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Hello everyone, we re back for our second conversation with extraordinary leaders conversation designed to unify not divide a conversation designed to take a stand against injustice and to create lasting change, not just inspiration.
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I want to thank you for joining us again.
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This continued conversation is because Reverend Jesse Jackson was available last time and it gave us an opportunity to think of some other individuals and I m so grateful they re willing to join us to add to the voices.
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The goal here is to get to a deep level of our own feeling and emotion, to understand even greatly, more than understand, appreciate, feel, experience the compassion and the love for our brothers and sisters who have had a unique experience, unfortunately, starting in slavery,
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And then still experiencing what we re experiencing, the George Floyd s of the world, the Ahmaud Arbery s, the Taylor s, the complete insanity and injustice that happens over something as insane as the color of one s skin instead of the quality of one s character.
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We tend to be so tribal, tribal about religion, tribal about race, tribal about politics, divided.
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And so this is an opportunity to perhaps shut up and listen and hear and feel and really try to step in the shoes of those that have lived this life.
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And the people that we re having are extraordinary human beings here.
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They re leaders.
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And they also happen to be African-American as well, but extraordinary leaders.
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That s why I asked them to be here.
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about half are friends of mine for years and the other half I m just getting to meet myself along with you here for the first time today.
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So I want to introduce them and then I d like to kind of create the frame of what we want to accomplish here and then we ll just dive straight in.
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First of all, we have Van Jones, a CNN political contributor.
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He s the host of The Van Jones Show and The Redemption Project.
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Van, I have so much respect for you, brother.
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You re a man of such integrity.
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I know your political side, and I voted for Obama myself, I understand, but regardless, you ve managed in the middle.
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I watched, especially in the last year or so,
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especially around the area of trying to make reform in the prison system, you really bridge both sides.
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I ve seen you step out of what I see very often in television is it s like one channel is one side, one channel is another.
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I really want to thank you for that.
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I m really grateful to have you today.
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He wrote, Beyond the Messy Truth, how we came apart and how we can come together.
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That s what this whole conversation is about, brother.
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So thank you for being here, Ben.
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Next, we have a legend, Reverend Jesse Jackson.
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This man needs no introduction.
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Civil rights activist, Baptist minister, politician, former aide and dear friend of Martin Luther King Jr.
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himself.
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Are you, is it true you re 78 years old now?
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79 in a few days.
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79 in a few days.
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Well, happy birthday early.
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You ve been an activist for 60 years, only been alive 60 years, brother, so we cannot wait to hear your sharing and it s been a privilege to see you.
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It feels like a reunion.
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Now, last time we were hanging out together, we were both speakers at Tukey Williams  funeral back in 2005.
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And then, of course, our next person, Barbara Becknell, is a force of nature as well.
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She s an author, a journalist, a film producer,
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I got to meet Barbara in 2005 because I watched a film that she co-produced, a biopic called Redemption.
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It was the story of Tukey Stanley Williams, a man who started the Crips and went to jail and was on death row for 20 years, six years in solitary confinement.
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A man who had a brutal upbringing and learned that he was either predator or prey and decided to become predator.
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And Barbara decided to go do a journalistic piece.
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I ll let her share for herself, but I think it was a little bit to make sure her son didn t think he was too cool a guy.
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Because, you know, he was the coolest from the standpoint of the gangs, that s for sure.
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Came in to judge the man and fell in love with the man he became.
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And that s really, Barbara, why we re here.
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We re here to let people remember that it doesn t matter where people start, doesn t matter what we ve done.
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All human beings do stupid things, sometimes horrible things, all of us.
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But we can change.
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We can transform.
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And Tookie s life was an example of that.
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I got a chance to spend time with him.
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But Barbara spent 13 years of her life supporting this man.
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After judging him, she came in and helped him get these books published.
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He was nominated for nine Nobel Peace Prizes from prison.
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He ended the fights between the Crips and the Bloods by video from prison.
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And unfortunately, he died in this criminal justice system, even while he was serving others while we worked together.
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So we ll talk in depth about that, Barbara, and what that means and how we can extrapolate that to help other people believe change not only is a must, but it really can happen.
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And it does happen with the right approach.
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And Barbara, you re nothing but love.
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So thank you.
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And Barbara also ran for governor of California in the Democratic Party back in 2006 against Governor Schwarzenegger, who we were trying to persuade at the time to help us out.
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And then, of course, we have Derek Johnson.
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Derek s the president and CEO of the NAACP.
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And the NAACP was the oldest and largest civil rights organization in America.
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It started in 1909, and it was started by white and black folks together because same damn shit we re dealing with today, right?
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Just violence and insanity and stupidity.
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But he s spent his life as a veteran activist, and now he s heading that organization in the 21st century.
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Derek, thank you for being here.
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We really appreciate you being here.
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Thank you.
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And finally, Charlemagne the God.
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I m just Tony the guy, but it s a pleasure to meet you, brother.
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He s a cultural influencer.
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I was excited to have you here because he s the host of The Breakfast Club, but I love the way you go deep, brother, and you don t take bullshit from anything or anyone, and you go there.
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So I know, and we all in this room have large bullshit meters at this stage of our life.
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So I know that we ll get straight frame from you.
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You wrote a book called Black Privilege, Opportunities Come to Those Who Create It.
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I really love the whole thought process behind that.
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And he s also talked a lot about the anxiety that human beings have, especially African-Americans living in a world where they got to wonder, are the police going to help you or hurt you or hurt your family?
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So Charlie May, thank you for joining us, brother.
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We really appreciate you being here.
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Thank you for having me.
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All right.
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So the focus here, as I started to say, is let s see if we can t, by deep conversation of emotion, come to a larger truth that, look, there s 99.9% DNA in common amongst us all.
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We re the family of God and the family of this world.
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And we were all black at one point.
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If you study history, we moved north and our skin had to lighten to survive to get vitamin D. And we stayed in Africa.
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We needed protection from the sun.
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And yet, somehow, we ve created this cultural conditioning of judging humans by the color of their skin rather than the quality of their character.
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And in our previous discussion, we had a gentleman on who was extraordinary.
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His name is Daryl Davis.
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He s a great influencer, great, brilliant man, also happens to be African-American.
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And he has converted, over 30 years, literally 200 Ku Klux Klan members.
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And one of those we had on the show here earlier, which was a previous imperial wizard,
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I mean, this man couldn t be more racist, mean, or harmful as a human you could ever imagine.
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And now he s an anti-racist activist.
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So it just shows the change.
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You know, Tukey Williams, the example we gave with him, I mean, I kept reading the press at the time trying to save his life.
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And the press kept telling the same story of what he was.
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not who he is.
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And that s what we do to each other.
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We had a police officer here on the last session.
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He s a white police officer.
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He s actually mixed race, half Hispanic, but looks very white.
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He s in L.A.
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and he s been trying to protect protesters and stop rioters, not an easy thing, and getting called a racist and being attacked viciously.
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And he s married to an African-American woman and has interracial children.
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So we all make these judgments as human beings, this tribal mindset, and our goal here is to show it can change.
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So
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My mindset as a human, regardless of color, I respect everybody.
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I think that s what s missing.
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And my respect doesn t come because I know everything about them.
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My respect comes because I know every person I ve ever met in my life is superior to me, superior to me in some way.
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That s not me playing small or fake ego.
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It s just I know they have different life experiences than I have.
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And as a result, they have experiences I don t have.
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They have skills, abilities, insights, emotions that I won t have.
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And today we want to hear those and feel those.
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But I m not inferior and I m not asking you to be either.
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I also know that I m superior to everyone I meet in some area, right?
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Because I ve had a different set of life experiences over all these years.
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I ve put myself on the line, learned certain things.
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And so what that creates is equality.
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It makes us respect myself and respect others.
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And then it s not this positioning that so many people have.
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I want to dig in and start with you, Van, if we may, at the top.
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I really was excited to have you, because I think you ve got a balance of head and heart.
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I mean, you re smart as a whip.
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I m not blowing smoke.
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You know who you are.
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But you also have this great heart.
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I feel it in you.
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And you step in other people s shoes.
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And I understand you grew up in a home with a law enforcement family.
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And so I want to get your point of view first on what s the best way to improve law enforcement.
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And what do you think of the situation?
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What needs to be done, brother?
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Well, it s just an honor to be here.
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I ve admired you for a very long time, and I ve never met you, but I ve read your books, I ve watched your videos, and I think my life is better because of you, and I appreciate you.
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Very kind.
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Thank you, man.
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Being able to bring a pretty important technique for life to millions and millions of people.
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Look, you know, I was born in rural West Tennessee on the edge of a small town in 1968, which is the year they killed Bobby Kennedy.
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They killed Dr. King.
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They basically tried to kill hope in America.
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And I basically spent most of my life trying to figure out how to get the hope back.
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My father was born in 1944.
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in Orange Mound, Memphis, which is one of the biggest so-called ghettos in the South, what you would now call a shotgun shack.
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He joined the military to get out of poverty.
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Everybody else was running out of the military.
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My dad ran into the military to get out of poverty.
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He attended a little black college.
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He put himself through Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, and he married the college president s daughter, my mother, because my dad was no dummy.
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So my mom and my dad worked hard.
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They put my Uncle Milton through college.
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who just retired from Memphis City Police Force, a cousin through college, and then me and my twin sister through college.
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And when I graduated from Yale Law School in 1993, they took a picture of my father standing outside that law school with his hands in the air, saying, you re a ninth generation American, a ninth generation American, but you re the first one that was born with all your rights recognized by this government, and look at what you ve done.
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Wow.
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And they put that picture of my father on the funeral program when he passed away.
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Oh, my gosh.
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So I m Willie Jones s son.
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Beautiful.
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And I am Loretta Kirkendall Jones s son.
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And I wish my father and my mother had lived to see this, because somehow,
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I mean, we couldn t have done this two weeks ago, because people would have been so destroyed and so distraught by watching a lynching, because that s what that was.
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It was a lynching.
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It was.
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And to see a black man strangled to death in front of the whole community, body cams on, cell phones out, to intimidate a community, that s a lynching.
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But it s never been shown on a billion cell phones at the same time.
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So we couldn t have done this a week ago or two weeks ago.
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But now I think a miracle has happened.
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some common ground, a continent of common ground, has emerged from beneath the depths, it could go back down.
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But at least right now, you have tens of millions of white Americans saying, racism is more real than I thought.
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Nobody s now saying racism is over, post-racial.
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That seems to be completely off the table, at least for now.
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And you also have people saying that there s something much, much,
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more broken about our police and criminal justice system than they had hoped.
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And they re asking, what can I do?
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What can I do?
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That s a miracle.
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Reverend Jackson has been working for that his whole life.
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Dr. King gave his life for that, to try to just get people to acknowledge.
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have to fix it in 20 minutes, but just not being gaslit all the time that you re making this up, you re exaggerating it, or what about this and what about that, just to know that there s at least some number of people who are willing to at least acknowledge what we ve gone through and what we re going through.
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And in terms of, you know, the way forward,
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You know, I mean, you can get smart about it.
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I mean, there has to be justice in the case.
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The officers need to be punished and held accountable.
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There has to be bipartisan legislation to fix some of these things and make it less likely to happen.
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There needs to be an economic surge into these communities that have been suffering for so long and have been suffering even more because of the virus.
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You know, revolution is a change of heart first.
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Yes.
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know it s a change of heart and and there has to be a real change of heart uh and and we have to learn how to help each other now because i think often as an african-american i feel now a little bit in a no-win situation we don t know how to talk to each other now people want to have the conversation we don t know how to have it as an african-american i feel
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because I want my sisters and brothers who are white to care more and to know more, but I also feel fatigued in trying to be the teacher.
