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March 25, 2021

Q&A with Kendall Qualls: ‘It’s insulting to hear that Black people can’t get ahead because of systemic racism.’

Originally published by Minnesota Reformer

Republican who lost congressional race has started group aimed at lifting up Black families without government

In November, Republican Kendall Qualls lost a race to represent Minnesota’s 3rd District to U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips. Two months later on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Qualls launched TakeCharge Minnesota: “A new organization committed to countering the prevailing narrative in popular culture that America is structured to undermine the lives of Black Americans,” according to the group’s website.

Qualls recently spoke to the Reformer about race in the U.S., his proposal to combat poverty and disparities, and how former President Donald Trump was able to improve his standing with Black voters.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us a little about yourself.

My father served in Vietnam. Unfortunately, when he came back, my parents divorced. I moved from Fort Kimball, Kentucky, to my grandparents’s apartment in Harlem. On the day we showed up with our luggage in hand, we were held up, gun and all, one block from their apartment. I was 6 or 7 years old.

My mother had five kids. My older brothers and sisters were getting absorbed by the street culture of the inner city, and I was fighting nearly every day in elementary school. My father had to come get me and my younger brother. We moved to Oklahoma, where all he could afford was a trailer because he was paying alimony and child support.

I paid my way through college, worked full-time, I was in the Army Reserves, as well. I got my undergrad degree in ’85. I got two masters degrees while I was in the Army, and 11 years ago, I got my MBA.

People who helped me in life were Black and white, rich and poor, male and female, gay and straight. Americans help each other when they see someone trying to better their lot in life, and most American’s don’t put a filter on it based on skin color.

To me, it’s insulting to hear that Black people can’t get ahead because of systemic racism. I was able to get this house and this car because, guess what? They use a credit score. There are institutions that opened their doors, who want to help people like me. But you gotta get to that point.

Tell us about your new organization, TakeCharge. Is it an extension of your congressional campaign, or a new endeavor?

Although I didn’t win, I got 5% more of the vote than former President Trump or (GOP Senate candidate) Jason Lewis. A first-time candidate outperforming the top of the ticket is virtually unheard of. The qualitative feedback was “Kendall, your message resonated with people. Americans need to hear it. Minnesotans need to hear it.”

What is that message?

After Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, the government offered a financial incentive for women to have children outside of wedlock and remain unmarried: welfare. That was the catalyst that changed the Black community, and that was the beginning of disparity.

[Editor’s note: You can find some history here and here of the federal program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children, which was first established with the Social Security Act of 1935.]

Up until the 1960s, nearly 80% of Black families were two-parent families. One of the things we’re going to address is to get back to historical norms. We’re going to fix this, and we’re going to do it without interventions by government and elites from Ivy League schools.

By the end of the year, you’re going to see more than 120 mothers in the community advocating for faith, family, education and marriage as a standard for men and women; with a multimedia platform to help with air support.

You’re trying to reach Minneapolis’ Black community with this message, many of whom are progressive. How do you respond to progressive critiques?

I don’t. To be honest, I don’t care what progressives think, Black or white.

We need to get back to our cultural roots of faith, family and education. We get back to that, we’ll address 85, 90% of the problems we have in our culture. Anyone who wants to tell me that I’m wrong for focusing on the No. 1 issue, they have lost their freaking minds.

Progressives have been in our major cities 50, 60 years. They oversaw this decline, and they did nothing to reverse it. You know why? When you can get people dependent on government, you can count on more votes.

You launched TakeCharge on MLK day. What is Dr. King’s legacy?

He was looking to give us access, as citizens, to the constitutional rights we didn’t have.

The last major piece of civil rights legislation passed four months after his death. What he wanted from his ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ was structurally there. Obviously, there was residual racism, but those things dissipated over time. We were heading there as Americans. All of a sudden, we’re looking at disparities. It all became about skin color from people on his side of the political spectrum.

When you have nearly 80% of kids growing up with no father in their home, no structure, no guidance, do you think they’re going to Harvard, Princeton, Yale? You think they’re even going to graduate from State U? There may be exceptions, but we have a pipeline problem, not a racial discrimination problem. Every company wants to see more people like me at senior levels. We’re not producing them as a culture.

