Kevin McGary is the president of Every Black Life Matters, with emphasis on the “Every.”
McGary joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the contrasts between the Black Lives Matter organization and his own group, how fatherlessness has adversely affected the black community, critical race theory, the racist origins of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, and more.
“When we encounter people who are diehard BLMers, they usually say, ‘Hey, … black lives matter,'” McGary said.
“And I go up to them, and I get in their face, and I say, ‘You know what, to me, bro, every single black life matters.’ And then I ask them, ‘Now, does every single black life matter to you?’ And then they’re stuck. They’re like, ‘Oh, this brother, he’s coming with something.'”
We also cover these stories:
- The House Oversight and Reform Committee releases emails revealing that the Trump White House put pressure on then-Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen to investigate voter fraud claims.
- Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., defends the Trump administration’s Justice Department for subpoenaing the phone and email records of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats.
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., apologizes for comparing the House speaker’s requirement that members of Congress continue to wear a face mask against COVID-19 on the House floor with Jews being made to wear gold stars by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
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Rachel del Guidice: I’m joined today on The Daily Signal by Kevin McGary. He’s the president of Every Black Life Matters. Kevin, it is great to have you with us on The Daily Signal.
Kevin McGary: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Del Guidice: Well, it’s great to have you with us. Can you start off, Kevin, by telling us about your organization, Every Black Life Matters, and the story behind it?
McGary: Yeah. Excellent.
We all saw what happened for 9 minutes and 45 seconds last year, last summer, and obviously, we saw what happened to our communities as a result of that. A lot of people believed the sentiment that black lives matter and so we should go out and do some sort of protest.
Those protests turned violent, that violence destroyed cities, destroyed black and brown businesses, and as a result, we figured that well, when people really get a clue as to what BLM is really all about—people of moral character, people of faith foundations—they’ll want to still express the sentiment, but they’ll probably start to move away from the organization. So we want it to be there for them, so we’re an alternative to Black Lives Matter.
We are called Every Black Life Matters. And the reason why [is], we wanted to specifically be in the exact same lane as BLM, but we wanted to reframe all of the major arguments.
So our pillars are protecting black life from the womb to the tomb, protecting the nuclear family, encouraging fatherhood, free markets, and capitalism, and school choice. These are the things that make a notable difference in black life and we wanted to express the sentiment that black life indeed does matter.
And right now we have some systemic plights that are strategically against black life in certain areas that we’d like to address and so we started Every Black Life Matters. We’ve changed, reframed all of the major arguments, and we’re excited that we have so many people that are coming alongside as donors, supporters, prayer partners, and encouraging the work.
Del Guidice: That’s so awesome. Kevin, you’ve mentioned this a little bit and we’re going to delve a little bit more into it, but just kind of on a surface level, can you talk more about the differences between BLM and Every Black Life Matters?
We saw BLM really not support the family. They’re definitely not pro-life. You are so pro-life. And can you just draw out that more and why you wanted to have such a contrast there in between that?
McGary: Yeah. So, what we saw was a lot of BLMers that were standing on the sideline when Antifa was going into these communities, utterly burning black and brown businesses to the ground, and BLMers were applauding and saying, “Yeah,” and then looting as well.
So we needed an organization that would really stand against that, confirm to Antifa that “Look, you’re the white supremacist, you’re coming to the black community, and you’re destroying our businesses. You guys are the white supremacists and you need to stop.” So that was one of the things that we wanted to really send a strong message with.
The next thing is, the reason why we’re so pro-life is because, and I think this argument is, we have to explain to people why we kept the nomenclature of BLM and why did we think that we had to bring out “black” or put “black” in our sort of moniker. Here’s the reason why.
Margaret Sanger in the early 1970s said, “We don’t want the word to get out, but we want to fully exterminate the Negro population.” “Negro” was her term. And so black lives are literally strategically, to this very day, targeted for extermination—Margaret Sanger’s term.
So we said, “Look, that means that there are some systemically racist organizations—Planned Parenthood and abortuaries would fall into that category—that are trying to create black genocide and they’ve, unfortunately, been successful at that and we, as an organization, need to stand against that.” That’s No. 1.
No. 2 is we needed—we hear all of Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo and their books that they’ve written talk about how the educational platforms, there’s not really a level playing field for the black community. They’re absolutely true, but what they both stopped short of is they didn’t come up with a real solution that black families need and that is school choice, parental choice, different types of educational platforms, including charter, parochial, private, homeschooling networks, those types of things, making a tremendous difference to black life.
We also know that fatherhood is critical for and reestablishing the nuclear family is critical for reducing crime and poverty. So if we had a father in the home, social anthropologists, cultural anthropologists have already determined that having a father in the home, we could reduce crime and poverty by up to 70%.