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And so now how do you deal with that Catch-22?
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And what I ve kind of come to is just at least as we re getting to know each other in a different way, in a deeper way, there s a reason you pay tuition because it s costly to educate somebody.
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It is costly.
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So if I m the only black person in this corporation, I m the only black person, now everybody s coming to be educated.
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It costs me, it takes something from me.
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And if I have to do it perfectly, otherwise you might get triggered.
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Now I ve gotta be a university professor and your therapist.
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I don t have the ability to do that, right?
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And so if I m gonna be the professor, I think the prayer is just at least do your homework.
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And I think that s the next step is like, Google is a powerful tool.
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You know, God forbid, if you found out that your child, God forbid, had a rare form of cancer on Monday, God forbid, on Friday, you would be a world expert on that form of cancer.
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You would be an expert.
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You would have watched every YouTube video, read every book, found every expert.
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You d be arguing with the doctors.
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You d be so well-educated.
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Within five days, because Google is such a powerful tool.
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So if I got to be the,
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teacher, I m willing to do that, but please, I think we have to say, there s homework to be done, too, on your side.
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There s books like The New Jim Crow, White Fragility.
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There are documentaries like Eyes on the Prize, The 13th.
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So when you come, you ve already done your homework, and it s a more joyful conversation when you say, I made my whole family watch all 10 episodes of Eyes on the Prize.
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And we ve been debating in our household about Stokely Carmichael.
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Can we talk about that?
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What do you think about Stokely?
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That s a wonderful conversation.
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As opposed to teach me in five minutes all about racism and make me feel good.
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You would never go to somebody and say, teach me Russian in five minutes.
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Make me feel good about it.
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Yeah.
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And I will tell you, and Reverend Jackson will tell you, the history of race relations in this country is as complex as Russian.
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So if you would never go up to somebody and say, teach me Russian in five minutes, and by the way, don t offend me when you do it, you wouldn t say that to me on race.
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So now we can start joking with each other a little bit more because we re in a circle where people now really do want to know what to do.
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I think we have to discover what to do and co-author what to do.
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Last thing I ll say is this.
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What I ve now become aware of
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And you were talking about this earlier, and now be quiet.
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Please don t be quiet.
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There s an irony here that I wasn t aware of until this week.
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I think there is an irony.
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We re trying to confer a benefit to our white sisters and brothers.
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I think they think we re trying to take something from them.
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that we put them down in the past, maybe they re gonna come back and abuse us and mistreat us or whatever.
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There s some anger that has to be worked through and anger is justified given our situation.
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But the irony is, the skillset and the mindset of the 21st century,
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is what we re trying to confer to our white sisters and brothers.
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Our white sisters and brothers all too often have been taught the mindset of competition, domination, victory, achievement, accomplishment.
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They haven t been taught the mindset of empathy.
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Yes.
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That s a different mindset.
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Now, if you re black, you have to code switch all the time, so you have to understand how white folks think, how you think, whatever.
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So we are very skilled at that.
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White folks, less skilled at that.
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But there s a mindset of empathy that we are trying to convert.
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The precursor to being a good anti-racist, you have to have empathy.
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And there s a skill set.
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The skill set that most of our white sisters and brothers have been taught is present, speak, talk, debate, argue, not listen.
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Women are the masters of the deep listening that we need to learn.
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And so there s a 21st century mindset of empathy and skillset of listening that if we are successful at conferring that, you re gonna be the best husband ever.
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You re going to be the best mom ever.
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You re going to be the best salesperson.
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You re going to be the best neighbor.
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You re going to have happiness and joy.
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White people are trapped.
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White people are constricted.
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White people are smaller than they have to be to be this unconscious.
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You have to just be unconscious.
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And so there s a freedom for everybody that we re aiming for.
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And, you know, that to me is something that is ironic.
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They think that they re fighting to keep us from being free at their expense, but our unfreedom comes at their expense.
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None of us are free in this system.
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And so I just appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the conversation.
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I think if everybody s willing to do their homework, Google is a powerful tool.
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Find your own books, read them, do documentaries.
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Come tell me what you think about James Baldwin, you know.
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Octavia Butler and all our great thought leaders and Toni Morrison and then we can have a we have to have equality of discomfort We have to have equality of discomfort if I m gonna be uncomfortable every day in a white environment in this conversation You have to be willing to be a little bit uncomfortable too and an equality of effort.
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I ve been trying my whole life And if we can have that kind of equality, I think we ll get somewhere
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First of all, thank you.
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Bishop Jake s shared the concept.
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Also, you said the beginning of remarks about the idea of just being believed I don t you know that what we re going through is real instead of, you know, you re just angry, you know, you have no reason to be or
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You know, I think a lot of white people feel they re being personally attacked and they feel like they ve not contributed any of this.
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And so their mindset is, well, then you re doing the same to me, you re doing to others, but they don t understand.
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I can even tell you myself when I ve been involved in this fight for 20 years, but I can remember in the beginning, people talking about privilege and, you know,
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I worked my ass off to be where I am.
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And I was like, you know, not all white people end up where I am.
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My privilege?
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What are you talking about?
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And that s what goes through the head of somebody who doesn t have your experience initially.
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I m embarrassed to even admit, but that s what it was.
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And then you start seeing, you know, as I develop more friends in the community that are there, they become dear friends and witnessing things that you just don t see if you re not in the environment that I just wouldn t tolerate.
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But then also the deeper part of like, you know, white privilege, the ultimate white privilege that people don t realize they have.
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I heard,
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friend of mine was saying that, you know, privilege, we re not taking, we don t want to take away your privilege, we just want equal privilege.
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It s not about taking something from people.
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I think that s somehow what some people have in their head because there s so much anger, which there s every reason to have beyond anger, total rage.
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If it happened to any person, they d have this rage inside, to their family, to their friends, to their community.
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But I think the ultimate white privilege, at least for me, is that
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that I don t have to worry about my children or my grandchildren being pulled by a police officer and is he going to take them out of the car or abuse them or kill them?
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And so I wanted to show for two seconds, I know you re a father, a father of two, right?
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Don t you have two boys?
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Yes, I do, I have two boys, two black boys and one sixth one.
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Yeah, and how old are they?
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The big boy will be 16 this summer and the little boy will be 12 this summer.
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So they re just getting into that age.
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How old are you?
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coached or dealt with your two sons, and what kind of conversations do you have with them to try and help them understand what s going on and have hope for the future?
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I m curious, Sam.
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You know, it s, I think a lot of white parents ask, when should we start talking to our kids about race?
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And just the mere fact that you can ask the question that there s some time, oh, you get to pick?
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Yeah.
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What?
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Never, never, it literally never occurred to me that, oh, well, maybe eight and a half.
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No, I think 11 and a half.
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They live in these households.
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They hear this stuff.
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You know, even when you don t talk to them, the kids are smart.
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Kids are way smarter than we give them credit for.
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When you were a kid, you knew everything that was going on.
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You played though.
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And our kids are the same way.
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They know what s going on.
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And so, you know, it s something that what you want to do is to,
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First of all, make sure they understand that it has nothing to do with them.
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There s nothing to do with them.
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That this is something that has been passed down and that for them, what we want them to do is survive the experience and then let their dad deal with it.
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That s what we say.
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We just want you to survive the experiences and then let your dad deal with it.
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And they were gonna have a big, big problem when your dad comes to deal with it.
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They don t have to have a problem.
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You have the problem with them, and then they ll have the problem with me.
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It has nothing to do with you.
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You re not losing any dignity when you re surrounded and outnumbered.
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The wise man knows to retreat, and then we can fight another day.
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So we have to talk to our kids about
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just art of war, Sun Tzu stuff at eight, you know, at six.
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Because the other thing too is that the little kids are, you know, so as your big kid gets bigger, the little kids don t like to be pushed out the room when you re trying to talk to the big kid.
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So even if you try to push them out or you try to wait until they go to sleep, they re listening.
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You see them under the door with their little ear.
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And so this is a part of it.
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And I m gonna say this, our wife s and brother s are doing us no favors.
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by not talking to their kids about race because they don t want to spoil their innocence.
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Well, what you re doing is ensuring their ignorance.
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And society s happy to talk to them about race every single day by giving these little subtle clues as to who s on top and who s on bottom.
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And so by trying to protect their innocence, you re actually protecting the ignorance of the society.
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And kids understand one word that you can always use, no matter how little.
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They understand fair and unfair.
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So you can always just say to the kid,
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It s not fair to treat somebody this way because of their skin color.
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It s not fair because they re heavy, because they speak a different language.
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It s not fair.
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Kids understand fair and unfair.
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And so there s no excuse not to talk to your kid about the fact that some people treat people unfairly.
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because of the color of their skin.
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You can start that at three or four years old and build that as you go and then they get more information as they can take more information.
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But the idea that you re just not going to talk about it is a disservice to our kids who then have to go to school with ignorant white kids who then can t be allies and who can t understand what s going on and then get tricked into patterns of behavior that are not fair.
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not humane.
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They re not what any spirit or soul is about for anyone.
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Thank you, man.
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I really appreciate your insights and your feeling, and hopefully people will be penetrated by what you ve shared.
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Now we speak to a legend, Reverend Jesse Jackson, civil rights activist, Baptist minister, politician.
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Jesse, you ve been called the conscience of a nation.
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You ve been called a great unifier.
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for 60 years you ve worked in this category and you ve been on the forefront of just about every piece, civil rights, equality, economic, social justice, sexual, social justice.
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You re there in the front lines always and you were Martin Luther King s aid.
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So you have a perspective that dwarfs all of us.
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I m curious, what advice would you have about how to talk to each other and how do we in this day moving forward instead of backward?
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You always talk about we can t move backward with fear and division.
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So how do we unify at a time like this?
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You know, I was with the jail with seven last mid-July, 1696, trying to use the public library.
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It s gonna be 60 years this coming July 16th, went to jail trying to use the public library.
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Wow.
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My first experience with this race thing was one that stands out in my mind.
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I was going out to help my mother.
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I go on the back of the bus.
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I got on the bus.
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I sat behind the driver because my grandpa had a wood yard and I was sitting in front of the truck.
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Three white kids sitting in front of me, they were playing at this innocent farm.
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And I was quiet, looking out the window, and the driver said, hold on, hold on, hold on this bus.
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He was telling me because I was quiet, the other kids were playing.
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He said, loud.
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My mother, she came in rushing, got me, she pinched me.
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My mother, you pinched me.
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I cried.
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She pinched me.
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And she said, you ll understand.
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One of my father s friends, Mr. Yates, said the sound of a bus driver s head red colored from the rear, black and whites from the front.
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But don t worry about it because the back of the bus that goes to the front will get, the bus will have a wreck for the back won t get hurt.
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He s insulating me from racial laws.
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I look for the God factor in this thing.
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When George Floyd breathed his last breath, God breathed into the whole human race.
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A dying man, not a congressman, not a rich man, a dying man on the corner in Minnesota, breathed life into the whole world with his last breath.
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That s a God factor, it seemed to me.
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A child 16 years old,
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on a camera, captured it.
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The whole world is running to this camera, not a big camera shot.
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Barbara in Hollywood, the child, she filmed it, took it public.
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The other thing, it seems to me, is that COVID-19, one germ, stopped the whole world.
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You couldn t shoot with your gun, you couldn t bomb it, one germ, COVID-19, and it made people
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People thought they couldn t stop the whole world.
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Let me go to another level.
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If there s a wall between us, Tony, there s a wall between us.
