something that i did not know. that's a great book. a great book for baseball fans. i'm looking forward to reading all of my books on my list. thank you. >> send us an e-mail at booktv@c-span.org. ... well, now joining us on our booktv set is radio talk show host, columnist and lawyer larry elder. his most recent book, "dear father, dear son: two lives, eight hours." mr. elder, who is randolph elder? >> guest: randolph elder was my father. you heard the term tiger mom? my dad was a junk yard dog dad.

he was one of the first black marines, and i knew that my dad was a marine, and because of his gruff exterior i sort of thought that marines were just sort of mean, brutal people. my brothers and i could not stand my father. i mean, we couldn't stand the s.o.b.. we thought of him as cold, as uncare, as unloving, unlovable, and whenever he came into the house, it always changed the atmosphere in the home. when i was 15 years old, my father and i had a furious fight. we didn't speak to each other for ten years. so the book is all about the conversation my dad had when i was 25 years old a conversation that i thought was going to last ten minutes, it ended up lasting eight hours. and he morphed into this kind, caring, sensitive man that i completely misunderstood my whole life. so the book really is a 247-page apology to the man. >> host: in here you write that your dad felt during that conversation that he hadn't done anything wrong in your

childhood. >> guest: he hadn't. what i planned on doing when i was flying into l.a. to meet with him was to be very calm and talk about all the things that he'd ever done to me and my brothers that i thought were abusive, mean-spirited, what i thought were bad things for a parent. and so i promised myself i was going to be calm, i sat down, and i unloaded on his put for 20 minutes. and this and this very angry. my father sat there, and he said very quietly, i was afraid of my daddy too. my father never mentioned his father. there was kind of a no-fly zone over talking about my dad's life. and in this conversation i found out that my father did not know the name of his biological father, he never met his biological father. i didn't know that until this conversation. it turns out my father had an abusive relationship with his mother. his mother and he quarreled. my dad came home from school one day 13 years old, had a fight with the mother's

then-boyfriend, another man, not elder. the mother sided with the boyfriend, throws my father out of the house. athens, georgia, just a few years before the beginning of the great depression, 13 years old, and he never returned home. and the on the front porch of the home his real mother yelled at him and said you'll be home, either that or you'll be in the penitentiary, or you'll be in prison, in the cemetery or in prison, is what she told him. and my father went next door and then to another door to another house to get a job. and so my father literally went door to door to find some sort of job. he ended up becoming a pullman porter for the trains, and my father visited california at the time. and he thought kind of he'd make a mental note of it, maybe he'd come back to california. so he comes out of the service, he goes to chattanooga, tennessee, he walks to an unemployment office. the woman tells him he has to go back out and go through the

colored only door. he says, this is bs, they don't have colored doors in california, i'm going to get a job as a cook. he goes restaurant to restaurant, and they say, i'm sorry, sir, you have no references which is their way of saying in california, we don't hire black people. when he was in chattanooga, they told him we flat out don't hire n-words. he walks through a door, asks for a job, he says what time do you close? 8:30, 5, my dad sat there the next day 59 8:30 til 5. lady calls him up and says, sir, i've got a job. my dad says what is it? she says it's a job cleaning toilets. my dad worked at that job for ten years, took a second job for ten years also as a janitor, cooked for a family on the weekend, went tonight school to get his ged that he never got. i never saw a human being work that hard. so you add his work ethic, how much time he spent working, how

little sleep he had, plus he comes home and is greeted by three rambunctious boys, okay, he wasn't ward cleaver, i give him a mulligan. my dad hit me with a belt. when i was having a book tour with somebody, i mentioned it, and the interviewer says, he didn't hit you with the telephone cord? and that was in the next chapter. this is how people disciplined people in those days, especially if you were from the south, especially if you came from a background where you had a mean-spirited dad, quote, in your own life. the man that my dad is named after, elder, was abusive, he was an alcoholic who physically beat him and his mother. again, all of this my dad spills out in this eight hour conversation. and i realize that my daddied the best he could by his definition. his way of punishing me was kinder, gentler and more sensitive than the way he was punished. my dad felt i put a roof over your held, clothing on your back, what's the problem?

he never had that. i wanted ward cleaver. my dad was not ward cleaver. i give him a mulligan. >> host: your dad also said to you that he was of there for you. >> guest: and that's the other -- >> host: he stay with the his mother. >> and that's the other point. here i am thinking that my daddied not love me. he got up every day, he came home, he wasn't abusive, he and my mom resolved things in an intelligent way. why i thought he didn't love me is beyond me, and one of the reasons i wrote the book is to tell people, many of whom who have had bad experiences with their own dads, often there's no manual. these people is have no better experience, they did the best they could. they did their job, they were the role model. and as long as the old man is above the ground, you can still reach out and perhaps repair the relationship, which is what i did. there's one other wrinkle in the book. i was living in cleveland, i met my uncle. my uncle happened to be a man who lived with my dad before my

dad met my mother, none of which i knew. so imagine growing up with a man who had no friends. it was never for my dad, it was always for my mom, and fast forward to meeting a man who knew my dad before he met my mother? he said, i lived with him, i know him better than you do. either he's changed, which i doubt, or you've misjudged him. so that is what gave me the incentive to sit down with him. i can't say i had this epiphany and i figured there was going to be a wonderful rapprochement with my dad, but i figured i'd tell him off, and at least we would understand respective positions. but it was luck. so i want people to know don't rely on some chance end counter. if he's still around, maybe just you completely misread the old man? and until you resolve your relationship with your father, there's going to be something

