Mass Shootings & Anxiety, DOJ Finds AL Neglects Black Residents, Remembering Harry Belafonte

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today is Monday, May a, twenty twenty three. Coming up
on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network.
The decades old water and sewerce crisis in Alabama's Black
Belt Lowndes County is now hopefully being solved. The DOJ
found a pattern of neglect from Alabama's Department of Public
Health and they failed to act on the county's water problems.

(00:23):
I will talk to the Rural Development manager of the
Equal Justice Initiative about how black Alabama citizens have been
greatly impacted his Mental Health Awareness Month, and I will
talk to a licensed professional counselor about how the rise
in mass shootings affects people's daily lives and mental well being.
Actor Richard Dreyfis faces backlash after defending blackface and expressing

(00:48):
regret over being unable to play a black man. Will
show you the video that has him pissed off with
the OSCARS diversity standards. Plus will play for you on
one interview I did with Hairbella Fontie. I'll first sit
down interview. It's one you do not want to miss.
It's time to bring the fuck. I'm rolling Unfiltered on

(01:08):
a Black Star Network let's go.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Why the music go out?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
He's it whatever it is. He's got the fact, the
fine and wait to blas. He's roight on top and
it's rolling. Best believe he's going putting it down. Frank's
Loston News to politics with entertainment.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Just bookcase. He's stolen, rolling out.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
It's rolling.

Speaker 6 (01:38):
Fonte yea.

Speaker 7 (01:42):
Rolling.

Speaker 8 (01:46):
He's poky stress, she's real good question, No, he's rolling, Fonte.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Folks.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Late last week, the DOJ released the findings of its
first environmental justice investigation under Title six of the Civil
Rights Act of nineteen sixty four. It's in an area
of Alabama that's called the black Belt. According to the DOJ,
the investigation uncovered evidence that the Alabama Department of Public
Health had a pattern of neglect and failed to act

(02:23):
on water problems in Lownes County, about thirty miles southwest
of Montgomery, State's capital. Fifty one thousand homes in Lowndes County,
sixty percent of them have inefficient sewer systems. Catherine and
Coleman Flowers as the CEO of the Center for Rural
Enterprise and Environmental Justice. She joins me now from Huntsville, Alabama.

(02:45):
Catherine glad to have you here. This is a perfect example, Catherine,
of an environmental issue that's a race issue that involves
a Department of Justice. Christian Clark was there last week
where they announced those findings.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Let people know again.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
How the life of black folks impacted by an inadequate
water source system.

Speaker 9 (03:15):
Well, first of all, I Roland, thank you for having
me here. I grew up in Lowndes County, so I
know what it's like to have a failing septic system.
I know it's like to use an outhouse, but a
lot of people I was surprised when I moved back
to the area to find out that people are still
living like that. And what's even worse now is that
if you're living in a home where your septic system

(03:38):
is failing, usually what people do when it fails, it
comes back into the home and when it's or it
will be outside of the home or people disconnected, and
that's when you see the toilet paper and so.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
Forth outside the home.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Then there are a lot of people that can't.

Speaker 9 (03:52):
Afford them because they're so expensive, and they just have
it growing into a pit.

Speaker 4 (03:57):
As you see in one of the photos that's there.

Speaker 9 (04:00):
We've gone to places where we've just seen sewage all
over the areas because people didn't have treatment. There are
also cases and examples we've seen they have sewage lagoons
where people are living right adjacent to where all the
sewage from the community goes into this one area. And
we did a study back that was released in twenty seventeen,

(04:23):
a peer reviewed study where we found evidence of hookworm
and other tropical parasites. And when this study was released,
the state Health Department put on this website that it
was not valid because we use PCR technology, which was
not approved by the FDA.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
To see those photos again, people might be thinking, oh,
this is nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties and not twenty twenty three.

Speaker 9 (04:53):
Oh, this is definitely. This is definitely twenty twenty three.
A lot of those pictures were taken in twenty three
and if you go to a lot of the homes,
you can see this. And I guess the reason that
we were able to share this over the course of
the time I've been doing this work is because I
am a native and I grew up seeing a lot
of this too. A lot of people are embarrassed by

(05:15):
it and didn't want to really talk about it, but
they shared this information with us because they're ready for
a solution. And we're glad that the DOJ took of
our complaint and saw validity and what we were and
I've been doing. I've been working on this issue since
two thousand and two. So we found the complaint in
twenty eighteen. Unfortunately, somebody heard us and we're able to

(05:39):
using Title six and the civil rights law. And what
I think is the most appropriate place, which is Lowndes County,
because most of the sale.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Went to Montgomery, March goes through Lowndes County.

Speaker 9 (05:50):
It's also home to the original Black Panther Party, which
was founded there. So I think that if history barrassed
us out, maybe we can also make additional history making
sure that no other rural community throughout the South would
have these kind of long running situations, because we're hoping
that this could be a model for how we address
these issues.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Catherine Allows County seventy two point five percent black, twenty
six percent white. So what is this decision by the
deal of day, What is it going to do, What
is it going to cause? What is going to change?

Speaker 9 (06:26):
Well, hopefully what it would change is that most of
the families that are impacted by this, which are families
that are African American, most of the families will find
a remedy finally where they don't have to worry about
either sewage running into the backyards whether the children are
playing around it, or coming back into their homes. So
we're hoping that out of this we can find technological

(06:47):
solutions that work. Places like Whitehall, Alabama, where people are
living closer together, we're hoping instead of them being because
the pictures that you're seeing now are in white Hall,
actually that family, their great grandmother provide the camp site
for the marches when they march.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
From Seal THEMN to Montgomery.

Speaker 9 (07:06):
It is a travesty that people that gave so much
for the right to vote are now being put in
a situation where they have to live like this. And
hopefully what we could find is that there would be
funding that would be directed to them that will allow
them to have centralized sewer where centralized sewer can be
or having septic systems at work.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
And again they'll be suspending criminal penalties and leans they
will also suspend enforcement of sanitation laws that could result
in criminal charges, finds jail time and potential property laws
for residents in Lownes County who lack the means to
purchase functioning septic systems. They will also ensure that Lowndes
County residents are informed about the suspension of the criminal

(07:53):
penalties and leans also examining public health risks within Lowndes
County and coordinate with the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention to measure the level of a health risk of
different populations experience from raw sewage exposure. They also agreed
to work collaboratorily with the CDC to adopt any public
health recommendations provided by the CDC. Then will also launching

(08:15):
a public health awareness campaign and will develop a public
health awareness campaign using radio print, ads, flyers, mailers, do
or door outreach, and other appropriate ways to ensure residents
receive critical health and safety information related to raw sewage exposure.
Also providing public health educational materials for Lownes County healthcare
providers by creating or supplement creating or have supplemental education

(08:39):
materials for healthcare providers for Lowndes County residents, including school
based healthcare centers and community based organizations to provide more
information on symptoms and illness related to raw sewage exposure. Also,
they will be conducting assessments to determine appropriate septic and
wastewater management systems by conducting a comprehensive assessment of the

(09:02):
appropriate again management systems for homes within Lowndes County and
use that information to prioritize properties to receive systems based
on risk of exposure to raw sewage. And Alabama Department
of Public Health cannot use this information for criminal penalties Orleans.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
That is really important there, Catherine.

Speaker 9 (09:23):
That's very important because what keeps a lot of us
connected to the county is that our family owned property there.
And when they came up with this Lean law that
would allow them to put lians on people's properties, note
that that's the only place in the state of Alabama
where it would apply in Lowndes County and there are

(09:44):
sixty seven counties in the state of Alabama, and they
had that special law just for Lowndes County. So we
feel that, you know, the way they were just so
punitive in terms of going after people who were in
a situation that was not through their own making was
hard and I'm glad that the Justice Department stepped in

(10:07):
and listen to our complaint and and it's helping us
get to a place where this can finally be resolved.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
All right, then, Captain Flowers, thanks so much, great work
and keep fighting.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Thank you so much. Come and visit us. Indeed, I'll
be in Alabama soon. Thank you. Thanks you a lot.
All right, folks, so we come back.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
I talked to my panel about this rolland Unfiltered on
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Hatred on the streets. A horrific scene white nationalist rally
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White people are losing their their minds.

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As a Manguy pro Trump mark storm to the US Capital,
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About to see the rise where I call white minority resistance.
We have seen white folks in this country who simply
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I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of
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This is part of American history.

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Every time that people of color have made progress, whether
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Of the Proud Boys and the Boogaaloo Boys America, There's
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It's all the proud boy to guy.

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This country is getting increasingly racist and its behaviors and
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The fee that you're taking our job, they're taking our resources, they're.

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Taking out women. This is white field up.

Speaker 5 (12:41):
Connect on the frequency with me, Dee Barnes.

Speaker 18 (12:44):
Our special guest Alicia Garza, one of the founders of
the Black Lives Matter movement.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
We're going to discuss her new book, The Purpose of Power,
How we come together when we fall apart.

Speaker 19 (12:54):
We live in a world where we have to navigate.
You know, when we say something, people look at us money,
But when amasi, it's the same thing less skillfully than
we did. Right, everybody box towards what they said, even
though it was your idea.

Speaker 14 (13:08):
Right here from the frequency on the Black Star Network. Hi,
I'm bb Whinings.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Hi, I'm Kimberrell. Hi, I'm Karl Painning.

Speaker 20 (13:20):
Hey, everybody is a Sherry Shepherd. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered,
And while he's doing unfiltered, I'm practicing your walk.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
All right, Fuas, Welcome back, my pan out.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Doctor a'ma congo to being a professorial lecturer a School
of International Service American University out of based out of
d C. Nita Shannon, former Georgiana State Representative out of Atlanta,
doctor the Imbay Carter, Associate Professor of University of Maryland,
the School of Public Policy out of DC. Glad to
have y'all here. I will start with you, Niambi. This

(14:02):
is a perfect example of again why elections matter. Having
a Biden Harris Department of Justice democrat leading, having Christen
Clark there going after a red state Alabama where they
have been screwing over black people.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
Impacting their health.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
This is how environmental racism combines what the DJ does
to affect change.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
This is a huge, huge deal.

Speaker 21 (14:36):
Absolutely, Roland is super important because it's not just this
sort of issue of just having this sewage. It's all
of the other things that come with it. As your
previous guest talked about, I mean, Alabama's had a hookworm problem.
That's something you don't really see in this country anymore.
Yet this is happening in the twenty first century because
you have a history of neglect. You have these rural

(14:57):
communities and others that don't have proper sewage, that don't
have access to clean water, all of the things that
we deride developing nations in other countries for, but we
never stop to look at rural America. And it's not
just the water. It's also the things that we dump.
It's the trash collection sites and where they're placed. It's
all of this stuff, and it is making black communities

(15:18):
in Alabama, in Lowndes County sick and sicker by the
day because they're also less healthcare access in those same places.
So it's just a sort of perfect storm of problems
that are collecting in this community. And thankfully the Department
of Justice has done something toward trying.

Speaker 22 (15:37):
To remediate this issue.

Speaker 21 (15:39):
But it's going to take a really long time to
get this together.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
The thing here, Ranita, we talked about this all the time.
Why civil rights groups matter, why lawsuits matter, why holding
people accountable. The reality is Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, we can
go down the line when Republicans are in office these

(16:07):
red states, know we can do pretty much what the
hell we want to do. And you know, there's somebody
out there who will say, you know, oh, you know,
what are they done for black people? Seventy two point
five percent of Lownes County is black. Now, you may

(16:27):
you may have a working toilet or bathroom in your house,
but trust me, this decision by DOJ to come down
on the Alabama Department of Public Health, this has a
direct impact on the lives of black people.