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On the other side of the wall is ignorance, fear, hatred, and violence.
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Now, when we play football together, it s interesting that we come out of these various backgrounds.
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What allows us to play football together?
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Alabama Police, Clemson.
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Uniform color, not skin color.
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People, every political persuasion in the stands, 90,000 people.
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What allows us to survive that encounter?
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Because when I was playing Pelleziba, five, when I was playing Pelleziba, rules of public,
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Goals are clear, referees are fair, and the score is transparent.
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Now the playing field is even.
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Rules are public.
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Goals are clear, referees are fair, and the score is transparent.
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When you get along with football, it s an even playing field.
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We saw a live lynching.
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Touched something deep in the whole human family.
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It may not have happened when M.T.O.
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was killed.
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It didn t.
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We heard about it, we didn t see the lynching.
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But we matured a lot in the last 50 years.
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We have a lot more interaction than we realize.
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Learned to live together.
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Don t go a step further.
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Our society is built on white supremacy.
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We say slavery, slavery is not the reason of sin.
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The reason of sin is genocide of Native Americans.
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We killed them.
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and declared war on Native Americans, the original host.
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And when they, the Redskins, which is named after a racist owner, marshal of the Washington team, and the movers was a part of this Charmaine, when they would bring a wagon load of dead Indians to the trading post, they d pick it for a dead Indian, man, woman, and child.
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The scabdom, I had regular little scabs, the red skin.
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Legend, legend.
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We were born and sent shaped in iniquity.
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White supremacy is America s real story.
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White supremacy, we believe in it as a nation.
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We believe in black inferiority.
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I m gonna put this on that bus that day.
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Now, the king said, if I get on the bus, you re going to sit on the front.
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The law says I can sit there.
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You like it, don t like it, you can walk, but you can t make me move.
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The law says I have to move, then you humiliate me.
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Now, whatever your attitude is about it, you re either going to ride the bus or you re going to walk.
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The law changed that behavior, and the king said, eventually,
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Yeah, two would change, but first behavior changes when the law changes.
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Now, I want to go one step further.
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Law and behavior versus attitudes.
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These conversations have been nice, but law determines that.
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We re doing some things, we want to make lynching a federal crime.
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Between 1880 and 1950, 5,000 blacks were lynched.
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No camera, five times.
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Indians were driven west by a trail of tears, we were driven north by a trail of blood.
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They burned the whole town, they would have church service.
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They d be lynching downtown, leave church and go watch a black body mutilated and burned at the stake.
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That does not fit the white narrative of who white people are.
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We think Civil Rights started in 1955.
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Jim Crow meant we were worse than slavery.
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At least in slavery, the owner had an interest in protecting his slaves for production purposes, for tax purposes.
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Apartheid really was worse than slavery, Derek, in this sense.
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Separate but equal.
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Whites, you have separate, but whites have the right to vote.
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You have the right to own land.
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This thing is not about just about police, it s about banking, industry, technology.
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6,000 years later, in 1965, radio was discovered, we began our own lottery.
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TV was discovered, lottery.
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We moved to another part of that.
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You built the whole American side on race supremacy and black inferiority.
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So I m concerned that police is just one dimension of race supremacy.
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You fly that plane to LA or San Francisco or Oklahoma City, wherever you land, and there s not a black skyline building in America, not one.
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Banking apartheid is healthcare, education, job ownership.
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My point really is this.
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We can t just talk about race supremacy, we must look at it as real.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why?
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You didn t have a black auto dealership in 1966.
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Auto dealership.
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Well, they had no black Hilton franchises.
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Race supremacy.
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We locked out society.
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And we can t borrow money.
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We can t get credit.
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So we must dismantle the partner, not just police.
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Lynch should be a federal crime.
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SPEAKER_00
The guy killed Aubrey in Georgia.
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SPEAKER_00
They get criminal hate crime because Georgia doesn t have a hate crime legislation.
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SPEAKER_00
I didn t know that.
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SPEAKER_00
And so it really should be a hate crime trial on the anti-lynching provision.
3
SPEAKER_00
Lynch is not a criminal crime.
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SPEAKER_00
Lynch is not a criminal crime.
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SPEAKER_00
Never passed a bill right there, and then they never passed a bill.
3
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Good cops become bad cops when they cannot tell about bad cops.
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Blue flu is silence.
3
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Silence is violence.
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Police know who s the brute.
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They know who violate people.
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They won t tell it.
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So they become bad cops.
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The fact that they cover it up and won t tell it.
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If they tell it, they ll get hurt, get killed, can t get promoted.
3
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So that system is corrupt.
3
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We probably come back out and they cannot tell about a bad, bad, Simon Munity.
3
SPEAKER_00
Simon Munity, when Juan McDonald was killing Chicago, killing Chicago, a couple of days before he gave the family $500,000 and sort of got out.
3
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Cops said he attacked him.
3
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He shot him 16 times.
3
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When he was jailed, first time he was jailed for killing a person in 50 years, when the police was arrested in Minnesota, first time a white had been arrested for killing a black in the history of Minnesota.
3
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So laws affect behavior, behavior affects attitudes.
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I believe that we must make racial behavior legal.
3
SPEAKER_00
What made Black Lives Matter take off was that three of them was killed.
3
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Killer went free.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yellow killed.
3
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New York, killer went free.
3
SPEAKER_00
Micah Brown killed in Ferguson, Missouri.
3
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Lived there around six hours in the hot sun.
3
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Even his neighbors walked past him.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a justice to the situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
His neighbors walked right past him.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a terrible thing.
3
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My friends, when somebody said, Black Lives Matter, it came out of that situation, Black Lives Matter.
3
SPEAKER_00
The good news is, two weeks ago, a racist congressman from Iowa was defeated, Stephen King.
3
SPEAKER_00
Black woman is now mayor of Ferguson, Missouri.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have to see the God factor in this because we focus on Trump and Biden, but the black male Montgomery and Selma and Birmingham and Mobile and Richmond and Austin and Dallas and Houston.
3
SPEAKER_00
That came when we did a concert in Houston, 1967.
3
SPEAKER_00
He, uh, Ruthie Franklin and Bella Vona did a concert too for him.
3
SPEAKER_00
Except on the stage, to give a wreath of flowers, they put tear gas in the fans, ready to evacuate the stadium.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re sitting there as a black mayor.
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So, I see daylight coming.
4
SPEAKER_02
This crisis has given America a chance to express.
4
SPEAKER_02
We remember something that didn t exist.
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SPEAKER_02
There s something deep down that s been cultivating over these last few years.
4
SPEAKER_02
We re better than we ve ever been.
4
SPEAKER_02
This is the best America s ever been.
4
SPEAKER_02
Today is the best America.
4
SPEAKER_02
America has never fought this much over a black man being killed, ever.
4
SPEAKER_02
We have the most blacks in Congress.
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SPEAKER_02
The teenagers in Congress, the Americans in Congress.
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SPEAKER_02
We will determine the next president.
4
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We have four million blacks in America.
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Over 100,000 white people now.
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SPEAKER_02
So I guess my real point is that while
4
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I was in pain by the public institution of George and Ms.
4
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Parks.
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And Ms.
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Parks said, why don t you go to the back of the bus?
4
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You could have been hurt.
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You could have been pushed off of the bus.
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So I thought, by the name of Teal, I couldn t go back.
4
SPEAKER_02
God can speak to us from the grave.
4
SPEAKER_02
Emmett Till told Miss Pollack to sit down.
4
SPEAKER_02
She really planned to go to the Texas 54 Decision Band, but when the moment of truth came, she wanted to get up.
4
SPEAKER_02
Emmett Till said, you can t get up.
4
SPEAKER_02
In many ways now, George speaks to us from the grave.
4
SPEAKER_02
The God factor, I keep on living after I die.
4
SPEAKER_02
I believe a lot of this conversation takes place, but I m convinced that attitudes come from the law and the law for behavior.
4
SPEAKER_02
When kids play their football, they shouldn t play.
4
SPEAKER_02
The rules determine the winner.
4
SPEAKER_02
So rules matter.
4
SPEAKER_02
Law matters.
4
SPEAKER_02
Right now, our predicament together is legal.
4
SPEAKER_02
People of faith fight for just law.
4
SPEAKER_02
I m not trying to diminish their attitudes.
4
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I m saying that in some sense, behavior is based on what you can and cannot get away with.
4
SPEAKER_02
Thank you so much.
4
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Reverend Jackson.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m glad to hear that you feel that this is a historic moment, a God-given moment as well, a moment of grace, because the unification is there more than ever, as you pointed out.
4
SPEAKER_02
In today s world, there are no more foreigners in this world.
4
SPEAKER_02
If you go to the plane in New York, you re going to Senegal, you re going to the plane, you re going to L.A., we re getting there at the same time.
4
SPEAKER_02
Science is wealth, business is technology.
4
SPEAKER_02
Learning to live together.
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And so I m excited about it.
4
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I set up a coalition.
4
SPEAKER_02
We re winning this race.
4
SPEAKER_02
The problem is we re winning.
4
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But God can use the pain and bring about power.
4
SPEAKER_02
This boy dying, you know, there s a term in the New Testament called Numa, meaning breath.
4
SPEAKER_02
God breathed his breath in us.
4
SPEAKER_02
He always breathed, always breathed.
4
SPEAKER_02
A knee on Floyd s neck, he was breathing God out of him.
4
SPEAKER_02
And his last breath breathed life in the whole human race.
4
SPEAKER_02
It says, remember, Moses said, his breath went to the human race.
4
SPEAKER_02
What an investment.
4
SPEAKER_02
My, my, my.
4
SPEAKER_01
The beautiful moments to me was seeing his daughter, seeing my daddy change the world.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, that s out of such massive injustice, only greatness, only good must come.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it looks like we re moving in that direction.
4
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for your life of service.
4
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for what you ve shared.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we ll come back with the questions at the end with everyone together.
4
SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Reverend.
4
SPEAKER_01
Barbara, we ve been through some tears together over the years.
4
SPEAKER_01
Would you share with us what brought you to Tukey originally and how his life is an example of what s really possible, how humans can change, white, black, brown, you know, Christian, Jew, Muslim, it doesn t matter what, because to me that s what his life is a metaphor for and his life passing the way it did.
4
SPEAKER_01
I want to make sure he s honored this time and brought up as such a beautiful example, Barbara.
4
SPEAKER_00
I met Stan about 27 years ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you had seen me then, I was a, I can laugh about it now, but I was a pearl button wearing, white pearls around my neck, straight hair,
4
SPEAKER_00
middle class sister who thought I knew what it meant.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I didn t know, obviously, what it meant to be black, but thought I was more down.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s put it that way.
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SPEAKER_00
Thought I was way more down than, in fact, I was.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I go into the prison because at this point, I m sort of changing careers from being an economist and a public policy analyst in Washington, D.C.
4
SPEAKER_00
to becoming a writer.
4
SPEAKER_00
I get a writing assignment from Essence Magazine to do something on black youth gangs.
4
SPEAKER_00
I go into Watts and the Hood.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was just at the time when the Crips and the Bloods gang truce was starting.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m getting on.
4
SPEAKER_00
They say, well, you know, if you want to know something about the Crips, you really need to talk to Stanley Tookey-Williams.
4
SPEAKER_00
But he s on San Quentin s death row, and he hates journalists.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that required six months of writing him.
4
SPEAKER_00
Finally, he lets me in.
4
SPEAKER_00
At that point, he had been incarcerated for about 13 years.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what he said to me was,
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m not who I was when I arrived here.
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What I want to do now is write books for kids, not adults, but for kids to get them not to follow in my footsteps.
