you do that,
you usually will compromise the American principle. You're gonna break the law. Yeah.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (07:31.85)
You compromise the American principles. Yeah. No, absolutely. and, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Eli Steele (07:38.934)
or you're in danger of creating another tribe.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (07:42.998)
Yeah.
Eli Steele (07:43.47)
Do you intend to create a rebelling tribe? Because when you say, we define the enemy, that's what tribes do. So the white community can create a new tribe and say, okay, this is our new enemy. And we're going to define them this way, we're going to kill them. Okay, so, okay, so you kill these people and what you get. And then now here's the thing, most of the people on the white, if you look at them, they call them the Christian. So you Christian, you ego-iron, kill these people.
Well, what happened to you? I mean, the greatest thing, you know, I grew up in a Judeo-Christian household. My mother's Jewish, my father's black, and both believers. And so I grew up with the idea that Jesus, the greatest concept he gave to the Russian civilization was the concept of forgiveness, the concept of compassion, empathy, all that stuff. If it's so, Your Honor.
go out for revenge and throw this out because I personally know some of these people and they will call themselves Christians. And I'm sitting there going like this, I'm gonna say that on Twitter or anything like that, but I'm like, okay, so now that you have the power, you should throw your principles out the window. And so where we go with that? Because for me personally, my end goal in all of it is not revenge, but to...
Finally, because we come from Black, we never had our freedom. We never had that equal America. If you went from slavery, segregation to identity policy. We've never had that area of America where we say, we're free. We should do whatever you want. If you discriminate against us, you ask anybody else, it would be punishable. We've never had that equal playing field. And that's where we're trying to get you.
And so I'm not really interested in anything beyond accountability, upholding the law, anything that ensures that playing field is equal.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (09:55.99)
Yeah. Yeah. No, and I think that's important. I mean, I think, so many of the things that you said there, Eli, are incredibly important in the sense that, well, first of all, let me just tell you, I had never heard the analogy or the story, the way you put it or the way your father, Shelby, put it about the Tar baby and how, you know, each time you try to strike this doll, you get
Now and the more that you fight it the more that you seek revenge against it the more damage You're actually doing to yourself. I think that's an incredibly strong takeaway in in just being able to to think about that because one of the things that I've talked about a lot on this podcast with different guests is the idea of You know becoming consumed by our hatred
Becoming consumed by the idea of revenge wanting retribution and then and then the idea of can we have reconciliation without retribution? You know one of the big things that I've talked about on this podcast and I know it's not not what you talk about necessarily, but I did see you know things like this come up in the comments because Because there are a lot of people that were hurt by the the kovat divide, you know things that came along with the kovat divide and
And many people who have watched or listened to a lot of the work that I've done know that, you know, I'm friends with Dr. Francis Collins, former head of the NIH, and I'm also friends with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the next guy that's going to lead the NIH and all the things that happened there, whether it be the pandemic itself or the government's response to the pandemic, the pandemic of the COVID divide.
But, but taking this to the concept of race and, and, and, and people's racial identity and the things that have happened in the past and, the things that are happening today and people using that concept of victimhood and wanting revenge for, these different things. You know, I understand that there are many conservatives out there. Again, like we said, right as we were starting the show is, you know, the things that
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (12:22.698)
conservatives experienced over, whether it be the past four years or the ugliness that, that happened, during the first Trump term, things like that, or just all of the ugliness that, that led up to Trump becoming president. because, you know, my, and this is where I want to, I want to get your thoughts, Eli is
You know, one of the big things that I have seen, my life experience tells me, is one of the big reasons that we have Trump, this bombastic hyperbolic guy that says a lot of the things that he says and now does a lot of the things that he does. One of the ways that we got him, which he's definitely out of the mainstream when it comes to your typical politicians, right? And is because there were so many people who just did not
in politics did not engage until they became enraged. And once they became enraged, they were looking for somebody or some entity that could help them get the revenge that they wanted. And I think people see that in President Trump, right? They see this guy who, you know, he's take no crap, take no, you know, he's just going to go out there. He's going to do what he says, whether you like it or not. And
And there are a lot of people out there. right now, mean, as of the day of this recording, I he's got incredible ratings because he's doing exactly what he said he was going to do with the border. He's doing exactly what he said he was going to do with DEI. You know, he's doing exactly what he said when it came to, I'm going to go through with a meat ax into the agencies within our government. And I'm going to cut out every bit of waste, and abuse.
