Bishop TD Jakes - Panel Discussion: The Challenges of Our Times

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
So, ladies and gentlemen, we're so excited to have this
esteemed panel who all from different perspectives have come together
in a concerted effort to talk to us about where
do we go from here, not only as African Americans,
but as Americans in general, and what can we do
to handle some of the disparities inequities that perpetuate themselves

(00:33):
in our society from decades and centuries ago. And we
still see some inequities that are very, very concerning to us.
We're excited to have the panel. I want to welcome
you here on this platform to talk to us today,
and I wanted to start with this. All of your leaders,
you don't always agree. You have different perspectives, you come

(00:54):
from different backgrounds. Any perspective you take in this contemporary
environment that we in right now, you're going to face controversy.
You can't even say good morning without somebody attacking you.
How do you deal with that controversy as a leader,
and how do you maintain your position or your commitment

(01:16):
in the midst of such visceral, hostile commentary.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, look, I've been a ordained Baptist preacher for forty
one years. So the principles that govern my interaction with
human beings happens to be derived from both a biblical
but especially a religious tradition, a black sacred origin that
has as its primary premise and one of its major predicates,

(01:46):
a respect of the other, a respect for human beings that,
no matter how clashed our views are, how conflicted our
perspectives are, we got to respect the other person as
your interlocket or as your potent ally as your potential opponent,
not enemy, but opponent. I think it's pretty well known

(02:08):
that I am not a fan of cancel culture because
I think cancel culture is white supremacy on the sly
in the sense that the notion of zero tolerance is
not a progressive principle. It's a far right, not conservative.
It's a far right perspective that says we will not
tolerate any opposition to a particular perspective or viewpoint, and

(02:32):
as a result of that, we want to eviscerate it,
knock it out, destroy it completely. That is not the
best of who we are as a nation. That's not
the best of who we are as a people. I
think about, for instance, the recent if you will flagrant
offense by the country singer Morgan Whalen use the N word?

(02:53):
Is it good? Horrible? Was he talking about black people?

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Know?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Did he use the nigga versus the other n er? Yes,
he did, evincing a particular familiarity with hip hop culture
and its terminological habits. Yes, But when I went to
look at the film, I saw that he's using it
among his own peer group. It was still horrible, It

(03:17):
still horrendous. He admitted it. He even said, please, especially
my wife followers, don't defend me, don't defend what happened.
I love that. I love the fact that he was
self critical, he was introspective. Therefore, I think it's extremely
important to bring that guy back into the fold, so
to speak. His record company has dropped him, his agency

(03:38):
has dropped him. To me, that is counteractive to a
fundamental embrace of a person who's willing aid to admit
they did wrong, who's willing to acknowledge that what they
did is horrendous, who's not seeking an easy way out
and therefore seeking an opportunity to engage in what we
know as restorative justice, which means if you mess up,

(04:00):
you fess up, and then you get dressed up.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
When doctor Dyson talks about this being something that originated
on the far right and is an exemplary of white supremacy,
isn't it also true that far left also has their
fair share of that sort of thing. Senator Scout, how
do you have these types of cancel culture situations?

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Yeah, I actually.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
Agree with doctor Dyson as relates to the notion of
cancel culture should be canceled Number one two. I look
at it the controversy I find myself and I have
a guy who just got out of jail who was
trying to kill me, a white racist, and I got
a black guy going to jail for who wanted to
kill me on the other side. So for me, controversy
seems to follow the path I have chosen, which I
think is the path that God has chosen for me.

(04:48):
My goal, of course, is Matthew twenty five twenty one,
Well done, my good and faithful servant. As long as
I remember why I'm here, the rest of it will
take care of itself. And certainly, the stronger you're why,
the easier what the clear your how we're trying to
make progress, especially these days, we have to pay attention
that we can't actually agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
That is not in it.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
That is not end today, That is not the end
thing to do, but it certainly is the right thing
to do. And if we're gonna make progress as a people,
we're gonna have to make sure that the concept of
being a monolithic group it is never been true, it
will never be true.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
So we need to have voices speaking.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Into our community from within the community that has different
perspectives on how do we solve the problems that we
all see. The one thing I can say, whether you're
on my side or on the other side, that typically
we see the same problem. We want to address the
same problem. I'm going to bring a solution that I
know that has worked. I've tested it historically, I've tested
it bibically, I've tested it personally, and I can see

(05:44):
the current events leading the same direction. So when it
comes to controversy, I'm familiar with it. But what I
do is I keep my eye on the prize. My
prize is not what I get out of it. It
is the generation and the generation that follows that generation
that will come after me that will never know me,
who may know my name because it's associated with something

(06:05):
that helped me here at the end of my days.
Well done, my good and faithful servant.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
You know I made a mistake when I started. I
pointed out what was different and unique about everyone coming
from different perspectives on the team. We've got the female
perspective right left all of that perspective. I failed to
underscore what is a like about the team. That all
of you are people of faith, that all of you
love God, that all of you love this country, that

(06:33):
all of you love people in general, that all of
you want to leave the world better than you found it.
When you look at that and you look at the
complexities of today and the disparities that we face today,
Doctor Mackenzie, you said something. I'm going to put you
on the spot a little bit. You might not even
remember this, but it's my favorite quote from you, and

(06:55):
I have told everybody who will listen about it. When
I heard you speak at the White House at a
prayer breakfast several years ago for the former President Obama,
you made a statement about willful blindness, and I heard
it then. It resonated then, and it has gotten louder
and louder and louder. In my ears, do you think

(07:18):
that there is a willing, willful propensity to ignore the obvious,
and why do you think it exists in our country today?
And how do we heal that blindness that stops us
from being able to see the plight of the less fortunate.

Speaker 5 (07:37):
Bishop, thank you so much, and thank you for assembling
the panel and having us be present today to be
able to share this discussion. Yes, I remember that quote.
I remember that word, and I was talking about the
courage to see, and I used an example of a
surgeon who participated in the first cataract surgeries, and people

(07:59):
who were blind from birth had an opportunity to see,
and there was a variety of responses. Some welcomed the
sight as beautiful and wonderful. Others were slow to it,
They opened their eyes slowly for only a few minutes
a day or a few hours a day, and others
totally rejected because the world that they were used to,

(08:21):
the world that they knew, was dark, and that darkness
was safe was a safety measure. So in order to see,
you have to have courage. You have to have courage
to see what you've never seen before from a different perspective,
and then you have to have the courage to go
beyond your comfort zone of what is safe and dark
to be able to participate in the light. And so

(08:42):
we grew up in houses with experiences where we see things,
we hear things, and we're taught things, and we believe
that is the truth until.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
We see the truth.

Speaker 5 (08:52):
And then when we see it now our ego is
involved because I don't want to be proved wrong. This
is what I believe, this is what I know. I
know it's true. So it takes a uncomfortableness with an
uncertainty to reach beyond your perception and grab the truth,
especially if the truth that you know has been self serving,

(09:12):
which supports your stance where you are. And so you know,
I've been in discussions where we talk about privilege and
so forth and so on, where people say, well, why
should I share my slice of the pot? Why do
I need to take care of everybody? Why do I
need to be sensitive to needs of others? If you're
always if you have always participated in the world where

(09:36):
everybody has everything, you can walk in the store and
buy what you want without even asking how much the
price is. Go wherever you want to go, get on
a private jet, go somewhere it was cold in Texas,
I can go to some place warm. If you've always
lived in the world, then you do not understand the
other side of the world, where people are scrapping to
have something to eat, they're praying to have some water.