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And can you, and ultimately he asked, could I help him do that and get that done?
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which I ultimately, I did do.
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Didn t you have judgments about him before that?
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I remember him telling me that his first meeting with you didn t go so well.
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No, it did not go well, because number one, I did.
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I walked in as this middle class person who had all kinds of judgments that I was projecting onto him.
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And he had some judgments he was projecting onto me as well.
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And his projections, he was concerned as to whether I was maybe working for the LAPD, undercover, or what.
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So he was interrogating me.
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And this went on in the prison was only giving me two hours.
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And we re like an hour and 15 minutes into my two hours.
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So I forgot where I was and who I was with and lost my patience and said, look, you didn t get to be who you are, who and what you are without having good instincts.
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Check your gut.
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And if it still feels to you like I m an undercover agent or something, let s shake hands and I m out of here.
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Anyway, the long and the short of it is,
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Everything was quiet in the room and there were guards there with guns and nobody breathed.
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There was no breathing for maybe about 20 seconds, which was a long 20 seconds.
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And he finally said, threw his head back and laughed.
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And he said, come on, go ahead.
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What are your questions?
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And then
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you know, 13 and a half years later, I mean that my whole experience with working with him and working with the folks that I met, the gang truce leaders, the Crips and the Bloods, it completely changed my life.
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I was a woman with him for 13 years, coming out of prison, helping get those books out, trying to help him in every way, including help stay the execution.
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But we had some new information that was from his former cellmate.
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And we were trying to get the governor to consider that in those last moments.
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And the governor actually called me and said, I can t tell you what I m going to do.
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But I remember he said, all I can tell you, he told me and my friend, we had a home in Sun Valley where he was, you re going to want me to come to your jacuzzi and eat your ice cream.
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It s all going to be great.
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So we were stunned when we heard, obviously, because we thought it was going to be OK.
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I went on to the last ditch effort on Larry King and you were there and you said, I want to go to the execution and took he told me directly said I don t want to be in there.
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And you said you re not going to let only hate be there in that room when he goes to pass and you just you were the one face for him from that share with them how it happened.
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And by the way, he
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The guards loved him at the end.
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He was such a man of peace.
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They all had tears since he was going in.
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I mean, I got to see it directly when I went to go visit him.
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They loved him.
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He went from master of the universe to pain and violence, and six years in isolation, and then had this transformation to everybody loved him.
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But from that place, I want you to know where Barbara was.
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She s the one face in the room sending love to this man.
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Please share what happened.
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Well, yeah, it was the worst thing.
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Well, first of all, he did not want me there.
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That s right.
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I didn t want to be there for purposes.
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I didn t want to see him die, but I knew that shouldn t be the last thing the level of hatred, the
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that was going to be projected onto him, my belief was.
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And in fact, when I saw it, it was way worse than what my worst fantasies could be.
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But I thought that s not how he should die.
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It s just simply not how he should die.
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And that I told him, just look at me, look at me, don t look at them, just look at me.
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That s what you see.
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Let that be what you see.
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He had told me about
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three days before he was executed, I was pretty distraught.
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And he said, you need to pull yourself together.
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He says, you re out in the world representing me.
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And he says, and I won t let these people destroy me.
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And you can t let them do that to you.
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So pull yourself together.
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So we protested in the death chamber.
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We put up the Black Power sign.
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And at the end, we said, we screamed in unison, the few of us that were there for him.
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The state of California just killed an innocent man and there are no windows in there.
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It was all concrete.
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So the words just reverberated.
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It was more powerful than we could have imagined.
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But as I was leaving, I wanted, of course, to just collapse and cry.
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But Stan, as you say, Reverend Jackson,
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how they can talk to you from the grave.
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He was dead at that point, but I heard his voice say to me, you represent me.
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You don t collapse, you stand up.
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And I had probably the best posture I ve ever had in my life, the way I walked out of there saying, okay, in my head, I was like, I represent Stan.
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I, you know, cry when you get home, not now.
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So Stan was executed.
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And illegally, given that it was ruled to be cruel and unusual punishment, the way that, of course, any kind of execution is cruel and unusual.
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But even within the law s definition of what happened to him, the torture and the botching of the execution made it even more cruel and unusual.
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So I saw the state of California kill
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Stanley Tookie Williams.
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I then fast forward almost 15 years later, and I see George Floyd killed by a government, somebody representing the government.
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I see him executed, lynched, executed, and it triggered my death chamber experience
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And it was, and so I only could watch it once.
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I could not, any time I had to put it on mute, I had to walk away.
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I couldn t do it.
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I couldn t do it again.
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I learned a tremendous amount from Stan.
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But let s, one of the big lessons is everybody assumed,
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that I helped him so much with his redemption.
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But what I can honestly say is he helped me with my own redemption every bit as much as I contributed.
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Whatever I contributed to him was certainly no more
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or probably not even as close as what he contributed to me.
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And part of that speaks to what my thoughts are for what we can do with the situation we re in.
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So where I am now in watching what has transpired, I agree with the Reverend.
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We do need to deal, of course, with whatever laws that we can come up with to deal with the police brutality.
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but we need to deal with more than that.
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We need to, like he called, I wrote down where he said banking apartheid.
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So what I was thinking, cause there s been a discussion about the social contract and that the social contract has been broken.
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Well, if we re honest about this, like, you know, how did we get here?
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Well, we were never part of the social contract.
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So, you know, what s the social contract?
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Well, it s sort of the values that a populace or citizenry has that says, okay, if you will give me these things, we will allow, we ll give you consent to govern.
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to govern us.
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But the problem was our concerns weren t part of it.
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So we were reacting to the way we were being treated by that social contract.
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And the dominant culture was projecting that we were a part of it, but we were a part of it based on how they wanted us dealt with, how the majority or ruling class wanted us dealt with.
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But we need a new social contract.
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But we need to be a player this time.
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And to fall back on the parlance of the gangster class, who I know well now from my research, 27 years of research, we need to be players.
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And my position is,
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We re not, no more asking, no more begging to be players.
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No, we are players.
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Let us claim our status at this point.
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Just no more equivocating.
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And let s work on a new social contract.
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And this time, having learned our lesson, that puppy needs to be in writing, you know, all of it, not the part that s, you know, well, the constitution and what
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And what the Reverend said is absolutely right, I wrote that down, that rules determine the winner.
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So I agree with everything that everybody has said thus far.
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I m just saying, right now, while we have this energy, we need to come up with some tangible things for folks to do.
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I saw this wonderful documentary about James Baldwin that was called, I m Not Your Negro.
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And one of the quotes, and I wrote it down because I was completely blown away, he s at Cambridge University talking about race, and he says, there is scarcely any hope for the American dream because the people who are denied participation in it
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by their very presence will wreck it.
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So in other words, if you don t let us, you know, we re here to make everything better.
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Back to what Van said, it will make America better, not worse, better, and not even just better, way better, you know, much better.
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I wanted to bring up Tukey because most people don t even know his, they know the Crips and the Bloods, but they don t know his history.
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And most importantly, again, they don t know how he became a peacemaker.
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So I have one quick question for you, then I m going to go to Derek.
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I d really love to know, because you were there, I had my experience of it, but he experienced me as a man, he experienced me as a white man, he had, you know, same thing as you, initial concerns, but then he felt who I was, you know, consistent communication, you know,
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interviewed him for a direct conversation with the governor that was private since the governor wouldn t come meet him.
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And he wouldn t fall on his knees and beg.
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He said, Tony, I ve done a lot of things.
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I ve done worse things than this, but I didn t do this.
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And he said, I m not going to give up my integrity.
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And he had this transformation inside himself from a man of violence to a man of peace.
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It s as large a transformation as a human can probably experience.
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He told me that the experience of that was an internal one.
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He was blaming everybody on the outside.
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He said he read these great books, religious books, philosophy, and it began to change his way of looking at himself, where he took responsibility for himself in a whole new way.
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And then from a place of peace in himself, he could bring peace to others.
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But he couldn t do it when he was enraged, he said.
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And so very much like Martin Luther King s approach, right, in terms of peace being the approach.
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So tell me,
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If, can you tell us two things?
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One, how did Stan go from the man he was to the man he became?
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The man you judged, and by the time you met him, he was a different man who literally touched the world.
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And secondly, what would Stan want to happen now in the midst of all this?
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Okay, so when he was thrown in solitary confinement, he s on death row, and somebody tried to stab him.
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And they put him and the guy who tried to stab him in solitary confinement.
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But the guy who stabbed him, they let out in about two years.
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Him, by the time I met him, he d been in solitary confinement about three and a half years.
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And then it took me working with him maybe another two and a half or three years to get him out of solitary confinement.
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So he was there about six and a half years total.
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So what he says happened was,
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Now, first of all, I had told everybody he was brilliant.
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And what was I called?
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I was called the duped middle class woman.
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There was no way he was that brilliant, and on and on.
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OK.
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Well, it turns out, a few years before he was executed, they made him take an IQ test for something.
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At any rate, he was genius level.
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So I was like, OK, I m vindicated.
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I was not the duped middle class woman.
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But at that time, he was pretty semi illiterate when he was in.
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So this brilliant guy was semi illiterate.
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So he says the chaplain brought him a Bible and a dictionary.
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Plus he then got another book that was about black heroes.
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And so he said, he took the dictionary and he started reading mostly the hero book, although he did read the Bible also.
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And he said, literally every sentence he had to stop and look up a word.
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And he said, but he trudged through and read that whole book.
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And he says, as he became a literate person and then wanted to read more, he said he then became a thinking person, a rational person.
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Now, all of this is while he s in solitary confinement.
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Then he began to evaluate his life and become introspective and to see, OK, this is not the right direction.
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And that s when he got the idea.
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of wanting to write books for kids.
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So let me just tell you that real quick.
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And that is back in the mid-1990s, it was about 1995, when we put a book proposal together and I went, it turns out the American Booksellers Association was having their convention at the Chicago McCormick Center, which is a huge center.
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And they had like about 2,500 publishers there.
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It took me three days to walk that whole conference and go to every booth.
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Only three publishers were willing to deal with
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a black guy on death row, even though his books were to try to save kids, but they didn t want, so three, only three, and then of the three, we picked one, and that was the beginning of him being able to sort of concretize.
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What would he want people to know today?
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Because, you know, I was, one of the great gifts of my life, one of the great privileges was having being the one person, white person, he asked to come speak at his funeral, and he let me know he wanted peace was the most important thing, but
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What would he see today?
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What would he want people to know today?
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I think individual responsibility and courage.
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I think that he would want folks to be willing to call out what s wrong to, you know, the dominant racist narrative.
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When you see it, call it out.
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Because that s what he did.
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When you see it, have the courage to stand up and call it out.
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So I think that s what, so I think much of what we re talking about here, not even much, all of what we re talking about tonight, he would, today, he would support.
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Thank you, Barbara.
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Thank you for sharing that.
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It s a part of history a lot of people don t know, and you ve been on the edge of it there.
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the spirit and soul contract between brothers and sisters, regardless of color of skin.
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And it s also happening because we ve got leaders that have grown up with this pain who are now in a leadership position.
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So speaking of leaders, and thank you all for your patience here.
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I know we re trying to cover a lot in this area.
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Derek Johnson, head of the NAACP.
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Derek, I saw that this week, I think I saw you reached out to the Mormon Church.
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And you were quoted saying, join us on this journey of understanding and overcoming.
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What was your goal there?
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And what s your goal today?
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What s the understanding overcoming that we all need to understand today?