Speaker 21 (16:44):
This absolutely has far reaching consequences, and this is a
great example of what we mean when we talk about
environmental racism.

Speaker 4 (16:51):
You're absolutely correct.

Speaker 21 (16:52):
You know, this situation with Lowndes County, unfortunately, is not
the first time that we've seen a Republican majority control
state just allow a black county to languish and have
environmental issues. And as you said before this, you know,
I'm thankful the dealj stepped in, but as you talked
about before, this really has far reaching consequences. You know, tonight,
I'm wearing a shirt that says Black Birth Matters, and
this is actually supporting a group of black doulas in

(17:15):
New Orleans that works to make sure that those who
are giving birth are having good health outcomes. But when
we talk about environmental racism and what's happening in Lownes County,
these two issues don't look.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
Connected, but they are.

Speaker 21 (17:28):
You cannot have healthy, successful pregnancies if you are not
able to drink clean water and have air that is
appropriate to breathe. And so I know that environmental issues
usually don't rank high when people think about who they're
going to vote for and when they think about what
are top priority issues. But I can guarantee you the

(17:49):
folks who are living in Lowndes County are definitely this
is ranking high with them because it's just essential for life.
It's essential for growing healthy, happy Black families to have
clean water and clean air. Sounds so basic, but as
you can see, this is not the only example that
that actually is something that is not very basic when
it comes to supporting counties at a majority black.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Last thing I'll say is, I have not.

Speaker 21 (18:13):
Seen a situation where any state in the nation has
allowed a majority white county to languish. You might have
some poor areas within a county, but you are not
going to see a majority white county be allowed to
languish from an environmental perspective the way that Lowndes County
has been allowed to languish.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
And it's sad oh a congo.

Speaker 23 (18:35):
You know, this really has me thinking a lot about,
to be quite honest, twenty twenty four because Ms Flowers
said that she started this campaign in two thousand and two,
and here we are in twenty twenty three. All of
this effort to get to this point tonight, an effort that,
mind you, Roland as you know better than nobody else,
no other news network is talking about in terms of

(18:56):
bringing this to the forefront, and I'm just thinking about what.

Speaker 22 (19:00):
Happens in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 23 (19:02):
If Biden loses the election, all of these efforts go away.

Speaker 22 (19:07):
Kristen Clark, all of these people are gone.

Speaker 23 (19:09):
So when we see these types of efforts being made,
we push the Justice Department to do these types of
things and they act. We have to continue to push
further because this can easily disappear. And to be quite honest, Roland,
I think policies like these and actions like these by
the Department of Justice are the reasons why people are
saying Biden has low numbers. I think people are feeling

(19:31):
like he's done enough for the black community. Katanji ka kamala,
all of this that's going on, these actions, and people
are like, come on, man, it's.

Speaker 22 (19:40):
Enough, But we can't stop. We have to keep.

Speaker 23 (19:43):
Demanding more because it's clearly leading to results.

Speaker 22 (19:45):
And lastly, I will say, Roland, you've.

Speaker 23 (19:47):
Been talking about Selma multiple times and how the condition
is left in some when people are not talking about
an economic plan for some black folks. In particular, when
we talk about that economic plan, it has to include
counties like Lownes County because she talked about that connection
to the civil rights movement, So we have to applaud
the DJ for what is doing. We have to stay
engaged to make sure that we can get twenty twenty

(20:07):
four so we can get more of this going into
twenty twenty four and beyond. And we also have to
make sure that we as black people are going back
to snatch up our communities that have such a powerful
legacy and making sure we're doing our best to take
care of them economically as well.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Absolutely, and again this is one of those things where
I've said repeatedly the Biden administration should be pushing, It
should be touting, and not just you know, just having
DOJ send items out. And part of the deal in
politics neobay ain't just what you do, it's how you

(20:45):
sell it.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
You gotta tell folk what you did.

Speaker 21 (20:49):
Absolutely, and I think this is something you've chied to
Democrats a lot on. They don't really do a good
job of talking about the things that they've done. I mean,
I think for many of us who live through the
recovery of these last few years, I mean, talking about
being able to get rapid COVID tests in your home
like that was not a small achievement. Thinking about some
of these moratoriums in renal assistants, other kinds of things.

(21:11):
These were not small things, and these were not inconsequential
things for Black Americans. Yet I think Democrats have a
real problem with saying the things that they actually have
done and have done well, and I think this is
going to be one of those things. Unfortunately, to doctor
de Benga's point just a moment ago in yours also

(21:33):
is that this is not a small thing. I mean,
environmental justice, if we're really going to be honest about it,
is a black issue. It's something that started with black communities,
and it was black people laying down in the street
in Warren County, North Carolina that moved this thing that
we call environmental justice to the four Yet we talk
about environmental concerns as if they're not black issues. But

(21:55):
we know they rank high in black communities all over
the country, whether you're talking about Newark or you're talking
about Selma. So we know this is an important thing
for our communities.

Speaker 14 (22:04):
Our communities are hotter, more.

Speaker 21 (22:06):
Underserved, we have poorer temperatures, I mean poor air quality
in our community.

Speaker 22 (22:12):
So all of these environmental issues matter to us.

Speaker 21 (22:14):
Yet you have here a Department of Justice stepping into
a place like Lowndes County, which has multiple multiple health violations,
and this will probably barely get a mention from the
Democratic field, whether we're talking about just President Biden, but
even his surrogates and others who are sort of on

(22:35):
the ground and in these states, this will probably not
rate highly, although we know this is an important move
for black people. We don't just care about police brutality.
We don't just care about you know, affirmative action and
all these things. We care about the air we breathe,
We care about the water we drink, We care about
the paint and all of the groundwater and all those

(22:56):
things that are vital to our life. So you know,
the Democrats will probably fall short yet again. I mean,
I don't know how many times we can tell them.
You can tell them that all these folks can tell
them that you need to start with your strongest points first,
But it just seems that, you know, tooting their own horn,
if you will, is just not something they are wont

(23:17):
to do. And I don't know why, for the life
of me, they don't want to take credit for the
actual wins that they have.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
Absolutely and Renda again going to twenty four, they've better
do a hell of a lot more. This is also
to me, this is one of those things that Karine
Jean Saint Pierre should be talking about from the White
House podium.

Speaker 21 (23:39):
I hope that she will, because, as I said before,
people don't think about environmental issues until it's a problem
in their own backyard. But these really are life and
death issues. I think when it comes to Democrats, one
of the long problems that we've had is that Democrats
have been too busy sort of doing things and then
telling people to be grateful for it. What they need
to do in this next election cycle is listen to
the public on what they want as priorities, but as

(24:02):
you said, also lift up things like this to say, hey,
we have your back, even when you have not said, hey,
we want to make sure that we have clean water
and clean air as a complete top priority. We're stepping
into areas that may not have your best interest at heart,
like a Republican controlled state. We're stepping in and making
sure that they do the right thing. And so this
is something that I really hope that the Press Secretary

(24:23):
will bring to the forefront because, as I said before,
what happened, What is happening in Lowndes County. This is
not the only only county that has faced this. You
see over and over and over again where majority black
counties are just left to language when it comes to infrastructure,
environmental protections, and just overall basic safety.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
I'm a congo.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
If you don't toot your own horn, ain't nobody else
gonna choose it for you. The Biden hair folks better
realize this because look the ABC pole that came ABC
Washington Post pole. Look, they have an uphill battle. It
ain't gonna be easy. That's right for reelection.

Speaker 23 (25:03):
It's not going to be easy going against twice impeached,
disgrace and died at least one time.

Speaker 7 (25:09):
For now.

Speaker 23 (25:11):
President who said you can grab women whatever they want
and justified it in a court deposition just last week.

Speaker 22 (25:17):
But yet it's still not going to be easy.

Speaker 23 (25:19):
Biden administration cannot take this for granted, and they need
to really focus on getting more. You know, the people
have already been engaged, engaged, but these newer voters, all
of these young people coming out of Tennessee place like Wisconsin.
What happens so e Zephyr in Montana. But also as
Vernita and doctor Carter said, the environmental justice issue, how

(25:39):
many of us in our communities are growing up with
asthma and diabetes. A few weeks ago, I was in Rosedale, Mississippi,
which is the poorer city in the poorest state of
the United States, majority black people who I'm seeing there
as well, and we can turn those people into voters
if we start seeing what's happening as it relates to
bragging and talking about what's happening in our communities and
what the Biden minsisted is doing better. And so, as

(26:01):
you said earlier this weekend on I believe it was MSNBC,
you said, you know, we got to obliterate the Republican
Party as it stands now, and the only way we're
going to do that Roland is to get out there
and vote and bring new voters into the fold. If
the Democrats make the same mistake again to trying to
just only going after white suburban women, they are going
to fail. It's amazing that Biden might actually lose against Trump.

(26:23):
But if the Democrats go with the same old playbook,
hire the same old consultants, and don't pay attention to
black media, and pay at and brag about these stories.

Speaker 22 (26:32):
It can really be a toss up as relates to
what could happen.

Speaker 23 (26:35):
It's really at the end of the day, the Biden
administration has its work cut out for them, and they
have a powerful record to go on black unemployment, the
lowest has ever been. Are they talking about that? We're
not seeing that. If they don't step up, it might
be too late. But we got to stay on them.

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Absolutely ours so tight.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
One second, we come back mass shooting in Texas. We've
had more than one hundred this year already. The toll
it is taking on the mental health of Americans. Will
discuss that next. Right here, I'm rolling Martin unfoltured on
the Black Starting Network.

Speaker 24 (27:09):
That was a pivotal, pivotal time and literally Kevin Kevin
Hart telling me that he's like, man, what you doing?

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Man?

Speaker 11 (27:18):
You got to stay on stage?

Speaker 24 (27:20):
And I was like, yeah, you know, I'm thinking there,
I'm good, And he was absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
What what show did Jill done? This was one on
one during that time, and that was show you. So
you're doing one on one going great, You're making money.
You're like, I'm like, I don't need to leave.

Speaker 24 (27:36):
I don't need need from you know, Wednesday, Thursday to Sunday.
You know, I just I didn't want to do that.
You know, it's just like I'm gonna stay here, or
I didn't want to finish work Friday, fly out, go
do a gig Saturday Sunday.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
I was just like, I don't have to do that.

Speaker 24 (27:50):
And I lost a little bit of that hunger.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
That I had. To New York.

Speaker 24 (27:54):
I would hit all the clubs and running around, you know,
sometimes be in Chapelle or be in this one and
that I wanted to go to the comedy cellar one
in the morning.

Speaker 14 (28:02):
And I mean that was our life.

Speaker 7 (28:05):
We loved it.

Speaker 25 (28:06):
You know.

Speaker 24 (28:06):
You get two shows in Manhattans, go to Brooklyn, leave Brooklyn,
go to Queen's, go to Jersey, and I kind.

Speaker 11 (28:12):
Of just I got complacent.

Speaker 7 (28:14):
But I was like, I got this money, I'm good.

Speaker 11 (28:17):
I don't need to go.

Speaker 24 (28:17):
I don't need to go chase that because that money
wasn't at the same level that I was making. But
what I was missing was that training.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yes, was that was that And it wasn't the money.

