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Richard Helppie
Hello, and welcome to The Common Bridge. I'm your host Rich Helppie, and we've got a great guest today. Some might say he's controversial. He's very clear in his thoughts, and he's not afraid of having a good open, honest discussion. So we're bringing to The Common Bridge today, Mr. Adam Coleman. Adam, thank you so much for joining us.
Adam Coleman
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Richard Helppie
The Common Bridge, of course, is available at substack.com, most of your podcast outlets, on YouTube TV and on your Radio Garden app at Mission Control Radio; please subscribe and join in. Mr. Coleman is the author of "Black Victim To Black Victor". He's an op-ed writer. He's a public speaker, he's host of "A Good Faith Space" Twitter Spaces show, and the founder of Wrong Speak Publishing. Adam was born in Detroit and raised in a variety of states throughout America. He writes openly about his personal struggles with fatherlessness, homelessness and masculinity. He strongly believes that we should all have the ability to speak freely, and is now advocating for people who feel voiceless to be heard. His articles have appeared in the New York Post, Newsweek, The Post Millennial, The Federalist, and many other outlets, as well as on cable news channels and he's been quoted regularly. Adam, I'm so happy that you're here with us today. Our audience likes to know a little bit about our guests. So you were born in Detroit; obviously, I'm a proud Southeast Michigan man, raised in the metropolitan Detroit area. Did you spend much time here?
Adam Coleman
I basically was born in Detroit, but I left at the age of five. I would say, to kind of summarize because it'd be a long list, I've lived in five states in my life. We moved around a lot; four states before the age of 18. I moved to Tennessee as an adult for about a year and then came back to New Jersey where I'm still at. So we moved around a lot.
Richard Helppie
Tell me a little bit about your career arc. Did you get a formal education? What are you doing now? What led you to this point of being this renowned speaker and columnist?
Adam Coleman
Actually, almost nothing. Almost nothing I did before brought me to this point. Occasionally I would write stuff unrelated to politics or culture, online. So I just would write how I speak, and I'm a pretty clear speaker when I actually talk to people I know. I got even more focused on communication and just understanding things like that. I don't have a college degree. I took a couple of classes online, but that was about it. I went to tech school, so my trade is IT. That's my normal job that I participate in and that I was doing before I started writing in a public manner. So what brought me to this point was actually George Floyd. It wasn't immediately, but it was more so of me just observing the environment around me. I'm a very observant person. When I meet somebody new, I'm usually pretty quiet because I'm observing. Sometimes people mistake that with being dismissive or shy or something like that. But I like observing, I like taking in what's going on around me. From a social standpoint, I was taking in the world around me that regards to George Floyd. We've obviously had controversial police shootings involving someone who's black; I never thought George Floyd would turn into what it turned into. When I saw it exploding in front of my very eyes, I was kind of like, what exactly is happening? Just so people understand, I kept to myself, I've always kept to myself. Nobody - unless you're really, really close to me - nobody really knew my political thoughts. I didn't post really anything on social media. I just had a Facebook account, basically for family members. So I kept really to myself about all my thoughts: race, culture, politics, relationships, all that stuff. I kept it to myself, and I cherished keeping that to myself for the most part. But I felt like, for one, I was confused; if I was the only one who felt the way I did am I being unreasonable? Because I'm watching other black people look like they're having panic attacks. Meanwhile, I'm saying this is unfortunate but my life is nothing like that and so many other black people's lives are nothing like this, why are the people I've known for years or my entire life acting like it is? Something is off here. And why are people - white people - acting like, all of a sudden we're all George Floyd? And we're all in this great risk and danger of being shot by the police. The narrative just became so ridiculous and exaggerative, that it kind of got to a point where I just want to start asking questions, figuring out, am I the only one? I started going to free speech forums and just talking to people tell them how I felt and they were like, yeah, you're not the only one, we feel the same way; this doesn't make any sense. But actually, from doing that, people encouraged me to write more often. They said...someone explicitly sent me a private message saying, you really should write, the way you explained yourself is really good, not a lot of people do that. And to kind of go back a little bit, I had actually been wanting to write a book for a couple of years. I've had some transformative moments in my life and I actually wanted to write something to leave for my son, as a legacy item. So, after this, and everything going on, getting encouragement, it's like, I have what I want to write about; I want to write about this. So that's when I started writing, "Black Victim To Black Victor", [it] took me about nine months to completion with all the editing and everything. Basically it's been - I was just talking to somebody about this today - it's been amazing, because I'm just - was it three months past my one year mark - about a year, year and three months since I first published the book. That was basically a year and three months of me being actually public. I had no real public profile, nobody knew who I was; I was just the guy who's on the other side of the YouTube videos just watching and now, I'm in the YouTube videos and people like yourself want to talk to me. So it's been an absolute blessing.