There is evidence that, in the 2020 election, Donald Trump did as well or better with Black voters than any Republican presidential candidate since 1980. As a Black conservative man, what about Trump’s message do you think resonated with a broader section of the Black community than other recent GOP presidential candidates?

First, I want to push back on your definition. You called me a conservative. When did wanting to improve your lot in life, raise your family, raise your kids to be productive, when did that become “conservative?” That used to be the American thing.

Here’s the thing Donald Trump understood more than anything, because he’s a business guy: There is nothing more dignified for a human being than to have a job, earn a living, be independent and provide for their families. That’s universal. That used to be a universal thing in the Democratic Party as well. It used to be.

The late Democratic Sen. Paul Tsongas said Democrats love employees, they just hate the employers. That’s what Donald Trump understood.

The GOP is increasingly making space in the conservative coalition for people who have views that are at least adjacent to white supremacism. Many such individuals have spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference in recent years. How do you navigate the tension of being in coalition with these types of people?

I can tell you exactly who the Republican party is. It’s the party of Abraham Lincoln. It’s the party of Ulysses S. Grant, who sent troops into the South to protect Black Americans from the Ku Klux Klan. It’s the party of Dwight Eisenhower, who sent federal troops to the South to ensure Black Americans could get to an equal access school. It’s the party of Ronald Reagan, who appointed the first Black person as National Security Advisor. And on and on.

You’re not going to get 100% from either party on their behavior, but the Republican Party still gets an ‘A’ from my perspective for what they’ve done for the Black community and this country, regardless of skin color.

I hear you saying you don’t feel that tension.

Because it’s not prevalent, it’s not the norm. One of my favorite actors is Tom Hanks. Not every one of his films was that great. That one island movie, “Castaway”? That doesn’t cause me to cast away Tom Hanks. Same scenario.

Given the historic levels of division in our society today, what do you think are possible areas of compromise between conservatives and progressives?

When I remember liberals, I remember when the American grizzly bear was near extinction, the American bald eagle was near extinction, and they brought them back. In my lifetime, the American Black family has gone from 80% two-parent families to less than 20%. Literally, the American Black family is near extinction. In our lifetime, on our watch, and there is barely a whisper about turning it around.

My no. 1 focus is to start that movement here in Minneapolis, and we’re going to spread it around the country.

March 10, 2021

Opinion: A Family Values Solution for Minneapolis’ Racial Strife

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Original article by Ryan Hiraki, Ozy

Tension permeates the Twin Cities. Jury selection is underway in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who faces second-degree murder and manslaughter charges for the death of George Floyd, a painful incident that sparked burning and looting throughout this Midwestern metro hub last year.

Among the ruins, reflection and (slow) recovery of America’s most heated racial collision since the Rodney King riots, a local activist insists he has answers. He’s Black. He’s compassionate. He’s conservative. And he’s starting a movement that has some much-needed traction. It’s a nonprofit called TakeCharge Minnesota.

Kendall Qualls, 58, fidgets and gestures while making the case for his throwback mission — teaming up with mothers and grandmothers to restore the core values of faith, education and, most of all, two-parent families to the African American community.

The latter transcends political polarization. While the national child poverty rate is 18 percent, only 8 percent of American children live in poverty when raised by both parents, including 12 percent of Blacks and 5 percent of whites, according to federal data. And youths from the poorest fifth of the population are nearly twice as likely to never enroll in colleges or trade schools compared to kids from the middle socioeconomic class, and six times more likely to pass on postsecondary opportunities than the upper class.

You don’t have to believe in God to understand that data, although praying on Sundays doesn’t hurt. Qualls does. He’s a regular at Plymouth Covenant Church. And while people argue about everything from Chauvin’s use of force to the fentanyl in Floyd’s bloodstream, Qualls is preaching personal responsibility. He knows from experience that life is unfair. “But it doesn’t mean you have to be a victim,” he says.

Qualls’ parents divorced when he was 5, and he still recalls their move from Kentucky to New York. His mother was mugged after they got off the bus, the Quallses’ welcome-to-Harlem initiation. With the streets stealing their older siblings away, he and his younger brother moved two years later to Oklahoma to live with their dad in an old trailer. It was a prudent decision.