that will be missing. i felt kinder, happier, lighter when i reconciled with my father. it made everything better x there's always going to be an itch that needs to be scratched if you don't resolve that. >> host: our guest, larry elder. radio talk show host, columnist. the firms are up on the -- the numbers are up on the screen. we're talking about his most recent book which is a memoir. mr. elder writes a lot about politics as people who follow him know. if you'd like to dial in and talk about that as well, 202-585-3885 in the east and central time zones, 585-3886 if you're in the mountain or pacific time zone where we are right now on the campus of usc. mr. elder, chapter two, if "norl was hate." my hatred for my father was not the kind where you get a spanking, seethe for a bit and things go pack to number -- go back the number because you realize he punishes you because

he loves you. norm was intimidation. normal was tense. normal was wondering if you would say something that could set him off. normal was hate. >> yeah. when people look at me and i'm smiling, they often wonder why is it that i'm so sort of nonchalant about it. i'm writing that from the perspective of a child, andering seems romantic, everything seems awful, everything seems brutal. the fact of the matter is once you have perspective and realize that my dad was doing the best that he could, i thought his punishments were excessive, and i think another parenting model would have been more appropriate for me, but within the bounds of acceptability, it certainly was. my father, as i said before, was ill-tempered in part because he was so tired all the time. imagine averaging four and a half to five hours a sleep a day for probably two or three decades. that's what the guy was like. and then you walk into the house and have three rambunctious kids. my brothers and i would have our

toys on the carpet when our dad would walk in in the middle of the floor. he would kick them so hard, the toys would often break. i thought that was insanity. and one time when i got older, i mentioned this to my mother. i said, why didn't you say something about that? she said, he didn't kick my stuff. and it turns out my mother had a pair of shoes before we came along, my brothers and i came along, and my dad came home and kicked her shoes so hard they flew and kicked the wall. she said, you do that again, i'm gone. and he never did it again to her, but he would kick our stuff. >> your dad was a republican. >> guest: he was a republican. my father always felt that the democratic party offered you something for nothing. my mother was a democrat. and so at the table the two of them would have these battle, and i would go back and forth. and i sided with my mom when i was younger, but when i got older and older, i thought my dad made more sense. he had a few simple rules. hard work wins, you get out of

life what you put into it, and no matter how hard you work, bad things are going to happen, and how you respond will tell us whether we raised a man. i would always say, not too much pressure, dad. >> host: larry erld, you recently wrote a column about african-americans and fatherhood saying that patrick moynihan back in the '60s said there was a national tragedy because 25% of african-american children were born in unwed households. >> guest: right. >> host: today that number is 75%. >> guest: yeah. i was a freshman in college in 1970, and daniel patrick moynihan called the negro family: a case for national action. and at the time, 25% of kids were born outside of wedlock. and moynihan said this was horrific, this is a neutron bomb dropped on the community, and if something isn't done, this could be horrific. it could lead to greater dependency on welfare, crime. over 70% of black kids are born outside of wedlock, so more

white kids are born outside of wedlock than the number that triggered this alarming book. i believe that the direct link between not having a father in the house and all sorts of social problems up to and including murder. i was on the pearce be morgan show a little while ago, and i told him the face of gun violence in america as horrific as sandy hook was is not some suburban kid, it's a brown or black kid in the ghetto. if you look at chicago, chicago's on track for two sandy hooks per month. usually against another black person. yet chicago is about a third, a third and a third black, white and hispanic. why would so many murders come from the black community? the answer is so many kids come from parents without fathers. you look at violation, we're talking about gang-related kids, usually young kids. there was a documentary that my dad and i discussed in the book called resurrection, and it was about truth pack shakur. tupac shakur.

and he said white people may like hearing me say this, but i know for a fact if i'd had a father in my life, i would have had discipline and confidence. and he went on to talk about the fact that he joined a gang because he didn't have a father, he wanted structure, he wanted protection. and he went on to say in a way maybe a conservative right-winger might say that it is important for a boy to have a father in his life. a boy needs a father. tupac shakur said this. there's also a pole that the l.a. times took in the mid '80s where they asked poor people and non-poor people the following question: do you believe young, poor women often have children to gain additional welfare benefits? most nonpoor people said no. but when poor people were asked the same question, 64% of poor people said, yes. so what i'm saying is we are financially incentivizing women into engaging in behavior that's counterproductive, and we're allowing the man to abandon his financial and moral responsibility by allowing the

woman to marry the government. these are policies that we have done, both parties, with the best of intentionses. and i think they are a net negative on our society. and so we're blaming high capacity magazines, we're blaming racism, all sorts of things when, in fact, we need to look in the mirror and recognize we have advocated policies that have been antithetical to the formation of a nuclear-intact family. >> host: larry elder, where can people hear your show? >> guest: i can be heard on kabc here in l.a. my twitter handle is @larryelder. i'm on facebook. >> host: do people go online to listen to you in. >> guest: yes. >> host: you had a national show. >> guest: you can hear my show in bangladesh. i get phone calls sometimes from abbottabad -- not really. [laughter] you can hear my show anywhere. >> host: one of your previous books, "what's race got to do with it," we talked earlier in