(09:59):
Their kids go to school and on the free lunch program.
One in five children in America live below the poverty line.
That means that means then living below the poverty line
now impacts their social development, their emotional development, and their
economic development. They are more prone to all of the
isn'ts that are in the world, and they are now

(10:21):
starting out in life way beyond the starting line. And
so people say, well, you just pull yourself up by
your bootstrap.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
That's great.

Speaker 5 (10:28):
If you have boots boots, then what are you going
to pull up on?

Speaker 1 (10:33):
I love this. You're reminding me of how smart you
all are. This is going to be a great conversation. Magaary,
What does social justice look like to you when you
look at the times we're in now. We look back
at the king era and what was done in the sixties.
We look at the return of balance with George Floyd
and Armaud Arbery and on and on and on Breona

(10:55):
Taylor at what does social justice look like now? And
how how do we take it forward in this window?
If it is a window where people are starting to
look in our direction and legitimize what we have already
known was authenticated all through our history.

Speaker 6 (11:14):
Well, first, let me just say thank you for allowing
me to be on this August panel with friends and
mentors and people I look up to. I think it's
rightful that I go last, because there was so much
that a young man like me could sit and soak
up from the likes of Senators Scott and Michael Larry
Dissman of course Bishop Mackenzie.

Speaker 7 (11:34):
I look at this.

Speaker 6 (11:35):
Very similar to the way that the other three have,
although I'll add what I believe to be my unique perspective,
being a child of the movement. You asked at the
very beginning a unique question, and where do we go
from here? I go back to what I believe to
be doctor King's second best piece of writing. His first
best piece of writing was, of course, the Letter from

(11:55):
the Birmingham Jail. I always tell folk, if you think
it was I have a dream speech. We can fight
after this. But his second best piece of writing was
where do we go from here, and in that book
he gave us two choices. He said we could have
chaos or community. I think that when I look at
my good friend Tim Scott, I see him in a
light that's different than most. I see Tim Scott as
the first African American elected the state wide since eighteen

(12:17):
seventy six in the great state of South Carolina. I
recognize that history. I recognize all the people who toiled
in the vineyard. I recognize that he represents the Robert Small's,
he represents the Cleveland Sellars. He represents the bendroin He Mazes,
and the Septimer Clarks, and the Majesica Simpkins, all those
individuals who paved the way. The Georgia Ohmores who sacrificed

(12:39):
everything they had so that our black folk could have
the ability to vote in this country. The Sara Maae
Flemings who sat down seventeen months before Rosa Parks. You know,
these are the stories that we must share. So you
asked me what is the most difficult question. There is
a great deal of pain in our community, and when
I think about the way that we have to evaluate this,

(13:00):
I don't want to say the name too loud because
I have, as y'all know, I have toddler twins, and
one of them is named after Stokely Carmichael. But I
don't want to say Stokely too loud. He'll jump up
in my lap. But Stokely would always define our discussion
as this. He would say that if you want to
lynch me, that's your problem. But if you have the
power to lynch me, then that's my problem. We're dealing
with power constructs that must be reimagined in this country.

(13:24):
I think the way going forward is we have to
reimagine the way that we educate our children in a
twenty first century global economy.

Speaker 7 (13:31):
We have to.

Speaker 6 (13:31):
Reimagine the way that we get the implicit biases out
of our healthcare delivery system. We have to reimagine the
way that we look at restorative justice when individuals get
locked up. We have to reimagine what this country should be.
And I think that that is the way that we
bring more people on board to join our journey in
reimagining what the United States should be. You know, I

(13:53):
don't necessarily have that answer to the question because for me,
under the pastor pastor a client privilege that I share
with Bishop Jakes. I call him and text him because
I struggle with this. I struggle with my heart is
beating so fast thinking about the beginning of the George

(14:16):
Floyd trial on March eighth. I know there's going to
be another Breonna Taylor. You talk about this moment, but
our country has missed these moments so often. In nineteen
fifty five, we thought we were going to have a
new moment after Mamie Teal let the world see what
racism and bigotry had done to him it And nineteen

(14:37):
sixty eight we missed that moment after the assassination of
King or even go back earlier than that, we missed
that moment after that Edmond Pettus Bridge, which was the
first time that white folk had seen black folk be
bludgeoned on my TV. And then I go to my
good friend Bishop Mackenzie. You know this, and Tim knows
it better than most. I think the three of us
probably know it better than most. We missed that moment
in June of twenty fifteen when we were all in

(15:00):
TD Arena. And you know, with all due respect to
my pastors, y'all think y'all can sing and y'all remember
when Barack Obama sang Amazing Grace and he didn't hit
in their note, And you know, he didn't hit a
note because the AAMI bishops had to carry it for him.
Whenever the AMI bishops are carrying the notes for you
didn't hit a note. But it was it was that
moment that it just we I felt so good. I mean,

(15:24):
I can't even describe it. I walked out of that
that I walked out of that arena knowing that we
had just laid my good friend Clemente Pintey, who I
served with, who Tim served with, We just laid him
to rest, who who you all.

Speaker 7 (15:36):
Served with as men and women of the cloth.

Speaker 6 (15:38):
And I walked out and I was like, man, this,
you know what my heart is beating red, white and blue.
I think that we're going to realize why Robert Small
stole that boat off the coast of Charleston. I think
we're going to realize what didn't Mark VC was fighting for.
We're gonna my dad is going to be proud. And
then you know, a few days later, we're back to
that same cycle. And sometimes it gets difficult to think

(16:02):
that we're going to break that cycle. But I think
that's the challenge for all of us, so that my children,
so that Stokely and Saty grow up in a country
where I think my only dream for them. In fact,
I know my only dream for them is that I
want them to be free.

Speaker 4 (16:16):
I think that's really reimagining the future so that we
can experience the present differently by understanding and appreciating the
past uniquely for our kids and our grandkids, so to speak.
But but Caari talked about there was so critically important.
Clemente Pinckney is such a powerful voice of reason, a
powerful witness for the Lord. My uncle went to that

(16:38):
church for fifty years, sat under Clemente Pinckney before he
passed away, and had such a profound impact on all
of us in South Carolina. Out of that, however, did
come change for South Carolina, but not really for the nation.
But what preceded the death of the nine parishoners in
the church was the killing of Walter Scott namesake but

(17:01):
not a relative April of twenty fifteen, and I started
thinking to myself that we have to come together on
solutions that prevent these things from happening. And it took
Walter Scott, several other murders, and then George Floyd for
us to get serious about the things that provide view.