And then you've got all of these people, Eli, are like, okay, this is fantastic. And then you've got other people who are like, okay, well, this is the kind of the stuff I wanted, but maybe not this aggressive, right? And then you've got others that are like, I don't know what the hell is going on. So it's, we are in a weird spot right now in this, but there are a lot of people out there. There are a lot of people that think, okay, we're finally getting the revenge that we wanted.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (14:46.71)
But I personally, as a conservative, somebody who's been a conservative now for as long as I've been following politics, I don't want revenge. I want accountability, like you said. I want our government to work right the way that it was intended to work. But I don't want it, I don't want to accomplish it through the same means that got us here. I don't want.
you know, everlasting executive orders that are just, you know, just made to basically be better or do, you know, I want it done the right way. So, so what do you say to those people, Eli, who, who probably don't understand the difference between revenge and accountability, but want to see a lot of the things that were promised by, Donald Trump.
But maybe not the Medac strategy.
Eli Steele (15:46.774)
Yeah, it's a...
Yeah, that's very good question. I don't think this is the first time that we've been here. I mean, if you look through history, there's always been regime change. There's always been that kind of stuff going on. been revolutions, there's been all this stuff. If you look at these dishes, these dishes, well, it's a very, the nicest dishes in America, which are very...
a time of great upheaval. In many ways, we are still fighting that war from the Stiches because all the forces that we are dealing with today come out of the Nazi Stiches. This idea of revenge is not new. I put a line, I think, in that tweet, and I think a lot of people are probably maybe a little bit too insiderish or too much in the know in a way, but I said something like,
where Black people could have run after we found in the Dixie. And that was the big division among the Black Civil Rights Movement, where the debate between the non-violence and the Black power. Then you also had degrees to Black power, was, from merely saying the word Black power, which is identity politics, and then also the Black militant.
You know, the Black Panthers, all of that. My father never became an official Black Panther, but pretty darn close, he became the one. So my father ranked him king all the way, the whole spectrum. And so this is the guy that we sort of probably, you know, we call the Black conservative today, Risha. That's another topic, there's a reason why we do that, and because he stands in opposition.
Eli Steele (17:48.558)
to the forces to come out with a stichy. So for one point, it's the we are here largely because a lot of black people. And I think there's a weaker black people. And what I mean by that, I'm making a judgment. think there's black people that are far smarter like Bayon, Wouston. I would even put Eldridge Cleaver in there. Eldridge Cleaver was the black panther.
who realized, wait a minute, America is not such a bad country. But Eldridge Cleaver was at the forefront of the liberation movement. He was at the forefront of the whole oppression dynamic. My father was involved in all of that. He was at the forefront of that. He changed his mind. And so he traveled the world and realized that we were not such a crazy country.
Elder Cleaver had a famous saying, which he said, if you still think the same way as you did in 1968, you're in trouble. Because that was a very different time than 1975, when he changed his mind. He came back to the United States to face the charges for the police shootout. He went back into jail, and he got out of jail. So that was a big price that he had to pay to come back to America, which he goes to jail.
and serve his time for that. But anyway, the reason why I'm putting it out is because I'm showing Amanda Kerr, Amanda Swartley, to understand what was going on. And you have to understand black people, in the 90s, 60s, when they came into freedom, it was a shock. Nobody gave them Amanda, or said, this is how you live in freedom. Basically, white people in that time said, whatever, you're on your own.