this program with eric deggans whose newest book is called "race baiter." he got that name because bill o'reilly called him a race baiter saying he wrote about race. there's a victim of -- a culture of victimology among some african-americans. what are your thoughts? >> guest: i have a word i coined, and it means somebody who blames others for his or her flight. i don't believe rh is -- racism is a major problem in america anymore. i subscribe to what i call the elvis factor. 10 percent of the american people believe elvis is still alive. so you start with 10%. 10 president of the american people have to be written off. is there racism? of course, but is there the kind that can stop any person who has gotten an education and has some dedication and is willing to work hard and has a little bit of luck in no. america is the greatest country in all of human history. that's why most of the world's seven billion people want to come here. >> host: recent column, then

we're going to go to calls, rgiii gets uncle tom treatment. what is this column about? >> guest: it's about a sports caster on espn who criticized rg iii who talked about the fact that the criticism was that rg iii may be a cornball brother. and the reason he is as far as this guy's concerned is because he might be a republican. so becoming republican is a four-letter word for a lot of people. rg iii came from a nuclear-intact family. he doesn't think of himself as a victim. he doesn't think of himself as a trailblazer as far as his race is concerned. he's trying to be the best rg iii he could possibly be, and for a lot of people that means he's a sellout and an uncle tom. it's outrageous. he's a starts guy, for -- sports guy, for crying out loud. wins and losses ought to be the way we evaluate rg iii.

>> host: was your book tough to write? >> guest: people have asked me that, and i suppose it might have been, but that was -- i was 25 years old when we reconciled, and i wrote the book a couple years ago. so i've had plenty of time, my dad and i have had 35 years to work op our relationship, and arguably we were closer than my mother and i are. my mother and i are very close. so it wasn't difficult at all. it was, again, a 247-page apology to the man. i was anxious to get it out before he died, and i was able to do so. >> host: how far was your boyhood home? >> guest: i was born in south central, picot union which is a pretty heavily hispanic area. and then my dad moved up to south central. we were the second black family on the block, and within five years the whole block was all black. >> host: larry elder, there's a picture on the front of your book, very quickly. and i promise then we'll go to calls. what is this a picture of?

>> guest: that's a picture of my dad's restaurant. and if you can look very closely in there, you can see my dad leaning over there. it's one of the rare only photos we have of my dad's café. that's where i was born, in that little house right there. my dad tore it down after the place was zoned for light industrial and built the restaurant there. lousy location. you can't see it, but the food was so good, people found their way. >> host: and you hated working there. >> >> guest: i wouldn't stand working for you. he cursed at me. he would get volatile and start yelling and screaming. you can see how small it was, it was embarrassing. and i told myself the next time he cursed at me i'm going to walk up to him and say, now see here, buddy. i didn't have enough guts to confront him, but we did have the conversation that lasted a few minutes, and then we didn't talk for ten years. >> host: i'm done talking, it's your turn. larry elder's our guest. henry in bay shore, new york, you're the first caller. >> guest: i can't hear.

>> host: hi, henry. last chance. we're going to move on to ohio, there'd doe, ohio. anthony? anthony, you're on booktv on c-span2 with larry elder. hi, anthony. >> caller: hi, how are you? >> host: please go ahead, sir. >> caller: yes. i was wanting to ask mr. elder, is he having any plans on having another talk show again? [laughter] >> guest: well, anthony, thank you for the question. from your lips to god's microphone. i'd love to have another talk show, i'd love to have a show along the lines of a hannity or reilly, political show where you call in and give your opinions, and i'm looking around to try and find that. hopefully, that can happen. >> host: is radio the only thing you're doing right now? >> guest: well, i'm writing a play. i've had a meeting with sony pictures, and they've begin me some optimism maybe this project could be a movie someday.

and i want to make it a play first along the lines of what tyler perry did. and then take it to a production house and maybe get it made. >> host: would you star in it like tyler perry does? >> guest: no, i'm not an actor. [laughter] >> host: are you still a lawyer? practicing lawyer? >> guest: i am. i'm not practicing, but i'm still a lawyer. i haven't been disbarred. >> host: john's in west lake village, and i have no idea what your state is, because it's all run off the screen. tell us your state and go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: california. >> host: thank you, sir. >> caller: i guess i have three questions. number one, do you have any children? number two, do you treat your children or would you advise treating your children the way your father treated you? and, number three, does the, does the way your father treated you affect your relationship with people and the way that you

approach political discussion? in other words, do you consider yourself -- [inaudible] of the people when they disagree with you? >> guest: well, thank you for that. um, i think the first question was how do i feel -- >> host: do you have children? >> guest: do i have children, thank you. no, i don't. and people have asked me whether or not my not having children had to do with way my father and my mother raised me, and i think probably so. i remember watching them when i was a kid in the kitchen watching them discuss something financial, and i remember saying to myself, this doesn't seem like a whole lot of fun. and i really thought that fathers were mean task masters, and i never wanted anybody to feel towards me the way i felt towards my father. when i got into college and i had classmates and was invited to their homes, i saw their homes were very different from my home, and they felt very differently towards their father. so i realized it was not necessarily the way it had to be. but the i do think it probably