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You know, and I appreciate everyone who s spoken before and, and for me, the journey is important to kind of listen to but also place myself in that reality because growing up in Detroit in a
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the neighborhood I grew up in and under Mayor Comey Young and listening to him establish what it means to be in control and govern a city in the backdrop of the 84 and 88 presidential campaign when you can hear Reverend Jackson give those stirring speeches.
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One in particular speech he gave was about the patches that we all make up that whether you are black or white or labor or women s rights,
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All of us have a patch, but the patch is not large enough to build a quilt, and it s through building that quilt that we can make up what s necessary to build a society that fits all of us.
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And I can recall him giving that speech.
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For me, in the neighborhood I grew up in, it was rough.
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I didn t know any other
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Black professionals, other than school teachers.
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And so I look to PBS and Eyes on the Prize.
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I look to the 90 News to see what Colby Young will see that night.
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I look to the Democratic Conventions during those two cycles to hear the voice of Jesse Jackson as a model, as an example.
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of how to move forward.
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But also, once I matriculated to college, Tougaloo and HBCU in Mississippi, and we had some of the most dynamic speakers who would come in, everyone from Kwame Ture, Sokoli Carmichael, to Naeem Agbar, and it was in the midst of the concept of Afrocentricity and that movement, and listening to all those individuals, only to leave there and go to law school.
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law school in Houston.
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In my section, it was eight blacks out of 120 people.
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First time I had been in such a white environment.
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There was the largest standalone, it still is the largest standalone law school in the country.
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About 65 African-Americans in the entire school at that time, close to 1,200 students.
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A different reality, a different atmosphere, something I had not been used to because I had grown accustomed
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to growing up in a city like Detroit, 75, 80% black, going to an HBCU.
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So I had the privilege of being in that comfort zone and being able to figure out who I would be and how I would develop, only to be confronted with being in law school.
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Leaving law school, working on Capitol Hill, coming back to Mississippi.
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I came back to Mississippi because this is where the fight was.
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This is where the fight is.
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And Mississippi now is synonymous for America.
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It is how people see each other.
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My lessons I learned in Mississippi is how the tool of race is used
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to maintain power, how the tool of race is used to stir up emotion, how the tool of race is used to create otherness in ways in which demean individuals.
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And the way you demean individuals is through public policy.
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It is one thing to feel and empathize.
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It s another thing to carry your feelings and empathy towards an outcome
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to change public policies, to change systems.
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And so for me, I said, you know, I need to also reach across communities.
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Where are the other communities that have been maligned and systems have been used against them?
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And how do we begin to broaden the conversation and take it away from the concept of partisanship?
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Reverend Jackson, I m using him now because he s on here.
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He used to always talk about there s only one party with two assumptions.
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or two parties with one reality.
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And at the end of the day, Black folks were being used in the midst of both of those assumptions, both of those parties, to achieve an outcome that always in line up to the needs and interests of our community.
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In fact, when you think about political parties, they are nothing more than vehicles for agendas.
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It s incumbent upon us to put forth the right agenda to drive home the needs and interests that matter to the communities we represent.
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And in order to do that, you have to build alliances.
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You have to understand the plight of other communities, but you also have to understand that this is a game of chess, not checkers.
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And reaching out and talking to other people and aligning your emotional empathy with the reality of what power actually look like.
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It is a beautiful thing to see what s taking place across the country.
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with the protesters.
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It is not just protesters of one community, it s everybody.
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It s the diversity of America.
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But we have to also begin to march those protests towards power, and power is at the ballot box.
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Unfortunately, people like to say, well, it s not all about elections.
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Yes, it is and it isn t.
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It s not all about election if you think that the end of the day, the election is going to be the outcome that you re looking for.
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But it is about election if the outcome you re looking for is about public policy, which much of this country is driven by folks
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public and private policy.
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And so for us as African Americans, we really have to understand the natures of the nature of power in this democracy and separate out the difference between what a democracy is compared to what is capitalism.
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Because when democracy is strong, that means we are engaged and we re participating.
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We re advancing our agenda.
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What s important to our community, collectively and individually, and is strong, you hold capital in check.
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But when democracy is weak and African-American votes is supplanted or is submerged and unable to evolve into the voices that it should be, capital exploits people.
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Capital demean people.
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Capital figure out ways on how to develop a mass incarceration system that make billionaires out of nowhere while at the exact same time give lip service to the problem of mass incarceration and blame those who are incarcerated for being victims.
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Those individuals such as Tookie Smith, who was a genius by one measurement, but illiterate by another measurement, was victimized by a school system that simply penalized him, victimized him because of the zip code he grew up in.
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Penalize people just because you are born into an area, therefore you lack the access to healthcare.
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Penalize people as a result of where you re born.
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You re born with asthma.
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Asthma is not naturally developed.
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Asthma is environment because of the lead paint in walls, the chemicals that s been emitted.
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All of that is about public policy and you change public policy.
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by policymakers who are sitting in the seat.
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And you change that by exercising that currency we call the vote.
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Our collective currency is the power in this democracy.
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And so reaching across communities to understand how can we collectively leverage our currency.
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Reaching within our community to make sure we maximize our currency.
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understanding the platform and history, understanding also, we don t repeat it.
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Today, we are at a junction.
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And that juncture is almost like using a historical analogy of standing at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
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John Lewis was in the midst of trying to take that march.
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And he was stopped on that bridge and beat.
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Today we stand there, the question we have for America, are we gonna march forward and change the current political environment so that the public policies
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really reflect the values that we would like to be governed by?
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Or are we going to retreat?
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Are we going to use this moment of protest and say, we told them, we shouted, we lied, we gathered, and now what?
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And so as we look at the arc of history, we have to learn from history and understand that even our most successful efforts, we had to build coalitions.
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Even some of our most prolific speakers, they understood the nature of reaching across communities.
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I would love when Stokely Carmichael would come to campus and he would give a speech and then sit with us for hours.
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And he would just go back and forth.
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And for me, it gave me a worldview because he was living on the continent of Africa.
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And once a year, he would come to the States and give speeches.
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And I would listen and listen.
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And the amount of love for community he would display was amazing.
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And one of the things he will always say, whatever you do, organize, organize, organize.
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Get away from the titles of what organization you re part of, but make sure you organize them because when it s time to stand up to protect the community, you need to be able to be called on and operate.
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And he understood the arc of history.
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We ll sit there and you had other individuals who will come on campus and talk about that.
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And for me, I began to carry that forward because for us to move forward from this moment is a great juncture.
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It s a great opportunity.
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We can actually do something that we have not done in this country in a long time.
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It s truly addressed the question of structural racism.
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begin to advance the opportunity for there be a trueness to that Constitution that all men and women.
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are entitled to certain inalienable rights.
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Or we can retreat right at the foot of the bridge and do nothing.
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Recognize this moment, just like we recognize the moment Trayvon Martin was killed, just like we recognize the moment of Ferguson, just like we recognize the moment of Eric Garner, or we can actually make something out of this.
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Eight minutes and 46 seconds, we witnessed a murder in broad daylight.
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11 camera angles, people watched.
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Are we gonna allow people to politicize this moment so they can cannibalize the opportunity?
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Or can we begin to build relationships within the black community and outside of the black community to try to put forth a public policy scheme that reflect a value system that we can overcome the structural racism that has plagued us for decades?
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Final point.
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W.E.B Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP.
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And he talked about the issue of the 21st century will be the issue of race.
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We have never dealt with race.
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We ve never addressed race.
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We try to make the victims the problem so we can excuse away the opportunity.
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Here is our opportunity to really confront the question, yes,
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Police agencies across the country, they have been a plague in our neighborhoods.
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I grew up in Detroit on the street called 23rd Street.
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We had two white officers who we hated.
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We called them Starshine Hutch.
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If they pulled you over, if you had any money in your pocket, they would take it and put it in their pocket.
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They were known to beat people.
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And it was amazing to me.
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They finally got caught because on my block, there was a young brother who was standing out there, Malice Green, and they beat Malice Green to death.
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And finally, they were caught red-headed and they both had to serve time.
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That was on my street.
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That s in my neighborhood.
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But I also knew Junior Hawkins, an officer con where he grew up in the neighborhood, and Lieutenant Napoleon, who s now the sheriff, who all come from the neighborhood.
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When we would see them, we said, okay, that s them.
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And if we were not doing something we were supposed to do, they would pull us over and talk to us.
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They may even put us in a police car and take us home.
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It was a different type of relationship.
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There was a different type of culture because you have officers who knew the people, who respected the people, who cared about the people, and for Junior Hawkins, who actually lived in a neighborhood.
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And you had officers who didn t care about the people, who was racist to the core and used their power to exploit the people when they didn t even live in the city of Detroit.
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We have to realign how we look at our structures, particularly policing in our communities to ensure we don t have police officers who become predators on the people who live in the communities.
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And we have individuals who care enough about the community to provide the necessary protection and service.
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So thank you for this opportunity, but we are at a juncture.
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It is about our heart, but it s also about our head.
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It s a foundation of a history that we can learn from, but it s forward-looking.
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We have to move from protest to power.
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First, I wanted to just comment on what you said.
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This has happened so many times.
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We ve had the moment before, but nothing s changed.
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My prayer is there s the process of stacking.
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There s been stacking going on for centuries, for decades.
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But when somebody overreacts to something, if you overreact to your own child or to other human being, and you realize you feel bad afterwards, you don t overreact to that moment.
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You overreact because it happened again and again and again until you hit a tipping point.
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I mean, Eric Gardner couldn t breathe, and we didn t get enough of this result.
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But maybe Arbery, maybe Floyd, maybe all these together finally hit this tipping point where it can change.
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So my last question for you, and I ve got to go to Charlemagne, I really appreciate his time, is what do you want to come out of these protests now at this point?
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And why have you, there s a big push to defund the police, and there s a lot of controversy on all sides on that.
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Why are you not endorsing that so that people understand your perspective and the NAACP s perspective on that?
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And what do you hope is going to come out of this protest?
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What do you want out of this protest?
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Well, the moment of protest is great.
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It has stirred up the type of energy.
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It has given a lot of people the courage to stand up and identify.
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In this moment, it is just not about Mr. Floyd.
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It s about racism.
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We ve heard more people pronounce the reality that racism is real.
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For years, people were denied it even exists.
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This administration is still denying
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it exists.
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Racism is real.
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That s one good thing.
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Now what you re going to do about it, it s time to take the protest and march to the polls in November.
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Because how you address it is address the policy that reinforce it, that keep it in place.
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And when the whole movement around defund the police, I completely understand the energy behind it.
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And I ve asked, what does that really mean?
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And I ve had three different definitions.
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And how I interpret it is this, we need to change the relationship between law enforcement agencies and communities.
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We need to stop having a buildup of arms of local agencies and understand those resources can be better deployed around preventive opportunities.
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Growing up in Detroit, we used to go 10 minutes across the river, and during that time, many of the, across the river to Canada and Windsor.
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And much of the time, those police officers didn t always carry guns.
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It was a different type of relationship with the community.
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With the example I gave about the officers who grew up in the neighborhood, it was a different type of relationship with the community.
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Over the last 30 years, crime has gone down, not up, and yet the budgets of police agencies have gone up.
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Why are they building up arms as opposed to building up communities?
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How can those resources be better deployed to ensure that a child is not locked up, but the same amount of resources can be utilized so many children can be exposed to what is possible?
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Yes.
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And so we shouldn t dismiss any campaign.
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The energy of our young people are real.
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The opportunity that we have is real.
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The question is, what are we going to do about it?
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Derrick, Derrick.
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Do you remember in Minnesota, sir?
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Yes.
