Carl Jackson thanks Dennis Prager and others for his platform and recounts becoming a radio host after working as a landscaper. He credits white mentors like Jim Angelakis and Pastor Carl Stevens with his transformation, and expresses frustration with terms like racism and DEI that he says ignore the white people who've helped him.
I also want to thank Dennis Prager, uh, and Sue, uh, for this opportunity. I love you guys. You guys know that I am praying for you and I am praying for your family. For those of you that may not know, uh, Dennis Prager is the one that discovered me and put me on the, uh, national stage, introduced me to Phil Boyce, uh, gave me a shot here. So I will be forever grateful and appreciative of that. Uh, also my friends at American Adversaries right here at AM 950, The Answer Orlando, .com. When I walked into this studio literally over a decade ago now, just over a decade ago, I could not stand Barack Obama. And I was like, I was just a landscaper, to be frank with you. And I was like, I can't take this. I had just listened to this predominantly black radio station in town, and they were making this guy out to be God, um, and it was just getting on my nerve. And they were talking about how blacks were still oppressed and all this kind of stuff. Now mind you, this was, these were a bunch of millionaires that I was listening to, and I'm like, fools, I would rather be, uh, in your position, uh, rather than, you know, rather than cutting grass right now, and you fools are sitting here talking about how you're oppressed. It was absolutely insane. Uh, so I determined that I had to do something about it. Didn't know what the hell to do, to be, to be quite frank with you, but I knew for whatever reason God had given me a voice. I could, I could speak. I had spoken before, albeit not on radio, not for an extended period of time, so that was going to be a new venture. But the— I came in to get my own show. I didn't know what it entailed, and the American Adversaries gave me a shot and, uh, and helped put me on the map locally until I branched out on my own, uh, with my own show. So I'm forever grateful, uh, to those people. And they, they happen to be white, by the way. They happen to be white. So this is why I am so, uh, when it comes to using the terms racism or DEI or CRT, It gets me pretty hyped up because there are so many white people that frankly came into my life to lend a helping hand, including Jim Angelakis, Pastor Carl Stevens. These are the guys when I was a, you know, little wannabe thug walking into a church building, I had to serve, you know, community service. And these guys just treated me like I was their brother in Christ, rather. And I was so ashamed, rather than, you know, rather than some thug off the street. And it's a wonderful church that I still attend today.
Life, Legacy, and a Dangerous Mission in the Soviet Union | Sunday Fireside Chat