Speaker 11 (28:28):
It was the money, you know, it was that That's
what I needed.

Speaker 14 (28:46):
We're all impacted by the culture whether we know it
or not.

Speaker 26 (28:50):
From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part
of our lives. And we're going to talk about it
every day right here on the Culture with me Faraji
Muhammad only on the Black Star Network.

Speaker 11 (29:09):
Ha Hey, I'm Antony Smith.

Speaker 22 (29:14):
Ruhlna. Well, and you are watching Rolling Martin Unfield.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
M are folks.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
Uh. It is May eighth and already there have been
fifteen mass shootings in America in the last eight days.
As these shootings become increasingly more common, so has anxieties
surrounding the likelihood of these events.

Speaker 11 (29:59):
Folks.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
This we saw what took place in Texas, seven people
shot and killed at a mall in Texas. Robin May
joins me is now from Lithonia, Georgia. Robin is a
licensed professional counselor. And Robin, I must tell you it
is I mean, I've seen social media polls where their

(30:19):
people who said they have adjusted what times they go
to public events, where they go to the mall, They've
adjusted what they wear, how they walk, where they park.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
And that's a whole lot to think about when you're
just trying to just go.

Speaker 27 (30:40):
Out absolutely absolutely, and you know, Roland, what's interesting even
when you were just giving those statistics, I found myself
having to take a deep breath in just the reality.
What's so interesting is that it was just a mass
shooting here in Atlanta and also in Texas, where I
am from.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
And so I even find myself. I do this for
a living.

Speaker 27 (31:04):
I help people navigate this terrain for a living, and
I find myself looking over my shoulders, watching people a
little bit closer, trying to figure out what's going on.
And I want to say this to everybody who's watching me.
I've said this before on your show Rolling, and I'm
just gonna have to be the poster child for this.
I want us to understand that our souls, hear me,

(31:26):
Our souls have a capacity.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
There's only so much we.

Speaker 27 (31:29):
Can carry, and so because we cannot control all the environments,
it is wise to figure out what you can do
to make yourself feel safe, and not only yourself, your
family members.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
And so one of the things I'm doing tonight my
daughters don't even know this.

Speaker 27 (31:45):
We're having to come to Jesus meeting and we're gonna
sit down and talk about what is the strategy for
safety for our household. But there's something else. I think
we need to do well, and I want you to
hear me. I want everybody listening to hear me. What
often happens is that we wait for the crisis to
start dealing and tending with our hearts and our souls

(32:06):
and our anxiety. What I want all of us to
do is start making wholeness and wellness a lifestyle so
that you can begin to release some of that stuff
that we're carrying, because we shouldn't have to carry all
of this. And so that starts with learning how to
take breaks and to set boundaries from all of this
information that we're taking in.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
I am looking here, there's I'm looking at this particular
tweet here, and it's just crazy. A six year old.
You gonna understand the impact of this. A six year old, y'all?
Might I think we might have a seeing maybe on
my screen? A six year old lost his mom, dad,

(32:50):
and three year old brother in the Texas Mall shooting.
Only he survived and was just released from the ICU.
There's a go fundme. They were trying to raise fifty thousand.
So far they raised five hundred and eighty one thousand.
And this is the thing here, Doc, you.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
Got folks who are just mean.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
They I know some people who literally they are scared
to death when their children leave home because places that
we used to think, I mean, I remember in parents
were like, got the kids up of the mall, everything
gonna be fine.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Now in that case, Oh they can go to the park. Nope.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
I mean again, a movie theater, nope. And if it
is just this, this culture of guns in the society
is just just utterly ridiculous.

Speaker 27 (33:41):
You know, Roland's interesting because when I was thinking about
our conversation, I was thinking about where do I feel
that you can go where there's not going to be
an issue my husband I passor a church here in Lithonia, Roland,
I don't even know that you can say that you're
safe at church. And if you don't feel safe, church
everywhere is a place where we can feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 (34:05):
And you know, Roland, I think this is what's happening.
I believe this is a larger problem.

Speaker 27 (34:11):
And if I had the opportunity to speak to the
decision makers in our government, I would say this, this
really boils down to a worldview because as long as
we believe it's just me, myself and I, that's the
only thing I have to worry about. I don't have
to worry about anybody else. We won't begin to make
the gun laws that are necessary to make a change,

(34:32):
because there is no reason that people should have access
to guns so easily. And I'm saying this from a
mental health perspective. Let's put as many boundaries in place.
I don't want to take anybody's right. I am woman,
hear me, roar, I want all of my rights. But
let's put some boundaries in place so that we can
start to mitigate some of this. And if we don't
do that, if we continue to have the world view

(34:54):
that it's just me, myself and I, I believe these
things will continue to happen.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Oh absolutely, Uh And uh, you know what's interesting to
me is when you look at some of these people
who are complaining and who are who are upset. I've
got a lot of these uh, these right wing folk, uh,
and they that they were so mad and upset.

Speaker 28 (35:18):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
What I said over the weekend on MSNBC, and I said,
you know, we've got to take uh these Republicans out
where they must be defeated. When you have people who
refuse to do anything about guns, and in fact, their
responses here's what's crazy to me.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Their responses are, oh no, let's just do open carry.
I mean, in.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Tennessee, the response to the mad shooting in Tennessee was
to say, oh no, let's let people just be able
to carry guns without a permit.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
Unbelieva.

Speaker 27 (35:52):
Listen, okay, okay, can we can you and I just
sit here for a minute, just talk about what is
the challenge again?

Speaker 4 (35:58):
I want everybody to hear me.

Speaker 27 (36:00):
As a mental health therapist, my job is to make
sure that people feel safe to express fully what they
feel and what they believe. And personally, I believe we
all have our rights. But what is wrong with just
saying if there are ten steps right now to get
a gun? And quite frankly, I think it's about three,
but there are ten steps right now to get one

(36:22):
of these weapons. What's wrong with just putting fifteen steps
in place just to make sure that somebody doesn't get
their hands on it, who isn't ready, or who can't
handle it, or who has evil intentions.

Speaker 4 (36:34):
But again, I want to say this wrong.

Speaker 27 (36:36):
Let me jump back to this mental health aspect for
all of us, because while we're waiting to make change.
We have to figure out what we can do for oursels.
So I really want to encourage people to create their
own strategy. What can you do to feel now? You
can't control it all? Let me say that again, you
cannot control it all.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
But you can do some things to make yourself feel.

Speaker 27 (36:59):
As safe as possible, even if that means, like I said,
sitting down with your family and talking through what time
do we need to all be home? How do we
check in with one another? What is our code word
when we go places? What are we looking out for?
That is one of the ways that you can take
some semblance of control.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Back Rata your question for Doc, well, thank you.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
For talking with us tonight.

Speaker 21 (37:24):
I guess my question is really around what are people
supposed to do as far as we're leaving the chronic
stress that they're living under due to these mass shootings.
Because it's black folks, we already live with chronic stress,
because there are things that have gone unresolved in our
communities which are also a part of this issue, like
police brutality, police just you know, killing black people with guns.
So there are already chronic stress issues that we deal with.

(37:47):
You mentioned before about taking a break but the problem is,
even when you take a break, the minute you come
back to real life, you turn on the news, you
turn on you go online, and immediately you see there's
never there's been another mass shooting. So what is it
a realistic way to balance the chronic stress that people
are now having to deal with understanding that these shootings

(38:07):
can and do happen anywhere at any time.

Speaker 27 (38:10):
So I'm so glad you asked me that question, because
can I tell you what I believe the crisis is. Again,
I said this a little bit earlier. What I find
when people come into my office virtually and they set
on my virtual couch, what I find is that we
want to start implementing crisis management in our hearts and
in our souls and our lives once the crisis happens.

(38:32):
What I want us to realize is that we have
to create a lifestyle of taking care of our souls. Listen,
I know that there's this popular mantra now of self care,
and I believe in self care, but often we minimize
that to getting our nails done and getting our hair cut.
What we need to understand is self care has to
go a little bit deeper. We need to start looking
into soul care. What are the ways that you care

(38:56):
for your soul. I can't tell you how to do that,
but we have to begin to that. But I'm gonna
give you the very first thing that I tell anybody
I talk to, hold space for yourself. Hold space for yourself,
because what often happens, particularly in the black community.

Speaker 22 (39:13):
We ignore what we feel.

Speaker 27 (39:15):
We ignore what we feel, and we brush it to
the side and we push it to the side. But
I'm gonna tell you something, that feeling is gonna show up.
It's gonna show up in how you respond to your kids.
It's gonna show up whenever you're driving down the street
and you're blowing your horn.

Speaker 4 (39:28):
So we've got to hold space for ourselves.

Speaker 27 (39:30):
We have to have a space where we can say
I'm tired, I'm overwhelmed, I'm shook, I can't do this
right now. We have to learn to set those boundaries
and not be afraid of setting the boundaries.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
I'm a congo.

Speaker 23 (39:45):
So, doctor may I want to talk about the kids,
high school, students, middle elementary school. When I was a
kid and there were shootings that would happen, there would
always be stories about there's going to be grief counselors
at the school and in the hood, where like, they're
never coming to our schools, you know, going to like
the white schools and suburbs and the life. And so
I'm wondering from your experience, is there a particular type

(40:08):
of stress that is different in the black community in
terms of how therapists and counselors should be responding to
these mass shootings, because following up on part of what
Ranita was saying, you know, some of us in our
communities are already dealing with other types of violence, including
individual targeted gun violence as well. So should counselors be

(40:29):
taking a generic approach to how they deal with all
young people in these mass shootings or should they have
look they look at a little bit different as it
relates to our communities.

Speaker 27 (40:38):
Well, any therapist works their salts, work their way understands
that you cannot have a generic approach. You know, I
am not a child psychologist, but I will say as
a mama to children in each age group elementary, middle school,
and high school, I will say that I know that
any therapist that has done the work understands that we

(40:59):
do need to create strategies that are appropriate for our culture,
and what that looks like can be different, because you know,
we are not a monolith, and so what that looks
like can be different. One of the first things I
believe though, is helping children be able to identify feelings.
Helping children be able to identify feelings, particularly in our

(41:19):
community and listen.

Speaker 4 (41:21):
That can be as simple.

Speaker 27 (41:22):
If any parent is watching me right now, that can
be as simple as pulling out your phone googling a
feelings will. I'm giving you a strategy right now, pull
out your phone with your child, pull out and google
feeling will and help your child learn how to identify
what they are feeling and not watch this because this
is what often happens in our community.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
Will tell them to suck it up, tell them is nothing.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Wrong with what they are feeling.

Speaker 27 (41:46):
Another strategy that can work with young people. This is
what I do with my own children. I admit age
appropriately what I am feeling, age appropriately what I am feeling,
and then I share with my children what I'm trying
to do to deal with it. Because what that does,
and my husband does this as well with the children.
What that does is help to normalize what they are experiencing.

(42:08):
And then Lastly, remember when I said earlier to create
space for yourself. I need everybody to learn to create
the space for their children.

Speaker 4 (42:16):
And what does that look like?

Speaker 27 (42:18):
Even if now I know this is going to sound
pie and state out to some folks, but I want
you to trust me, even though you don't know me.
I want you to consider setting a time one day
out of the week where you and your children just
sit and talk about what you're feeling. I ask them
what they know about what has been on the news.
Give them the space without contribution, without getting in trouble,

(42:39):
without telling them to suck it up. Give them the
space to be able to communicate what they are feeling.
You'll be blown away with their insight into.