Richard Helppie
Well you are, again, a very, very good writer, and you've written some provocative columns. How would you describe your central theme or your mission in your writing, if there is one? Or maybe you're describing things that are interesting to you?
Adam Coleman
Both I would say. I want to write things that are interesting to me, so I do have an agenda. Other people say they have an agenda. I have an agenda for certain themes. So the importance of family, advocating for children, the importance of men and fatherhood, and having constructive, and non-bombastic conversations about race. Especially the race topic, it's so controversial to talk about it. But I think it's controversial to talk about it because a lot of people who have the microphone talk about race in the dumbest ways. Even the people I agree with, in some respects I agree with them, but they're so bombastic about the points that I agree with them about, that it's never received properly. And so for me, I really appreciate proper communication. My particular style when it comes to writing articles is always to find some points so people can connect with either what I'm talking about, or I throw myself in there so people can understand my perspective of where I'm coming from. But I never want to write anything that people can say this is in bad faith. You may not agree with where I'm coming from, and that's perfectly fine, but you can't say that I don't care. So I'll tell you a quick story actually. Someone had wrote me a hate email, which is actually pretty rare since what I've been doing and that's because I've been doing it effectively. But someone wrote me a hate email and it was all over the place. At first - because I saw it like at ten at night - at first I was like, I'll just delete it. But then I'm sitting in bed for like 20 minutes and it bothered me. It bothered me that they thought all these things about me based off of a Newsweek article that I wrote. So after about 20 minutes, I got up and went to the computer and sat down for about a half hour, wrote them a long detailed email response. Whether they responded back to it or not I didn't care about, but I just wanted to get that off my chest. Actually, the next morning they responded back to me. For one, they apologized because they were like, yesterday was my birthday, I was drinking too much, I don't even remember writing all this. But I think the quote they used was like, I was insulting Mr. Rogers and Mr. Rogers came up to me and just talked to me very calmly and politely. He's like, I feel really stupid right now. We had a couple email exchanges back and forth and he was like, listen, you're a cool dude, I understand where you're coming from. There are some points we disagree with and that was perfectly fine. It's stuff like that, where I don't want anybody to think that I am just like X person, I am just like this person - I'm just me, and I'm coming from a good place and this is what I truly believe.
Richard Helppie
I'm reading you; who doesn't celebrate their birthday by getting hammered reading Newsweek [laughter] and firing off a nasty gram, right? (Adam Coleman: Yeah.) I want to say that we have a lot of common ground, you and I, that we've never met before. First of all, I'll tell you, I was an IT guy. And one of the things I loved about IT, it was completely objective. It didn't care if you were a man, a woman, a young person or an old person, what your race was; it did the same thing for everybody. It's the ultimate in objectivity. Did it work, did it not work? I mean, that's it, right? (Adam Coleman: Yeah.) And since we've been doing The Common Bridge, where we're trying to just have discussion, have dialogue and try to talk about policy, I have not had one person ever come in and go, oh, we don't need that. It just the opposite. It's, we need more of this. I'm really cheered by what you're doing and I know you had to have experienced that certain groups of people are tuned, if they hear something, it triggers them, or if they're listening, and they don't hear it and they assume well, he said this or he didn't say that, therefore it means he's a crazy person. And you punched through that with that hate writer. You told him, I'm not that guy and engaging him. We need more of that. Great that you did that.
Adam Coleman
Generally speaking, for something like that, because this was via email that's why I felt comfortable responding that way, but I generally have a rule, I don't engage in bad faith conversations with people. So with something like that, I felt like if I was to respond to at least give my perspective, and he wrote back something crazy, that I just wouldn't respond after that. (Rich Helppie: Sure.) There was something about - I can't even explain it - but there was something about how he wrote it. Like I understood where he was coming from; I understood his frustration. He wasn't just saying you're a crazy da, da, da; he was saying out of bounds things. But I understood, he was coming from a very similar place that I'm coming from; he just doesn't understand that we're coming from the same place. We may have different paths but we want the same end goal.