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As we moved in politically, white figures moved to suburbs, and police offered the right to be non-residential in Minneapolis.
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Now, I say for the police don t live in Minneapolis.
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in Baltimore and Detroit.
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These policemen find a good job in the city and they come in as hired hands, as hired gunmen.
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So it s a residency for police, firemen, and teachers.
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The police is your next door neighbor, dealing with a stranger with a gun.
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You know, and that s a perfect point.
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You have no empathy for those you don t live around.
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You don t care about a community that you re not invested in.
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Therefore, you are willing to do stuff that s unlawful, particularly if you re not held accountable.
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Qualified immunity allows police officers to do stuff without being held accountable.
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In the city of Detroit today, the county sheriff, Benny Napoleon, good brother, when he recognized that this virus was taking hold, what he did immediately was reduce the number of inmates in the county jail
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from around 2,500 to less than 900, releasing all of the nonviolent offenders, placing them under house arrest, making sure they were tested, making sure that they wouldn t go back in an environment to cause harm if they had any history of pedophilia or domestic violence.
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And he shrunk the side.
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He wanted to protect his deputies.
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He wanted to protect the inmates.
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But he wanted to make sure that the community that he still lives in,
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treated people with dignity, whether they were locked up or not.
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It s a model that people should look at.
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He redirected the resource to save money, and as a result of that, allow people to have dignity in the midst of this public health crisis.
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So we need the police, but we need police that are connected to the community, that care for the community, understand the community and have consequences for the officer.
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Didn t the officer that committed this murder was written up 18 times and yet he wasn t removed.
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So that s the insane part.
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Thank you, Derek.
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I really appreciate Charlemagne, the God you ve been patient as can be brother.
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We never expected to build all this long.
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Thank you for sticking with us.
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Um, you re a cultural influencer, man.
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You ve you re, you re not just influencing this country around the world.
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Now your breakfast club.
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conversations get put on YouTube, everybody sees them, shares them, you go deep.
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I ve heard you say you re not surprised by this.
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I d love to know a couple things.
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One is, you have two daughters, is that right?
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Three.
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Three daughters.
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Okay.
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How old are your daughters, may I ask?
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11, 4, and 1.
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Wow.
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I assume at 11 for sure you re having these conversations, but how are you helping them to interpret what this means?
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What s the message you want your children to have?
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I m curious.
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And then I d love it if you d share a little bit of your story.
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I know you started out out of necessity selling drugs early in your life and so forth.
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And what created the change in you where you really wanted to become an influencer the way you d become?
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But I d love to hear about your children first, if we may.
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Yeah.
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First of all, I want to thank all the brilliant people that are here with us today, because it s been very informative just listening to each one of y all speak.
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And I m a little off right now, just because this whole time period has been really emotionally exhausting and mentally exhausting and spiritually exhausting.
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And right before
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Around 1.30 today, Eastern Time, I got a phone call about one of my really good friends who committed suicide.
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Wow.
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Sorry, brother.
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Yeah, and you know, you just, I don t know, it s whatever.
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In a way, I feel like I failed her, just because you know people are going through things, and you reach out to help people, and you try to help people.
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But it s like if somebody doesn t allow you fully in and really gives you access to help, you never really know what s going on.
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You just know something s going on.
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So it s like for me, it s just like today, it s just a new day, same old trauma.
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It s trauma on top of trauma.
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And I guess that s one of the things I try to keep from my daughters, because they re 11, they re four, they re one.
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They have a sense of innocence, and you don t know how much is too much to put in somebody s mind.
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You don t want to plant the wrong seeds in a person s, in a child s brain, because you don t know what that fruit can grow into.
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I don t want to tell my daughter, like, yo, all white people are evil.
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you know, all white people are bad, you know, I don t wanna do that, right?
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But then you have to tell them about the reality of the situation.
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The reality of the situation is white supremacy is very evil.
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You know, systemic racism is very evil, you know?
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And for me, just being a black person in America, you know, in particular, a black man, like, there s no way I can look at, you know, George Floyd and don t see myself.
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You know, for me personally, that s just,
8
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A nightmare scenario of mine, you know to have an encounter with police officers that ends with me being murdered just because of an interaction And you know when you re a black man, all you re trying to do every day of your life is survive and when you have like Close friends close family people that you rely on a circle a tribe When one of us doesn t make it for whatever reason You feel like
8
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You feel like you re getting closer to it yourself.
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You feel like you didn t survive.
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SPEAKER_03
Like, I honestly feel right now like a part of me has gone, you know what I m saying?
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I feel like I didn t help one of my own survive.
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So, you know, how much longer, you know, would I even have left?
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SPEAKER_03
I don t know, you know, but, you know, I just have this thing I call black annoyance and things like this just constantly remind me why it s warranted and black annoyance,
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It s the paranoia that comes with being black in America, and it s triggered by, you know, death.
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So seeing a black man get killed in broad daylight in front of several people while cameras are rolling, and he s being murdered by the same people that, you know, are supposed to protect and serve us, when you see that, you know, you got to nullify the shadow of a doubt that everything you believe about America is an absolute lie.
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You know, and I say it all the time, liberty and justice for all is just complete and total BS.
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It s not liberty and justice for all, it s liberty and justice for, you know, rich white folks.
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SPEAKER_03
And when they created the Constitution and had the three-fifths rule in it, where they only looked at us as three-fifths of a human being, that s exactly how they ve always wanted it.
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And situations like George Floyd just remind you that
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you know, that s the way the white supremacist power structure always wants it to be.
8
SPEAKER_03
And, you know, I even think, even thinking back to my, my people was like, you know, I, I wanted, I did, I reached out to do a welfare check, you know, early, earlier this year.
8
SPEAKER_03
And, you know, the, the, the law enforcement agency told me that they couldn t do a welfare check.
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And, and I think the reasons were because, um,
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she hadn t hurt anybody or hadn t hurt herself, or she wasn t in no immediate danger.
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And I m like, well, what the hell is the point of the welfare check then?
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SPEAKER_03
That s the whole point of the welfare check.
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So it s just like, how come we don t have the resources we need to make sure that our people are mentally and emotionally stable the way that they need to be?
8
SPEAKER_03
And this is just generational trauma to me.
8
SPEAKER_03
Even when I think about the police, you got to think in the South, the economics that drove the creation of police forces.
8
SPEAKER_03
They weren t centered on protecting and serving.
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They were about preservation of the slave trade.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, the primary policing institutions back then were slave patrols whose job was to chase down runaways and prevent slave revolts.
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And when I see police killing and all black people, I see and feel what my ancestors felt because you are killing, you know, black futures and stopping black progress and choking the life out of just beautiful black freedom.
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And, you know, America oppressed us on purpose and then acts like, you know, we put ourselves there.
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just because we didn t work hard enough.
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They want us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, but they cut off our feet.
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So why the hell would I own a pair of boots when I don t even have any feet?
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So I don t know.
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I m feeling a range of emotions, range of emotions right now.
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And it s literally just trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma.
9
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So when you ask me, how do I have these conversations with my children, my answer is,
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as little as possible, because I haven t quite figured it out for myself yet.
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And I don t know if I will ever quite figure it out.
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And I do remember having, you know, the most recent conversation me and my daughter had, you know, she was crying to me, telling me that, you know,
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all white people are in a certain way.
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This is an 11-year-old talking to a 41-year-old.
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And in my emotions, looking at yet another black man get killed at the hands of the police and get killed because of white supremacy, get killed because of systemic racism, that is how my energy was.
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And that s how my rhetoric was.
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But I wasn t talking about
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white people, I was talking about white supremacy and systemic racism, and that was just a concept she hadn t quite grasped yet.
9
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And you get a video where the young girl just, you know, started crying just because she came to the reality of, like, wow, somebody may hate me just because of the color of my skin.
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And what did that do to a person?
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What kind of trauma did that put into an individual, especially a child?
9
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Because they can t control what color they are.
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They can t control the fact that they have this beautiful melanin.
9
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And that s why I go out of my way to say
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You know, it s a privilege to be Black.
9
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You know, it s an honor to be Black.
9
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You know, I grew up with my father riding around in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, listening to James Brown say it loud, I m Black and I m proud.
9
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Like, we had the African medallions and the Malcolm X hats.
9
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Like, we had that sense of Black pride because if we don t constantly tell each other over and over and over and over and over that we are worthy, that we are Black, that Black is beautiful, this world will damn sure make us think otherwise.
9
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I m deeply sorry for the loss of your friend.
9
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Outside this conversation, I d love to send you some things.
9
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I have an individual skill I ve developed out of my hating of suffering any human being.
9
SPEAKER_01
And in my own experience, I d be at the edge of my own life at one stage decades and decades ago.
9
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I ve not lost one suicide out of thousands.
9
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We ve killed those people.
9
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Someone only takes their life when they believe that dying is less painful than living, as you know.
9
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And when you can shift that, you can shift anyone.
9
SPEAKER_01
So if you re interested, I ll send you some resources in that area.
9
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And if I can ever be helpful to you outside this conversation, brother, you can count on me, because I do have that skill, regardless of the color of my skin.
9
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And it s been my lifelong work.
9
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I d love to know just how you came to make the shifts in your own life.
9
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I know you started out, if I understand your history, selling drugs.
9
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You had a very tough background, to say the least, and yet now you re a worldwide influencer and you inspire people around the world.
9
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I know you don t feel that way right now.
9
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How could you with what you ve been through again?
9
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But I d love to know a little bit of the path, because that path shows people what s possible.
9
SPEAKER_01
You re an example of that.
9
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That s why I wanted to bring you on, because you re an extraordinary human being.
9
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And it s not because you had it easy.
9
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That s for sure.
9
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So tell us, if you would, just a little about that.
9
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And then tell us a little bit about what your core message is for America today.
9
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What do you want?
9
SPEAKER_01
What do you want to come out of this as well?
9
SPEAKER_01
But first, tell us a little bit about your journey, if you would.
9
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I grew up.
9
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I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, raised in a small town called Mom s Corner.
9
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And I grew up on this very small dirt road in a single wide trailer.
9
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And it was my mother and my father and my older sister and me and then my mother had my mother and father had to talk to younger brothers and a younger sister.
9
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You know, everything that I got into as a child, especially when it came to like crime, I bought all of that on myself.
9
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You know, my father was definitely, you know, the bad seed from bad sperm.
9
SPEAKER_00
He was, you know, had his own problems with substance abuse and he had his own problems with mental health.
9
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He was, you know, a drug user, but then he was also a drug seller.
9
SPEAKER_00
So he had that side in him, but he was also a good man as well.
9
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He was a great man.
9
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You know, he was a great man who, you know, knew how to do construction, knew how to use his hands.
9
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So, you know, even at his worst, I always saw him bounce back and, you know, become his best.
9
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You know, we had a, and I learned this through therapy.
9
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I had my own issues with him just because of how I watched him, you know, treat my mother, because him and my mother ended up getting a divorce.
9
SPEAKER_00
They ve been divorced for like,
9
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20 plus years now but you know I watched him you know having having a whole other family on the side and you know things like that you know bother you as a child and then you kind of suppress it and then it comes back later on in your life when you know you you are in a relationship and you know you you you might you know cheat
9
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And then you re like, man, I don t want to lose my family, you know, like my father lost his.
9
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But, you know, we in a good place now.
9
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But the beauty about my father and my mother, my mother was an English teacher and a Jehovah s Witness.
9
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And my grandmother was a Baptist.
9
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So I always had spirituality.
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I always had some type of spiritual foundation.
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Like my mother would always give me watchtowers and a wakes to read.
