Herschel Walker Suggests Young People 'Don't Even Know' What Racism Is

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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property insurance market, local and national politics. She has previously extensively covered U.S. and European politics. Giulia joined Newsweek in 2022 from CGTN Europe and had previously worked at the European Central Bank. She is a graduate in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University and holds a Bachelor's degree in Politics and International Relations from Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy. She speaks English, Italian, and a little French and Spanish. You can get in touch with Giulia by emailing: g.carbonaro@newsweek.com.

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A video of Herschel Walker saying that young people "don't even know" what racism is, and that it's older people who should be asked if things should change, has emerged on social media as yet more controversy hits the Republican Senate candidate.

In a clip shared by PatriotTakes, a Twitter account monitoring right-wing extremism and more, Walker said: "When you start asking if things should change, go to your mom. Why are you asking an 18-year-old if something is racist? They don't even know what it is. [...] Go to your grandparents and start asking them."

Walker, who lost the midterms' Georgia Senate race to Democrat Raphael Warnock with 48.49 percent of the vote against his rival's 49.44 percent, ran his campaign by playing down charges of systemic and structural racism in American society and laws, saying those were part of "woke culture."

"You're not a racist unless you're 185 years old in today's world," Walker said in October at the Memory Lane Classic Car Museum in Young Harris, Georgia, as reported by NBC News.

"You have to be 185 years old, because you've got to learn that from your parents, because maybe they don't know any better, and that's OK. You're not a racist today, because they have television, they have the internet, they have something else to show you that we're all the same. So you're not a racist. You're just stupid," Walker added.

Herschel Walker
Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks during a campaign rally on November 28, 2022 in Cumming, Georgia. In a recent interview, Walker said young people don't know what racism is. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

But Walker, a former NFL star and a novice in the world of politics, has reportedly not always claimed to live in a post-racial America. In an undated video that resurfaced online a month ahead of the midterms, a much younger Walker can be seen saying that racism was "the hardest thing" he "had to overcome in life."

The recent clip shared on Tuesday by PatriotTakes, extracted from an interview Walker gave with conservative news media The Blaze, immediately received some backlash on Twitter, as people brought forward examples of children and young people experiencing racism and talked about their own experiences of discrimination.

According to a recent study published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine looking at parental reporting of racism experienced by their children between 2016 and 2020, a growing percentage of indigenous and Black children are experiencing racism in their lives.

The percentage of indigenous children experiencing racism increased from 10.8 percent in 2016 to 15.7 percent in 2020, while the percentage of Black children experiencing discrimination grew from 9.69 percent in 2018 to 15.04 percent in 2020.

According to a 2021 research by the Pew Research Center, roughly eight in 10 Black adults (above the age of 18) say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity.

The protests following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, increased national attention on the topics of racism and racial inequality in the U.S., but a majority of Black adults (65 percent) believe that this hasn't led to changes in society or the law, according to the same Pew Research Center poll.

Walker, whose Senate campaign has been marked by scandals as former partners came forward to say that the GOP candidate paid for their abortions in the past despite now promoting a total ban on abortions, is now facing questions about his residential status.

Reports have claimed that the GOP Senate candidate listed his primary residence in Texas during the midterms campaigns in order to claim a tax break, despite running for Senate in the state of Georgia—potentially breaching the law in both Texas and Georgia.

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About the writer

Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property insurance market, local and national politics. She has previously extensively covered U.S. and European politics. Giulia joined Newsweek in 2022 from CGTN Europe and had previously worked at the European Central Bank. She is a graduate in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University and holds a Bachelor's degree in Politics and International Relations from Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy. She speaks English, Italian, and a little French and Spanish. You can get in touch with Giulia by emailing: g.carbonaro@newsweek.com.

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Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. Her focus is on the U.S. economy, housing market, property ... Read more