Richard Helppie
One of your columns, where I first became aware of you, I thought it was really good. You wrote it at the end of May and you said there's a factor in these mass shootings - about fatherlessness. And you talked about the root causes, that everybody starts going off [of], well, what was the perpetrator's political beliefs? But you dug into that and you found a little bit [about] that perhaps these people that do this are without fathers and they don't have that strong, same gender parent that's providing them guidance. Talk to the audience of Common Bridge a little bit about that column and what you discovered, and maybe some of the conclusions you reached.
Adam Coleman
A lot of what I talked about within that article is actually what I expanded on in my book. So even though the book is, on the surface levels, about race, you can easily swap in "black" with whatever you want. A lot of the core principles I'm talking about are the importance of family and fatherhood, and even more so, the effects on children. For me, I grew up without my father so I know what it's like to not have my father in my life. I know what it's like for my mother to work a lot, and being left home alone, or have my sister be the one that's watching me on a consistent basis. I know what it's like not having that guidance. I know what it's like to make it into adulthood and not know what it is to be a man. I know what it's like to raise a son and still not know how to teach my son how to be a man because I don't even know how to be a man and trying to figure all of these things out. So when I had the opportunity to write my book, I really thought a lot about all of this and just also understanding basic childhood psychology. Granted, I'm not a psychologist, but I'm heavily interested in psychology and human behavior. If you pay attention enough, you see patterns. I talked to people who've worked in juvenile homes. Actually, from that article, it's always interesting, whenever I talk about fatherlessness people who work in the prisons or juvenile, they'll reach out to me, they're like, we saw it; the vast majority of these boys had no fathers. Why is this a surprise to anybody; we see it all the time. So I wanted to take the situation and put in the article that a boy who is secure with himself, who has direction, who has a purpose, has zero interest in hurting anybody else. He's far too focused on achieving things. He's far too focused on a purpose, going down a particular path; you can't get him to do anything close to what happened in Uvalde or any other mass shooting. Also, we like to talk about mental health, I don't really go too much into it with the article, but how your childhood is laid out affects your mental health. We also say like, oh, they had mental health issues; well, how did they get that way? I think we talk about mental health differently, like we talk about anything else. If I break my foot, I know that with a proper treatment, I can get better from it. But my foot didn't just one day become broken, something happened for my foot to be broken. The same type of thing when it comes to a lot of mental health issues, severe depression, all these different things. Well, was there anybody to uplift their spirits when they were down when they were younger? Was their father there to reassure them when they had issues? Was someone there to help lift them up, to constantly give them encouragement? Children need these things, and especially young men; young men need these things growing up. And that's what I'm saying when it comes to being a man or being a father; you raise your child to control their emotions, you raise your child to be focused and centered, to be balanced. These are out of balance boys or young men that are reacting this way, who want to shoot and hurt other people. I wanted to make the strong point that these mass shootings, for one, they want attention, because they feel unseen. Also, they're suicidal. If you go out into the public and just start shooting people, you understand that someone's going to shoot you back at some point. These people don't care if they live or die, or in some cases, want to die. They want to die by the hands of somebody else shooting them; they want to go out in a blaze of glory, so to speak, but in a very crazy way of thinking. So some of these guys may have legit, really bad mental health issues; possibly the Buffalo shooter guy, that may have been his situation, possibly, I don't know too much about it. But there's been a whole bunch of other situations where it - I hate to be harsh - but it's the failure of parents, or it's the failure of not diligent enough parents, or uninvolved parents, and especially when it comes to young men, their fathers.
Richard Helppie
I know that in the case of the Oxford, Michigan shooter and the Parkland, Florida shooter, both of them said, well, they wanted to stay alive because they wanted to see the pain and the destruction that they had caused. I find that troubling. I don't recall what the Parkland shooter, his home life was like, but I know he had been a troubled child most of his life. And I know in Oxford the parents were unattentive to the kid. So I think perhaps you're onto something like that with fatherlessness. I like the way you've articulated about needing a purpose. In one of your other articles - and I'm going to make a point here somewhat political, somewhat societal - a lot of the publications you're in might be considered right wing or conservative or Republican. Then there are those that are on the opposite pole; the left, the progressives, the Democrats say well, they're pro-woman. But you wrote a column and it was "F**Kboy Culture & The Death Of The Masculine Man" about you don't want your son to be an F-boy and you talked about a man, that he didn't have a purpose, he put his own pleasure above any other human being and he used and abused women in a sexual way, teased them with romance and whatever. I would think, if I'm pro woman - and I am; I have sisters, daughters, wife, etc. - absolutely, I want young men being respectful. I thought you put it together; if they had a purpose, they're not going to be users. It seems to me that we need to make sure that young men - and young women, of course - have a purpose. I thought it was a great way to tie it together.