Speaker 4 (42:46):
What they're experiencing.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Now be Yeah.

Speaker 21 (42:52):
So I wanted to talk about how we don't conflate
mental wellness mental illness with violence, because I think every
time these events happen, we always say, well, the person
was mentally ill, the person was mentally ill, as obvious.
But there are lots of people who are struggling with
mental illness who are not violent, who do not resort

(43:12):
to shooting people in the mall or at the grocery store,
church So how can we have a more responsible conversation
around mental illness and whether that motivates shootings and also
these broader, you know, kinds of considerations around mental illness
and mentally ill people and making sure those folks get
the supports that they need, even ourselves who are struggling

(43:34):
with mental wellness and mental illness for numerous and sundry reasons,
from the stress of these shootings, from the stress of
being black, from the stress of being women. So how
can we have a responsible conversation about this that does
not demonize mental illness or mental illness in a violent life.

Speaker 27 (43:52):
Yeah, that is a really intense conversation and it's one
that I've been having with a lot of colleagues.

Speaker 7 (43:58):
You know.

Speaker 27 (43:58):
One of the things that I like to see is
that multiple things can be true at the same time.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
And so you absolutely are right.

Speaker 27 (44:07):
I work with people all the time, every single day
who have severe mental illness, who have never gone out
and perform these types of acts, And so, yes, what
happens that I believe And this is my first time
talking about this on a stage like this because it's
such a sensitive conversation, but I believe what often happens
is that human nature cannot be number one controlled, It

(44:31):
cannot be fully.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
Understood, and it cannot be put in a neat box.
Let me tell you what I mean by that.

Speaker 27 (44:36):
We want to fully understand all of human nature and
be able to say, this is why this person did that.
We want to be able to put it in a
neat box so that we can put it on the shelf.
And I just have found that it's not that nuanced.

Speaker 4 (44:49):
It is hard for me to say watch this. I
know this is going to be a bit controversial, but
I'm here now.

Speaker 27 (44:54):
It's hard for me to say that somebody that shoots
up a mall or shoots up a church, or shoots
up a school, It's hard for me to say that
that person is mentally well. I believe that there is
something going on, even if it is something that is undiagnosed,
or even if it is a person. Now we can
get into mental illness personality disorders, but that does not
equate to the person who is mentally ill also being

(45:19):
someone that's going to commit violence. We have to parse
that conversation out so that people are not ashamed to
come and say that I'm not doing okay, and I
believe that conversation needs to continue to be had in
safe spaces because people like me will be hesitant to
talk through it because you don't.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
Want the backlash.

Speaker 27 (45:38):
But it's a broader conversation that I believe needs to
be had consistently so that everybody can have a greater
understanding of mental illness. And I want to say this
as well.

Speaker 4 (45:48):
I believe that mental illness and mental wellness needs to become.

Speaker 27 (45:52):
Ingrained from childhood understanding what that is. I believe it
needs to be talked about at church. I believe it
needs to be talked about in our colleges so that
we can have a broader understanding so that we are
not passing judgment on people and causing people to be demonized.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
All right, Robin may Well appreciate it, Thanks for joining us,
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Folks. Coming up next, actor Richard dreyfis.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Oh, he is so upset, y'all. He cannot wear a
black face and he's angry. He's really upset at the
Academy is now demanding diversity. He was mighty quiet when
white men ruled Hollywood. I'll break it down next to

(46:36):
rolling bout the unfiltered I'm a black Stuff network.

Speaker 29 (46:42):
When we talk about blackness and what happens in black culture,
you're about covering these things that matter to us, us
speaking to our issues and concerns.

Speaker 4 (46:52):
This is a genuine people power movement.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
A lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get
it and spread the words we wish to put. We
need our own cause to long have others spoken for us.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay
for it. This is about covering us invest in black
on media.

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them
to cover ourself, So please support us in what we do. Folks.
We want to hit two thousand people fifty dollars this month.
Waits one hundred thousand dollars. We're behind one hundred thousand,
so we want to hit that. You'll money makes this possible.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Check some money orders go to fuel box files to
the one ninety six Washington DC two zero zero three seven.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
DASH zero one nine six has apples.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Dollars signed r M unfiltered, paypalers are marketIn unfiltered, venmo
Is are m unfiltered.

Speaker 2 (47:40):
Zeilas rolling at Rollinsmartin.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
Dot com.

Speaker 5 (47:46):
On a next balance life with me, doctor Jackie. What
does it mean to actually have balance in your life?
Why is it important? And how do you get there?
A masterclass on the art of balance. It could change
your life.

Speaker 30 (47:57):
Find the harmony of your life. So what beat can
you maintain at a good pace? What cadence can keep
you running that marathon? Because we know we're going to have,
you know, high levels, we're going to have low levels.
But where can you find that low that harmonious paste.

Speaker 5 (48:18):
That's all next on a Balanced Life on Black Star Network.

Speaker 11 (48:24):
What's up?

Speaker 2 (48:25):
What's up?

Speaker 11 (48:25):
I'm doctor Ricky, the Qahadmaster.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Hi, I'm Amra Stevens West from the Carmichael Show.

Speaker 7 (48:30):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
My name is LaToya Luckett and you're watching Roland Martin
on filtered. Sixteen year old Zignie Valentine has been missing

(48:56):
from Columbia, South Carolina since March seventh. These five feet
eight and just tall, weighs one hundred and thirty five pounds,
with black hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information about
Zonnie Valentine's urged to call the Richard County Richland County,
South Carolina Sheriff's Office at eight zero three five seven
six three thousand eight zero, three, five, seven, six, three thousand.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Oh my god, y'all, ah, my goodness, Oh, my goodness,
what happened to the good old days.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
When white men ruled everything, when white men could act
in every movie, when we did not have to think
about black people and Latinos and Asians, and we really
didn't even have to bother with women unless they were
just simply some objects over there that we could stare at.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
And ogul at. Well, the Academy has been contending with
the lack of diversity.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Remember Oscar So White, which was started about April Rain
and they have been trying to forced to change.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
There are people who don't like that. They're upset.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
They're upset because they now don't have the pick of everything.
They now don't get to control everything. They're really upset
because now they're demanding that you actually have diversity active.
Richard Dreyfus is upset because the Oscars are actually creating

(50:29):
rules when it comes to movies nominated for Academy Awards
that they have to have a certain level of diversity.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Oh Richard, an Oscar winner, Oh oh, old white man, Richard.
It's not happy. This is an art form.

Speaker 31 (50:54):
It's also a form of commerce and it makes money,
but it's art and no one should be telling me
as an artist that I have to give in to
the latest most current idea of what morality is and

(51:18):
what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people's feelings?
You can't legislate that.

Speaker 1 (51:29):
And.

Speaker 31 (51:31):
You have to let life be life. And I'm sorry,
I don't think that there's a minority or a majority
in the country that has to be catered.

Speaker 6 (51:41):
To like that.

Speaker 11 (51:43):
You know, Laurence Olivier.

Speaker 31 (51:46):
Was the last white actor to play Othello, and he
did it in nineteen sixty five, and he did it
in blackface, and he played a black man brilliantly. Am
I being told that I will never have a chance

(52:08):
to play a black man? Is someone else being told
that if they're not Jewish they shouldn't play the Merchant
of Venice?

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?

Speaker 31 (52:26):
This is so patronizing, it's so thoughtless and treating people
like children.

Speaker 32 (52:34):
Do you think there's a difference between the question of
representation and who is allowed to represent other groups? For example,
as you said, somebody representing the Merchant of Venice and
the case of blackface explicitly in this country, given the

(52:59):
history of slavery and the sensitivities around black racism, do
you think there's a difference between.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Those there shouldn't be, Okay, So, if y'all want to
watch the rest of Margaret Whover's interview Richard Dreyfus, you
can go online and check it out. But he said,
these new oscar Us make him vomit. But Richard, did
Hollywood's racism make you vomit? When Hollywood refused to cast

(53:32):
black men in the role of a fellow?

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Where were you, Richard? Where were you when so many.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Talented black men and black women could not get any roles,
could not get hired.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Where were you.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
When when Cooper Gooding Junior talked about after Boys in
the Hood, all he got for a decade.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
Were thug rolls hood roles. Where were you, Richard?

Speaker 1 (54:12):
When Viola Davis talked about not getting paid fair share.
I don't recall seeing you coming out saying, Hm, we
should be paying this black woman her fair share like
we are.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Meryl Street. Richard, I am not going to be able
to play a black man. Well, guess what, Richard, I'm
not gonna be able to play a white guy.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
You all saw a line because Sir laws Olivier was
not the last actor in blackface. See you said he
was the He played Othellow.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Robert Downey Junior Junior played a man in blackface. In
the movie.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
White Chicks, Marlon and Seawan played two white women. See
what you will not hear in that interview. Oh, we
can legislate people's feelings.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
Oh, but we can start demanding there be parody. There'll
be equity.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
If y'all want to understand why I wrote my book
White Fear, it's Richard Dreyfus.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
We always enjoyed his work. But see the richer Dreyfuses
of the world what they don't like. See they don't
like the new rules of Oscars. But the reason you
have new rules from the Academy.

Speaker 33 (55:55):
Is because white men in Hollywood refuse to actually acknowledge
Black people and women and Latinos and Asians and naive
Americans because they.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Refused to recognize the talent.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Now, oh, it's art, it's art, it's the art of
the job.

Speaker 28 (56:16):
But what about when black folks wanted to express and
show the arts, Hollywood said, Oh no, no, black movies.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Black movies don't do well Overseas Live. Where were you, Richard?
Where was your.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Concern for black directors, black producers, black screenwriters, black black
actors and actresses.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Please, Richard, explain to me that if I had to
sit here right.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Now and name the number of black men who have
won Best Actor in the Academy's.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Hmmm, Sydney.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Denzel, Jamie Forrest Whittaker, I think that's it. If I
had to name the number of black women.

Speaker 2 (57:36):
Who have won.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Best Actress, Hallie, some of y'all watch and say, follow up, Nope,
she won for Best Supporting, not Best Actress, because that
year they chose not to nominate her in the Best

(57:57):
Actress category because they felt it was too steep, so
they put her in the Best Supporting Actress.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Ever dawned on you, Richard. That's all we can name.
Has it ever occurred to you, Richard, the rampidt racism
in Hollywood? Richard? Has it ever occurred to you?

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Literally, how Hollywood from its beginning has been racist?