(17:25):
I've often said that if a picture's worth a thousand words,
then a video is worth a thousand pictures. What changed
with Walter Scott is that we had video, and so
as I reimagined the future, I started then in twenty fifteen,
advocating for hundreds of millions of dollars for video cameras
so that we could see what was happening.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
I started partnering.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
With friends on the other side of the aisle so
that we could talk to the DOJ. What Baccari just
talked about was so important because it's the pain in
our lives that literally can be leveraged for our future,
and if we're not careful, we miss those because we've
had so much of pain that we missed the opportunity
within that pain. If all you can feel is the

(18:12):
misery of that pain. So often I think about Corey
Booker and I coming together on opportunity zones. We were
looking at the poverty that is so persistent twenty seven
percent as average poverty in African American communities. Having grown
up in a single parent household in poverty, under the
poverty line for most of my young life. I will

(18:34):
say that having a chance of work with someone who
went to Yale and princed and a Rhodes scholar on
something so basic as how do we bring resources back
to the community because the community.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Too often can't lead.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
The transportation is the logistics haven't been solved and so well.
Bakar was talking about reimagining the future, something that when
you do it well, and even if you just do
it this small way, you can have an incredible impact
on lives. And that's one of the things that I
hope that we spend some time on is how that

(19:09):
future comes together. I know that listening to doctor Dyson
makes me dizzy because he's powerful, he's eloquent, and he's clear,
and the same with the Bishop mackenzie you all have.
I'm taking those Bishop McKenzie on the willful blindness and
the courage to see if we take that seriously and

(19:29):
implement it into a policy position wherever God has placed us,
for me in politics as an elected official, for all
of us in different ways, maybe something to come back
to politics, But the truth of the matter is simply
this that there is a powerful way for us to
be the transformation we need to see. Sow those seeds
of the Galatians six seven and verse nine. Through due season,

(19:52):
we will get our return. That is where I see
us right now, in the middle of a pandemic sowing
amazing seed. Is the hpcus a billion dollars sewing seeds
into police reform? That the Chestice Act, Sewing seeds the
first step act we have right now in moment, and frankly,
corporate America is committing somewhere upwards of a half a

(20:15):
trillion dollars to address the issues, And I keep asking myself,
what are we doing to make sure that those resources
don't go to a nonprofit that doesn't look like you?

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Bishop, You've thrown a lot of things on the wall there.
I mean, just a whole whole lot of things, one
of which I hope we get back to and swing
around and talk about those moneies that have been allocated
by those corporations. What is going on with that money? Yes,
so how are we holding them accountable? Who is watching
the store? I really want to get to that in
a minute, because I think it's something that we really

(20:46):
have to be prudent in really following up and scrutinizing
how those moneies are allocated and how they're used or
whether just photo ops in public relations. And then it's
when the when the trouble is over, it ships away.
But before I get into that, doctor Nyson, I need
you to help me process this. After George Floyd's murder
and the Black Lives Matter movement exploding all the more

(21:11):
across the world, across the globe, not just the organization,
but the movement, people begin to validate and authenticate the
atrocities that we have been saying for years that whenever
you bring up anything race related, they're going to come
back and call you names, race mador, you're doing, you're
this or that the other. To see that many white

(21:31):
folks standing with that many black people holding up the
same signs, for me was quite emotional because I remember
the sixties. I was a little boy, but I remember
the sixties. It was predominantly black people marching in the street.
It was speckled with a little bit of salt, but
it was mostly pepper out there all over the place. Okay,
now you saw as many white people as you did

(21:54):
Black people may be more. Yet, when we speak in
terms of race relationships, we speak in terms of white
and black. How do we is it? First of all,
did that touch you in any way? And how do
we galvanize those whites and black whose uniformity centers around

(22:19):
an ideology that is inclusive? How do we bring them
in to staying after the march is over, to changing
policies and changing the world, and holding corporations accountable and
challenging our school systems and closing out our food deserts
and creating affordable housing for people who are disenfranchised in

(22:42):
hopeless situations. Got out of a visible prison to be
locked up in an invisible prison, and all of these
realities exist right now for us. How did you feel
about that? And how do we galvanize that momentum to
go forward black and white together holding hands demanding change
in this country?

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yes, sir Bishop, well it so well stated, eloquently as usual,
Yet it affected me quite profoundly, because, like you, I
was born in fifty eight, so I'm sixty two years old,
and I remember my mother carrying us with my father
in the car from Detroit, Michigan, down south. Mama from Alabama,

(23:26):
Daddy from Georgia. He's of Alabama, fifteen miles outside of
Alexander City, where too grew up, seventy five miles south
north of Montgomery, and so and Daddy from All Benny, Georgia,
not Albany, All Benny, Georgia. So when we were heading there,

(23:48):
begging my mother, surveying the landscape, seeing as a child,
other people are stopping. Why can't we stop? Why are
we extracting a mason jar from beneath the seat in
order to relieve ourselves? Why are we stuck in a
brown paper bag? The white Southerners would call it if

(24:09):
you got a Coca Cola in a brown paper bag
of dope and a poke? Why is it that we
are stuck with a brown paper bag full of sandwiches
and chicken? Our others are stopping and begging my mother once,
you know, being so persistent. It didn't start when I
was older. It started when I was a child, begging, pleading,

(24:30):
as doctor King would say, because of their importunity. Well,
so here I am begging for us to stop. We
finally stopped in Nashville, Tennessee, where I'm now going to
become a distinguished university professor at Vanderbilt. But there that
day when they didn't know I was going to be
a professor at Vanderbilt, stopping in that place, and that

(24:53):
white man told my mother we do not serve niggas there.
And I asked, what's that? What is that? What does
that mean?

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Right?

Speaker 2 (25:02):
And my mother said, whatever you do, Michael, do not
tell your father, because you know, Bishop, both bishops, senator,
brother Bakar, you know what that is. You know what
the the the infrastructure of the black males psyche, already
demonized and stigmatized and rendered peripheral by a culture that

(25:24):
refuses to acknowledge our fundamental humanity, and now not even
exercising control over these little intimate spaces where a microaggression
like a herald's epithet can be a seismic shift in
the templates of your own consciousness and in the tectonic
plates of your self awareness. Don't tell your daddy, because
if you tell your daddy, you know he gonna go

(25:46):
off and come in here, and it's gonna be the
end of somebody's life. So I carried that with me, right,
and I understood that both personally, existentially and later on,
you know, theologically, theoretically, philosophically, all that stuff. So when
I saw what happened that day after George Floyd, and

(26:07):
I saw the swelling of the numbers of protesters, because
you can't sell ten million rap records in this nation
without a bunch of white folk buying them. You ain't
gonna have the greatest movement in America in terms of numbers,
the sheer new miracality of the upsurge of protests without

(26:29):
having a bunch of white folk involved in that. And
that was different, as you said, than the sixties because
of although James Reed was there, the Unitarian minister Viola
Luitsa from Detroit, Michigan, from Michigan was there who died.
There were you know, Abraham Joshua Heshel, the great Rabbi

(26:51):
locking arms with doctor King. But you do know, as
you brilliantly said, that the vast majority of those who
were involved were black people, in particular, more broadly people
of color, and yes, a contingent of white people to
be certain, But this time there was a huge outpouring
because I think for the first time, white brothers and sisters,

(27:14):
no judgment, many of them who were involved fell in
love with black people for the first time. I ain't
judging why I'm saying it happened. It happened because you
can never know when your moment comes. You don't know
what's going to inspire you to get the Holy ghost.
You don't know when you're gonna start speaking in tongues.
You don't know what night the paraclet will descend upon
you with the Chicaino glory. And you could preach for

(27:36):
one minute like Bishop both of them, Vashtime, Mackenzie and
TD Jakes. But when that minute is over, you're back
to homolytical neutrality, and they're still in their genius. But
on that day, you, on that moment, many white brothers
and sisters fell in love because they got it. Why
the pandemic had us at home two weeks before the pandemic,