made me feel, maybe understand how hard it is raising children, what hard work it is and how labor intensive it is. and what i wanted to do was to be a writer and do a lot of traveling. i think i felt probably that i didn't want to make those kinds of sacrifices. i have an enormous appreciation for what my mother and father went through and all of the sacrifices that they did financial and otherwise. when people decide to raise children, i think it is the most important decision you can possibly make maybe short of going into combat. my goodness, you can't send them back? they often don't turn out the way you want them to turn out. they often get angry when you're trying to do the best for them. it's a thankless task. but i think the rewards are there, and now that my friends are having kids that are my age, i see why they put in the work. if i had to do it all over again, i probably would have kids. >> host: has it affected your relationship with people, as that caller asked? >> guest: um, i think probably so. i think when you don't feel loved by your father, it makes you a little less warm and a

little less loose. and as i said, when my dad and i reconciled, my friends noticed a difference in my personality. they thought i was funnier, happier, more accepting of other people. so i think early on some of this imprinting might have made me have decisions about family and that sort of thing. >> host: patrick, peter borrow, new hampshire. >> guest: thank you for remembering the questions, peter. [laughter] >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: thank you very much. i would like to ask mr. elder -- well, first, i would like to say i really admire your, and am impressed with your courage you had to confront your father and go through the working things out with him. i couldn't think of a word the use. >> guest: that's right. >> caller: and i grew up with a very loving father. however, my mother was an alcoholic, so they had all of these fights when i was really

young. and i was never aware of what was going on. and so, um, i never, you know, i always want withed my father -- wanted my father to tell me why he was so angry and stuff. and, of course, later on i figured it out. but my question is, um, how open do you think, you know, from your experience, how open dune dune -- do you think a father should be with their children or child as to how, what his feelings really are and, you know, how -- you know, his most intimate feelings as far as things he might be dealing with within himself, his own issuesesome. >> guest: right. >> host: all right, patrick, i think we got the point, thank you. larry elder? >> guest: well, i think it's the $64,000, and what you're really

asking is to what extent should your father be a friend as opposed to being a parent, and the answer is real simple, he should be a parent. whatever stories the parent has that could perhaps give a lesson, a life lesson to the child, the father should use. but, again, as i said before there's no handbook here. and my book is written from the perspective of my dad. we often talk about how we are raised from the perspective of a child, but we don't think about how our fathers feel about disciplining us. my father told me he didn't like doing it, but he wanted us to turn out okay, and he was willing to go through the necessary years, in my case, of being the bad guy in order to achieve the objective which was to have three well-grounded boys. >> host: who are kirk and dennis? >> guest: they are my two brothers, i'm in the middle. dennis was wayward and kirk was much more solid. both of them are vietnam-era vets, dennis in the army, my brother in the navy. dennis, he and i could not stand

each other. we fought night and day, day and night, 24/7 the way a lot of boys do. and my little brother, i think, had a problem with me because i was such a good student, and in those days teachers were so insensitive, they would often say to my little brother, how come you're not like larry? so dennis, i think, early on decided to be the anti-larry. i think now a school psychologist would intervene, and we probably would deal with him a little better, but kids often compared him to me, and i think my little brother wanted to be the anti-larry, as i explain in my book. >> host: where are they today? >> guest: dennis died about 15 years ago. my older brother is still around, he is a foreman with a major oil company, happily married, has three children -- by the way, both of my brothers married women who had children and went on to have very long marriages. >> host: talk about your brother's funeral and your mother's view and your view and what actually happened. >> guest: you're talking about

dennis' funeral. and, again, this is the brother that i didn't get along with. and my brother dropped out of high school. he did a lot of drugs. the military straightened him out. but he got out. he was still fairly wayward. and when he died, i said to my mother, we'll just have a very small service because dennis, dennis' friends are scattered here and yon, and they're not the kind of people that you can reach on a phone and will show up. and she says, you don't know him. we need to have a big church. dennis' friends are going to find out that he died, and they'll be here. it was one of the largest funeral i'd been to. almost like maag relate thatcher -- margaret thatcher had died. people were coming from everywhere. he lived in arizona, other parts of the country. people came to pay their respects to him. and when i would hear them talk about him, it was almost like my dad's and my conversation because i would hear things about my brother that i didn't know and things he'd said and done that i didn't know, and he was apparently a far better friend to other people than he

was to me in many cases. my brother and i shortly after he died, he was laying in the hospital x we had a very long conversation, and i found out that he did respect me and love me and look up to me, and i told him the same thing. and it was kind of a nice moment. >> host: larry elder, do you have any reticence about writing a family history and putting your life out there in print for people? >> guest: i would not have written that book had my mother still been alive. there's a story i told about how my mother got my brother in the service. i'll let the readers read it. my mother would not have liked me to have told the story. but it tells you my mother was gutsy. my mother was tough. and the book, the book is a, a book that's also an ode to her as well, but there's some stories in there that my mother probably would have been embarrassed about. >> host: you know what? i don't often do this, but it's worth getting this book just to read that story about his mom. frank, in montgomery, alabama, you're on with larry elder on

booktv. >> caller: mr. elder, i appreciate what you said. but i want to -- >> guest: hi, frank. >> caller: have you read a wonderful poem by robert hayden? a bunch of sundays? it fit well what you're saying about your father. and it's a short, wonderful poem. it begins that -- [inaudible] and put his clothes on in the blue black cold. and from then -- [inaudible] weekday weather made bank fires blaze. then he says in the poem that when the rooms are warm, you recall me. i would get up -- [inaudible] driven out the cold and feeling the -- [inaudible] but then he says later on -- [inaudible] what did i know? what did i know of love's austere and lonely offices?