And in the same way, they said having educational reforms that would allow for school choice, parental choice programs would also reduce crime and poverty pretty much to the same extent.
So these are things that are critical for sincere—and I have to say this because there’s a lot of people out there that are political activists that are purposefully being manipulative and trying to generate an emotional response. They’re insincere. If they were sincere, they would stand for school choice, they would stand for the nuclear family and father in the home, they would stand against the systemic racism of Planned Parenthood, and they would stand with us.
Del Guidice: You mentioned fatherlessness and I wanted to ask you about that. There seems to really be an epidemic of it in the black community. What is your perspective of that and how can that be fixed?
McGary: Yeah. So, we recognize that a lot of people, with the hookup culture, there’s people that do get pregnant unplanned, it happens. And a lot of times with casual relationships that young man really didn’t intend to necessarily be a part of that young lady’s life, and so that happens. It happens a lot more often than it used to happen, but it’s always happened, unfortunately.
And what we have determined or learned as a part of this is that if that father was still at least connected, even tangentially connected, to his children, that he could make a tremendous difference in their lives. …
One of the big reasons why fathers are disconnected is because the mother wants nothing to do with the father and they basically prevent that father from reconnecting with the child. So we have some education to do with mothers to help them to understand that, look, your child is going to have a much better life if that child at least recognizes, understands, who the father is and at least has some sort of a relationship with that father.
No. 2, we see that fathers are disconnected because they feel guilty. There’s not a whole lot going on in their personal life.
And what I remind people is, look, my mother and father were together and still are together for 62 years, but all of my formative years my father was just a runaway alcoholic, but the thing that’s interesting is he came home every night and I learned from him and his mistakes.
So what we’re encouraging fathers is, look, you don’t have to be perfect. Your children just need to be connected to you. They just need to know who you are. They just need to occasionally receive guidance from you.
For me and my father, I purposed within myself that I will never be an alcoholic. So, I learned from him. So from what would be perceived as his mistakes was great foundational principles in my own life, it showed up to this very day, and so it’s important that fathers just be connected.
Del Guidice: You were speaking of Margaret Sanger and the eugenicist movement that she was part of and looking at America today, do you think America has a racism problem? And if so, how should that be treated?
McGary: Yeah. We do have racism, and quite honestly, we do have systemic racism. I found two examples. Do you want to hear them?
Del Guidice: Go for it.
McGary: OK, so there, I have to tell you and all of your listeners, they are going to be inconvenient, but they are factual, historically factual.
No. 1, there is an organization that started in the 1800s. That particular organization had a faction of white supremacists, those white supremacists decided that they wanted to start and encourage slavery. Those white supremacists within that particular mindset not only encouraged slavery, but they put judges in place.
So when we did have a very critical litigation going on—Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Jim Crow, all of these things that came tofore—these people of that particular faction, of that particular mindset, really ruled against what could have made a critical difference in slavery at the time.
So that particular faction in the 1800s, when we did pass the Homestead Act, with the Homestead Act, what that does is, it was federal lands and they were saying, “Hey, we could grant these to people coming out of slavery, give it to free black slaves, etc., etc.” All of those lands, the gross majorities of those lands, were given to white Europeans who were newly immigrated to America as opposed to black ex-slaves or slaves. So we had people at that particular faction that meted out those lands in that way.
People in that particular faction as well, when we had Abraham Lincoln pretty much sign off on 40 acres and a mule, when Lincoln was killed, his vice president was of this other particular white supremacist faction and his vice president made sure that the 40 acres and a mule did not occur for black families.
During Reconstruction this particular mindset and this particular faction, these white supremacists, decided that they wanted to try to keep blacks in order, they started the KKK. From that they doubled down, tripled down, and in the early 1900s and through the civil rights movement they were segregationists. They were white supremacists and … they were segregationist. They made sure that that held.
And then when you move into the 1900s, early 1900s, mid-1900s, that particular faction, these particular people of this particular mindset, made sure that they were in alignment with eugenicists, organizations and eugenicist mindset. They were the epitome of white supremacists.
Now, I would ask you and I would ask your listeners, do your research—historically factual, true. And if you’re with me, denounce and renounce that particular organization. If there is any call for reparations, that organization is around today, they have tens of billions of dollars in their coffers, we should get reparations from that one faction that encouraged, elongated, and precipitated “safe slavery.”
The No. 2 organization is this particular organization was started by a lady that spoke at the Women’s KKK. She was a eugenicist. She was a white supremacist. She hated blacks. She called us reckless breeders. She called us weeds and scourge of society, feeble-minded, and she started an organization with the expressed intent of exterminating blacks.