Okay, like literally coming out of darkness, coming out of you don't have social capital, you don't have the uncle that works in this shop or whatever it is. So you have pretty much nothing and so it was a huge struggle for these blacks to understand, do we go for revenge? Or do we try to work with the system or whatever it is? And so a lot of blacks sort of developed a hybrid of academia in sort of
Eli Steele (20:08.77)
They worked within the system, but they brought the revolutionary ideas within the system. And they pursued, re-bandaged within the system. They pushed an ideology within the system that started off as diversity. Had a farm-ship action. The farm-ship action started off as something that was different, became hardcore racial preferences. So things just got stronger and stronger and more concentrated.
I started because I was having a Jewish mother and a black father. People told me, growing up, your family's wonderful. Your family is exactly what America's supposed to be about. This is where we're going in the future. Then college applications come. And you pick one race. And I remember, but I'm, you know, everyday.
And they said, no, pick one race, but particularly pick your black race. And that's when I realized, oh, all of this is just talk. All of this is just, no, you want to get the race in there, you want the power, all that. But that was 1990, 1991. And they used a smart clue, it gets worse, and then all of a sudden, it's 3 o'clock in morning. Then Black Lives Matter, then Michael Brown, then George Floyd.
And along the stops of the way, you get systemic racism, white privilege, white facility, you get all these ideas, respectability, policy shit. It just becomes this whole wave of ideas coming out of academia. All for revenge. All finally, you guys, okay, we're gonna put that white man inside the box. We're gonna put him inside identity policy shit. And we're gonna lock him in there, and we're gonna make him the other.
Just like the white man made the black people the other, the minorities the other, for so long. We're going to make him the other. We're going to say, how does it feel unless we have that job? How does it feel? And you know what? We deserve this job because of what you white people did to us for four centuries. So that's revenge. So my point is we had this whole long revenge in Poland. And that's my long answer to kind of give you.
Eli Steele (22:27.278)
that we are here today because of that re-bearing. Now you want to have more re-bearing. Well, it's going be a pretty difficult thing to be a white man, thinking re-bearing is in America. Given the whole history, I don't think that's a winning battle that you're to have. I can understand the impulse. I can understand it. But in the long run, because you have a memory, I mean, we have history. And the whole point was you re-
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (22:54.346)
Yeah.
Eli Steele (22:55.328)
and if the history be used against you, I don't think anybody born today has to pay for the sins of the fathers. They should not, when the mothers are fathers, they should not have to pay for it. Yeah, so Trump obviously, I think he was elected to shake everything up. And there's no doubt that there is the worldwide, the worldwide rush.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (23:05.579)
I agree.
Eli Steele (23:23.992)
My father and I talked about this, we were always saying wait until the white man gets trapped in identity politics. We said this in the 90s, trapped, trapped into identity politics. Because before the white man would sort of, he would sort of outside of it, the boss didn't mean anything to him. If anything, he supported it because there's always diversity.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (23:32.246)
Wait until
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (23:38.478)
into identity politics, yeah.
Eli Steele (23:52.622)
That's okay. We should give him a little bit of something. He had no idea that this system was working to bring him into the identity policy. The system was growing the whole time. And so that's why race is pushing. You think if you support it a little bit, you think if you know, no, no, it will grow and it will grow and it will grow. so it got the eventually got the right man into the system.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (24:01.676)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Steele (24:21.74)
And the white man went, You what, you didn't say anything when it happened to black people. You didn't say much when it happened to black people. They struck black people and created black underclass throughout America. if you think about what they did to black people, they made black people have bad faith in America. They said, white man's a devil. All of this. That was what was happening, but you didn't do anything about that.
And a day in the rainy day, a lot of the Asians got hit. And then the white people got stuck into it. And so a lot of the Jewish people today say, hey, it happened to you. No, it was just down the line. It went through everybody. And the Jews are now the ones that got it. And so the march through all these tribes.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (25:11.018)
Yep, yep, step by step, just went through every different bug.