Adam Coleman
Thank you, and thank you for reading that. That article has actually been an interesting article. I hear a lot from women - they would read it - and they're like, wow, I see exactly what you're talking about. That particular article, like you said, it was from experience. But it's something that I became very observant about; the guys who are obsessed with women, it's like they have no other purpose. It's like they have nothing. They may have a job [that] they may go to consistently, but the purpose of going to that job is to buy something to attract women, it's to afford to go somewhere to get women, it's to go to the club on the weekend so they have enough money to get there so they can get women; everything is about women. Their purpose is women. And they come out of it with women issues, women problems, lots of drama and when you really look at them, they're really sad; when you when you look at what's the outcome, what's the outcome of all this.
Richard Helppie
Think of what society tells the woman - the young woman - here's somebody that's practiced in devoting his life to obtaining women, and we tell the young women watch out for that guy; you're worth it. But similarly, if there's no father in the home, they don't know what does a good man do. (Adam Coleman: Yes.) What I counsel people on is that [if] you want to raise strong women, that relationship with their dad...that [if] there's a strong bond there [then] they're not going to fall for these players and users. You wrote another column. It's called "Fix College Tuition First - Nixing the Debt Won't Help My Son". Tell us about that. What was that article all about?
Adam Coleman
There are a couple of major points within it. The first major point is wiping out college debt would disproportionately basically benefit the wealthiest of Americans, or at least their children as well. So, for me, I'm thinking, alright, that's great that it helps them but how beneficial is it to take tax money, or to move money around, which ultimately we have to pay for at some point, when it benefits the top earners in this country and their children? How fair is that, for that to happen? They signed up for this, like no one told them to get $80,000 annual tuition. They signed up for this. And I understand, people say, oh, they were pressured by their parents. It's like, I get it but once you turn 18, you accept all responsibilities and that's the unfortunate consequence of doing this. The other thing I wanted to highlight was that - let's say I was all behind it, just wipe it all out - how does that prevent it from happening again?
Richard Helppie
I've written about this and talked about it. All the student debt, which is loan sharking, alright, because there's only two places you can go where your balance goes up even if you're making the payments; you've borrowed money from a loan shark or you've taken out a student loan. They prey on naive borrowers. I think it's highly immoral for college admissions to be sitting down with a young person, telling them your future is going to be better, at the same time saddling them with debt that they know is going to impair their future. Yet the same universities may have billions of dollars in endowments, they're paying their professors handsomely for teaching a few classes. The right answer needs to be, universities and colleges, you need to get your price point down to a place where Americans can afford it and that takes care of the whole problem, not put undue burden on that young person and their family and expect them to go through the next 30 years paying it off. It's crazy.
Adam Coleman
Yeah, I mean, especially if it's a state school. That means that there's some sort of oversight, so why aren't they checking the books? Why aren't they saying what does it actually cost to run this university and how much are they actually taking in? Is that something that's necessary; where's this money going? And I wish there was more of that. This is probably like the Libertarian side of me; one of the things I've become very aware of is the solution to everything is more money. It's never more money with oversight; it's never more money with checks and balances; it's just more money. So as much as I'm saying, check the books; they're never going to do it, because having oversight over money, especially over a public institution - and maybe there is some oversight - but there's no transparency to the public, the people who are actually going to be using these institutions. I would bet - me and you - we would probably bet that they're taking in a lot of money, they're not just scratching by with paying for the facilities and the building and the maintenance and the housing. I'm pretty sure that most of these universities are doing very well. One of my ex-girlfriends, she worked for one of the VPs, and I'm like, what does this guy do? Oh, he needs people to get more money and plays golf; I don't know. How much does this guy make? $250,000. Oh, okay, what does this guy, who just plays golf and tells his assistant to take a message and what else of value does he do? [What else] does he possess and give this institution? So I mean, one salary isn't going to cause a whole school of kids to pay 80 grand a year, but there has to be some sort of assessment. If they want to pay their professors and administration 250 grand, have at it; but at the consequence of kids is a different story.