(28:00):
we would have been cursing each other and cursing our
kids out. Why don't you get off of those darn
you know, iPhones and iPads and talk to each other
as human beings. Is it not ironic, perhaps even paradoxical,
that the very instruments and devices that we demonized as
preventing and precluding the possibility of human intimacy now become

(28:22):
their greatest instrument. People are now talk like we are today,
virtually talking to each other. Thank God for virtual communication,
because without that, our churches couldn't still get gone, We
couldn't still talk to our therapists. We still couldn't speak
to our loved ones. And God bless them, those who
say goodbye for the last time to their kin and
their loved ones do so often on this machinery. So

(28:46):
now many white brothers and sisters at home looking at
their devices and black and brown and red and yellow
two and then George Floyd's image flashes across the screen,
they are now more conditioned to feel what George Floyd
was enduring, because we all have to depend upon supplying
texture and color and context to these images that Senator

(29:10):
Scott's obrilliantly referred to in terms of what meaning we
can derive from them. So I think they were at home,
and guess what the asterisks were removed. Here are the
usual asterisk where you must have been belligerent to the police. No,
he said, officer, and sir, well, you must have been running. No,
he was lying prostrate on the ground. Well, he must

(29:31):
have been a danger. No, because three cops were arrayed
across his torso his neck and his legs. Derek Chauvin's
knee bore into the already mortally depressed column of this
asphyxiating man, and they're lying on the ground begging, calling
his mama. I think that touched the heart of so

(29:53):
many people too. White mothers saw mama and calling his
mother struck a visceral response, a kind of beyond intellect
into the deep heart of the emotional connection we have
as human beings. And so white folk flooded those treats.
But when you fall in love, I don't know about y'all.
You know, you're sending flowers in candy and it's romantic.

(30:18):
And then six seven, eight months later, George Floyd's been dead.
Stuff has died down. Folks are not as attentive the
question you asked, And doctor Senator Scott spoke about what's
the translation into corporations doing the real thing after they
claim to do it. Because it's easy to put a
black box up on social media to signify as an

(30:38):
avatar and symbol of your commitment what will be. But
how do you translate that into everyday things? As Bishop
was asking, So now white folks fell in love, and
a lot of people would say they fell out of love. No,
it's a different phase. This is the phase of did
you really turn the toilet paper out on the outside
versus the inside? Here's the phase we're at. Did you

(31:02):
leave that toilet seat up?

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Michael?

Speaker 2 (31:04):
And I almost swam in my own water. I'm not
saying that happened to me, but I heard things like
that occur. Did you really turn the toothpaste from the
top up and not the bottom? But here's also what happens.
Who's taking the kids to school, Who's going to take
care of the chores? How are we going to pave
the bill right? In other words, the unsexy normal versus

(31:26):
the sexy spectacular. George Floyd's death and then the precipitating
of an enormous outpouring of white identification with black people
and the grief we felt in common that reinforced our humanity.
That's the first step. That's the romance, the unsexy every day.
So I'm not cynical about this stage is you figure

(31:48):
out what to do, how to translate that love into
practical participation, into creative as Bacari talked about reimagining, this
is the moment where not just emotionally, we want to
figure out what do we do with the cops. What
do we do with the police. How do we talk
about refunding, defunding, reimagining the police? Could we use different language?

(32:13):
Should we use different jargon? Does it mean we know
that the police don't have an exclusive preserve over public safety?
So maybe let's talk about how people who are trained
in emotional wherewithal, who are trained in psychological therapeutic intervention
can accompany the public safety folk out into the streets.
Let's shift, let's reimagine. So for me, I think is

(32:36):
extremely important. I was deeply and profoundly moved. And what
I say to white brothers and sisters is yes, there
are many levels. As the great philosopher Meek Mill would say,
there are levels to this stuff. And one of the
levels is the first level. Is is the entry Some
of y'all have been members of the NAACP. You got
the entry level. What's the entry level? Read books, study

(32:56):
what's going on? That's fine. You want to go to
the next level of being a white allygure out what
you do in your corporate world. How do you rearrange
the logic and the way in which influences distributed, how
do you talk about who's in the room, who makes
the decision? So until we confront that truth, we won't
make much progress. But I think I am heartened, Bishop,
by the fact that so many white brothers and sisters

(33:19):
joined us, so that BIPOC, black, Indigenous people of color,
LATINX indigenous folk, Asian brothers and sisters, and black people
coming together to make a statement about no longer will
business as usual be taken, and that we have the
wherewithal to dig deep to make a statement about our
essential togetherness so that we can translate that model e

(33:42):
pluribus unum out of many one into real, actually existing
principles and practices.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Thank you very much. A powerful statement, very very powerful,
powerful statement. Anybody else want to weigh on that? Weigh
in on that before we go to something else.

Speaker 6 (33:57):
Now, I got a question now that I would like
all for you to help with. I think it would
be helpful generationally as we try to answer this question.
And I don't mean to take your role, Bishop Jakes,
but this has been on my been sizzling in my spirit,
as my my millennials and Generation Z say.

Speaker 7 (34:14):
Our journey going forward?

Speaker 6 (34:16):
Does it rely as as doctor Dyson said on us
getting people to give us the benefit of our humanity.
The common denominator between clem Emmett Till, Walter Scott, George Floyd,
et cetera is that black folk don't get the benefit
of their humanity from others in this country. Or I

(34:39):
guess it could be and but or is our way
forward through economic self sustainability? I mean, my question is
do I have to sit here and wait on other
folks to give me the benefit of my humanity?

Speaker 7 (34:53):
Or I think it's a or question? Is it through
as you.

Speaker 6 (34:58):
Know stokel In My daddy used to always chant black power,
but that black power meant political sustainability and economic sustainability.
And I hope that question makes sense because it concerns
me that I'm not sure one that we have to
choose a path, or two that my path must be

(35:18):
relying on others, or three which path I should take.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
I'll hop in here from my perspective, is the conjunction
is and not or? The latter part of your question
has to do with the finances of this nation. If
you are a cap if you are living in a
capitalist nation without capital, you are like a fish without water.
So the truth of the matter is you have to

(35:43):
be in a position where you can empower yourself through
economic mobility and opportunity. It's one of the reasons why
I think you have to grow the pie. One of
the things that we've seen during the pandemic, and this
is such an important point Bacari, that you've brought up,
is that working with some of the wealthiest African Americans
in this nation, like Robert Smith and many others, trying

(36:04):
to find a way to make sure that the resources
that come from the government are matched in the private sector,
and then there's access to that we were able to
set aside through the for Minorities Serving Institutions and CDFI's
thirty billion dollars through the Paycheck Protection program, so that
we can have access to those smaller businesses that are

(36:25):
more like micro business systems two and five employees, which
are consistently African American businesses have fewer than ten employees.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
So the way forward has to.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
Include economic opportunity on the family level. Without that, in
a capitalist, free enterprise system, there is it's going to
be very hard to have a conversation about what precedes
the end that's not capital.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
You know, Bagari's kind of set it off. Let me
just say there's one thing you you really set it off.
I'm trying not to just jump up and up in
Jackson the middle of the floor, because, on one hand,
I am insulted that I should have to go to
anybody at this stage in the world and ask them

(37:11):
for permission to be human. That is insulting, It is degrading,
it is unfair, It is an American It defies the Constitution,
it is biblically inappropriate. There's so many things to be
said about it. But the reality is, I'm a great
believer in entrepreneurship, the economic empowerment, building up from an

(37:35):
economic standpoint. But the reality is you can have all
the money you want. It doesn't change the criminal justice system.
It doesn't change some policies, it doesn't change qualified immunity,
it doesn't change states that are beyond a check writing
being able to rectify. So I certainly agree with the
Senator when it says it's not either or but both
and in order to be free. But I'm going to

(37:57):
get out of Bishop McKenzie's way, because I could tell
she was ready to jump on this letter grip.