Eli Steele (25:15.79)
Yeah, it's always been Mars too. I I could be a little bit more articulate, but I think you get the point that it's just been a Mars. That's what tribalism does. That's what race does. It's just, guess everybody, show it with a blast. It's just my father. And he said, oh, you don't agree with what we're doing. You're Uncle Tom. We have to throw you out of the system because you are exposing our game. You're exposing our con. I mean,
All Thomas Dorwell really is doing is exposing the cons. Shelby Steel, Thomas Dorwell, Walter Williams, all they did was just say, this was really going on. It's a shakedown. it's not even, yeah, it's not even, it's my father always saying this. Yeah, I just did one last thing. My father was saying one thing, now he was a station, and he said, you know what? I tried warning you.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (25:54.464)
Yeah, it's definitely a shakedown.
Definitely a shakedown.
Eli Steele (26:08.214)
I try warning you, he has a piece called The Loneliness of the Black Conservative, because he was alone. People would support him, but they would support him behind the scenes. And he would just say, you need to get up front. You need to fight. You need to get out there. And he would say, one thing all the time, where were you when we needed you? Now you all of sudden have flourish because of Trump.
You have courage. You didn't have the balls before. But now you have the courage because Trump had the courage to stand up there right the wrong way, whatever he's doing. But what we ask for in America is he is the symptom of America. He just takes that wucky ball, we're hit it, they'll shrink it. We're gonna pay the price one way or another. We win here, we'll lose here. But that's the situation. But you didn't have the courage to stand up in 1985.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (26:51.296)
He has a symptom.
Eli Steele (27:06.35)
1995, you didn't have the wars, you hid behind the black conservatives. Now you brave!
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (27:13.13)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Eli Steele (27:15.638)
And so that's why, from my point of view, there's a little bit of hip hop issue here. It's like, yeah, it's just like, I cannot tell you how many conversations, how many, don't call me, how many conversations I've had with people who are, I'm gonna lose my job. Okay, well, you're talking to somebody that's lost his job. My father lost his job. And you know, so it's hard for me to have sympathy. Well, okay, now you are rebelling.
Now you are messed up. What I've been fighting for. We should not revenge but accountability. Give race out of all government affairs. Let the shit fall where they may be. And my feeling is when you take race out, it forces you to look American. It's not black Americans, poor black Americans over here. Poor Asians over there. They're American. What is the problem with that situation? What do we need to do to either
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (27:58.49)
yeah.
Eli Steele (28:16.75)
Help them, help them manage you in the issue. Get the basic services in there, get the extra, get the school system up. Because you can only help people who are sure to extend. They have to step up. We have to stop this whole thing of lying to people and saying, it's the white man's fault. It's this person's fault. It's this damnit racist's fault. We have to say, no, no, what are you going to do about it? Yeah, know, and to these white people that have been fissionized.
Yeah, you did lose your job. did. Well, but you know what? My grandfather, my grandparents were officialized by Hitler for this year. They came to America, no apologies, no nothing. Their reparations was like $50 a month. That is a pay for losing your entire family. They didn't know English. They may have worked. My great- My grandfather on my black side, he didn't ask for revenge.
He only have freedom for I think about...
10 of his 70s dis-years on earth. That's it. So he lived dis-y five years under segregation. So you may think you're being frisky-mised, and you want your revenge. You'll never be satisfied. Because just as black people never will get justice, you'll never get justice. So the best thing you do is just, what you do now? Build in America. I know you don't want to hear that.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (29:32.545)
No.
Eli Steele (29:43.128)
But I would not support anybody who pissed off the white mentor right now and says I'm a white fishin'.
