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Thank you, Fox viewers.
Well, maybe I should say some Fox viewers.
As Black History Month comes to an end, I’ve been traveling across America -- from Seattle to St. Louis, from Chicago to Philadelphia – to promote my new book, "New Prize for These Eyes – The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement."
And I’m humbled by the large, yes large, turnout of Fox News viewers who show up to talk about race in America, to discuss politics as well as take a selfie and get an autographed book.
They tell me they’ve been watching me, a Black Democrat, on Fox News for nearly three decades.
It has been eye-opening to see these mostly white, Donald Trump-supporting Fox News fans line up to express concern about the future of race relations under our current president.
Tracing the journey of how we got here is the central theme of my new book. If the first civil rights movement was defined by three words—"We Shall Overcome"—then the second civil rights movement has been defined by three different words: "Black Lives Matter."
Today’s second civil rights movement is an essential part of the national debate about race.
Is a person’s race a legitimate factor to be considered in college admissions? How about hiring?
What is the best way to teach our children about America’s troubled racial past? How is it best to deal with race in movies, sports, and media?
Conservatives, moderates and liberals want to talk about race. They are frustrated by being shut up as real debate is replaced by empty slogans like "Identity Politics," and "Systemic Racism."
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People of all stripes want to talk because there is no hiding from the fact that America is already a big melting pot of people of different races and headed for an even more racially diverse future.
But talking honestly about race in America in the age of Black Lives Matter is being handicapped, undermined by another three words: Defund the Police.
"Defund the Police" was the rallying cry of a few radical, disorganized activists. But Defund the Police never had broad support among the public. It never had support among Democrats in elected office.
Yet critics of BLM used those three words to shut down debate over race relations by linking everything BLM stood for to anyone chanting Defund The Police.
Here is the reality. In 2021, in a Democrat majority U.S. Senate, all 99 senators present—including every Democrat—voted for Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s, R-Ala., amendment to withhold federal funds from localities that defund their police.
People of all stripes want to talk about race because there is no hiding from the fact that America is already a big melting pot of people of different races and headed for an even more racially diverse future.
Here is another reality: Immediately after the murder of George Floyd, under the knee of a Minneapolis policeman, BLM was supported by most White Americans. The protest with 26 million people marching coast-to-coast, was the largest protest of any kind in American history.
As I write in the book, white Americans "comprised the largest group of participants in these protests, at 46 percent." That was bigger than the 39 percent of marchers who were Latino and Black. And it is important to note that the second-largest racial group in the marches was the Latino contingent.
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That picture of racially diverse people marching for racial peace was stunning. Even the historic 1963 March on Washington, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, had only 250,000 people and that crowd was mostly Black.
And as I remind readers in my book, the people marching had previous knowledge of the BLM movement. The phrase entered the national lexicon seven years before George Floyd’s murder, after the acquittal of the man who shot and killed Black teen Trayvon Martin.
But years later in the outpouring of concern after Floyd’s killing, BLM still lacked a clear leadership structure. It lacked a clear set of demands for achieving a racially-just society. Different chapters of BLM in different cities had different leaders with different agendas.
One of the leading BLM group got caught up in allegations of corruption and misuse of donor funds. And there was no transparency about BLM’s handling of money.
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Tens of millions of dollars sent to advance the cause of racial justice by people of all colors were unaccounted for and in some cases went to hefty consulting fees, to family and friends and personal luxuries. And then there was the burden created by Defund the Police.
Juan Williams (Fox News Digital)
Critics of BLM also called attention to every instance of financial shenanigans, violence, profanity and especially use of the phrase "Defund the Police." But independent studies showed that more than 90 percent of marches were peaceful. And even with the threat of violence at the marches being amplified, notably on conservative websites, polls showed that a third of Republicans supported the marches.
My guess is that many of those conservatives are among the people I’ve been meeting on the road for my book tour.
These Trump voters say they came out to hear my perspective in order to better understand race relations. That stands in stark contrast to a lot of the hate aimed at different political views that I see on social media, where trolls and deranged minds hide behind the anonymity of their keyboards. It turns out that the internet is not the real world.’
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As former First Lady Michelle Obama often says, "It’s harder to hate up close."
Thank you, Fox viewers, for getting close, for reading and talking.
Juan Williams' latest book is "New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement" (Simon and Schuster, January 14, 2025).