Speaker 5 (38:05):
You know, I'm enjoying the conversation. And there are pieces
in everybody's conversation uh that that you know, yes, yes, yes, yes,
and yes, but words matter, and what we say and
how we say it has impact. Doctor doctor Dyson has

(38:25):
a way of saying things.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (38:27):
And and so when when when we talk about Okay,
Clemente uh Pinckney passed. No, he didn't pass, he was slain.
He was murdered. And so we have to say what
it is. And sometimes saying what it is, we'll get
you in trouble and and all of that. But but

(38:47):
it is what it is.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
And we all watched it, and so in uh, you know,
the game changer back in the early sixties, uh was television,
And so because people were able to see the dogs
and the hose, that became a game changer. Now you
know your cell phone. Everybody's a movie producer, movie director,
and so now you get to see it. But see,

(39:11):
you're only seeing a part of it. You're seeing what's
being captured. So if I'm only seeing ten percent of
what's being captured, then there's a whole ninety percent of
people who are being persecuted, not silently but violently, and
they're suffering beyond our view site. And that's one thing.

(39:35):
The other thing is, yes, I think there is a
three legged stool, well, actually a four let's say a
whole table.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
All right.

Speaker 5 (39:43):
So there's education, there is economics, there is faith your religion,
and there's politics. And so yes, we need to work
on the education of this generation and the re education
of the generations who are now in control and in power.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
I want to.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Grab a quick point because I can't count too well.
And Senator Scott was talking about so many billions of
dollars that have been allocated by these corporations, and I'm
a witness that there. I talked to the CEOs as well,
that there is a commitment from many, many CEOs to
commit billions of dollars toward underserved communities. Yet it still

(40:24):
is true today that the wealth gap between the average
working black family and the average working white family is
about thirty thousand dollars a year. That's the gap, that's
not the income. That's how far apart the average is.
The gap is huge. You can drive a freight train
through it. So when I hear about these billions that

(40:45):
are allocated, and then I go into the urban areas
where they are not demonstrated. It makes me wonder where
did the money go? Because billions sounds pretty big to
a country boy from West Virginia going on the side
of a mountain. And when you start getting the hundreds
of billions of dollars, I think there ought to be
some kind of effect that we see. Why are we

(41:07):
not feeling the infusion of capital into our community? Anybody?

Speaker 6 (41:13):
But let me let me also say, let me also
help you reframe the question, because it's not just urban
communities that it ain't getting to. Because as I'm from
the poor black, rural South and it ain't getting there either.
We still got a quarter of shame in South Carolina
where kids go to school and they're heating and the
air don't work, their infrastructures falling apart. You know, our
rural hospitals are still closing down. So it's not making

(41:34):
it to us either. One of the most frustrating things
about my colleagues to the left of me and my
colleagues to the right of me is the way that
we legislate. Bishop Jakes, you asked a good question, as
Bishop Mackenzie said earlier. You know, rising ties, Lift all
boats is one of the political dogmas that we should bury, right,

(41:54):
And I think that we have to understand that race
neutral policy cannot affect you, wait change when you have
race specific problems. My friends to the far right and
my white progressives all legislate from the same way. Let
me just tell you what I mean by that. The
PPP program, which was billions of dollars, didn't make it

(42:16):
to black and brown communities, Black, brown, and Native American
communities that were devastated by COVID nineteen, many black people.
As you know, we had a discussion about this, Bishop Jakes, me, you,
and somebody from the National Bankers Association. I know Senator
Scott has been working on this diligently. Some of the
changes that we're seeing now in the PPP program of

(42:36):
changes that he advocated for back then. Right, But we
have so many black folk that are unbanked. They so
how you going to get a black person who runs
his barbershop who doesn't really have a bank account a
PPP loan?

Speaker 7 (42:49):
That just doesn't work. And so we have to do something.

Speaker 6 (42:53):
And I've always told people that our political mantra should
always be access. See people think black folk want a handout.
We don't want anything given to us. We just want
access to the resources, and for far too long we
haven't had that access, mainly because of the way that
we legislate.

Speaker 4 (43:12):
Let me just hop in there on some of the
comments it's been made by you, Bishop Jakes and Baccari
on making things like the Paycheck Protection Program work in
the middle of a pandemic for African American businesses. For
the first few weeks, if you didn't have a banking relationship,
you didn't have access because it was all built on
who you already knew. And we've had many conversations with

(43:34):
businesses and churches throughout America on accessing the PPP. I'll
say this that when we were able to then target
specifically minority institutions and CDFIs with thirty billion dollars to
help those smaller businesses have access to the resources with
communities that were in their neighborhoods, we got a better

(43:55):
response second time around than we did the first time around.
The second thing we did, which I thought was really
important as well, was that when I put the when
we were putting the legislation together, I added into the
legislation ten million dollars for the for the mbdas we
all know mbda's to be able to market in the
communities that had no relationship with the in financial institutions.

(44:18):
But then what I realized shortly thereafter was that in
order for those that marketing dollar to be spent well
and to have a bank to go to, you had
to go beyond the five or six INNERD banks that
were part of the Triple P program because they were
part of the SBA program, to include four thousand institutions,
to include fintech, because fintech became the fastest way for

(44:38):
many of our smaller entrepreneurs to get access to capital.
And then what we saw in South Carolina the car
was Optus Bank started working with Diane Sumter, who was
head of the MBDA for the Carolinas, to make sure
that they had everything they needed because literally, it was
a loan that became a grant. A loan that becomes
a grant, everybody who needed access to it should have

(45:01):
access to it. And by the way, there's still resources
left in the paycheck Protection program today, and so we're
not talking about something that was, we're talking to something
that is, but even more important than that, that's on
the policy side from the government. It's the private sector
that we still have yet to explore. From my perspective,

(45:23):
we can talk about how we during the pandemic provided
more money for HBCUs over a billion dollars. That was
on top of an all time high investment in hbc
used as a nation in the history of the country,
making their funding permanent, which important. But we need to
go beyond even those dollars on the public side and

(45:46):
go to the private side. The half a trillion dollars
that I was talking about are resources coming from some
of the largest corporations in this nation who need to
be held accountable for not buying ads and books, not
putting black box is on ads, not showing me diversity
in your commercials.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
I want to know who's in.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
Your supply chain, what vendors are now a part of
your team that were not a part of your team before.
Tell me about the progress. How do we chart the
course for your board members and your c suite. Well,
we started doing that and I've got a conversation in
about two weeks with ten of the major companies.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
I'm asking them, show me.