Richard Helppie
Healthcare went through this, where the charges in healthcare kept escalating and escalating, and then finally new payment systems came in and said, look, for this condition, you're only going to get this amount of money; figure it out, how do you achieve the mission for that amount of money. Colleges and universities could do a lot of it; it's a lot less money to deliver classes digitally. They don't need all the buildings, you don't need all the departments, not everybody has to have a music school and an engineering school. You don't need to build a field house. I mean, the list goes on. So I'm with you. I'd like to get into the books and deal with that. Now, one thing, Adam, as I was thinking about what we talk about today, the facts are that black Americans have been discriminated against. I mean, there's no question. From the beginning of the country; two thirds of a person. We fought a bloody civil war because half the country thought owning another human being was a great idea. In my lifetime, we had to pass the Civil Rights Act, so that a person could use the bathroom or get a hotel room or a meal or whatever, no matter what the color of their skin was. We celebrate soldiers that were part of all black units that just wanted to serve the country. We honor Jackie Robinson in baseball, Willie O'Ree in hockey. I do believe that there are remnants and vestiges of discrimination against black Americans. My own personal view, for what it's worth, is that that's unique to the black experience - it's not every other immigrant group that came over - that it somehow looks a little different. Everybody else got assimilated; nobody else was prevented from full participation. So how do we overcome that reality that black Americans' history has been different? I think that there's still remnants in there. How do we root it out; get rid of it? Is there a way?
Adam Coleman
Yes. So there is no law that outright discriminates against anybody, especially when on the basis of race, which is why a lot of people say, well, any type of disparity is an example of discrimination. But that's not true. That's not true at all. I could make up a ton of different disparities that wouldn't point to any sort of malice, or anything like that, or any outright discrimination. The example I like to tell people; if you're a company in Salt Lake City, and someone says to you, you only have five black people that work here and you have 200 employees - you're like, we're in Salt Lake City, I don't know what you want, there's not a lot of black people here. That's not the company being discriminatory, that's the company just reacting to what's the market. What is this actually like? So there are different ways to look at things to figure out, are we being balanced? Are we actually discriminating or not discriminating? But I feel like the term "systemic racism" - which now is in the lexicon, where five years ago, an average person didn't ever utter this phrase - that is being used for manipulation, that is being used to enforce certain things, to enforce certain outcomes. That part, I don't really like. I see that more as using black people to enforce some particular outcome that someone wants; either to appear righteous, to appear as being part of the "Savior", we're going to finally bring equality for black people, or whatever it may be. In some cases, I think it's more of a ruse to do other things. I think politically...and this is probably been the most frustrating thing about the past year or two; actually, I like to say post-George Floyd. There's before George Floyd, after George Floyd when we talk about race. In politics, it feels like in order to push something through just say it benefits black people, even if it doesn't. So if you can say that well, we're doing this because we want this done and it also helps black people, when it gets this sudden pass. It really doesn't even matter what it is, as long as you say that it benefits black people, then they'll just do it. To me, that's a vulnerability. To me, that's manipulation. It's things like that, I don't like. Now what we're seeing is benevolence, we're not seeing malice. We're seeing benevolence to get anything done. We're going to be benevolent to black people and we're going to do this because they can't do it themselves. See, we've already had the civil rights movement; that was 60 plus years ago, and it still hasn't done anything so we now need to be active in their lives because it can't happen without us. It's that kind of mentality; it's that Savior-ism that has become so, so prevalent. I'm writing a second book, and that's the main theme of it is talking about this ideological Savior-ism that's happening within our country. I'm sure it existed before, but now it's mainstream, now it's pushed by very political people, whether they're pundits or politicians. Now, it's not even questioned, people just do it and it's okay; it's perfectly mainstreamed and we're supposed to just accept it. This is why I speak out against this. This is why I just had an article come out today with the New York Post, talking about how there are certain black media figures who always portray us as scared, weak, emotional, and they're black as well. Meanwhile, they're the elite. These are the black elite. These are the wealthiest black people who say, "you saw George Floyd; we're in danger" as they go and live their life as a one percenter. He's not in danger, but he is using that as a manipulation. It's things like that, that for me, I don't see enough people talking about. Even people who agree with me, I don't see enough of them bringing this up. So that's why I'm glad that places like New York Post give me an opportunity to talk about, specifically, [that] this type of behavior is unacceptable. This is manipulation, and I can't stand for it.