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And, you know, we would go out and field service every Saturday.
9
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And that was, you know, eye opening for me because
9
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they were actually being witnesses for God.
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That s what Jehovah s Witnesses mean, being witnesses of Jehovah.
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And they were, even though people would say that they were annoying, but it s like, yo, you kind of should be annoying when you re trying to, you know, push the work of a higher power, you know?
9
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And literally every Saturday morning, that s something that we would do.
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And she was an English teacher, so she would always keep a book in my face, you know?
9
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And she would always tell me to read things that don t pertain to me.
9
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And that s kind of where I guess I developed an appetite for everything.
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I guess that s where I m always willing to have conversations with anybody, because I saw other worldviews, you know, other than my own.
9
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And I was like a super, super intelligent kid, like as far as grades, until I got to about sixth grade.
9
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And when I got to sixth grade, I was the guy who was hanging around all of the white kids in my class, because that s all that was in my class.
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It was only like three other kids in my class, because it was like, they used to have it,
9
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in tier.
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So it was like A tier was the best and then B tier and then everything our A and C was the best and then like B and D was like the bad kids.
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I was always in A tier and there s only like three other black kids in that class.
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We all would hang out amongst each other but then all my cousins who were, you know,
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already on the wrong path, they wasn t having that at all.
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So they literally would bully me all the time.
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Like I used to have the fanny pack and the glasses.
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So in sixth grade, they would bully me.
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And it just got to the point, I remember one day my glasses just fell off and shattered and hit the ground.
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And I was like, man, if you can t beat them, join them.
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And so I just started running with that crowd.
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And literally that lasted for about,
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probably four, five years because from the time I made that decision in seventh grade to run with that crowd, the behavior just got worse.
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So to acting up in school and then finally getting to high school and then getting introduced to, you know, selling drugs because people that were my age had started to get into that.
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And so like once I started
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getting suspended all the time from school and not wanting to tell my parents I ll be cutting at somebody s house.
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That s how you get into the criminal lifestyle.
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And then when I got expelled from school around like I think I was in 10th grade, I was all the way in the street at that point.
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I went to jail for like 45, 50 days.
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And when I came home, I tried to get my life on the right path.
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So I had a job.
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I worked at a warehouse called Industrial Acoustics Company.
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That didn t work right for me.
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And then I ended up working at a flower garden.
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That didn t go well for me.
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So I was just like, I m gonna do what everybody else doing.
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So I started selling dope.
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And when I started selling dope, the first time I ever got locked up for drugs was really that was the time when I finally say,
9
SPEAKER_00
All right, enough is enough.
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Because my father would always tell me that if I don t change my lifestyle, I m going to end up in jail, dead, or broke sitting under the tree.
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So when you re young and you start to actually see that reality, you start to see people that you actually loved, you know.
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growing up to be just washed, and they re sitting under the tree not doing nothing with their life, and you got people that you were peers with and went to school with, they end up in jail, and you got friends that have gotten killed.
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And it s just like, I don t wanna be that.
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And so for whatever reason, I thank God that he just gave me the vision to see what life would be tomorrow.
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Because I always said, whatever you do in your life today directly impacts what happens in your life tomorrow.
9
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So I just started working a whole bunch of odd jobs.
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like most brothers in the hood I wanted to rap and I was in this recording studio one time and I met this
10
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guy named Willie Will, Willie Will was a radio personality.
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And I just asked him, I said, how did you get into radio?
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And he said, I just went down there and got an internship.
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This is 1998 in Charleston, South Carolina.
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So things were a lot different back then, but I went down to the radio station, filled out the internship papers and got an internship.
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And that was the most positive setting I had ever been in in my life.
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Just being in this corporate environment and having this corporate structure, it just really helped me a lot.
10
SPEAKER_01
And the first time I ever cracked that microphone,
10
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I was just like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
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SPEAKER_01
So even when you asked me about, you know, being a cultural influencer, that s not something that I, you know, sought out to do.
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SPEAKER_01
I just always remember when my father, one of the first, the first two books my father ever gave me was on the autobiography of Malcolm X and Message to the Black Man by Elijah Muhammad.
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And Malcolm X always said, the person who controls the media controls the minds of the masses.
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So being that I ve always had that thought in my head, I ve always attempted to do that.
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I ve always attempted to be the perfect balance of ratchetness and righteousness, because I am a full human being.
10
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And I say full, because I don t think I m quite whole yet.
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I think whole is a journey that you get to when you really start digging in deep when it comes to your mindfulness and your mental health.
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I m getting to that journey of wholeness.
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And I don t know if I ll ever be whole, but I am full.
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And being that I m full, I have a wide range of interests and a wide range of things that I m into.
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And like I said, I like to have conversations with everybody.
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And I think that reflects in what I do on the radio.
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So I think that s where the influence comes from.
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Well, you ve got a mission beyond yourself, right?
10
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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always said, you know, man hasn t found something or a person hasn t found something they re willing to die for or isn t fit to live.
10
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You ve found your grace.
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You know, so many times in the earliest stages in my own life, when I ve worked with other people, someone told me this when I was really just down and out, I was sleeping in my car, I was homeless.
10
SPEAKER_00
And this person I was talking to said, if you won t give up, your gifts will make room for you.
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You know, if you just keep giving, you can keep finding a way to give.
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And you ve been doing that, brother.
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I think that s why you ve prospered.
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Tell me something, I respect you so much because you do talk to everybody.
10
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I saw the other day you had Rush Limbaugh on and yet, you know, he s denying any form of systemic racism whatsoever.
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I understand, you know, how some people think that they re being blamed, but that s not the message.
10
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The message is there s a system that is suppressing our brothers and sisters.
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So how do you, how do you get through to somebody and you can t get through to everybody, obviously, but if you were going to try to send a message to someone who is dyed in the rule, thinking their race is greater,
10
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or you want to get through to somebody and start to break down the systemic racism, what do you think are the steps that are in front of us?
10
SPEAKER_00
Because you wouldn t keep on going unless some part of you, in spite of all the pain,
10
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knows that there is a way to get through this eventually, you know, we can t give up.
10
SPEAKER_00
So tell me what s the belief that keeps you going and how do we attack this?
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SPEAKER_00
And you know, what would you say to somebody to try to get through to them?
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SPEAKER_00
I m sure you ve been successful before, you know, Daryl Davies, I mentioned to you before, you know, converted 200 KKK leaders to give up their entire approach.
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It didn t do it in one conversation, but he did it.
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So and you have that same power.
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It s the reason I wanted you on the show.
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And I m
10
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I honestly deeply feel a love for you, brother, because I know what it feels like to lose those you love, so I understand that and the love that all of you, the losses you ve all been through and that America s been through, not just George Floyd, but you go through the list.
10
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But I m asking you, I know you talk to other people.
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Tell me why you do it.
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Tell me how do you reach them or the ones that you do break through, how do you do it?
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SPEAKER_00
How do we dismantle this mindset and this system of systemic racism?
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Well, I think when it comes to systemic racism, I can t dismantle a system that I didn t create.
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When it comes to having conversations with white people about it, it s so interesting.
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SPEAKER_01
I was on a Zoom a couple of weeks ago.
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It was a white brother on the Zoom who asked that question.
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He said, how do we teach young white kids not to be racist?
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Because they re learning this in the home.
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And my immediate reaction was, it s not my job to teach young white kids how not to be racist.
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And my good brother, Michael Eric Dyson, was also on the Zoom.
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And Michael Eric Dyson said, Charlamagne, let me tell you something.
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He teaches at Georgetown University.
10
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And he said, I teach a class on hip hop.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he said, in this class, they re talking, these white, he said it s 75% white, they re talking about you.
10
SPEAKER_01
they re talking about your interviews, you know, you come up in the conversation quite often.
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SPEAKER_01
So whether you re intentionally teaching them, you know, you are not, you are.
10
SPEAKER_01
You re just being yourself, but that s a teaching in itself.
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Yeah.
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So he said, you might as well be intentional about it.
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And then, you know, he reminded me of, um,
10
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in the autobiography of Malcolm X and in the movie, you know, when Malcolm X was speaking at Harvard and, you know, that white woman, a white woman walked up to him and said, how can I help?
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And Malcolm X said, you can t.
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And Malcolm X said, you know, he always regretted that.
10
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You know?
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And so it s just like, I would never want to miss out on an opportunity to use, you know, somebody s privilege in order to combat prejudice.
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Because that s what I always tell white people to do.
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Use your privilege to combat prejudice.
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Because, like I said, I can t dismantle a system that I didn t create.
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SPEAKER_01
Only thing we can do is do what we re doing now.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, taking it to the streets, being loud about it, being vocal about it, saying things like, look,
10
SPEAKER_01
See, because if you ask me, man, I feel like this is really a divine reckoning.
10
SPEAKER_01
I feel like God is showing America everything from coronavirus and the way it impacted the black community.
10
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We all know it impacted the black community because all the underlying conditions that exist in the black community because of systemic racism, from watching another black man get killed in the middle of the street, from like Reverend Jesse Jackson saying earlier, we are going to control an election this year.
10
SPEAKER_01
If Joe Biden doesn t lean into blackness in a real way,
10
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he probably won t get elected in November, you know, just because if you think about, in 2016, 4.4 million people that voted in 2012 stayed home, a third of them were black, because they just don t feel inspired, you know?
10
SPEAKER_01
There s nothing energizing them.
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They feel like their hood and the black community have been the same for decades and decades and decades, regardless of who s in the White House.
10
SPEAKER_01
So you can t call Donald Trump a devil.
10
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because these people been living in hell.
10
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So every single person that s in charge look like like like a devil to them.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I just feel like, man, God is is giving America a chance to do the right thing.
10
SPEAKER_01
And everything that s happening right now is a reminder to America and the world to do right by black people, because you have to get your karma right.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like, you know, I m using the line of color purple.
10
SPEAKER_01
There is no good that s going to come to America until they do right by black people.
10
SPEAKER_01
And it s time for America to atone for its original sin.
10
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which is slavery, and that s only going to happen through legislation and reparations, and America has to make amends for the wrong that it s done to Black people in this country.
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If not, I just don t think America can handle the karma that it s currently experiencing.
10
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I really don t.
10
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If you think this year has been hell so far, you haven t seen nothing yet.
10
SPEAKER_01
America doesn t atone for the sins of its past if we all don t collectively get our souls right.
10
SPEAKER_01
You know, when you hear people like Joe Biden say the soul of the country is at stake, that s very, very, very true.
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And we all have to get our souls right in order to move forward.
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And then regardless of his leaning in or out of that politics, there s also the local politics of who the district attorneys, who are the sheriffs.
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I mean, we ve got to remember that the vote matters at all levels because sometimes we get choices at the top and none of us care on either side.
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It s pretty crazy sometimes, but we got to realize our vote does matter in that area.
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What gives you strength and hope to keep moving forward?
10
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What s the message that you want all people to have that makes you believe that it can get better?
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Because otherwise you wouldn t be doing what you re doing, brother.
10
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There s some part of you, no matter how down you get, you keep on giving, you keep on going, you keep putting the light out in the midst of the darkness.
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SPEAKER_00
What s the belief that keeps you going and what makes you hopeful right now?
10
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Amen.
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I m old school.
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I m 41.
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I m an old school Southern brother.
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So I still believe in God.
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I don t know.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know anything else.
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SPEAKER_01
I really don t.
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I didn t go to college.
10
SPEAKER_01
I don t have any degrees.
10
SPEAKER_01
I don t have anything else to fall back on.
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SPEAKER_01
All I know is that I was taught to pray and I was taught to pray hard.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I was always taught that, you know,
10
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Regardless of what may be going on in your life, God will always get you through.