I'm just not gonna support that. Yeah.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (29:54.55)
Yeah, the white victimhood. So that victimhood mentality, that victimhood mentality and that seeking of revenge, that will serve nobody well because you're right. Where does it end? It never ends. Once it starts, that path just continues on. you know, if you find a where you think you've done enough damage to the other side to get your due revenge, to get your pound of flesh,
Well, then the other side is going to start looking for revenge for what you've just done. It's a never ending cycle. It's an ugly cycle. It's an unwinnable cycle. And we have to realize as human beings that this is not the way. You know, I think you bring up so many very, very good points, Eli, in the sense that, you know, it's, so there were so many.
throughout history, throughout segregation, throughout the civil rights movement that did stand up. They did stand up at the risk of their own, at their own jobs, their own whatever things that they were able to acquire. They put it all on the line and were saying things that were not popular because then there was, you know, I'm glad you continue to bring up,
Obviously your father Shelby steel, but but Walter Williams Thomas soul these men are some of the most profound thinkers of of Not just our time but of any time and and to to Go back and read I've got a number of books by Walter Williams That that I've read and and I used to enjoy listening to him before he passed I used to enjoy listening to him when he
when you fill in on certain radio shows and things like that. Just an incredible man, but the idea of working within the system. Do not seek revenge. Do not do...
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (32:05.868)
explain that and and and do the things that that he has been able to do or was able to do you know before he passed just just incredible work but he talks about working within the system and making the life that he wanted by working through that system and and yeah talking about race and economics and things like that so so so back to the idea of you know do you want
Revenge or do you want a better America? Because they are two different things. And I continue to say that because it is such a profound statement and there are so many people right now who they don't understand that. They don't understand the idea that if we start on a cycle of revenge, if we start on that footing and say, well, I'm just going to get revenge now, but then once I've got it, then we're all good. Then we're square. Then we're back to even. Now we're at some kind of baseline.
It's not true. It's not true at all. And if we want a better America, we have to realize that now, accept what was, move on and let's make America better. You know, I don't, I don't buy into the whole make America great again thing because in order to make America great again, you have to believe that America ceased being great. I think America is great because its people are good.
They've made mistakes, they've had their downfalls, they've had their, many have had their faults and there's many stains in the history of this country. But I don't think America ever ceased being great. So I don't think we can make it great again. I think true conservatism is the idea that this country was made and put together through geniuses and divine providence. It's had its downfalls. It's been great since it was incepted. It's going to continue.
allow a concept like revenge, anger, hate, and just that overall perpetual cycle of ugly to ruin what we are. And we are great. I'm not going to allow it. If I can do anything about it, Eli, I do not want to allow revenge and hate and those who would spread that fear, outrage, and grievance just for the sole purpose of keeping us divided.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (34:34.464)
That is the worst thing that we can do. If we want a better America, revenge is not the path.
Eli Steele (34:39.361)
Absolutely.
Eli Steele (34:43.67)
Yeah, the one thing that keeps us from being, I mean, a way, a pretty darn good country is waste. Waste has been that one thing that's been there since the beginning. You you have slave owners, the scientists, paper, they own slaves and they're all men of created equal. So I bring that up because the Civil Rights Movement was a movement.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (34:58.09)
It's poison, like you said.
Eli Steele (35:12.974)
black people in the marches, white people as well, because if you look at the marches, pretty multiracial, wanted those boxes removed, the race boxes, because white men superior and black men inferior, so they had to remove those boxes. So we all of sudden have this moment and then people are waiting a minute about how we're a racial country, how we're going to improve racial discrimination. So we need to
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (35:32.044)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Steele (35:41.934)
put the boxes back in. So we come up with five boxes to fit the entire population of the world, because we are a country that the world comes to and we fit them all into five waste boxes. so, know, some Vietnamese with a Chinese person, and you know the history of Vietnam and China, they've been historical enemies, all together in same box in the mouth.