Speaker 4 (46:27):
Where you were, where you are, and where you're going
tell me your roadmap forgetting us there, because I've only
been here for a couple of years, but I've been
around long enough to realize that if you don't have
a roadmap, I'm not here for wishes and promises. I'm
gonna pray in church, but you got to produce for me.
If James two fourteen two seventeen says faith without works

(46:49):
is dead, still spell's dead. And so I'm asking for
all of us to put pressure, especially as consumers, on
these companies needs that show us good opportunities, but we
can never measure it in new businesses and new opportunities

(47:09):
and access to capital. So I'm bringing those folks to
explain to me, as your United States Senator, why it
is I can't understand the words coming out of your
mouth when I look at the piece of paper that
tells me that there's been no change in the last
three years.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
That won't work for me. And so I can use my.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
Bully pulpit, but we all have a bully pulpit to
hold the government and the corporations accountable. I'm asking us
to ask the questions and then hold accountable at and
T to Coca Cola, as well as Fargo's.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
These are companies where we're spending.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
We're spending trillions of dollars as a community in these areas.
The question I'm asking is what is the ROI and
figuring out that apparatus is how we make long term
progress as a nation. Because a nation that does not
focus on those folks in need, is that a nation

(48:01):
that can live up to Matthew twenty five. And that's
one of the reasons why I'm focusing on making sure
that a as a consumer I do, but be as
an elected official, I find ways to make sure that
I can measure the progress being made according to the
commitments being made.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
After all that, Brillians, I want to say in answering
you know Bacari's question. You know your other homeboy, James
Brown said, I don't want nobody to give me nothing.
Open the dough. I get it myself. So the vicious
mythology has been that black people have not often or
always been about self help. That's often the only help

(48:38):
we had. When we look at enslavement, when we look
at reconstruction, when we look at Jim Crow, when we
look at post Jim Crow, when we look at the
burgeoning of the black middle class. When we look at
the upward mobility of black people, we have had, you know,
the sororities, the fraternities, the volunteer organizations. We have leveraged
all of the incredible opportunity and the wealth that we

(48:59):
have had in defense of our bodies, in the defense
of our brains, and in defense of our livelihood. So
there's no question that black people ain't waiting around for
nobody to give us nothing. As Bacari said, and as
all of you have reiterated, we just want the opportunity
to be able to maximize our potential. But as James
Brown will say, also house and ever, house and ever,

(49:23):
the truth is that we also have to hold this
government accountable because when Tupac said, just the other day,
I got lynched by some crooked cops, and to this
day them say, same cops on the beat getting major paid,
but when I get my check, they take in tax out.
So we pan the cops to knock the blacks out.
He's talking about a fundamental proposition. You ain't gonna be
no Marxist economists to understand you're subsidizing your own oppression,

(49:46):
and your tax base is supporting police people who deplorably
and inexcusably treat you as less than human. So ain't
about asking, It's about demanding. As Martin Luther King Jenior said,
we ain't gone nowhere. We done built, and now we
have a commission in the Congress Senators Scott talking about reparations,

(50:07):
studying what the exact level degree, consistency, pedigree, and quality
of commitment will be and whatever that looks like. The
point is that if we want to talk about other
ethnic groups who have catalyzed their upward mobility, they have
had a mixture of their grossly independent, autonomous attempt to

(50:28):
try to get to do for themselves. But at the
same time, we know that money talks, and we know
that money translates into political power, and those with the
cash often in one sense began to sway and have
tremendous influence over those who are in the political world.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
And the other thing that I think that we cannot
move away from. Demanding requires a sense of empowerment that
is liking amongst our people. We have been so oppressed
so long that even when the door is open, the
canary stays in the cage. And demanding is the language
of the intellectuals, and the financially endowed black person clearly

(51:10):
has enough stress to demand to the welfare mother who's
got three kids living in a two bedroom apartment, telling
her to demand when she has to wait in line,
wait on food stamps, wait on the bus to come
get her wait, wait, wait, wait wait. Feeling that sense
of power is something that we have to work on
in order to evolve. I think part of that sense

(51:31):
of power does come through the Church, does come through
our faith, does come through the heralding of empowerment, starts
on a very spirit level, not a dollar level. Bishop McKenzie,
what is the role of the church today beyond the
preaching of the gospel and the conversion of the soul?
What do you see as the role of the church today?

(51:54):
And are we living up to our ideals?

Speaker 5 (51:58):
I think some of us are, and some of us
are on the way, and some of us are not.
For us, we come to worship and we need to serve.
That's it period. As a pastor, a preacher, a bishop,
a presiding bishop, our responsibility must be beyond those who
are part of the household of faith, that we have

(52:18):
to take care of the community. Everyone who lives within
the shadow of the citadel is our responsibility. There are
are our membership, whether they come or they don't come,
we have to be the voice for them. We have
to stand up for them. We have to go to
the city council and represent them. We have to go
to the meeting of the school board and represent them.
We have to speak truth to power. We say that

(52:40):
over and over and over again. We have to speak
truth to power that if no one else, we're the
ones that must speak up for ourselves and for our constituency,
which is beyond the four walls of the church. A
problem that I have is, you know, you know, one
of the things that I have experienced is that, especially
in pology, Senator, is that plans and programs are put

(53:03):
together without our input and then you come and ask
us to co sign. And my premise is, ask us
about the problem first, why you're putting the program and
the idea together. Because there's some things that we experience
in the trenches. We're in the neighborhood every day. We're
in the lives of our people every day. We're in
the lives of the community every single day. Why don't

(53:25):
you come and ask us, come and see what we're
experiencing and what we have tried. Because the very program
that that you're trying to put together, we've already tried.
We've already had the program, we already put there, and
we can tell you what's working and what's not working.
Bring us to the table. We'd be happy to tell
you what we see and what our members are experiencing,

(53:46):
what the neighborhood is experienced. Don't just write a program
and then say here, co sign it and we hope
we're going to send it out there and we hope
it's going to do well. We can tell you what
works and what hasn't, because for the most part, we
have tried it well.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Basial McKinsey, I would say that is good advice for
every elected official to stay in touch with their community
and their constituents. Is what it is, exactly what I
have tried to do. It's what I strive to do.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
Certainly, I certainly am.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
I'm sure I'm falling short somewhere along the way, But
I will say that including churches in the paycheck Protection
program was the result of having conversations with African American
UH and pastors and other organizations. It was increasing the
amount of money that you can give as a line
item on your taxes for charitable contributions to organizations was

(54:36):
a result of having a conversation with my pastor and
other pastors on.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
A nationwide zoom.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
The focus that we have taken on opportunity zones happened
through the consultation with friends on all sides of the isle,
not just left and right, but left, right, middle, and
on the on every side. And so what I've learned
though through time is that people think of politics as

(55:02):
a national conversation. Most politics is a local conversation. What
you just mentioned about enterprise zones and the challenges that
disrupted your ties and offerings happened on a local or
a state level, and not on a national level. One
of the things that is missing most in understanding and

(55:22):
appreciating the layers of government is that the layer closest
to the people have the most direct and immediate impact.
That spent thirteen years on county council and sharing a council,
so I understand what happens when local government makes a
decision that has a major impact on minority communities, but
spent no time asking about the ingress egress the routes

(55:46):
about the frankly, little things like stop sign speed limits,
big things like planning and zoning. Those things have such
a disastrous impact on communities that should have representation at
the table. We should be as engaged, frankly on the
local level as we are on the national level, because

(56:07):
that is what's determining the outcome of our communities every
single day of every year.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
But Corey, I want you to jump in this. We're
giving a report card to ourselves. Is a black church.
It's the church at all relevant today in the in
the battle and the struggle, in the raising up of people.
And what is our report card on the street?