That particular organization to this very day has proliferated all of their major clinics within walking distance of the black community, about 80%-plus to 90% of them are within walking distances of the black community. Unfortunately, they have been very successful at fully exterminating, or at least mostly exterminating, large percentages of blacks.
When you consider that blacks make up 13% of the population, of that only 6.50% are women, of that only half of that, about 3%, are childbearing age, 15 to 44, and they put up to 90% of their resources within walking distance of that community. It makes no sense other than it’s part of a strategy.
Del Guidice: An agenda.
McGary: So that organization is systemically racist. It’s fundamentally, primarily all run, up until the last few years, they tried to put the figureheads in there that were Asian, black, and etc., but that particular organization meets all of the definitions of white supremacy, meets all of the definition of systemically racist.
Now here’s the question that we all need to ask each other. We have all of these talking heads, [critical race theory] adherents and proponents, we have these anti-racist people—Kendi; Robin DiAngelo, Ms. “White Fragility.” Here’s the thing, when we have these two perfect examples that would actually define what systemic racism is, how it’s still happening today in certain circles, how come they never, ever mentioned what happened in the 1800s? Who was directly responsible for that? That organization is never, ever called out.
Del Guidice: Never mentioned.
McGary: That other organization is never, ever called out for their systemically racist things that they’re doing today to exterminate the black population. Why not?
Before we say that we will go along with any [critical race theory] proponents or any supposed anti-racist, we need to take a stand and say, “You know what? I may believe you. I may even be inclined to listen to you about these issues, but first I want you to renounce and denounce at the very least these two organizations for what they have done and what they’re currently doing to the black community.”
Del Guidice: Well, Kevin, something Every Black Life Matters talks about is real justice. Can you talk about what real justice is?
McGary: Yeah. … I wrote a book, it’s called “Just Justly Justice.” Real justice is when justice begins in the womb.
Before I say that, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of his other real famous quotes was, and I’m paraphrasing, “If we allow injustice anywhere, it allows injustice to proliferate everywhere.” So with that in mind, we have to look at the very essence of life, the root of when life begins.
If we allow injustice when life begins, then we’re basically allowing injustice everywhere. So I would say to all of my social justice warriors, if you allow injustice in the womb, at conception, if you allow targeted injustice at blacks in the womb because it’s, “oh, a woman’s rights choose,” whatever you want want to call it, if you allow that injustice there, you allow the prolific proliferation of injustice everywhere.
So for us, because justice begins in the womb, real justice is standing for life at the essence of life where it actually begins.
Now, here’s the other thing I would say. We have a lot of people that are out there and they’re positioning themselves as “diversity, equity, inclusion” people. Here’s the thing I’d like for everybody to just reflect on, just briefly, how does a person who supposedly is about diversity stand with these people who are white supremacists and summarily, mercilessly murdering black babies in the womb?
Diversity means that you’re allowing and you encourage all diverse perspectives to come forward. How is it that you make demands about equity while you make sure that black babies are mercilessly, disproportionately murdered in the womb and in a most inequitable way where they’re not only murdered, but they’re dismembered, they’re skinned, and they’re sold their body parts? How has that equity?
Del Guidice: Mm-hmm.
McGary: How do you say that we’re all about inclusion while you exclude these lives in the womb?
Basically, I want everybody to recognize that there is gross hypocrisy with all of this stuff. With [critical race theory]. With diversity, equity, inclusion. With supposedly anti-racist. With supposedly these people that are positioning themselves as being principled about white fragility. Excuse me, first address these issues. Then we may listen to you.
Del Guidice: Another issue you guys are addressing is the whole conversation with free markets and how important it is for free markets to be present for families to flourish and that’s another way where you all really differ with the BLM organization. Can you talk about that and why that’s so important?
McGary: Absolutely. The No. 1 issue, one of the other main issues, for bringing people out of property in any environment, in any culture, in any community in the world is the ability for individuals to express themselves via entrepreneurialism. And because free markets have proven themselves over time, historically, as being the most equitable way to quickly pull people out of poverty, our biggest thing is free markets, capitalism are essential.
If we are sincere about standing up and encouraging blacks to not just, to a level of sustenance, but to actually encourage them to thrive, and excel, and succeed, over and abundantly, we must stand for free markets and capitalism. We must encourage entrepreneurialism within our K through 12 schools. We must encourage black households to embrace entrepreneurialism as opposed to Marxism, socialism, communism.
We’re being sold a bill of goods and we need black organizations who are principled around the things that really make a big difference in the black community to stand up and encourage our black brothers and sisters, this is the way out. It is not to embrace more government influence and be sort of tethered to the teat of government.