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Richard? Please go read. Let me go ahead and pull
the book. Pull it up, because see, Richard, you and
others might think I'm making this up.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Oh no, that was an award winning book, Richard, that
actually dealt with the racism in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
I've got a copy of it at home, Richard.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
The book is called an Empire of their Own, How
the Jews Invented Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (59:20):
It's by Neil Gabler. It's an award winning book.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
He details in that book, Richard, the racism in Hollywood
from the beginning. He details the sexism in Hollywood from
the beginning. And so, what if I said to y'all,
for the longest, white fear their anger, the anger of

(59:51):
all these white folks. They're angry about critical race theory.
They're angry about diversity, equity inclusion, angry about multiculturalism, they're
angry about affirmative action. They're angry about all these things.
And they're angry about these things because they're upset that

(01:00:13):
they don't get to have the white America that they
used to have. Se See, Richard said, oh, these things
will work themselves out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Really, that hasn't gone so well for us, Richard.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Things haven't really gone that great for us in that area, Richard,
we really haven't worked out.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
King had a book, cald why we can't wait? And
so even though you've had Oscar so white you still
have massive resistance.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Oh, by the way, Richard, and I know you did
a movie with Barbius Trice, And for my goodness, how
does she how's a movie that she directed be nominated
for Best Picture and the director not nominated? How many
women have one best director? I think it's one.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
So you sit here in your.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
White male ness and you complain against the rules. What
you don't complain about is what led.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
To the rules. See, Richard, if you don't have racism,
you don't have new rules. If you don't have exclusion,
you don't have new rules.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
If you don't have the shunting of people off to
the hinderlens, then you don't have new rules. Pull to
Betsy Devas tweet Betsy Devas or a tweet complaining about
critical race theory. Seeing the reason our kids in the
history scores are so low today, it's because we're teaching
crt Ooh, Betsy, what you really like for us to

(01:02:08):
teach about American history and the decoration of Independence?

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
What you really like for us to teach about the Constitution? Betsy?

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
If you do, you really want us to go deep
on the founding of America, y'all? She calls out CRT.
She calls out the sixteen nineteen project. No, Betsy, you
don't really want to do that, just like I don't
think Richard Dreifis really wants to have a deep conversation

(01:02:39):
about racism in Hollywood. See, Richard, I would more than
love for there are not to be rules when it
comes to diversity in movies. I would love and America

(01:03:00):
there are not to be targets and goals when it
comes to contracts.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
But here's what I do know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
In media, three hundred and twenty two billion dollars is
spent every single year, and black owned media gets point five.

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
To one percent.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
What I do know, Richard, The federal government spends five
hundred and sixty billion dollars a year on contracts, and
black businesses get one point six seven percent. What I
do know, Richard, is that it's rare as hell for
black people to be honored by the Academy Awards. It's
actually rare for black men to be lead characters on

(01:03:42):
television and film. Schamar Moore was complaining over the weekend
about CBS canceling Swat, and he said he was the
only black male lead of a drama on all of
Network Television in two thousand and twenty three.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
So, Richard, you're a seventy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Five year old white man, and it's very easy for
a seventy five year old white man to talk about
the art.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
The art, Oh, my god, the art. It's the art.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
Think it's about the art, when there's been a systematic
exclusion of black folks in every facet of the society,
including so called liberal Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Sir, Richard, forgive me that my violins have taken the
night off. Forgive me that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
I really don't give a damn about your hurt little feelings,
because the reality, Richard, we're not going anywhere, and white
folks like you are going to have to accept the reality.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
That we ain't going anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
And you might be a littupset, you actually probably a
little pissed off that you don't get the pick of
roles that you used to because you now have to
share with black and Latino and Asian and Native American actors. Oh,
you can talk about the Merchant of Venice, but the

(01:05:19):
reality is, we've seen folk who are not Jewish play
those roles. We've seen individuals who are not Italian play
those roles. John Legozamo was literally complaining about that very

(01:05:41):
same thing. So this idea that this isn't happening, it's
not true.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
What you don't like.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Is that the Academy has finally said to all of
white Hollywood. And by the way, Richard, the Academy is
still more than eighty percent white. What you don't like
is they've said.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
It's not good enough.

Speaker 1 (01:06:07):
Oh lastly, Richard, you said it's art and it's also commerce, Richard,
matter fact, zoom in, zoom in, Richard, I want to
help you out. Black people have lots of money, Latinos

(01:06:28):
have lots of money, Asians have lots of money. A
study's done that says Hollywood is losing ten billion dollars
a year because they failed to accept diversity.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
Richard. I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Hollywood has now gotten a message that if they don't
include black people and Latinos and Asians and Native Americans,
we will happily go somewhere. And they do not want
to see other folk make that money and not them.

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):
You'll get over it because we really don't care. We
really don't. That's all I gotta say. I'm a congo.
You can weigh in.

Speaker 22 (01:07:21):
He laid it out that was class right there. It
was truly in session.

Speaker 14 (01:07:25):
You know.

Speaker 23 (01:07:25):
One of the things I talk about it in my
book Lies about Black People. It was coming out in July,
and thanks for the shout out on that book Roland
as well. On the blurb, is I talk about the
history of black face going back to eighteen thirty with
Thomas d Rice, who was the first person to get
out there and do these minstrel shows. He was a
B list actor, but by eighteen forty five he was
a superstar in the burgeoning industry. And so we go

(01:07:47):
up to the present and we can go down the
list of so many people that I talk about in
the book who have played non who are white, people
who had played non white character everyone from Ramsey's to Cleopatra.

Speaker 22 (01:07:57):
I mean, here's a partial list.

Speaker 23 (01:07:59):
Roland, Ben Affleck, Fredistaire, Marlon Brando, Justin Chatwin, Glenn Close,
Sean Connomy, Be, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tony Curtis, Johnny's Depp, Joe Gray, Allgannis,
I can go on and on, Jake Gillenhall.

Speaker 22 (01:08:10):
The list goes on and on.

Speaker 23 (01:08:11):
They have made a fortune off of playing people who
don't look like them, while people from all of these
other communities, Black Asian Latino don't get marginalized and don't
have an opportunity to make that money.

Speaker 22 (01:08:22):
And that is the history of Hollywood.

Speaker 23 (01:08:24):
And so now that these guys have to actually compete
with people who can actually play the roles that were
written for them, it's almost like, oh my gosh, it's
what do they call racism in reverse. And really, at
the end of the day, I appreciate the fact that
you're saying, we don't care Roland because we have to
be overly assertive and demanding what is ours. This man
is talking about going back to anytime you have a

(01:08:44):
quotation talking about you miss the days of being able
to go back to nineteen sixty five where you could do.

Speaker 22 (01:08:50):
Something like this, shows how behind you are.

Speaker 23 (01:08:53):
But when people are finding for equality, that's going to
look like oppression for people who've been able to dominate
the industry for decades Disinception and you mentioned the other
book as well. So really, at the end of the day,
black folks who are out there creating, all of these
non white folks who are out there creating and writing,
keep doing what you're doing, Keep fighting for the representation.

Speaker 22 (01:09:11):
Michael b.

Speaker 23 (01:09:12):
Joining with the diversity writer and the like, because we
have to make sure that our stories get told by
people who sound like us and look like us, who
and at the end of the day, are us. So
Richard Dreyfus, you can have several seats because we are
not going to stop.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Branda people like.

Speaker 21 (01:09:30):
Richard Dreyfus driving crazy. And here's why, every time anybody
talks about changing standards to make sure that more communities
are included, people like Richard get up and act like
their civil rights are being violated because things.

Speaker 4 (01:09:43):
Are changing, and it's just crazy.

Speaker 21 (01:09:45):
Winning an oscar is not something that is necessary in
order for you to be able to breathe in oxygen
and breathe out carbon dioxide commonly known as breathing. If
it was, we'd have lots of dead black actors because
we have not won oscars to the level that people
who look like Richard have. But these people seem to
make these new standards to be out almost like they're
going to be put in jail. Guess what, Richard, if

(01:10:07):
you want to make an all white movie, I promise
you nobody will put you in jail.

Speaker 4 (01:10:10):
You will be okay.

Speaker 21 (01:10:12):
The oscars are just saying They're not going to reward
you for that lack of diversity and for having movies
like we have seen for hundreds of years, movies that
just have nothing but all white people. So you know,
at the end of the day, people like Richard, what
their problem really is is that they see whiteness and
white people.

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):
As the default.

Speaker 21 (01:10:28):
They see the white community as a default in everybody
else as some type of other or being something different,
and that's why they can't understand why inclusion standards need
to change. So at the end of the day, Richard
will be strong or don't be strong.

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
Either way, we don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
MA I'm maybe take us out.

Speaker 21 (01:10:48):
Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I
think we should all be concerned when someone is upset
about not being able to put on black face, what's
that really about? And I think for all the reasons
that you and my copatins have let what this really
is about is a white man not having boundaries and
getting boundaries, probably for the first time in his career,
and he doesn't like them saying that there are actual

(01:11:09):
people who have darker skin, who are black, or who
are Asian, or who are Latino, or who are Indigenous,
who can play these roles. It never dawns on them, right,
because white people can be everything to all people. White
people are the only people that get to play in
fantasy and make believe and make movies. But in this case,
when the Academy and others are speaking back and saying,

(01:11:30):
you know what, we're not going to do these old practices.
We're not going to put people in makeup and prosthetics
to make them look like the actual actors who are
alive and who can perform these roles quite well. I
think you see the tantrums that people are throwing because
what he's also saying is he doesn't believe that black
actors or Asian actors, or Latino actors or indigenous actors

(01:11:50):
are just as good. Right that if white people can't
compete and white men like him aren't considered for these roles,
then somehow the casting is illegitimate. And hey, we've seen
blind casting. It works, it's a thing. But that's not
what he's really upset about. He's upset because somebody said
that there are boundaries to his white maleness, and that's
usually the key to everything in this society, even instilled

(01:12:15):
to Hollywood. It's just saying that in this one instance,
we're not going to do business as usual, which is
to find a white person and either change the story
to make him the character less ethnic, if you will,
or to change something essential about the character, like their
skin color. So you know, you know, boohoo for Richard

(01:12:35):
Dreys's who at his big old age can't figure out
how to be interesting and thoughtful and creative absent you know,
dark skin makeup.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Yep, So Richard, we don't care. We really don't. We
don't care. Miami, Rinita, I'm a congo.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Appreciate your joining us today. Thank you so very much.
Be on the panel, folks, coming up next. I sat
down at Hair Belafonte in twenty twelve to talk about
his memoir in his new documentary. It was an amazing conversation.
You get to experience it, likely for the first time.
You're watching Roland Martin unfiltered right here on the Black
Study Network.

Speaker 10 (01:13:19):
Hatred on the Streets, a horrific scene white nationalist rally
that descended into deadly violent.

Speaker 11 (01:13:28):
White people are losing their their.

Speaker 12 (01:13:31):
As a angry pro Trump mart storm to the US Capital.

Speaker 27 (01:13:35):
Or S show.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
We're about to see the rise of what I call
white minority resistance.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
We have seen white folks in this country who simply
cannot tolerate black folks voting.

Speaker 13 (01:13:45):
violent denial.

Speaker 14 (01:13:50):

Speaker 15 (01:13:52):
Every time that people of color and made progress, whether
real or symbolic, there has been that. Carol Anderson, every
university calls white rage as a backlash.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
Since the wife of the Proud Boys and the Boogaaloo
Boys America, There's going to be more of this.

Speaker 4 (01:14:07):
It's all the Proud Boy God.

Speaker 16 (01:14:09):
This country just getting increasingly racist and its behaviors and
its attitudes because of the fear of.

Speaker 17 (01:14:16):
White people, the fee that they're taking our job, they're
taking our resources, they're taking out women.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
This is white field.

Speaker 5 (01:14:38):
Hi am Dost Jackie Head Martin, and I have a
question for you. Ever feel as if your life is
teetering and weight and pressure of the world is consistently
on your shoulders. Let me tell you, living a balance
life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Black Star
Network for a balance life. For Dtor Jackie will laugh together,
cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on.

(01:15:00):
So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black
Star Network. A Balanced Life was Doctor Jack.

