A Tale of Two Women

They have experienced the worst of times, and they have enjoyed the best of times.

Their lives have been similar in ways as they lived through turbulent times in our nation and have seen, and have experienced personally, some of the wrongs that were committed during times of racism and oppression in our nation. They have also witnessed, and have worked in different ways to bring about the changes that have taken place in our nation as it has moved to right the wrongs of the past. At times during their lives, they would have had a great deal in common as it related to their worldviews.

At some point though, it seems that their lives diverged.

Maxine Moore Waters was born in St Louis in 1938. In 1971, she graduated from the California State University, Los Angeles with a degree in sociology. She began her career as a legislature representing California’s 29th district in 1991. She has since continued on that course as a congresswoman representing the Democratic party in California’s 43rd congressional district.

Perhaps many would choose Waters as a person to emulate or recommend as a person to whom their daughter could look for direction or inspiration.

But if one were to listen to the words of Waters in the recent past, one would hear anger directed toward many of the people of this country, including some of the people who she has been elected to represent, and one would hear contempt for the constitution that she has sworn to uphold for the past 30 years, as well as for the country that has ultimately given her the opportunity to live the life she has chosen to live.

In June of 2018 Waters was filmed making the following remarks to her supporters gathered at the Wilshire Federal Building: “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Her reference to “that Cabinet” was directed toward members of then President Trump’s administration.

Her most most recent comments, once again on film, gaining public attention came just prior to the verdict in the Derek Chauvin: trial “We’ve got to stay in the streets, and we’ve got to demand justice,” she urged the crowd, who earlier had been chanting. We’re looking for a guilty verdict” in the Chauvin case, Waters said. “And if we don’t, we cannot go away, we’ve got to get more confrontational.”

In both cases, Waters’ comments were considered by many as irresponsible at best, and inciteful on a level unbecoming for a nearly lifelong government official. In both cases, her words are available for the listening.

Waters will continue to represent her district as she won reelection in 2020. Her current term will end in 2023. Perhaps she will retire at that time as she will be nearing, or past, her 85th birthday, and she can truly appreciate the good things that her career has brought her.

Carol Miller Swain was born in Bedford, Virginia in 1954. Swain attended Roanoke College, Yale Law School, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Swain has recently retired from her career as a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. Now listed in searches as a “conservative commentator,” Swain has said “the world is my classroom.”

During an interview with Candace Owens, Swain shared some of the details of her life including growing up in a “two room shack” with nine siblings, her mom, and her stepfather. Swain spoke of the kind of poverty she experienced in rural West Virginia during her youth, living without plumbing in that shack with walls that were basically “cardboard with wallpaper over the top of the cardboard.” She spoke of failing a year of school after having missed 80 of 180 school days during a particularly harsh winter; the family had neither the clothing nor the boots to protect them from the elements should they have attempted to make the trek to school.

Swain married at the age of 16. She pointed out during her interview with Owens that she was not pregnant at the time of her marriage, wanting viewers to note that even then she believed it was important to be married prior to beginning a family. By the age of 20, she was the mother of three children. She then shared that she had suicidal ideations in her early 20s, taking pills, but always planning and desperately hoping to be “rescued.”

Swain told Owens, “I should have died of all of that, except God had a plan for my life that was bigger than me.”

Swain’s life progressed from those difficult times to a successful undergraduate experience at Roanoke College and continued on to graduate school.

Swain recalled one encounter with a professor while she was attending grad school: “One professor screamed at me one day: ‘You’ll never be able to change the fact that you’re a black woman.'” Swain continued with her reflection on that incident: “The message was that you’re black; you’re handicapped; and there’s nothing you can do about it. It was graduate school, and the theories of oppression was when I learned you’re poor; you’re black; you have children; you’re female; you’re oppressed. By then I was already successful. It was too late, but had I gotten those messages as an undergraduate, I’m just not sure how I would have dealt with it.”

It is quite likely that Swain has been deemed a “conservative commentator” due at least in part to her battle against many of the theories that are now being taught at universities throughout the country. She is a proponent of seeking out varying ideas and of challenging one’s self rather than falling victim to the mentality of victimhood that she encountered during graduate school. For several years Swain has publicly expressed her concerns about the Marxist nature of BLM, and more recently she has been openly critical of critical race theory.

Ultimately, Swain was indeed successful by the time she entered graduate school and encountered those messages of that might have led another person, perhaps a younger person, down a very different path. And regardless of her critics both past and present, she continues to be successful now.

As she concluded her interview with Owens, Swain offered the following guidance: “You need to hang in there and watch your life unfold. Life is a journey. It took me 40 years to figure out who I am and what I was meant to do. It doesn’t have to take you that long. That’s my message. Be encouraged. Be Yourself. Be strong.”

The lives of each of these women are intricate stories from which not all conclusions can be drawn based on the few chapters that have been revealed publicly. I know less about the story of Maxine Waters than I do that of Carol Swain. Honestly, I was drawn to Swain’s story because hers is the story of a victor, and hers is the message that could inspire others to live the life of a victor.

Still, it is not my place nor my intention to pass judgment on these woman, nor to create a villainess or a heroine. However long it has taken them to find their voices, both women continue to use their voices. It is based on their own words, as heard by thousands of people, that I have drawn my own personal conclusions. You are free to draw your own conclusions.