Like his Vietnam War vet father, Qualls joined the Army. He later earned an MBA from the University of Michigan and excelled as a marketing executive in the pharmaceutical industry until he ended up in Minnesota, where he rode all that education and experience to a Republican congressional nomination — one of more than five dozen African American Republicans to run for Congress last year.

It doesn’t matter that he lost the general election. This husband and father of five, who claims he’s no politician, is still a leader. And he’s encouraged by the exit polls. Trump’s share of African American votes (12 percent) matched the highest number for any Republican since 1980. More Blacks are realizing their Democratic leaders have failed them, that big-government policies and defunding the police will not solve America’s problems.

Baldwin, 65, laments the out-of-wedlock births that surged in the Black community following the enactment of 1960s welfare policies. “The culture I grew up with has disappeared without a whimper,” says Baldwin, a grandmother who just celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary.

Qualls and the three women admit they face a challenge in making significant change during the woke revolution, in which victimhood is creeping into politics and public school curricula across the country. But they believe their grassroots efforts will eventually resonate. Qualls is using his network to find “ambassadors” such as King, Haywood and Baldwin. Then they’ll use their networks to find more. And eventually, there will be a growing coalition strengthening all demographics by serving as proof that there’s a higher likelihood of success through good decisions, and that you can still find redemption after regrettable ones.

Their solution is a much better option than depending on government officials like Jacob Frey. The 39-year-old mayor, who failed to respond as rioters torched his city, recently announced that the south Minneapolis intersection where Floyd died and memorials stand will remain closed until after the Chauvin trial. Compared to Qualls, that’s not doing much to help with the healing process.

January 25, 2021

The Power of Mothers

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One of the priorities of the new Qualls organization is to revive the value and benefits of education and marriage in the black community. Qualls plans to empower the experiences of mothers and grandmothers as a force multiplier.

The tragedy of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis was hijacked when politicians made it about police brutality and systemic racism, concealing the underlying issue in the process. In response to Floyd’s death and the subsequent rioting, Dean Phillips, the representative from Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, joined a long list of progressive politicians when he issued a statement condemning white Minnesotans and magnifying the belief that the problems facing black Americans are rooted in white privilege and systemic racism. I countered with my own statement that there are racist people in our country, but we’re not a racist country— and that’s a very important distinction. I also pointed out that the American Dream is alive and well. It worked for me, and I plan to work tirelessly in Minneapolis and across the state to convey how it still works for everyone, including black Americans, regardless of their circumstances.

Despite the prevailing narrative, the biggest issue facing black Americans is not police brutality or racism. Do we need to find a just and swift process for getting rid of bad cops? Absolutely. But the biggest issue facing the black community is the breakdown of the family precipitated by fatherless homes. This has not always been a problem in the black community. In the 1960s, nearly 75 percent of black children lived in two-parent families. Today, 80 percent of black children in Hennepin County alone are raised in fatherless homes. We’ll never solve any problem in black communities until we resolve that issue first.

Until now we’ve addressed symptoms—poverty, joblessness, crime—through political maneuvers, government programs and allocation of billions of dollars. But this is a cultural and generational problem that needs to be addressed through leaders in the community, education and empowered women who have been on this journey for five or more decades. In the process, we must also address the mental and emotional prison of victimhood reinforced by politicians, academia and the media.

Mothers and grandmothers are a catalyst for change. The tough DUI laws we have today did not originate with politicians. They were initiated by heartbroken mothers (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers–MADD) who were angry about losing loved ones at the hands of repeat offenders who returned to the roads after no or little punishment for their crimes. In the same manner, my new organization TakeCharge Minnesota will enlist the support of mothers and grandmothers who are angry as they watch their children and grandchildren suffer from the calamity of crime-ridden streets, joblessness, and poor schooling, all intensified by the absence of fathers in homes.