Speaker 1 (01:15:59):
I'm Roland mart and welcome to this special edition of
Washington Watch Harry Belafonte. Just the name itself brings forth
powerful memories of the star singer, actor, producer, humanitarian and
close up witness and participant in the civil rights struggles

(01:16:20):
of the last half of the twentieth century.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
His life, public and private is revealed.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
With unflinching honesty in his book My Song a Memoir
and in this interview with me in his New.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
York City office.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Well, first off, Harry Belafonte is so glad to sit
before you and to join us here on TV one.

Speaker 7 (01:16:44):
It's good to see you again.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
I read your book and read your book, My Song
a Memoir. And what was really interesting is when you
talked about why you needed to do this book, you
needed to do the HBO documentary because with Marlon Brando,
your longtime friend passing away, all of that history died

(01:17:09):
with him.

Speaker 7 (01:17:10):
Yes, there's a whole culture in America that's deeply committed
to the politics of progress, and a lot of people
play a role in that culture, but they played quietly,
and a lot of them have celebrity status, and Marlon
and I grew up together. I met when I was nineteen.

(01:17:32):
We were in school together, and our couriers kind of
our lives paralleled with one another. As a matter of fact,
he introduced me to my second wife.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
And someone who he used to who he was dating.

Speaker 7 (01:17:45):
Yes, as a matter of fact, I met her a
while he was dating, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Said, this is too good for you, Marlon, that's a
good friend.

Speaker 7 (01:17:54):
Anyway, he did a lot. He did a lot with
the Black Panthers, a lot with Snick Student and Violent
Coordinating Committee. He came met with Doctor King any number
of times, came to New York along with a host
of other celebrities to raise funds and to raise consciousness.
I think America needs to know that they have citizens

(01:18:15):
who do this on a much larger scale than the
press is able to report or chooses to report. So
when he passed, I saw the void that was there
as far as my soul was concerned, because I lost
a very good friend. But then I understood that he
went away without telling America what he did, and America

(01:18:36):
needed to know that there are a lot of citizens
that make a difference. So I decided that I would
go out and find people who knew him, knew the
history and could comment on it. And I started on
that path. I ran to a lot of other people
that had parallel histories to Marlon, and I thought they
should be in this story that I was attempting to tell.

(01:19:00):
The consequence we came up with Singing Song. When I
got through making the film, I realized that we had
about seven close to eight hundred hours of interview footage
and we only had an hour of forty minutes, and
you wished to tell the story. So the idea of
a book to become more subtextural, to talk more deeply

(01:19:23):
about the context of the history of the period, UH
was required. So then I went off and started to
do the book. Had a parallel time that you were
editing as we were editing the film, and both came
out at the same time. I am.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
I've always been fascinated with history, but specifically African American history.
When Gordon Parks died, when I read these old bits
and you're sitting here saying, man, he did all of this,
and I began to get DVDs and began to get
books to really understand who he was.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
And in many ways.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
That's how I felt reading this book. I mean, I'm
seeing there going. Man, I've known a lot of stuff.
You know about Hairbelafante, but wow, this is amazing. And
what really stood out was that you literally were at
the intersection of so much history.

Speaker 22 (01:20:18):
Paul Robison, W. B.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
Dubois going to dinner, Doctor King, going through Snick and
all of those folks. And so when you think back
on that, do you even tell yourself, man, knows what
amazing times?

Speaker 7 (01:20:32):
I really didn't get into the fact. Oh I knew
there were amazing times as I was living out the history.
You can't have over a quarter of a million people
show up on the ball of Washington, DC and don't.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Know that something's going right.

Speaker 7 (01:20:46):
So things like that which were outstanding obviously stood out.
And I was aware of the fact that I was
with men like doctor King and John Kennedy and Nelson Mandeln,
women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosa Parks, who were who
had their hands on the pulse of our time, and

(01:21:08):
that to be in their service meant that I was
doing something that had historical value. It is in that
spirit that I was able to sustain and maintain a
life of social commitment that satisfied the earliest instructions that
I got from my mother, which was never go to

(01:21:30):
bed at night knowing that there was something you could
do to stop injustice and didn't commit yourself to it.
She said, make sure you always wake up every day
doing something to help enhance justice. And with that instruction,
which I got quite young, it just stayed with me
all my life and became a thing that I measured

(01:21:51):
most of what I did in my life against.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
Next, Harry Belafonte's mother may have directed him towards a
life of service.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Life with her was difficult and damage it.

Speaker 7 (01:22:03):
Life with my mother was not easy. I didn't really
come to understand her more fully until I've gone through
a whole period of psychoanalysis and began to look back
into my life in greater detail to understand what were
the things that really and what were her obstacles, What
were the things that she that she had to overcome,

(01:22:25):
and what price did we pay in her attempt to
overcome these hurdles.

Speaker 10 (01:22:37):
Hatred on the streets a horrific scene white nationalist rally
that descended into deadly violence.

Speaker 11 (01:22:46):
White people are losing their their minds.

Speaker 12 (01:22:50):
As an angry approach, Frump Mark Storm to the US
Capital Show.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
We're about to see the lads where I call white
minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country
who simply cannot tolerate black folks to voting.

Speaker 13 (01:23:04):
violent denial.

Speaker 14 (01:23:09):

Speaker 15 (01:23:10):
Every time that people of color have made progress, whether
real or symbolic, there has been. But Carol Anderson at
every university calls white rage as a backlash.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Is the wrath of the proud boys and the Boogaaloo
boys America.

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):
There's going to be more of this.

Speaker 16 (01:23:25):
They got this country just getting increasingly racist and its behaviors.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
And its attitudes because of the fear of white.

Speaker 17 (01:23:35):
People the few that they're taking our job, they're taking
our resources, they're taking our women.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
This is white Field.

Speaker 18 (01:23:57):
Up connects on the frequency with me De Barnes our
special guest Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the
Black Lives Matter movement. We're going to discuss her new book,
The Purpose of Power, How we come together when we
fall apart.

Speaker 19 (01:24:10):
We live in a world where we have to navigate,
you know, when we say something, people look at us funny.

Speaker 4 (01:24:15):
But when a man says the same thing.

Speaker 19 (01:24:17):
Less skillfully than we did, right, right, everybody boks towards
what they said, even though it was your idea.

Speaker 18 (01:24:24):
Right here from the frequency on the Black Star Network.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
You talk about your mother, and that was just a
consistent theme from beginning to end, not only the lessons
she taught, but also this struggle between the both of
you and this dynamic. Was it painful for you to

(01:25:02):
have to relive that?

Speaker 7 (01:25:07):
If I had attempted to tell this story some twenty
years earlier, I might have found there the uh, the
details of it somewhat painful, uh, visibly so. But by
the time I told the story, I had long since
sorted out a lot of the pain, a lot of
the problems.

Speaker 1 (01:25:28):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:25:28):
Life with my mother was not easy.

Speaker 31 (01:25:31):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:25:32):
I didn't really come to understand her more fully until
I'd gone through a whole period of psychoanalysis and began
to look back into my life in greater details to
understand what were the things that really what were her obstacles,
What were the things that she that she had to overcome,
and what price did we pay in her attempt to

(01:25:53):
overcome these hurdles and these uh obstacles that were put
before her. Uh So when I told the story, I
could do it with some sense of ease and with
some sense of calm. But it has never been uh
easy to talk about my mother.

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:26:10):
I didn't know as she passed away. When we finally
found her, she was in a paupoise grave.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:26:16):
We had to retrieve her body uh to identify her
and put her in a place of the rest that
was more appropriate.

Speaker 14 (01:26:26):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:26:27):
But she made life very challenging. I none of us
seemed to have been able to do anything uh that
that pleased her. She was in such a a pained
place as a woman, as an immigrant, and as a
person of color.

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
And here's what I find me interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
You talk about that pain and her being sort of
locked in, and then you doing psychoanalysis a and uh.
Terry Williams in her book Black Pain, she talks about
the importance uh of African Americans not being a free
to go to therapy.

Speaker 7 (01:27:02):
I think there's a particular stamp on the life of
black people where they're afraid to expose their deepest feelings
because in those feelings resides a rage that's almost nuclear.
In its proportions to reality. Black people have always kept

(01:27:23):
their pain in a silent place. On occasion, it erupts,
and when it erupts, it usually erupts violently. And I
think most of our culture, most of our lives, has
spent trying to contain that anger and to try to
deal with life in some rational and productive way. It's

(01:27:43):
not easy, and when especially when it comes to talking
about things that my particular brand of analysis came through
the Freudian experience, and in order to understand a lot
about your life, there is an aspect of the analytic application,
and we have to dig deep into your sexuality, into

(01:28:04):
the conflicts of sexuality. And in the Black community, we
were overburdened with a lot of things that have to
do with homophobia, with how we look upon others who
may see life sexually different than we do. In my
family friends, I had an uncle, the youngest of my family,
who was gay, and I had another uncle who was

(01:28:24):
stone gangster. He ran the numbers business in Harlem, highly
regarded in that culture. Name was Lenny Love. He knew
Bumpy Johnson. Bumpy Johnson was one of his agents in
the street, one of his runners, and he was this
macho guy, and every time we had a family dinner
and my gay uncle showed up, my uncle Lenny went

(01:28:46):
into an epileptic moment. He just kind of always choked
on the fact that this person city across him had
effeminine ways, had a style to his life, and had
a humor that just didn't fit what he thought a
real man should look like.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
And then what we also have is that whole notion
of what constitutes a real man is I have multiple
ladies or therefore multiple children, or therefore that so my
manhood is defined by that.

Speaker 7 (01:29:15):
Yes, absolutely, that's all part of the game. So when
I came upon the whole issue of analysis, I wasn't
almost looking of how to identify my sexuality. I was
looking at how to contain it and how to get
away from those things that you constantly substituted sex for

(01:29:36):
when you're doing have been dealing with issues on another level.
It is an important period for me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
So you get all of that union history, all of
the operating in your DNA, and it's a question of Okay,
I need to figure out how does this play a
role in who I am.

Speaker 7 (01:29:51):
I found that that necessity was most critical when I
was diagnosed almost at the age of seventy cancer. I
was stunned by the examination and the results that they
found when they took sampling.

Speaker 1 (01:30:08):
Is that because you're always healthy, you always took care
of yourself and always fit.

Speaker 7 (01:30:13):
Absolutely. I'm in a culture where you know, I ride
horses with Sydney Pourtier and shoot bad guys. I mean
the life in which we live. You sometimes feel that
you are impervious, right, you know that nothing can touch you.
And when they told me that I had cancer, it
absolutely stunned me, and I had to go through that

(01:30:35):
whole thing of looking at why me and what was
it about. I decided to become very active in doing
consciousness raising around in the black community on the issues
of cancer when I discovered that black men were more
exposed to cancer than almost any other tribe, any other group.
And in taking a look at why this was, there

(01:30:58):
was an important critical part of the of that critique
which said homophobia, men's unwillingness to be examined, have rectrical
rectoral examination, and other things.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
I don't want anybody touching me, and they bring up
a Tuskegee experiment, They bring up every kind of excuse
possible exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:31:17):
You're sitting there going yeah, but you know you could
be dying exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:31:21):
And I had to just get out and said, I
say to black men, went to churches, did a lot
of stuff up at the Abyssinia Baptists and other churches
around America, talking to the male black male community, women
as well. I didn't ignore the gender implications, but I
went after men mostly because they were the ones of
the were the most affected numerically.