Del Guidice: Well, Kevin, we’ve talked a little bit about critical race theory, but I want to bring it back to that just for a moment here. In the year since George Floyd’s death, there’s been a lot of conversation around antisemitism, critical race theory, anti-racism, all these issues. What do you think of these ideologies? And how do we move out of critical race theory and these issues?
McGary: … We’re actually going around the country and we have active letter campaigns denouncing critical race theory, so if you go to our site, everyblm.com, you’d be able to download [them]. We have templated letters that are already pre-written and ready for you to just sign your name to, different scenarios, whether it’s a legislator or federal office or whatever.
Here’s the thing about [critical race theory], fundamentally, what critical race theory is espousing, it says that just because of melanin in your skin or lack thereof, you are castigated and demonized and irredeemably racist, or white supremacists, or white privilege. Pick your term of the demonization of the day and that’s what white people are all categorized as via [critical race theory].
What’s unfortunate with that is we’ve come a long way since Dr. MLK encouraged us all that we should embrace one another based on the content of our character, not the color of our skin. …. And from his admonition and encouragement that we do that, we had all kinds of new laws, all kinds of new torts, all kinds of new initiatives that were started so we could really fully embrace and give people who were not treated fairly because of their skin color the ability to get recompensed based on litigation.
Now what we’re saying is, “Ah, no. Let’s go back and let’s strictly view people based on their skin color—this time whites—and be fully bigoted and prejudice against them, silence them, essentially cancel whiteness, and that’s the way that we handle this.”
This is ridiculous. It really sets us back. We have come a long way. Are we a perfect nation by viewing people in this way? There is no perfect nation, but we’ve come a very, very long way.
We will never fully eradicate racism and the reason why is this racism is a malady of the heart. It’s an evil. And it’s just like domestic violence, unfortunately, will never go away. It’s a malady of the heart. It’s an evil.
So what we need to do is stand against all evil, but we can’t eradicate it with these sweeping reforms, forcing people to be prejudice against other people, so we can end racism. I don’t know how that works.
Here’s the thing that Ibram X. Kendi said in his anti-racist book, he says, “Look, we get rid of past prejudice with current prejudice. We get rid of current prejudice with future prejudice.” Excuse me, how does that work?
Basically, you’re saying, “No, we need to codify prejudice, bigotry, racism as part of our normal everyday lives and that will actually help us unify. That would actually help us to get rid of race.” How does that work? It’s completely illogical and critical race theory is all about that.
So the fundamental thing I want your listeners and your viewers to understand is that if you’re a person of faith, if you’re a person of moral character, [critical race theory] basically says that whites are racist, evil, and irredeemable. If you’re a person of faith, you understand that Jesus came to redeem all.
Del Guidice: Yeah.
McGary: So it’s completely antithetical to anything that a person of faith, whatever, adopts. But here’s the ironic thing: We have a lot of churches, we have a lot of environments, corporate environments, that embrace critical race theory.
So we have to fight this thing. We’re going around and we’re talking to a lot of churches, pastors, leaders, ministry leaders, and helping to encourage them that, look, [critical race theory], black liberation theology, liberation theology in general, these are completely antithetical and they’re completely unbiblical. And you have to reject [them]. They’re religions onto themselves and we need to stand up against them because they’re corrosive, dangerous, diabolical, and, dare I say, demonic.
Del Guidice: Kevin, before we end, I had to ask you this: When you’re talking to people who are in the BLM organization, what would you tell them about why they need to join you all?
McGary: Yeah. We’ve done that a few times. We actually have a few videos of that. So when we encounter people who are diehard BLMers, they usually say, “Hey, OG Black Lives Matter.” And I go up to them, and I get in their face, and I say, “You know what, to me, bro, every single black life matters.” And then I ask them, “Now, does every single black life matter to you?” And then they’re stuck. They’re like, “Oh, this brother, he’s coming with something.”
So then I go further, I say, “Look, from conception to the grave, we need to stand up for black life. We have a lot of issues within our community that are barriers or impediments to our success. That could be early childhood development, school choice, certainly we’re targeted in the womb. Certainly if we had fatherhood initiatives and those types of things—” and we actually in that dialogue, actually bring them along. They’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” So by the end of that, we give them a badge and they actually take the badge and put [it] on.
So the reality is BLMers, a lot of them are good, sensible people, they’ve just been swept up emotionally and emotionally charged with this sort of sentiment. But the reality is, if we were to just take a second and challenge them on their premise with Every Black Life Matters, we can actually bring some of these people along.
Del Guidice: Amen.
McGary: Amen.
Del Guidice: That’s beautiful. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us on The Daily Signal. It’s been great having you.
McGary: Thank you for having me. God bless you.
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