TakeCharge Minnesota will remind mothers and grandmothers of a time when the black community had little in regard to tangible wealth but was rich in a heritage of faith, family and a keen interest for a good education for their children. When Martin Luther King, Jr., marched for civil rights in the 1960s, roughly 77 percent of black children were raised in two-parent homes. King’s sacrifices—including his life—have resulted in the deterioration of the status of black Americans, while politicians from their communities prosper like royalty. Their lust for power has blinded them to their responsibilities and duty to address the issue—restoration of the black family. We will fight to liberate black Americans, reinforce King’s dream, and empower them with the belief that America’s promises, which are embedded in the U.S. Constitution, are for all citizens.

January 18, 2021

To fulfill King’s dream, focus on fundamentals

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Three crippling trends in our country must be addressed to minimize the cycle of poverty and despair.

By Kendall Qualls

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, we are reminded that King achieved social change by pushing America to fulfill its obligations to Black Americans, securing rights promised to all citizens in the U.S. Constitution. Sadly, King’s life work and sacrifices removing significant barriers have yielded few benefits for too many Black Americans.

The Black political class has done quite well since the 1960s. We have seen Black Americans elected to from mayoral offices to the Oval Office and nearly every position in between, including, now, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. However, far too many Black Americans are stuck in generational poverty and despair.

If King were alive today, he would be appalled at three crippling trends in our country — two trends in the Black community and one gaining momentum in the broader culture.

In the Black community, the first problem that would shock King is the stark decline in academic motivation and performance. Locally, the academic performance gap for Black students in Minnesota is nearly the worst in the country.

The second disturbing trend has been an uncomfortable and ignored topic for decades and it has a corresponding association with the academic problem — the dramatic increase of fatherless homes.

The percentage of fatherless homes in the Black community has exploded in five decades, from 25% in the 1960s to 75% today. We should all be concerned because this problem is rapidly expanding beyond the Black community. Today, over 50% of births occur outside of marriage for all women under 30.

The U.S. has the largest percentage in the world of births outside of marriage. We’ve been silent too long on this issue.

The last disturbing trend is the march toward identity politics. Generations of Americans agreed with King’s dream that “content of character” is the right standard by which to judge an individual, rather than skin color. King would shudder in dismay at the weaponization of identity politics. Just because the weapon is pointed at a different ethnic group doesn’t make the concept acceptable.

Identity politics was wrong when King fought against it in the 1960s and it is wrong today.

It is tragically ironic that the pillars of the Black culture — faith, family and education — were stronger during King’s life than they are today. Sadly, these pillars have crumbled and desperately need repair.

Faith and family held Black Americans together during America’s history from the post-Civil War era through sanctioned segregation of the 1960s.

The pursuit of a better education was so important that slaves risked severe punishment just to learn to read.

Instead of sticking with the same policies and policymakers that have failed for more than 50 years, we should focus on the fundamentals to restore broken families. The goal should be to empower people to take charge of their own lives, the lives of their children and not to rely on government or politicians for redemption and prosperity.

Efforts should be centered on three goals: restoring two-parent families, improving academic performance and helping to prepare young adults to prosper in the private sector.

It is a national tragedy that nearly 80% of Black children grow up in fatherless homes. A plethora of studies reveal that children from two-parent Black families prosper during childhood and adult years in comparison to children from single-parent families, even when both cohorts of parents have the same level of education.

In addition, children from two-parent Black families have significantly less engagement with law enforcement, live longer and lead healthier lives. Community leaders, academic professionals and faith leaders should collaborate on a unified program to promote marriage throughout their communities.

A quality education is the gateway to prosperity. Government agencies should not hinder impoverished parents in their choice of schools when public schools fail students academically. Over 50% of Black students in Minneapolis Public Schools perform below state and national averages, while Black students from the same neighborhoods that attend Ascension, Cristo Rey and Hope Academy, private faith-based schools, perform above state and national averages. These schools have waiting lists from desperate parents wanting a better life for their children.

The private sector and free enterprise are the fastest route to a better quality of life. Getting a job and earning a living brings dignity, respect and value to a person’s life. Private-sector job creation is the cornerstone of prosperity for all Americans.

We should all be challenged to fulfill King’s vision to reactivate the American dream and prove that it still works for everyone regardless of race. I know the American dream still works because it has worked for me and millions of others who started life in poverty.

Originally published in the StarTribune.