Speaker 2 (01:31:43):
Has been hard hit. Absolutely when we come back.

Speaker 1 (01:31:49):
Harry Belafonte on the civil rights leaders who profited from
the movement.

Speaker 7 (01:31:54):
I know a lot of leaders and the civil rights
women who became very powerful businessmen who became rich. A
lot of the children of those men became people. Just
got to Wall Street and got the business. And that's
all they did is we don't need to do that.
Y'all did that. It's another day. Well, the truth of
the matters that you do need to do that, and

(01:32:14):
it's not another day because as long as there's poverty,
there's going to be a struggle.

Speaker 34 (01:32:21):
Next on the Black Table with me Greg Kaul, we
look at one of the most influential and prominent Black
Americans of the twentieth century.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
His work literally changed the world.

Speaker 34 (01:32:33):
Among other things, he played a major role in creating
the United Nations.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
He was the first African American and first person of color.

Speaker 34 (01:32:41):
To win the Nobel Peace Prize, and yet today he
is hardly a household name.

Speaker 2 (01:32:47):
We're talking, of course, about Ralph J. Bunch. A new book.

Speaker 34 (01:32:51):
Refers to him as the absolutely indispensable man.

Speaker 6 (01:32:55):
His lifelong interest and passion in racial justice, specific in
the form of colonialism, and he saw his work as
an activist an advocate for the black community here in
the United States as just the other side of the
coin of his work trying to roll back European Empire

(01:33:16):
and Africa.

Speaker 34 (01:33:17):
Author cal Rostialla will join us to share his incredible
story that's on the Next Black Table here on the Black.

Speaker 5 (01:33:26):
Star Network on a next a Balance life with me,
doctor Jackie. What does it mean to actually have balance
in your life? Why is it important? And how do
you get there? A masterclass on the art of balance.
It could change your life.

Speaker 30 (01:33:38):
Find the harmony of your life. And so what beat
can you maintain at a good pace? What cadence can
keep you running that marathon? Because we know we're going
to have you know, high levels, We're going to have
low levels, But where can you find that flow, that
harmonious taste.

Speaker 5 (01:33:59):
That's all next on a Balanced Life on the Lifestar Network.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
What are the points that you made the book when
you talked about that period in the seventies, really the
late sixties when snick began to become extremely radical Black
power will want whites out, forget what the civil rights
movement was about. And you asked the question in your book,
where is that next generation of leaders, the folks who

(01:35:16):
followed the footsteps of Doctor King, Abernathy Andrew Young, Josel Williams,
Ella Baker, Vane Lou Hamer, and you made the point
that they are more concerned about getting their own financial
fruits as opposed to having that consciousness of the previous generation.

Speaker 7 (01:35:36):
The present generation and a generation or two even before them,
we were hugely preoccupied with reaping the harvest of the
struggle that those of us were engaged in and trying
to change the change the game. And in a way

(01:35:57):
we're responsible because we wanted our kids to go to school,
We wanted him to get degrees, We wanted to get
into the mainstream and not to have to face adversity,
that's right, and not to have to face diversity. And
a lot of them took us back, took the call.
Because a lot of young did not want to face diversity.

(01:36:18):
They went off and became did things. They were very
self serving about, getting rich, having a position that gave
them material power, material acquisition, and that became the game.
And when I looked around at those of us who
had been in the struggle, I noticed that in many instances,

(01:36:39):
a lot of the very people who were at the
apex of the revolution, of the struggle soon became the
very things they set out to defeat. I know a
lot of leaders and the civil rights who became very
powerful businessmen who became very rich. A lot of the
children of those men became people just got to Wall
Street and got to and that's all they did. They said,

(01:37:02):
we don't need to do that. You all did that.
It's another day. Well, the truth of the matter is
that you do need to do that, and it's not
another day. Because as long as there's poverty, there's going
to be struggle, and as long as the struggle exists,
somebody has to be there to help with that struggle.
Overcome the tenets of poverty.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
In your book, you also offered some advice to artists,
and you talked about their responsibility and how they have
the voice the platform to address these social cultural issues.
Assess this generation of artists, black or white, and are

(01:37:45):
they as involved as you would want them to be?
Are some of the critical issues facing this country, in
this world.

Speaker 7 (01:37:53):
From my perspective, by no stretch of the imagination, can
I say that the cultural community, the arts community, is
anywhere near the a commitment to doing things about changing
the pain that exists in a lot of different levels socially.

(01:38:16):
My mentor, Paul Robes someone said to me that it
was a great adventure that I and others were embarking on.
So when I was quite young, Ozzie Davis and Ruby
d Sydney Portier all listening to our mentor speak when
he came to see a play that we were doing,
and he said, you know, artists are the gatekeepers of

(01:38:39):
the truth, are the gatekeepers of truth, and it is
through you that people are going to be instructed about
not only where they came from, but where we should
be going. And I think if you look at great art,
if you look at art that is in the service
of social need. You'll find that the greatness of ligiture,

(01:39:00):
the greatness of the fine arts, painting, all those things
came from men and women of consciousness who tried to
better the plight of human beings. In that context, I've
often looked upon the power that we have and what
comes out of celebrity. When I first went to Japan

(01:39:23):
to sing, and I found myself before fifty thousand Japanese
trying to sing the Banana Boat song, I really understood power.
I said, my God, here I am in a strange
place with a bunch of people that I didn't know
anything about, except adversarily because of the war. And I said,

(01:39:43):
here they were singing my song. And what do you
do with this platform besides harvest money? How do you
use this platform to impart a sense of our common humanity?
And I think art that does that has been art
that serves us well. And in my generation, we had
a large number of people stepped to the plate. Whether

(01:40:07):
it was Bob Dylan and Joan Bias, or was Richie Havens,
or it was Josh White, or it was Lead Belly.
I mean a litany of people. Sidney Portier, all the
actors of the period that did what they did. It's
always about moving the human family ahead. And I think
that artists have that power and they have the obligation

(01:40:31):
to sending out information into giving ideas and thoughts to
people that will help enrich them and get them out
of the quagmire in which we find ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:40:40):
If we draw a line, we could draw a line
from Ropes to Bellefonte, who do you connect or hand
the baton to? Who can we draw that line with
present day? Who was following your tradition? Was following Ropes's tradition?

Speaker 7 (01:40:59):
I think there are number of artists, not just in America,
but no the places that was seeing a lot of
artists out of Africa that I admire greatly because they
get that message. There are creatures of social thought. I
find a lot of people who nobody's heard of that
I find singing in the rap culture. And I find

(01:41:20):
the rap culture the most problematic for me because I
think there was a form a cultural dynamic that took
place that was rooted in social protests, that was rooted
in the message and the minute somebody came along with
the jingle and they saw that they could wrap gold
around their necks and that the culture could go someplace else.

(01:41:41):
We lost our we lost our path.

Speaker 1 (01:41:43):
So so you saw that that period where rap music
was sort of like folk music, the music that you
really got yourself wrapped into.

Speaker 7 (01:41:54):
Is folk music because like my friend Brian McGee would say,
it has to be folk music because I never heard
a horse sing. Folks sing folks tell us And when
I found were the young guys up in the Bronx
Mellimal Africa Bombarda at all were guys that came in
in protest and instead of taking a forty four, blowing

(01:42:16):
your brains out and shooting one another, they decided to
get together and challenge esus through a cultural dynamic. That
was a very healthy, healthy step for young people to
take the but the merchants saw an opportunity to exploit
this for gain, for profit and corrupted the process.

Speaker 1 (01:42:37):
Up next, Harry Belafonte on the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther
King Junior and the struggle for civil rights.

Speaker 7 (01:42:45):
We never ever lost the battle. I went back and
took a look at the whole journey of the civil
rights moment. We didn't win the war. We're still in
the war. We never lost a battle. On the way.

Speaker 29 (01:43:01):
We talk about blackness and what happens in black culture.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
You're about covering these.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
Things that matter to us, us speaking to our issues
and concerns.

Speaker 4 (01:43:11):
It is a genuine people power movement.

Speaker 2 (01:43:13):
A lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it,
you spread the word.

Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
We wish to plead our own cause to long have
others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story
if we can't pay for it. This is about covering
us invest in black on media.

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):
Your dollars matter.

Speaker 1 (01:43:32):
We don't have to keep asking them to cover ourselves,
So please support us.

Speaker 7 (01:43:36):
In what we do.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
Folks. We want to hit two thousand people fifty dollars
this month. Waits one hundred thousand dollars. We're behind one
hundred thousand, so we want to hit that. Y'all. Money
makes this possible.

Speaker 1 (01:43:45):
Check some money vorders go to puelbox file seven one
ninety six, Washington d C two zero zero three seven
dash zero one nine six cash apples dollars, sign orem unfiltered,
paypals are market unfiltered, venmo is arem unfiltered.

Speaker 2 (01:43:59):
Zilla is rolling at rollin tskmartin dot com.

Speaker 25 (01:44:04):
On the next Get wealthy with me Deborah Owens, America's
well coach.

Speaker 4 (01:44:09):
Nurses are the backbone of.

Speaker 25 (01:44:11):
The healthcare industry, and yet only seven percent of them
are black. What's the reason for that low number, Well,
a lack of opportunities and growth in their profession.

Speaker 5 (01:44:24):
Joining us on the next Get Wealthy is Needy Bartanilla.

Speaker 25 (01:44:28):
She's going to be sharing exactly what nurses need to
do and what approach they need to take to take
ownership of their success.

Speaker 35 (01:44:36):
So the Blackness Collaborative really spawned from a place and
a desire to create opportunities to uplift each other, those
of us in a profession, to also look and reach
back and create and create pipelines and opportunities for other
nurses like us.

Speaker 4 (01:44:51):
That's right here on Get Wealthy. Only on Black Star headlun.

Speaker 2 (01:45:42):
You get a phone call one day.

Speaker 1 (01:45:45):
And you're told the Reverend doctor Martin Luther King Junior
wants to talk with you, and you're write at that
literally the beginning of that relationship, literally change your life.
What was about him that was so unique, that was
so different, so transformative for you?

Speaker 7 (01:46:09):
His humility. I was stunned by it. I was sitting
in the room with a kid twenty four years old
when I first met him.

Speaker 1 (01:46:19):
And in your book there's a picture and you're sitting there.
You're only a few years older.

Speaker 2 (01:46:23):
But he looked so young sitting at that table. But
he was right.

Speaker 7 (01:46:26):
He was twenty four, and he said I was twenty six, right, right,
the old man of the crowd. But here we were
sitting in this room, and as I and as he
unfolded his mission to me, I could not only I
had to handle the fact that he came with an
inordinate intelligence, and the way in which he phrased the

(01:46:48):
things he had to say, and his vision for them
constantly vote to me a great sense of challenge and
a great sense of need and desire.

Speaker 2 (01:46:58):
Yeah. I was sitting there for three or.

Speaker 7 (01:47:00):
Hours, that's right, and that's where I want it to be.
So in that context I saw in him the model.
I was right open to violence. I'd come from it,
I'd lived in it all my life, and quite prepared
to apply it at any given moment if my turf
was invaded.

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):
You had a lot of that anger bored up inside
of you.