Speaker 6 (56:31):
Answer is yes, I mean I you know, I always
would say that the Black church is necessary, important, relevant.
You know, Bishop Mackenzie probably said it best. You know,
some are doing it, Others are just there on Sundays,
and some have stated that this fight is not theirs.

(56:51):
You'll be surprised how many churches. I know, Senator Scott
being a politician's probably coming come into contact with this.
Don't elected officials in their church, don't want them, don't
let them say nothing.

Speaker 7 (57:02):
It's just it's a weird that that's a weird thing
for me.

Speaker 6 (57:06):
Don't recognize them, you know, just want to keep themselves
totally separate. I just find that I didn't go to
divinity school, a seminary or anything, so I find that
to be a little weird. But I will tell you
overall that for me personally, you know, I would say
that the church, notwithstanding the two individuals who were here
who were representative thereof probably gets a C plus. And

(57:31):
I think if y'all weren't there, they probably wouldn't get
that high. And my comparison is to the role and
the import and the church and another generation in the
generation before mine. You know, I hear the stories about
how the church was the meeting place that we went
to gather when we were going out to plan our

(57:52):
voter registration drives, or when we were organizing behind any
particular candidate, or we were trying to plan the sit
in move or the march that was going to happen.
You know, it was the church. There was the shelter,
It was the church. There was the sustenance. It was
the church that provided not only that hope on a
Sunday that led us throughout the week, but gave us
so much more and in many communities, I think that

(58:16):
there is that the church has fatigued like the rest
of us. And my only advice is that the church
can't get tired. In the words of the poet from
Texas As Michael Larry Dyson always says, Kevin Gates, you
just can't get tired. And the church is somebody who
we look to who has to keep going. It is

(58:37):
our guiding light, it is our principle. There is no time,
there's no option for you to get fatigued. There's no time,
no option for the church itself. I understand members may
but for the church to get weary. And I just
feel like the church got tired like the rest of
us and is gasping for a deep breath. And during
that time, many of us are hurting. And so I

(58:58):
know that we are thirsting for the streets. The community
are thirsting for the church to reassert its role in
our communities. And I think that part of that is
a disconnect between what's happening in government is Bishop Mackenzie
and Senator just got said, and what's happening on the streets.
Because you know, I have spoken to people in the

(59:20):
previous administration and say that if you want to do
vaccine distribution, it needs to go through the am Church,
the CMME church. That needs to go through the Baptist
It needs to go through you know, you need to
make sure that you have Bishop Mackenzie and Bishop Jakes
giving out information. You need to have the drives at
their churches. We need to have it at our four
The speakers and the people doing the PSAs need to

(59:42):
be our for medical schools and universities because we still
have that trust in our institutions. We still have that
want for our institutions to succeed. We just need our
institutions to not get tired.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
You know, it's interesting just to hear their critique on it.
My only footnote is even in the sixties, the church
wasn't a monolith. It wasn't quite as good as we
like to remember it. There were a lot of churches
that didn't even allow doctor King.

Speaker 6 (01:00:11):
In Bishop Jackson when in Bishop Jackson in Chicago who
changed his uh changed his street address because they named
it King King Boulevard, and he changed it because he
did not want anything to do with that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
So you're correct, yeah, yeah, so it wasn't It wasn't
as good as we like to remember it, But it
wasn't bad either. The church certainly has had a paramount
role in the development of our community, and I think
needs to continue to do so in a myriad of
different ways in order to be effective. And whatever our
report card is, we take it humbly and have to
do more to change it. But when you think of

(01:00:47):
the church as an entity, it is not a unified entity.
We are as diverse as fingerprints. There is no one
school of books that we come from, one school of
thought that we come from, one denomination that we come from.
And now more than ever, anybody can go on the internet,

(01:01:07):
get ordained on the internet, get a building, and if
they have a monicum a talent, they can start a
church and not be up under anybody's control or authority.
And it's kind of the wild wild West out there
sometimes trying to get us all to hone in on
one idea when we're coming from some of these people,

(01:01:27):
I don't even know where they came from. They just
came up out out of there. We just looked up
and they were there, and they had a following, and
you had to acknowledge them as having a following, and
they didn't all come from the same school of thought
by any stretch imagination. I want to take careful, judicious
appreciation of your time. So I'm gonna end with this
one question. We have been traumatized. Some would say we've

(01:01:52):
been traumatized for the last four years. Certainly over the
last year, we have been deeply traumatized. The reawakening of
old homes, the gunfires in the street, the notion that
we're not safe in our own apartments, that somebody could
come in and shoot us and get away with it
and be excused from it. The notion that we might

(01:02:13):
not be safe going jogging, the notion that I, personally,
my youngest son just drove back from California, and I'm
worried till he gets my kid. Not about the weather.
I'm worried about the police. That is a reality for us.
We have been Every weeping mother identifies with another weeping

(01:02:34):
mother that never got on camera. We've been traumatized by
the virus, which disproportionately has affected our community. So out
of those five hundred thousand body bags, a good portion
of them are brown and black people who have families.
So we can count the dead, we can't count the families.

(01:02:56):
As a pastor, I am blatantly aware of this because
we get the calls, we hear the screams, we hear
the cries, We see the dysfunction, we see the angry children,
we see the breave mothers and daughters. That's trauma. When
you add all of that to what just happened in
Texas and what continues to happen around the country, we

(01:03:17):
have become a cesspool of pain, internalizing it more and
more and more, and generally our only outlet is not
therapy because we don't go to therapists like we should.
It's not group counseling. We don't take advantage of that either,
and seldom have the resources to pay to be a
part of all of that. It has been the church.

(01:03:39):
But guess what, the church doors are closed. So we
are taking all of this pressure in and very few
ways to let that pressure out. I want you to
address black pain. I want you to say to me
what you think the people who are listening right now
should be doing with that pain to get better, to

(01:04:01):
get well. We have internalized pain so long. John Lewis
said something that I thought was quite profound. They asked
him what he thought about Black Lives Matter, and he
thought that it was a great continuation of the sixties struggle,
and he applauded them and even spent some of the
last moments of his life with it. He said, the
only thing that I wish they'd do that they don't

(01:04:22):
do is sing. And I sat back in the seat,
and I was stunned. And he started talking about what
singing did to the civil rights movement against the hoses,
the dogs, and the bullets. That we had our song
and the importance of the song and the music. Have
we lost our song? And is our song enough to

(01:04:44):
combat the influx of pain that's coming to us at
warp speed now, Compared to waiting for the six o'clock
news in my generation, or sitting by the radio in
my mother's generation to hear something we could see now.
It's coming through my phone, it's coming through my iPad,
it's coming through my computer. And while I'm talking to you,

(01:05:06):
my television is on. And so from all of these
different angles, I'm getting all of these different images overload
to the sensory perceptions of a human mind. And then
I'm laid down with all of that still going on
in my head. We're suffering. The suicide rate amongst black
children's going up exponentially. Domestic violence has increased since we

(01:05:26):
have been through this plight with COVID. We're seeing murders
going up in every city. We cannot ignore the obvious.
We're not safe in our own cities. We're not safe
to call the people who police our cities. How do
we get to a mental healthy space. I'd love to
have anybody come in.

Speaker 7 (01:05:48):
I love that, Bishop Mackenzie, because I don't know. I'm
about messed up like everybody you talking about. So I'm gonna.