finish so -- so the point is, you make the point so well in your talk that your father did love you. but you didn't know that, what that love austere and lonely offices. my father and i never got along together. he lived to be 104 years old, but we never got along together. but i love what you said. and i'm glad you wrote it. republican or whatever you are. [laughter] >> guest: well, thank you very much, and you're absolutely right about the old man getting up and going to work every day, not liking it, and that was his role modeling. and and you didn't realize it when you're a kid, to watch somebody get up, and they're complaining, they're grumping, they don't want to go to work, but they do it anyway because they've got obligations. that's what you learn by having a father in the house. one of the things i also talk about is it also affects the girls. you don't have a father in the house, and often what happens is a girl would meet a man and

demand thoughts of -- [inaudible] and show her some sort of affection, she embraces this guy. and if he's a bad guy, it's too bad for her. and so not having a father in the house effects not just boys, but girls as well. >> host: larry elder spent several years living in cleveland working for a law firm, and this next call comes from bobby in ohio. >> caller: i've got a question for you in regards to the comment you made about rg 3:and the article about him being called an uncle tom. why would you state that person saying that would be republican? wouldn't democrats actually sometimes have feelings like that? i'm a republican, and i don't feel that way towards rg iii, so i'm just curious why you would say that. >> guest: you either misunderstood what i said, or i said it badly. what i said was the espn guy criticized rg iii because he thought he was republican. he said there's a rumor he's republican, i don't know about that. he's got a white fiancee, i

don't know about that. he called him a cornball brother because he suspected that rg iii was a republican, but he had a white fiancee. that is why this caster called him a cornball brother which i think is a racist thing. so i'm sorry if i misexplained it. >> host: go ahead, bobby, you're still on the line. >> caller: i appreciate that. i agree the same way you do then. i think it's totally a racist comment also. >> guest: absolutely. >> caller: and -- >> host: thank you, bobby. >> caller: and i'm a republican -- okay, thank you. >> guest: all right, thanks for calling in. republicans don't like being called racist, and with good reason. they shouldn't be called racist. >> host: larry elder, "dear father, dear son," is this an african-american story? >> guest: no, it's an american story. it's a story about a guy who struggled, who overcame, who endured the great depression, who joined to fight in the second world war, who was part of what tom brokaw called the greatest generation. it is an american story of hard

work, of triumph, of family, of success. this is a guy who did not know his biological father, became a entrepreneur, started a café, being able to buy that piece of property and the little house next door to it, plus the house in south central. my father is an american success story. >> host: linda is in winthrop, massachusetts, larry elder is our guest. >> caller: yes, hi, larry. i have a question for you. >> guest: hi. >> caller: hi. i'm very impressed by your story, and i know there are a lot of people out there that, um, have a hard time forgiving whether it's their parents or their spouse, and in some cases even their children. did you find that you were able to have the kind of forgiveness after ten years because you turned your life over to jesus and you gave it to him? i'd be interested to know. >> guest: well, i've always been a christian. my mother was, taught sunday school. so going to church was not an

option. i spent my 21st birthday in jerusalem as part of my junior year abroad in israel. i've always been very religious. no, that had nothing to do with it. the reason, i suppose, the ten-year relationship healed so quickly is during the eight-hour conversation because of my father's demeanor. when i unloaded on him and told him all the things he had done harshly, my father was like, is that it? you're mad at me for whipping you with a belt? that's it? do you know to know what my father did to me? and it was horrific. my father was like, is that all you have? [laughter] >> host: larry elder, did your father go to church? >> guest: he did not. my father was a religious man though. he did not go to church, and i talk about that in the book. my father felt that organized religion was partly a scam. my father thought there was something wrong about the man in the south who was the pastor during the great depression having the biggest house, driving the nicest car, wearing the nicest clothing. he thought the person who's a man of god should be poor and

should be wearing holy clothes and should not be sporting around in the sunday best. he said there was something inherently wrong about that. he also, when he came home, my dad said his mother and the neighbors would be gossipping about what was going on in church. so my father thought going to church was a big dress-up thing, a big thing to gossip, who's doing what, who's sleeping with whom. and my father thought it had very little to do with god, so he worshiped himself. he would often watch televangelists on tv and would read the bible, but my father felt that organized church was a ripoff. i'm not saying i agree with him, my mother certainly didn't, but it was one of the differences they had. >> host: you also say your parents never went anywhere together, they lived separate lives. >> guest: my father and my mother slept in separate bedrooms after a while. they never took vacation together. i never saw them kiss, i never saw them hold hands until after my dad and i reconciled, and

then i began talking to them both, and i think that i improved their relationship a little bit. and much to my surprise be, they met some friends who lived in scottsdale, arizona, and they actually packed in the car and drove this together. i was stunned. and they stayed in motels along the way. i presume they had to sleep in the same bed. but i think my relationship with my dad, once it healed, improved their as well. >> host: and that couple in scottsdale, that was a white couple, right? and they went to the grand canyon? >> guest: they went to the grand canyon. the story they tell me is at the ticket praise -- place the person said i need to know who your family is, and the man said, here they are. all these black people with these white guys, and the ticket guy goes, okay, let 'em through, and they went through. >> host: temple city, california. hi, bob. >> caller: am i really on or no?