Richard Helppie
I think this is an important conversation. Look, I have a very dear friend of mine and when he traveled, he always wore a business suit. He also, when he was in the military, he always wore his uniform when he traveled because he said he was treated better, that he wasn't as intimidating as a tall, black man. So there are, I think, clearly the way people react, I mean, he's certainly not a George Floyd at all. He's been a highly successful business person and raised wonderful kids and helped his community and just a wonderful guy. But because of the hue of his skin, he does take steps to make sure he's less threatening. So even that one percenter can experience this. I think we have to make sure that we can erase it and erase that line by talking to people that it doesn't matter what a person looks like; they're a good person or a bad person or something in between. We've got to get people to discuss with each other.
Adam Coleman
I understand that, but I'm going to say something that is not very politically correct. There is a racial inferiority complex that a lot of black people have, and I wish they wouldn't have it. There's no reason to feel that way. I don't know your friend, this person, but I know people who say similar type of things, and I think to myself, are you really being treated worse? In what way? And you can sometimes break down...well, they might say, I wear my suit, because I'm treated better. How? How are you treated better? Oh, well, they did this; I was like, did that not happen from before, from the same exact people in the same exact circumstance? A lot of this stuff - and I talk about it a little bit in the book - it's an ideological viewpoint on race that a lot of us are taught to see ourselves as consistent victims. We are taught that even if you become a billionaire, I could have had two billion if I was white. It's a ridiculous type of mindset that even in gaining success, they find some way to say they were they were hindered along the way. It's basically raising people to feel just a little bit inferior no matter how great they climb, no matter how high they climb, no matter how well their life turns out. It is this a bit of inferiority about being black. And I put it like this: erase race from the conversation. Imagine if someone came to you and said, I'm wonderful, I'm just great; no, no, I'm an awesome person. That sounds like a pick me up, right? Why would someone who feels secure say these things? Why would someone need to always try to pick me up? Now add race to the conversation. I've heard black people say this about themselves: I'm black and beautiful, I'm proud to be black. Well, alright, if that was true you wouldn't actually need to say this. Why would someone need to constantly pick themselves up; it's because internally they feel inferior. This is the type of thing that I'm trying to push back at. There's zero reason for any black person to feel inferior. Just because there was some sort of historical moment where there was negativity, pushed towards a direction or being oppressed or whatever you want to call it, does not mean that today you need to feel inferior about your skin tone.
Richard Helppie
I want to jump back to a topic that we were brushing up against, and that is that Savior-ism. One of the things that has long troubled me - and a lot of our philanthropy got into this - you had these defenses of monopolistic public school systems in major cities. They spend a lot of money and they deliver terrible education, kids graduating that are illiterate. Yet you have this political arm that says, well, we don't want to do any charters, although the parents say give us the charters, give us the options. They want to educate their kids and they don't want to have to move to the burbs to do that. I'm wondering if this kind of wanting to control that vital thing about education, was that where your idea about progressives using black Americans to experiment with communism comes from, or is it coming from something else?
Adam Coleman
No, I think, well, the experiment with communism part, I guess the easiest way to see it is that I think progressives use black people as a convenient tool to achieve whatever they want to achieve. So, to give you the example politically, say [it] benefits black people; this is why you do it. You can do that culturally, right? You can put policies into place that make no sense but you say it's to benefit black people and people are just supposed to shrug and say, well, how do I go against this? Because now if you go against it, then there's a slander against you and people don't want to be slandered. They just go along with the go along. So I think that what's become mainstream is progressives using historical black oppression, using certain incidences where something negative happened to a black person; sometimes it's ambiguous, like the police shootings. Some of these police shootings are ambiguous, some of them - whether they're black, white, Hispanic, or whatever - are kind of justified or, at least, the person involved is somewhat responsible for the shooting even happening in the first place. So they're a bit ambiguous, they're not outright "black person, I shoot" and that's the end of the story, that person just hated a black person or anything. But they use these ambiguities, they use these moments, to further push as to why they need to implement whatever they want to implement. (Rich Helppie: I see.) So when it comes to also the charter schools, for me, I think it's - you mentioned the communism part - there is a love affair with governmental control. Now, there's a love affair with government's control when they deem it necessary, because we already know if someone is wealthy enough, they're probably sending their kids to a private school. Why? Because likely, they're getting a better better education from there, but don't let them get public money to put them into private schools or to fund charter schools; don't let them do that. And I asked myself why? This is actually one of those things that I've had to ask myself - well, why was I against charter schools at all at one point - and then the more and more I asked, I can't get a real reason other than it will defund the public schools. I'm like, but if they're in a failing school district, who cares? Put the money in a school, build a school that's run privately, if they're getting money and they're getting the results, then have at it. But allowing for a failing school district to take even some kids who might be the bright spots within it to get dragged down because of lack of administration, lack of funding - or they get lots of funding, but they don't implement the funding - for all these things, that they could have gone to a better school and had a chance, I don't think that's fair.