Speaker 5 (01:05:53):
Say, okay to say I don't know. Lord, we don't
know what to do, but our eyes are on you,
so it's okay to say I believe that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:06:06):
But one thing for in many places in our faith
community is that we see trouble and trauma as two
different things. When we look at trouble, we said, trouble
don't last always. God's gonna help me in time of trouble.
But we don't talk about trauma. Trouble is something that
we think is fleeting and transitory. Were in trouble, we

(01:06:28):
just came out of trouble, and trouble is on its
way again. So we look at trouble as just a
temporary inconvenience. But trauma is something different. Trauma comes and
hangs out, Trauma comes and stays. You know, you may
have personal trouble, but you don't participate in other people's
trouble unless you're praying for them. So, but trauma. But
the kind of trauma we have now, as Bishop described it,

(01:06:51):
this is a collective trauma. I mean, it's not just
one or two people with post traumatic syndrome. You have
a whole community, a whole nation that is participating in
post traumatic syndrome. All of us experienced George Floyd, all
of us experienced Breonna Taylor. I mean, we can just
list the names, you know, the Emmanuel Nine, Mother Man.

(01:07:14):
We all participated, and so we all grieved and we
didn't realize we were going through the steps of the
steps of grieving, you know, anger and what am I
going to do?

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
Now?

Speaker 5 (01:07:23):
We're all going through this. And so what happened when
you especially with COVID. One of the things that happened
our disciplines went out the window. Our whole discipline, our
whole schedule is are so I'm home, So our regular schedule.
Our regular things are doing things, the things we do
to comfort ourselves, the joy that we would tap in
during the day, all of that went out of the window.

(01:07:46):
Our whole schedule, you know, our regular prayer schedule, our
study schedule, our worship schedule, our bibles, all of that
went out of the window. So a part of what
we have to do is put ourselves back on schedule
and get our disciplines lined up. Uh that when we
wake up in the morning, we talked to God before
we go to social media. You know, we you know,
we have ad time. We practice our gratitudes. You know,

(01:08:09):
no matter how how bad the trauma may be, there
is something still to be grateful for. And so I
think we need to practice our disciplines again. Go find
our joy, Go get a night, good night's sleep, go
to bed.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
We're there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Yeah, good, great at the state of stay asleep once
you get it, which is hard.

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Yeah, I'm waking up listening to Mackenzie and to uh
Jakes at the middle of the night. But can I
because I know I got to go too, But I
got to say this though.

Speaker 5 (01:08:42):
Well women, women, women, Mike, when Honda, before you get
to that part get some sessions, talking to a counselor
to a psychologist. It's okay, But in too many areas
of our faith traditions it's not okay. It is okay
talk to a counselor talk to your mentor talk to

(01:09:03):
a coach. But talk to someone. And if you can't talk, write,
write it in a letter, put it in an envelope,
and mail it back to yourself. But you got to
get it out of you, whether you have to sing it,
whether you have to write it, and whether you have
download and upload friends, do that, okay, Mike, I'm sorry, No.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Hey, that's that's the word Bishop, that's the word. I'm
just gonna riff off of that and pretend I said
that when I when I repeat you later. But the
difference between trouble and trauma, Oh, that's that's awesome. That's
that's that's that's my idea. Dog, that's that's a samples already.
But look, uh, in terms of what the church is doing,
Robert McAfee Brown, the Great theologian, said, the church is

(01:09:43):
like Noah's ark. If it wasn't for the storm on
the outside, you couldn't stand the stink on the inside.
So there is uh trouble in the church. Uh, there
is a there is stink in the church, but the
storm outside is so compar that we have to realize
and recognize that the Church continues to offer a service.

(01:10:06):
It continues to offer a unifying fiction, a narrative, a
story that people can come to, a truth that is
revealed to people. It offers the possibility that through the
centuries and over the course of time and the vicissitudes
of both our individual lives and our collective experiences, that
there is something to be said about that story, so

(01:10:29):
that when a great Bishop Mackenzie or a great Bishop
Jake stands up to preach that word, there is the
presumption of a certain level of biblical literacy in a
universe of interpretation that allows us to tap into you intuitively.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
I'll give you my sixty second version of doctor Dyson's
Real Quick here. I think it is important for us
to spend a little more time and the word. Last
year has been hard, It has been painful. It has
been for so many people. And I woke up one
morning and realized in April or may actually Aprils, I

(01:11:07):
called you. I think it was to have thirty days
of prayer. One of the things I'd realized to help
me out was number one, spending more time early in
the morning in the Word of God. Number two, remembering
first Pewter five seven, casting all your curs upon the
Lord Philippians four six. Understanding how to focus on the
good news. There's so much good news that we missed

(01:11:29):
in the middle of a pandemic, because all we see
from cover to cover, from screen to screen, from TV
to TV is bad news. There is a ton of
good news. I would recommend everyone watched the episode you
did with Keon Henderson. You want to be pumped up
and filled with the Holy ghost, watch Bishop Jakes and
Keon talk about life and the pursuit of significance. I

(01:11:53):
have placed in my YouTube Tdjakes every day for the
last several weeks, and then I add other speakers on
top of that, so that when I leave my house
in the morning, I am prepared to go legislate as
an official. And there's a whole slew of things that
I'll put both of the bishops in touch with from

(01:12:15):
a resourcing standpoint that we have made available that maybe
there's not enough information out there on finding the resources
we spent seven trillion dollars as a country, twice what
we usually spend for bringing resources into some areas that
I hope everybody knows about. We certainly have made sure

(01:12:38):
that in South Carolina and frankly around the country. I
want to make sure that you will have that information.
And I'm gonna stop there. God, bless you, thanks for
having me.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Absolutely fabulous. Only on a platform like this do you
get the brilliands of Bacari Sellers and Senator Jim Scott,
along with the Bishop Vashtib McKenzie and doctor Dyson all
in one place. It has been such a privilege to
have you and to share you with the broader audience.

(01:13:06):
Your wisdom, your thoughts, your reflection has been quite profound
to the viewers. I would end with simply this. The
Church is comprised of people, and anything that's comprised of
people is going to have its flaws. The messages are flawed,
but the message is still relevant. There is a reason

(01:13:27):
that God did not allow Jesus to come through the
Roman lineage and be a part of the aristocracy of
the times. He purposely chose that Jesus would come through
a lineage of people that at the time of his birth,
they would be oppressed. Not just him, but they would
be oppressed. Our faith is just as relevant now as

(01:13:49):
it's ever been in the history, from its very inception
to this present moment, because we have a suffering savior,
we have a bleeding physician. Emblem of our faith is
a cross. There's no fallacy here about pie in the
sky and victory without being victimized. It is quite clear

(01:14:11):
that Jesus was born in an oppressed environment, subjugated and
demeaned by an empire that oppressed him, and even to
Lord still he was rejected by the people who were
already oppressed. Ultimately, he ends up on a cross, and
there he bleeds to death on the cross through a

(01:14:33):
criminal justice system that had no justice he Our message
is not far removed from our new speakers. The criminal
justice that persecuted Jesus. It's the same kind of criminal
justice as persecuting us. The good news is he didn't
stay on the cross, and he didn't stay in the tomb,

(01:14:55):
But early Sunday morning he got up again from the grave.
Our message is a message of being able to come
above the obstacles and the vicissitudes of life. Whether you
are going through trouble or trauma. When all is said
and done, there's victory on the other side of your pain.

(01:15:18):
Hang in there and thank all of you for sharing
with us today. God bless you.