10
SPEAKER_01
I am the brother that absolutely believed in the story of Job.
10
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I am absolutely the brother that believed in the story of Noah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Even when things get hard, that s what I do.
10
SPEAKER_01
I drop to my knees.
10
SPEAKER_01
When I get bad news, I drop to my knees.
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SPEAKER_01
Whether it s bad news about something that s going on in my life, bad news about something that s going on with a friend, family member, people that I don t know.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m a praying man.
10
SPEAKER_01
I come from a family of prayer warriors.
10
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So if you ask me what s getting me through, it s always going to be God.
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SPEAKER_01
But boy, I ll tell you something.
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It gets harder and harder and harder and harder every day.
11
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I m not gonna lie to you.
11
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It gets so hard sometimes that you question your own faith, like in a real way.
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I know you say everything happens for a reason, but boy, I don t know.
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I really don t, but I m here until I m not.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, well, hopefully George Floyd, the reason there that we re seeing is finally hitting that tipping point with everyone, that there s enough people there.
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SPEAKER_03
I m encouraged to see so many people of every color out there marching and everybody having the conversation that s never happened at this level before.
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Listen, we ve gone way beyond.
11
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I just want to, since we all be together and Anne s back with us as well, a couple of quick questions, if you would.
11
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If you had one core message that you wanted white America to understand or to appreciate
11
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any of you just what s the core message as we have our final moments together you want them to leave with you think can move their heart if it s already moved or if their hearts move move their feet in a way and their their hands in a way and their wallets in a way and their behavior in a way that makes America the unified place that it is because when we talk about divisions and we can talk about everything but anger rarely it can open us it can focus us
11
SPEAKER_03
But I don t know if you agree, my experience is the only thing that cures it long term is unity.
11
SPEAKER_03
And unity is just a fancy word for love.
11
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And when there s love, human beings treat each other incredibly well.
11
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And when there s not, human beings can be evil.
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So what is your message that you d like white America to hear?
11
SPEAKER_03
Or what is the action you d like to call for?
11
SPEAKER_03
Reverend Jackson, do you want to start?
11
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You re mic d.
11
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Well, while he s unmuting, I ll just say this before I go.
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I think that my request would just be for more curiosity.
11
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The thing is when you re one up on a power dynamic, you have a lot of blind spots.
11
SPEAKER_00
When you re one down, you have a lot of sore spots.
11
SPEAKER_00
And what that means is that when you re one down and you re hurting, you have to pay attention to that dynamic.
11
SPEAKER_00
If you re a woman,
11
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working with a bunch of men, you really know a lot about how gender works in that office.
11
SPEAKER_00
If you re a guy, you may not even be able to answer the question.
11
SPEAKER_00
How does gender work?
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
11
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I mean, like Scooby Doo, I don t know.
11
SPEAKER_00
So wisdom accumulates at the bottom because when you re one down, those sore spots force you to pay attention and to learn.
11
SPEAKER_00
When you re one up, you know, and it s not even a moral thing.
11
SPEAKER_00
If you re in a car, wherever you are in that car, you have certain blind spots.
11
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The problem that we have is the people who are one up on race do not know that they do not know.
11
SPEAKER_00
They do not know that they do not know.
11
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They think that they know.
11
SPEAKER_00
And so the first step has to be maybe there s something in my blind spot.
11
SPEAKER_00
If this many people are marching and demonstrating, either all these black people are lying and lazy,
11
SPEAKER_00
and up to no good, or maybe there s something in my blind spot that I can t see.
11
SPEAKER_00
And so the power of curiosity, of assuming you don t know everything, assuming you can t know everything, and that your position, just like when you re driving a car, your position in that car will determine what you can see and what you can t see, I think opens it up for more wisdom to be shared throughout the system.
11
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lynchings in 70 years.
11
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Alabama 361, Arkansas 492, Florida 311, Georgia 637, Kentucky 168, Louisiana 549, Mississippi 654, South Carolina 123, North Carolina 185.
11
SPEAKER_04
There was no cameras.
11
SPEAKER_04
It s this lynching business.
11
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driving us from South to North, from South Pomona, Charlemagne, to North, is his old system.
11
SPEAKER_04
And we got to fight this thing and do it every day.
11
SPEAKER_04
And Tony, I appreciate this conversation.
11
SPEAKER_04
My brother, Charlemagne, I want to spend some time with you.
11
SPEAKER_04
Charlemagne, can I do this?
11
SPEAKER_04
I would love that.
11
SPEAKER_04
That d be my pleasure.
11
SPEAKER_04
We got it.
11
SPEAKER_04
I ll talk with Tony s producers.
11
SPEAKER_04
I love you.
11
SPEAKER_04
They re such a special guy.
11
SPEAKER_04
And the guy from CNN, man, he doesn t love me anymore, but I love him.
11
SPEAKER_03
I love him more than the other guy.
11
SPEAKER_03
That s awesome.
11
SPEAKER_03
Thank you.
11
SPEAKER_03
Last comment, Derek, and then we ll Charlemagne.
11
SPEAKER_03
We ll finish with Barbara, and we re set to go.
11
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Thank you all.
11
SPEAKER_02
You know, Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi civil rights activist, she gave a speech, and she talked about the nature of the South.
11
SPEAKER_02
And she talked about being from Sunflower County, and no matter what happens, as long as white people in that county had their foot on black folks  neck in the ditch, they were both in the ditch.
11
SPEAKER_02
And that s the reality where we are.
11
SPEAKER_02
As long as we allow racism to exist, long as we use the tools of otherness as a mechanism for political advancement,
11
SPEAKER_02
we will continue to be in this same ditch.
11
SPEAKER_02
The real question for white America as it is for black America, are we ready to get out the ditch?
11
SPEAKER_02
Are we ready to move forward?
11
SPEAKER_02
Are we ready to actually recognize that race is a social construct?
11
SPEAKER_02
And as it is African-Americans today, it could be another group tomorrow.
11
SPEAKER_02
And if we wanna continue that system, we are dooming our children to a future that s worse than the past that we re looking at.
11
SPEAKER_02
So we must walk together and recognize that this social construct must be blown up.
11
SPEAKER_02
And we need to build a more perfect approach so that all of us could be treated with respect and dignity.
11
SPEAKER_02
Because if not, as time go, things can shift and that s not what we want to see.
11
SPEAKER_03
Thank you.
11
SPEAKER_03
Barbara, any final comments?
11
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What you want white folks to understand, to feel, to act upon?
11
SPEAKER_05
Well, what I want is for them, there s a phrase that s used in the academic world, which of course I m half in right now, and that is the epistemology.
11
SPEAKER_05
So basically, what process do you use that we
11
SPEAKER_05
to process your knowledge and what you then stand for.
11
SPEAKER_05
And what I ve been arguing is that with white folks, there s an epistemic dilemma between how they see the world versus how we see the world, how the gangster class sees the world.
11
SPEAKER_05
So what I would say, I m sort of like what Van Jones was saying, and that is,
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We need them, I would like them to entertain the notion of having a new perspective.
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To believe that the way they looked at things, that there may just be another way to look at the world and to look at black people.
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And like Van Jones said, as black folks
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or as James Baldwin said, I ve had to outsmart white people my whole life.
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I ve had to know what they were about and what they were thinking, but they don t know anything about me.
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It s time for white folks to know something about us, a new perspective.
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That was, again, the entire purpose of this conversation.
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My hope is that will people be reached by the rawness and realness of all of you, your life experience,
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and your willingness to share and your willingness to still find a way to move towards solution.
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And every one of you would have the right to be enraged 24 seven and not have any opening in your minds, but you all are leaders and trying to find that place of balance and level or brotherhood again.
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Charlemagne, to clean it up, what would you like white folks to know?
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What do you want the world to know?
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What do you want them to do, brother?
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Oh man, you know, I think as long as we live under a mechanism of white supremacy,
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We re going to always be oppressed.
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I mean, that s the whole point of systemic racism is for America, America to keep his knee on the neck of black folks, you know, institutional racism is going to always exist because you always have individuals who are prejudiced in positions of power.
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systemic racism will always exist because you got certain policies and practices that just run deep in society, really deep in America.
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So, you know, until you have white people who want to use their privilege to combat prejudice and who are intentional about dismantling the mechanism of white supremacy, I m just not sure things will ever change.
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I m really not.
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I mean, I m keeping hope alive.
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as the Reverend Jesse Jackson said, but I don t know.
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We have to be intentional about it.
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This can t be something that we move on from two weeks from now.
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White people that have that power and they have that privilege, they have to
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relinquish a lot of that.
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And, you know, it s the same thing with men when we re in spaces with women, we have that male privilege.
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We have to relinquish that power and that privilege.
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And, you know, I don t even like the term making space.
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People like to say that making space.
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I m like, oh, this is all God s space.
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So I don t like to say make space.
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Like, let s share what God has here for all of us.
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I can t make space for you.
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God already made the space.
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Let me learn to share it.
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with you, you know, cause I don t want to look down on you.
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I don t want to look up at you.
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I want to look, you know, right into your eyes.
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So yeah, I think we just got to be intentional about.
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dismantling all of these wicked systems, man, but especially the system of white supremacy and systemic racism.
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Because even when you talk about the Book of Revelations, everybody s like, oh, it s the end of the world.
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I don t think it s the end of the world.
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I just think it s the end of a system.
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I think it s the end of a wicked system.
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So once again, leaning back to God, that s what gives me hope, that there are systems that come to an end, and God-like great systems take their place.
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And I think this is one of those times.
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Well, thank you.
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I just want you to know just I m one human being.
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I m certainly not everything, but it s these conversations that can open people s eyes and hearts.
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It s these conversations called to the spirit of the soul of a human being.
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Because we all, we want anybody we love to suffer and we re part of the same family.
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So we re going to also work to put this in schools.
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so that your voices will be heard from the raw, real place they are, both with the concern and the pain and the hurt, and also the way forward.
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It s not an easy way.
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It s not a straight line.
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There s nothing in nature that s a straight line.
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We see a straight line, a human drew it.
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You know, nature is up and down and around, but it feels like, and I sure pray to God that it is for all benefits, for all humanity,
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that we ve hit that tipping point, we move forward.
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And I have sincerely apologized to all of you, not for me, but for any white person that s ever suppressed or pushed back or not shown you the love or respect that each of you deserve as just the dignity of being a human being.
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And I thank you for all the fights you ve pushed through.
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I thank you for your perseverance.
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I thank you for your taking the time today out of your busy time to schedule your deepest feelings and share those and to share what you think are ways forward.
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And I just hope that what comes out of this conversation for people is more compassion, more unity, more connection, more love.
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If we step in each other s shoes, then we can t let this continue.
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And I m grateful that we re at this point where even technology is allowed.
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I saw somebody write that racism isn t increasing or decreasing.
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It s just being filmed more.
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Bring that mirror directly to people s faces.
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I think there is goodness in all humans of all colors, all races, all backgrounds.
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We re part of the same family.
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And all of you have contributed so much in your lives already.
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My prayer is that you ll continue to do the good work you re doing.
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And I hope you all know that you can call upon me in any way I can help you or your family, or Charlemagne, a friend like that in the future.
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I m dedicated and devoted to your well-being as I would any other brother or sister on the planet, but especially all of you that have been through so much and have given so much back.
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So thank you.
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God bless.
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Thank you.
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Bye-bye.
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Thank you, Tony.
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The Tony Robbins Podcast is directed by Tony Robbins and produced by the Tony Robbins team.
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Copyright Robbins Research International.