Richard Helppie
This is a fascinating insight and the depths that you come at this is great. We're nearing the end of our time. But I do want to invite you to come back on The Common Bridge, there's so much more that we should talk about; I think our listeners are going to love this. But also invite you, if you want to write a guest column or post one of your columns to our Substack page, I know that our readers would like to hear from you. So as we kind of move to the end, what's something we didn't talk about today that you'd really like our listeners, readers and viewers to hear about?
Adam Coleman
It's actually something I'm going to be writing an article about very soon: single parent homes. I don't think a lot of people understand that single parent homes are a vulnerability for children. It's more than just, well, it's more ideal for the kids to have two parents in the home; these are all true. Or the statistics of how children develop and their outcomes from having both parents in the home, all these things are true. There are people who try to refute it saying, oh, they turned out fine. Adam, you turned out fine, and all these different things. But they don't ever understand that being a single parent is a vulnerability for a child when it comes to safety, when it comes to molestations, because you can't be in two places at one time. So most single parents - we'll just say single mothers because most single parents are single mothers - they're going to work and so if they're working someone's watching their childs [sic] especially before they enter school. So who's watching their childs [sic]? Is it a daycare? Is it a family member? And so we know that there are people who are pedophiles, we know that these people exist. Well, where do you think these people work? Where do you think they're going? Even if that's not the case, we know there are people who are abusive, we know there are people who would treat your kid negatively because it's not their kid. And now they're in the hands of somebody else, they are being physically abused; you're not there to protect them. What I'm advocating for is the nuclear family when it comes to raising children, to reduce that vulnerability. It doesn't mean that children who have two parents can't be harmed, or molested or anything like that but man, it really reduces these particular situations. And one last thing that people don't understand, or especially, I think single mothers don't understand [is] there are men who look for single mothers. They're looking to get close to the single mother so they can get close to the children. This stuff is more common than people understand. And so the mother who's just trying to find a partner, and starts to trust this man, now has the child involved with this man - and let's say he even moves in - the statistics of how children are in danger when these particular situations happen, having a male figure who is not their biological father, in their home, it's through the roof. I don't think a lot of parents - a lot of single parents - understand how much danger they're putting their children in. They could be the best single parent in the world, put them in the wrong hands of someone they felt that they could trust...that's it.
Richard Helppie
I think that is a fair point, though I do know lots of great...I, by the way, I'm familiar with exactly those kinds of cases where the children were abused by a love interest. I think I know far more really quality step parents. But I think you're making the case that we do need to have standards. Standards need to be about behavior and that we're talking about a lot of the wrong things. As we go to close here, I want to ask people to read your column that says, "Is America Experiencing a Revenge of the Nerds Moment", just some extraordinarily good writing, and some really unique logic about erasing lines and what the internet did. So I just want encourage our listeners and our readers and our viewers look up Adam Coleman; you see he's very willing to engage. We will try to get him back on this show, try to get him to write for us a little bit at Substack because he's calling the question. These are things that we can all discuss and we can do it in an open and forthright dialogue. Adam, thank you so much for being on the show. I think our viewers and listeners, readers are going to love this.
Adam Coleman
Thank you. I really do appreciate it.
Richard Helppie
So this is Rich Helppie with our guest, Adam Coleman, as we sign off on The Common Bridge. Again, look us up on Substack, just put The Common Bridge in the search bar. Look us up on podcasts; Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Buzzsprout, and others and of course at YouTube TV. With our guest, Adam Coleman, this is your host, Rich Helppie, signing off on The Common Bridge.
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Transcribed by Cynthia Silveri
Commentary on Society and the importance of Fatherhood