>> host: yes, you are. >> caller: okay. mr. elder, you're the best. i've been listening to you. 38 year withs army, three wars, blown up in iraq, 32 years hapd. that's not my question. my question is when are you going to stop playing around d lack of words -- and run for president? [laughter] >> guest: two things could happen if i run. one of them is i could win, the other one is i could lose, and both of them are bad. [laughter] but thank you for that. i've given it some thought, seriously, and i came this close to running for senate against barbara boxer, and i flew to d.c., and i met a bunch of senators. my be arena lost by ten points, i could have. >> host: larry elder, what do you think about the kerfuffle around dr. ben carson? >> guest: i like dr. carson, and i thought that it was pretty gutsy for him to have said what he said right in front of the

president, advocating the use of health savings accounts to deal with medical issues. and i'm not a big proponent of obamacare. i think that obamacare will, ultimately, hurt this country. and i agree with them. but for people who are touting him for running for office? please. to go from being a practicing physician to being president of the united states is not going to happen. i understand how people can get starting with certain people like they did with donald trump. but i'm not a big let's find somebody who i think embodies what i want who's never run for office and is trying to stick them in the presidency. it's not going to happen. >> host: what do you think about republican efforts, outreach to african-americans, latinos, etc. >> guest: you have to reach back as well. republicans are not racist. the republican party, as a percentage, more of them voted for the passing of the civil rights act of 1964 than did democrats. and all of those politicians that stood this front of school doors, they were democrats. george wallace was a democrat.

orville -- [inaudible] of little rock was a democrat. and not all of them became republicans once the civil rights act got passed. so the idea that republicans are racist is not fair. you look at the his right-of-way the democratic -- history of the democratic party, this is a party that voted against the 13th, 14th amendment and basically every civil rights legislation passed in the 9th century -- 19th century, the republican party was against it. the first successful presidential candidate was a guy named abraham lincoln. republicans have a major story to tell. but often people don't want to hear about it, they believe the republicans are racist, and they shut their minds to it. this is not your grandfather's republican party. republicans are very sensitive about reaching out to blacks and hispanics. but they often con desend. they often say things like, oh, i know somebody who picked fruit with cesar chavez. i'm not looking for a fishing buddy, i'm looking for somebody who's going to advance policies that i want. i want a government who says out

of my wallet and bedroom, and whatever politician delivers it gets my vote. >> host: why do you think mitt romney lostsome. >> guest: because if you look at exit polling, most americans believe the economy was so messed up by george bush that obama struggled mightily to overcome this horrible situation he inherited. the second reason is most americans believe republicans only care about rich people. and those are branding problems that the republican party has to to overcome. and it's hard to overcome it because you've got three obstacles; academia, hollywood and our major media, all of which are overwhelmingly liberal. when you say something, it's got to be interpreted through the filter of those three entities, and often it's been distorted. >> host: larry elder is our guest, this is booktv on c-span2 live from the los angeles times festival of books, campus of usc. mike's in fort worth, texas. hi, mike. >> caller: how's it going,

larry? my -- pretty good. i'm a african-american democrat, but i agree with you one of the big problems in the african-american community is lack of fathers in the house. but i think, larry, when you say that, you kind of come off kind of harsh on black people. now, what's the reason behind the lack of a lot of fathers being in the house, drinking or in prison? well, back -- this is my belief. back in the '30s and '40s black people were lawyers, they had their own businesses like your father had that restaurant. today had, they were dentists -- they had, they were dentists, we had a lot of grocery stores because there was segregation, and we couldn't go to white places, so we had to become plumbers, our dentists, doctors and physicians. well, for the last 56 years there hasn't been, there hasn't been -- black youngsters haven't seen, haven't been able to go to the black dentist say like in the '30s or '40s or to a grocery store that's owned by

black people or to a black doctor's office. you get my point, what i'm trying to say? all they see is the gangs and the fast money. so the lack of black businesses and for youngsters to see that and say i want to be like that, i want to be, own a grocery store, i want to be like that mechanic or doctor, that's part of the problem too. i just want to get your comment on that, larry. >> guest: well, it still comes back down to the lack of fathers. look at these census reports. 1890-1940, a black person was more likely to be married than a white person. transfer, a black child was -- therefore, a black child was more likely to be born in a nuclear-intact family. and as i mentioned, in 1965, 25% of black kids were born outside wedlock. fast forward, it's now three times that. what's the answer? racism? really? during the great depression, 50% of black adults were unemployed. you didn't find this kind of criminality. the other -- poverty?