That's how absurd the whole system is. So it was just totally the whole absurdity. But anyway, so all we did was recreate a new form of racism. And so now we're in a situation, and I would have to say that if I have any reservations about the Trump administration, I would probably say race is still a killer shield. If you go back to George Floyd,
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (36:17.921)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Steele (36:35.884)
He lost the narrative. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to say. He was surrounding himself with fake Charleston black conservatives like Candace Thoman. Who is who is an original thinker? so he kindly wraps. I mean, that's who he was surrounding himself with. Show the irony that we came out with what killed Michael Brown in October.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (36:49.259)
Yeah.
Eli Steele (37:02.594)
So George Lorin had been waiting for whole summer and they were like, my God, we forgot about the true black conservatives like Thomas Sorrell, my father. And, but by then it was too late. They lost the narrative. They lost control. They didn't know how to message. And so I see that happening a lot with these so-called, I mean, I never really think of being a leader, but they are people who are making change.
I see that lot with some of these thinkers where they are focused on DEI and the focus of the last four years to five years, the post George Floyd era. And for me, that's a mistake because race is the problem, not DEI. Race is the fundamental problem here. And if we don't understand that, what's going to happen is the compromiser. Now, if we go back to history,
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (37:55.925)
Yes.
Eli Steele (38:02.274)
You know, the race is always compromised. We have the mystery compromised. We have, after the Civil Rights Movement, we have a compromise. We'll use these race boxes to prove that discrimination became a whole nother animal. You can't have the people coming in and say, I know how to do DEI right, DEI life, they call it. Well, you're leaving the door open again. And if I'm on the left.
I'm completely on board with you for DEI Light. We'll call it something else. We'll come up with another cool name. And so I think that's a big test for whether the conservative leaders, many of them who are revenge, if they really understand their enemy. I mean, there's a reason why race has come back this strong.
It is so profound, it's done so much profound damage. for example, you want to take out the Department of Education. Well, the Department of Education basically forced all the state schools, all the states and the local schools to conform to a federal sort of type of education plan. For the most part, I they had a lot of influence. Well, if you put California on their own.
or Illinois on their own, how you have oversized to change those education systems, because for example, in the state of Illinois, the governor appoints an education body within that state, and that education body
basically decides the criteria for teachers. So every teacher that goes through, wants to teach in the state, private, public, parochial, has to go through this body to get the license. And so this body right now is woke. They're not elected officials. So how do you control, how do you change that? And then not only that, a bigger problem is in those days,
Eli Steele (40:21.902)
You have teachers that know nothing but this. They know nothing but this ideology. They were raised on diversity. They were raised on, you know, whatever you want to call it, identity policy, C-R-C, then G-E-I, then G-E-I-A, or G-E-I-B, or whatever, or belonging. I mean, they've been raised on this. It's in them, it's in their, it's in the air that they breathe.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (40:43.914)
You're right.
Eli Steele (40:49.138)
That's the term that they use to release the air that we breathe. White supremacy is in the air that we breathe. mean, they said that. So how do you go in there and to my point is they've been so profound. It has to with the way people think. If you talk to any kid who's 15 years old, they don't talk like the way I talk. They will apologize for what they're about to say. Then they'll say it. You know, if they want to say something controversial.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (40:53.206)
Yeah.
Eli Steele (41:18.638)
They'd be like, okay, I'm afraid of bending over here, but you know, yeah, I know I'm a white person. Yeah, so they, it's like a land acknowledgement. already, it's like a personal identity acknowledgement. And so they changed the culture. They've done this, those folks and these people can deconstruct. It's easy to take things apart because we now have the ability to get the data.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (41:25.556)
Yeah, the preemptive apology.
Eli Steele (41:48.544)
all of that. But the question is, how are we going to rebuild? How are we going to rebuild the rigorous, strong, rugged individual that, you know, the President Hoover talked about in that famous speech, the rugged individual, the individual that has the resilience that can overcome obstacles. That's strong American because that's how you make a great American. How are we going to recreate that? And that's the challenge I think that we have today.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (42:19.562)
Yeah. No, I think that's a good point. mean, I, yeah, no, I think that's a very good point, Eli, but, know, I, I got to, you know, there's a couple of things that you said there that I would, I would probably push back on a little bit. Cause I think, well, I think, I think the idea that, you know, when you, when you talk about states like California and you talk about states like Illinois, very, very blue, very liberal, like the state that I live in Minnesota, right. Is, is very well.