Speaker 7 (01:47:23):
Yeah, the anger is still there. Incidentally, because at doctor
King's instruction, he thought anger was a very very important
tool he said, we first need to be angry at
our plight before we will act upon change in our condition.
So anger is a necessary force. It's not so much

(01:47:44):
that you're angry, it's what you do with your anger
that finally determines the importance of anger. And what I
saw in him was a chance to use non violence
as a weapon to change the dishes in which we lived.
And as much as I would have liked to in
the beginning poo pooh that idea, my first attraction to was.

(01:48:07):
I said, you know, tactically speaking, that's not bad. Tactically speaking,
you are somewhat disarmed. If when I give you love,
you'll give you a slap in the face. Something is
wrong with that equation. The oldness is on us who
are being attacked, and those who are doing the attacking

(01:48:27):
to change what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:48:29):
I've long said that one of the most underappreciated aspects
of Doctor King the Civil Rights Boom is that people
don't appreciate the strategizing that it wasn't just let's go
out and take a march. In your book, you really
get into the strategy of what's next and how long

(01:48:49):
it'll take, and what's the next step, and who do
we call them, who do we work with here and
here to make these things a reality.

Speaker 7 (01:48:58):
I think anybody who has the rebel spirit seized the
mission in that context. Every time we won the campaign.
And incidentally, I have to tell you, and I will
be challenged by anybody who would like to challenge me,
we never ever lost the battle. I went back and
took a look at the whole journey of the civil

(01:49:20):
rights movement. We didn't win the war. We're still in
the war, but we never lost a battle on the way.
So anybody who says, well, that was back then and
that was when I tell you that it's still applicable today.

Speaker 1 (01:49:33):
But when I look at when I look at the
Egypt in Tunisia, Egypt, Tunisia.

Speaker 7 (01:49:38):
Yeah, and I would look at the you know, Occupy
Wall Street, that's still us.

Speaker 2 (01:49:43):
Well, I see, to me, that's the poor people's campaign.

Speaker 7 (01:49:46):
That is the poor people's campaign, no question about it.
And the fact that they have chosen to use none
violence as the tactic by which to confront the oppressor
is to be one of the most clever, one of
the most one of the cleverest of our locations. They
could have picked non violence, And in this context, I
think what doctor King gave us in this in this tool,

(01:50:10):
was something that I grew to believe in. I began
to study nonviolence and its deeper tenants, and I think
it's the best, the best we could have.

Speaker 1 (01:50:19):
You saw young people really as that driving force of
the movement.

Speaker 2 (01:50:26):
It's part of the problem today.

Speaker 1 (01:50:29):
There was not that mechanism that stayed in place for
that was driven and directed by young people to pass
on from one but one generation to the next.

Speaker 7 (01:50:42):
I have a conversation in the film with Bendela and
I say to him, somewhere along the line, we who
were engaged in the struggle dropped the baton. We did
not pass it on to the next generation. And I
will eager to hear his response, and somewhat touched by

(01:51:05):
the fact that he saw that aspect of our struggle.
In the same context, he said, yes, we failed, we
did not do what we should do. But then when
I went back and took a look at the charts
of life, if you have never had the right to
vote and did not even understand that the process of voting,

(01:51:26):
if all of a sudden you wake up one day
and all of a sudden you can go into a
voting booth and cast your vote for somebody. The first
question you have as a black person coming to that
booth is who do I vote for and why? And
when you're looking for who to vote for, you you
had to have somebody who counsels you, or you have

(01:51:49):
a relationship to the community in which you live that
tells you who's the most annointed. And I think every
time black people went to vote, and a lot of
poor people went to vote for the first time, what
they found was that the people they could most trust
were the people who were from the civil rights movement.
So along came and young who was required to get

(01:52:11):
into the electoral process. Along came Julian Bond, who was
required to get into the electric process. Along came John Lewis,
who's acquired So all these civil rights leaders that came
from these communities flocked to fill the next space that
we had opened up for ourselves. We had to have young,
bright men and women sitting in places that could run

(01:52:34):
the legislative branch of government, that could sit and write
laws and become engaged. And once we got them into
that position, we no longer had those people in the
community servicing their growth and the counseling of young Turks.

Speaker 1 (01:52:50):
So the grass roots infrastructure became the political infrastructure exactly,
and then no longer was the grassroots infrastructure there to
support what they had already done exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:53:01):
We're just now getting back to that, and I think
we're getting back to that in a very healthy way
by what you see going on with Occupy Wall Street
and going on in Oakland.

Speaker 1 (01:53:11):
It was very interesting to read you talk about the
toll your work in terms of singing and acting, but
also your commitment to courses had on your marriages and
your family. I'm reading a book on Ella Baker and
how she essentially when she got divorced she married.

Speaker 7 (01:53:28):
The movement.

Speaker 1 (01:53:31):
Explained for folks, and you talked about it in the
book Doctor King as well explained for folks, really what
the price families have to pay for freedom fighters to
do what they do.

Speaker 7 (01:53:49):
I am constantly, constantly confronted with that thought, and it's
in my own cultural my own and Star DNA there's
no way to serve the cause of My son says
it very succinctly in the film. He said we had

(01:54:10):
a problem. He said, we had the family of man
and dad had his own family, and he was running
between the two like a lunatic. That's exactly what he's
had to laugh because I had this vision from his
perspective as a kid. But I don't think it's possible

(01:54:30):
to do what we do without some sacrifice to the
needs of family and to our children growing up. I
think the things I could have done a little differently
and maybe took a little edge off some of the
things that I didn't do to biology is a price
to pay nowhere for me, is this price more fully

(01:54:50):
illustrated than what happened with doctor King and his family.
I think his children paid a terrible price for what
happened to both the Martin and Coretta, and the constant
fear and the constant absence that was evident in their lives.
I think that had we done things a little differently,

(01:55:11):
and could we have done things differently, the families might
have fared better. But having said that, I'm hard pressed
to think of what it is we would have done differently.
I don't think we'd have done very much when.

Speaker 2 (01:55:25):
We come back.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
Harry Belafonte on his profound disappointment with the King Center
today for this moment.

Speaker 7 (01:55:34):
To have not been clearly a place of study that
prepared young minds to continue the cause of the need
of the struggle was for me a great loss. And
once I saw that there was an entire board of
people had picked by the King family to just further

(01:55:55):
their image and to further the cause of their power base,
I just said, there's something wrong with us.

Speaker 2 (01:56:05):
It's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:56:06):
When I tweeted this issue, I said, I'm going to
be interviewing Hara Belafonte. It was amazing how many people
responded by saying, ask him how he really felt and
how he feels today about being disinvited to speak at
career Scott King's funeral, somebody who he supported, He supported

(01:56:26):
her husband and his family. It was very interesting how
many African Americans across his country were offended by that.

Speaker 22 (01:56:35):
Invitation being pulled.

Speaker 7 (01:56:38):
The first thing I felt beyond being stunned by the
act itself, but I soon got off that. The first
thing I looked at us, where did we fail? It's
almost the same exact question that I asked Nelson Mandela.
Where did we fail to pass off the baton? Where
did the King family? Where did Martin Correcta and the

(01:57:01):
rest of us as the extended family fail in being
able to protect and to care and to help guide
those kids towards another level of social social embrace, social
activism that would have made them behave differently. And my
great question was how did the movement fail not the

(01:57:22):
King and his family by not being there for those
kids when they were molding and making up their ideas
and what they wanted to do. When there when when
the time of maturity revealed itself. And I still wonder
what we could have done differently, uh to have them
behave different.

Speaker 2 (01:57:42):
Are you sad? And to see the siblings fighting each
other and being in court.

Speaker 7 (01:57:47):
It's more than sad. I feel a deep sense of loss, uh,
And I feel somewhat responsible.

Speaker 1 (01:57:55):
Just recently, Mlka, the third in essence, was removed move
as CEO of the King Center. They put his sister
Bernice in as CEO. He then stepped down the following
week as president and he gave conflicting views.

Speaker 2 (01:58:11):
But while reading your book, you talked about being on
the board.

Speaker 1 (01:58:17):
Of the King Center when was first established, and you
basically said, not only it didn't lose its way, it
started off that way.

Speaker 2 (01:58:27):
And I'm always like to go back to when something
goes wrong.

Speaker 22 (01:58:30):
Can you go back to the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:58:32):
Do you believe that that constant drama today is a
result of it not having its firm routs established when
it was started?

Speaker 7 (01:58:43):
Absolutely no question about for me what was clear. But
the way in which the board was being instructed, and
the way in which those who controlled the environment were headed,
was to not only idolized doctor King, turn him into

(01:59:09):
a deity, but was to create a temple of worship
where they would constantly be at the center of the
homage being paid. And I said, I don't think that's
what Martin would have wanted. What I saw was clearly
an institution of activism rooted in the community, rooted in poverty.

(01:59:32):
If you want to have a crypt, have a crypt
where the poor access it very easily, have instructions coming
from the halls of reflection and analysis and study with scholars,
and what that helps you continue the rebel cause, helps
you continue the change that was meant to be by

(01:59:52):
what doctor King had done. I think it's all right
to give dinner parties and black tie affairs, give a
war for the lifetime achievement, and all these titles we
put on things, But for this moment. To have not
been clearly a place of study that prepared young minds

(02:00:13):
to continue the cause of the need of the struggle
was for me a great loss. And once I saw
that there was an entire board of people handpicked by
the king family to just further their image and to
further the cause of their power base, I just said,
there's something wrong with this.

Speaker 22 (02:00:35):
Fidel Castro.

Speaker 7 (02:00:36):
Fidel Castro, I thought he was a whiz. I saw
in him a lot of heroics in the very beginning
that was very, very attractive, because he was not the
first great leader of a movement that had been called
a terrorist or it was unacceptable to the status quo

(02:00:56):
that the king was a terrorist and a communist, so
as Nelson Mandela was a terrorist and a communist. And
as a matter of fact, it was until just about
three years ago or so that America finally took Nelson
Mandela off off the terrorist list for the State Department
as undesirables. So, when I was a young man growing up,

(02:01:18):
looking at all the rebellions that were taking place, Hochi
men for the Asian people atomm Boyer and Julius Norairi
and other people in Africa and then you take a
look at Michael Manley and people in the Caribbean. He
was part of a time and of a global upheaval
that I found very, very, very attractive. I had gone

(02:01:42):
to Cuba for a long time before Fidel Castro became involved.
I had a lot of Cuan musicians, a lot of
friends hung out there, went many a weekend with Sinatra
and Sammy Davis Junior to have a weekend fling in
Havana when we were working in Miami. So I had
a long history with Cuba and Cuba's people, and when
Fidel Castro stepped in, I was happy for us and

(02:02:03):
for the Cubans. When it began to go adrift, like
so much else, went a drift within the communist order,
we began to have a new set of concerns. I
don't think communism in and of itself was what went wrong.
What went wrong was another flaw in which the human

(02:02:24):
race suffers from. Because the best that's even in America
and in our Constitution was rooted in a certain kind
of evil in its day. Because when I look at
the Constitution that says we hold these truths to be
self evident, that all men are created equal, and you
look at the minds that could create that phraseology, that

(02:02:47):
pushed an idea, And at the same time, these very
same men were holders of slaves and cruelly subjected people
to a second class, a life of second class citizenry.
That was an evil, something villainous. And I think that
what happened with communism, what happened with the leaders power
corrupted them and corrupted them to the point where they

(02:03:08):
became totalitarian. They became so oppressive that they had to
eventually implode, which is what happened. And I think Fenel
Castro u uh made a lot of mistakes, but I
think in the beginning it was very royal

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Roland Martin

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