again, 50% of black adults were unemployed during the great depression, and you had jim crow where it was legal and de facto segregation. you didn't find the same kind of criminality. we have spent $16 trillion since 1965 on poverty, and what we've done is we've destabilized families. that is why when a kid sees a gang banger, as you mentioned, he looks at that gang banger and thinks, hey, this is what i want to be. he doesn't have a father to say, wait a second, this is not the way to go. hit the books two good, hard hours a day. finish high school, don't have a kid before you're 20 years old and get married before you have that kid. if you do that, you will not be poor. the question we have to ask ourselves is, what policies are we doing that are giving people the incentive or disincentive to follow that formula? >> host: larry elder, a conversation between you and your mother beginning with your mother. your mother thought -- your

father thought small. don't make the same mistake. that's unfair. oh, here you go again, defending him. he's not donald trump. he was a wimp, she said. >> guest: yeah. my mother -- she was in a bad mood at the time he said that. my mother thought my father should have been a more successful businessman, and i didn't think that was a fair criticism. i thought my daddied the best he could with what he did. he kept the door open. most restaurants fail, and to have a restaurant that remained open until my dad was in his 80s is a hell of an achievement. and i thought my father belittled his achievement. again, my mother was not the warmest and most fuzzy person, but i didn't take too much to heart with that statement. >> host: she spent a little bit of time on your radio program, too, didn't she? >> guest: my mother was on every friday for a whole hour, probably the most popular feature because she told it like it was. she didn't pull any punches. my mother didn't like something, she'd say so. and people loved her candor.

>> host: iraq. what would your mother -- i'm sorry, iran. what would your mother have done with iran? >> guest: well, i tell the story in the book, i was a first-year law student, and this is when the hostages were taken in iraq -- in iran. and we were all talking about what should be done, and one guy said we ought to file a class action lawsuit and freeze assets and all this and that. and i said i know what my mother would do. they said, what? she'd give 'em 48 hours and bomb the hell out of them. everyone said, oh, no. so i said, watch. i picked up my phone. i called my mom in l.a. i said, mom, the hostage thing in iran. she goes, yeah? what would you do about it? uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. hung up the pone the. well, did she say she'd give 'em 48 hours? i said, no, she's mellowing out, she'd give them 72. [laughter] >> host: katherine in hannah, utah. good afternoon. >> caller: yeah. >> host: katherine, we're listening. please go ahead with your question or comment for larry

elder. >> caller: oh, i'm sorry. i didn't hear. i wanted to say thank you so much, first of all, for sharing your personal story. it's very inspiring. i -- [inaudible] a kid like you. he's 30 years old, and he's afraid to be a bad dad. but he's an amazing man. he's doing everything and anything not to be like that, so what kind of reaffirming or things that you want to do for him to say, no, you can, you can be a great dad, actually? >> guest: i would tell him, again, not to try and be his friend. recognize there are going to be periods of time where the kid won't like you, may even hate you the way i did my father. and you have to hope that be you've done your job, at some point there'll be a realization that you've done your job, and your kid will appreciate that. every kid that i know of sooner or later has that epiphany. sooner or later, it happens. every parent recognizes that, and good participants realize --

good parents realize sooner or later a kid will thank them for their sacrifice. >> host: sandy in marino, california, please go ahead with your question or comment for larry elder. >> caller: hi, larry. thank you so much for taking this call. very interesting story you have. i just have a quick question. you mentioned earlier that the breaking point was when your dad used certain language to you, and you left the restaurant, and you hadn't spoken to him for ten years after thatment -- that. so how did you live in the house with your dad for ten b years as a teenager without saying anything to him, or was it not that drastic? >> guest: well, it was kind of drastic. we don't have a big house. the house, as you can see, was on the same plot where the restaurant is. so it wasn't a big house. but by then we had moved, and the house we have right now was not much bigger. remember, my dad worked real hard, he came home late. i'm a teenager, so i left for college when i was 17, so it was

just two years of, basically, avoiding him. and we were like two ships passing in the night. he'd come in real late, i would be asleep. i would get up, he would be gone, so it was easy to avoid not talking to him, and then once i left to college, i went to college in rhode island, and then i went to law school in michigan. so i was not in the same state with him, so it was quite easy to avoid him. and by the way, the caller who said that it seemed kind of harsh what i was saying about not having fathers, i interviewed the head of the naacp, and i said to him as between the presence of white racism or absence of black fathers, which poses a bigger threat to the black community, and without missing a beat, to his credit, he said the absence of black fathers. there's a movie called boys in the hood, and the director is john singleton. he talks about two families. one is the family of ice cube, no father in the house, and you saw how the family turned around. the other family was across the

street, and that was cube baa gooding jr., and lawrence fish burn was his father. and he turned out very differently. and john singleton did a second movie called baby boy which he talked about the sexual predatory behavior of young black men, and john singleton is from the same area that i'm from. he's talking about the centrality of fathers and the lack of fathers being the central problem in south central and, in my opinion, the central social problem in america. >> host: next call for mr. elder, we have about seven minutes left in our program. dennis in sharon, massachusetts. hi, dennis. dennis? >> caller: yes. can you hear me? yes -- >> host: please go ahead. >> caller: okay, great. i'm a great fan of c-span. i watch booktv every weekend. my father was born in 1892, i was his first son. when i was born, he was in 60 years old. he left macon, georgia, as he