Eli Steele (42:20.366)
I don't know about you.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (42:49.708)
I will say that it's very liberal in the metro area of Minneapolis, St. Paul, the rest of the state, with the exception of the Arrowhead up north a little bit, but the rest of the state is very conservative. Right. So I've been talking a lot lately in my talk, sub to subsidiarity and removing, you know, controlling things that we can control at the most local of levels, you know, trying to take and things that we do. so
You know, it used to be you know, it used to be states like you well like you talked about there is you know that in Illinois or in California, right? How do we you know if the state board is going to determine what has to be taught whether it be in a public school or a private school or whatever You know now all of sudden everybody that's going to teach in there has to teach these specific things that's my big problem with with the Department of Education and the concept of federal
You know the federal government ruling so many things from afar and whatever. The same thing kind of I think applies to our states. Like I said, the state in which I live, Minnesota. You got Governor Tim Walz in Minneapolis or in St. Paul there. And then the metro area is electing the vast majority of the body of electors in
And so, so the whole state of Minnesota is governed as if it was Minneapolis, St. Paul. It's just an ugly thing because the conservative values that the vast majority of the state geographically is not truly represented within St. Paul. The same thing happens within the United States as a whole, right? You've got the whole country, the vast majority of the country geographically and small, you've got a bunch of small pockets.
You know, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, know, Portland, Seattle, New York, you know, things like that. Those geographical areas that are concentrated are really making the decisions for a lot of people that really don't represent the same kind of values and things that they do. You know, it's a huge problem.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (45:15.5)
is a very, very important thing. But, but to, to the point of subsidiarity, the thing that I was talking about, you know, the more that we can take out of the hands of the federal government, the more that we can take out of these small concentration of power areas and put back in the hands of the people and work with our own communities to make our lives better again, you know, because
This is another thing, I know we're running, well, we're way beyond our time, but one of the things that I think is so important, Eli, that I think we need to work towards as a country is the concept of...
Government is neither the cause of nor the solution to all of our problems. And I think that's why, what president Trump and, and, the people within his administration are doing right now is very, very important. I know it sucks for a lot of people who, you know, they, they've spent their life in civil service and they, they, they worked for the, a very, very over bloated federal government, you know, and, and, and, and whatever, you know, there's going to be.
professional casualties in that scenario in which he starts to cut away the bloat, the fat, the corruption, whatever. And not everybody that works in a corrupt agency is corrupt. I want to make that clear. One of those ... that we were just talking about, But no, but so there's going to be casualties to that process in which he starts to slice away big chunks of the federal government. I get that.
But in order to get this country back to what it was, and in order to get the power back in the hands of the people, and in order to get problems solved at the most local of levels where we can actually do good things as citizens and make a true civic renewal, a true,
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (47:19.764)
make America a better America, think it takes putting the power back in the hands of the people. And that's not going to happen with big government bureaucracies. I don't care if it's a big government bureaucracy in California or a big government bureaucracy in Illinois or Minnesota or a big government bureaucracy in Washington, DC. We've got to put it all back in the hands of the people and start solving problems again in our own backyard.
That's what's going to make America a better America. Not seeking revenge, not being a bunch of assholes that are trying to take it out on the left or the right or whoever the other is today. you know, this us versus them, that ugly battle that that always turns into is not the way to make a better America. The way to make a better America is to put the power back in the hands of the people and start taking care of problems in our own backyard and quit worrying about Washington, DC or
Chicago or Minneapolis, St. Paul or San Francisco, LA. All right. You got the last word, man. I know we've got to wrap this up. I appreciate you so much. And, yeah, go ahead. I said a lot there, but.
