FILE: Surrounded by her family Rep. Mia Love talks about election results in the 4th Congressional District at the Utah Republican Party offices in Salt Lake City on Nov. 26, 2018. (Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Former Utah Representative and current CNN Contributor Mia Love says, on race relations, Americans need to, “stop being indifferent about what’s going on with our fellow Americans, and we have to start painting a vision of a better tomorrow, a better America.” A lesson she says she has learned from recently taking up painting and the realization she says she had, “that you can’t paint what you don’t see or don’t know.”
Love says she wonders how our children will know what direction to take and what decisions to make to get them to that better tomorrow. She was speaking during a special race relations episode of KSL Newsradio’s Inside Sources with Boyd Matheson.
The conversation with Mia Love was an extension of a previous discussion the two had over the weekend. Matheson had contacted Love for reaction to a change made to the Associated Press Style Guide. The AP had decided to capitalize the letter ‘b’ when referring to a Black person. Journalists use The Associated Press Style Guide as a resource.
“We have a lot bigger problems than capitalization,” Love said. “When your family is trapped in big poverty programs and big social programs, and no way of getting out, you don’t have time to consult political correctness or special check.
“You are just doing everything you can to put food on the table and have your children dream of a better tomorrow.”
Matheson asked about the lessons, with respect to race, that Love had learned as a politician.
Her candid answer was that having a conversation about race was not a statement of your feelings one way or the other and that people need to let each other know they are willing to have difficult conversations. She compared that to her willingness to have a difficult talk with her son.
On one side of the issue, she said, her son is going to grow up and will be riding to the park. She said she needs, “To tell him there are people out there not all of them but there are people out there who have a grudge, and you have to be careful of them and this is how you behave.
“Also on the other side,” she said, “you may be angry about what is happening to the people around you.”
“There is a certain dignity, and there is a certain respect you have for yourself,” Love told Matheson, “that you are not going to be destructive you will not stoop below what your mom your grandparents and great grandparents all of the people who have sacrificed to get you where you are.”