told we because he saw a black man being burned in the fountain of downtown macon, georgia. the point i would like to make is that i really believe it's, obviously, the father being in the household is a tremendous service to the children, without a doubt. but most importantly i really believe this thing about mind power. having the focus in order to be able to have a discipline to achieve what your goals are in life. the other thing i want to say is that there's a psychological underpinning that i believe hardly anybody talks about in which people aspire to be the anti-antihero. so a lot of this outburst that we see is really someone who really believes by doing something that, quote-unquote superbad, is better than being good. people want to do the contradiction. and that's what is sort of at

the underlying literature that's in the culture. and i'd like to hear what your comment to that is. >> guest: well, i think you're right. i think if you don't have an appropriation role model -- appropriate role model in the house acting out, trying to get some sort of attention to scratch that itch is what, often, people do. one of the things my dad can and i talked about when we reconciled was these so-called black leaders that don't emphasize the real issue, and that's the lack of fathers in the house. you find a lot of people emphasizing racism, racism, racism, and as i pointed out, in my humble opinion, racism is no longer the major rob in america. let's just take jesse jackson. his mother was a teenager who was impregnated by the man who lived next door, and jesse jackson was raised in south carolina, and he was taunted by kids saying jesse ain't got no daddy. so it seems to we he ought to be talking about the importance of having a father in the house. farrakhan, farrakhan's mother

was estranged from her father. she had a boyfriend. went back with the father, got pregnant, didn't want the boyfriend to know, so she tried to abort louis farrakhan three times with a coat hanger. and in the case of sharpton, sharpton lived a middle class life until his father abandoned the family, and then down to the ghetto. they talk about racism, racism as opposed to the centrality of fathers even though in their own lives the lack of their dads, in my opinion, had a very profound impact of how they view the world. one of the reasons they're so angry, perhaps, is because they didn't b have a father in the house, and instead of talking about importance of fathers and policies that can encourage people to get married before having children, they talk about racism, racism, racism. in my opinion, they're doing a disservice to the community. i think they're being leaders to the best of their ability, don't get me wrong. i don't think they're doing it in bad faith, but i think they ought to rethink what they're doing. >> host: leroy, ham den, connecticut. please go ahead. >> caller: yes. i'd just like to say, i kind of agree with what you're saying

about a strong father in the home, but my thing was i was raised in four different foster homes. and the fathers were strong figures on the disciplinary side. there was never any love, never any hugging. it was going to school and do your homework and be good. but the thing that really bothered me, i never knew love from a father. all i knew was discipline. it did teach me one thing, work and you'll be successful. even though without love i found that out. and the last foster home i lived in i really loved that man. he never knew it. he died before i had a chance to tell him. but that's why i'm so glad you had a chance to sit down and can talk to your father. but it taught me one thing that you said that you did the best, they did the best they could with what they knew. my children, and when they grew up, they told me the same thing.

dad, we love you. you may not have been the best father in the world, but you were the best for us because you did the best that you knew how to do, and they're all successful now. they're all with college educations. i just wanted to share that with you. >> host: all right, thank you, leroy. >> guest: thank you very much. could you imagine the lawsuit i had against my father based on how he raised me and the way kids are right now? i probably could have called 911 and had somebody out come out and take him away based on how kids were discipline inside those days. >> host: in your book you talk about graduating from crenshaw high school but also going to fairfax high school here in l.a. for some other courses and the difference between the two. >> guest: yeah. one of the reasons i'm so adamant about having parental choice in education is because i went to an inner city public high school, crenshaw high school, and i thought i was a world leader. i graduated number seven in my class, and i had exhausted all of the spanish we had. i'd gotten as all the way up. and we had a program called air

program enrichment ec change, and it was an peoplerral d experimental program. and if you didn't have a course, you could be bussed for some classes to that school. so i was bussed to fairfax which was then almost 100% jewish for one semester. i took spanish, and i took physiology, and i was flunking both those courses. i never flunked a course in my life. these kids were held to higher standards, their teachers expected more out of them. the kids were expected to speak spanish, and i learned that the expectation was far, far different in my inner city high school than it was in a suburban high school. and it made me angry. and i was determined that i was going to make sure i was going to advocate the power that parents should have to take their kids out of a bad school and put them into a better show. >> host: what time is your radio show on? >> guest: 3 until 6 monday through friday, pacific time. >> host: and people can hear it where?

>> guest: kabc.com, larryelder.com, facebook and twitter. >> host: and larry elder's most recent book is "dear father, dear son. two hours, two lives, eight hours --" >> guest: right. >> host: are you working on another book? >> guest: of course. writers are always working on another book. >> host: does it come back to politics? >> guest: actually, it's not. it's about a young italian guy who grew up with a father who had a voice every bit as good as frank sinatra and used the voice the scam people. that's all he did. he would do a concert, and old ladies would come up to him, and they'd give him money for a movie, and he'd take their movie and go to the next town. and this is the father that a friend of mine had. he's got all his music, and i'm telling you, this guy was a wonderful singer. people compare him to some of the great singers like caruso. so that's what the next book is about. >> host: sounds like you're venturing out away from politics a little bit. >> guest: i do like writing in general, but every one of my

books has a political core to it. >> host: well, we've been talking here on booktv with larry elder. "dear father, dear son: two lives, eight hours." pick up the book to find out how his mom got his brother dennis into the military.