Eli Steele (48:28.366)
Now you hit on the whole solution. I think that Trump coming in, mean, we voted him in, he comes in, he's giving us a shot.
I think in a way, it's going against corruption, was the massive amount of corruption. In fact, before I get to my main point, I got a text message from a professor in Michigan who was telling me that his friend who is involved in the Detroit public school, and apparently it's Trumper, is complaining that this is a back-to-school system for us.
And he basically saying that this is the worst thing, but I think that... So, I'm just looking at the screen.
Eli Steele (49:29.486)
But he's saying that the Department of Education has collapsed the system. So I walked back to my friend and I said he doesn't understand one thing. The education system already collapsed. That's we have to understand. Kids are family. Too many kids cannot read. It has already collapsed. People that can make it out do make it out. But those that needed that extra push or that extra...
know, whatever it is, it falls back on the parents. The teachers have been known to rescue kids that come from horrible families. And if that's not in place, well, we lose those kids too. And so he doesn't understand they've collapsed. But what has not collapsed is the pay system for the educators and for the administrators. So the school system is only associated in paying these people who are failing to do their job. And so I think that's the anger that you see in America.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (50:19.114)
Yep, that's right.
Eli Steele (50:28.972)
And I think the video is talking about it goes back to the people. It's the only way this is going to work. I might take Andy away from Trump, but Trump is one man whose use is his powers which allow him to be shouting. But if he breaks the system up enough, it's up to us to fix it. To bring it, to put it back together, to make it what we want to make it. And right now, too many of us have forgotten how to be American.
We have forgotten. We hide behind our keyboard. We hide behind other people. We say, oh, I can't do this. I'm too busy. No. They really have no voice. It's like if you don't vote, you don't have a right to talk. I really believe that. You got to vote. And even if you don't like and vote, you still got to make a decision and vote. You got to step up to your local board. You got to step up to whatever is going on, whether it's a park plan, a commission.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (51:20.96)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Steele (51:27.212)
whether it's the school system, whether it's the 40s, the white judges, and you have to step up and guess what? You start to know your neighbors better. You start talking to your neighbors instead of talking to people who live 5,000 miles away from you on a computer. Talk to your neighbor, all of that, and I think that what that does is to bring the complexity of life back in. Everything over simplified is black and white.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (51:43.532)
That's right.
Eli Steele (51:53.646)
You you give me some crazy people, you some brilliant people, you give me some people from all walks of life. I mean, every time I go out in the community, I feel more enriched. I feel more, people are not as bad as they think they are. If you want evidence, look at my documentary, What Killed Michael Brown? Everybody that we interview in that documentary is pretty much liberal or progressive. But when you hear them talk, you don't hear that.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (52:20.897)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Steele (52:23.896)
because we ask them different questions. And that's why I through my documentary, Rookman, Go Out In The World, and just talk to them. I don't hear black and white. I hear complexity. I hear the riches, the desires, the tragedies, all of that. So that's my point is, just get out there. Remake your neighborhood the way you want. And that's how you take hate down.
And it's not too late. I it's not too late. I mean, I we have all this technology, we have all these gives in the world. But the people, and that's what the country is, and that's our only hope in the long run.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (53:05.642)
Yep. No, you're absolutely right. There's a lot of complexities. There's no true black and white. These rigid binaries, they're ugly. They create that us versus them. We got to get back. We got to do exactly what you said, Eli. Civic engagement is going to be a huge part of what we do to rebuild this country. So good to see you again, my friend. It's been fantastic.
Eli Steele (53:06.242)
So I agree with you.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (53:34.272)
I truly appreciate you, the work that you do, and keep up all you're doing. I love to read your tweets. Eli Steele, thank you so much for joining me again on the D-Rate to Hate podcast, my friend.
Eli Steele (53:49.144)
Thank you so much for having me on. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. So thank you and until next time.
Wilk ~ Derate The Hate (53:59.658)
Until next time, my friend.
Eli Steele (54:02.594)
Awesome.
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