#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Black voters & defund the police; new COVID variant; #EssenceFest '21 recap

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

6.28.21 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Black voters & defund the police; new COVID variant; #EssenceFest '21 recapSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered#RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

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Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. today is monday june 28 2021 coming up on roland martin unfiltered there's a new COVID variant out that could be very deadly if you're not protected. We'll talk with Dr. Ebony Hilton about that on today's show. Also, now, where's our money segment? A lot of major advertisers had spots winning last night on the BET Awards, but how many of them are supportive of Black-owned media? Also, on today's show, a new poll shows that African-Americans are in support of defunding the police and shifting of resources for police reform. Plus, the Essence Festival, Virtual Festival 2021 took place over the weekend.

It will take place again this weekend. We'll have a recap and talk with the top editor at Essence, Corey Murray, as well as comedian Roy Wood Jr. Folks, it is time to bring the funk of roland martin unfiltered let's go he's got it whatever the biz he's on it whatever it is he's got the super fat the fine and when it breaks he's right on time and it's rolling best believe he's knowing putting it down from sports to news to politics with entertainment just for kicks he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks

He's rolling It's the go-go-royale It's rolling, Martin, yeah Rolling with rolling now He's broke, he's fresh, he's real, the best you know. He's Roland Martin now. Martin! All right, folks, glad to have you here on Roland Martin Unfiltered.

Texas Democrats, they're suing the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, for vetoing the bill that funds thousands of state lawmakers. You might remember, of course, when the Texas Democrats walked out of the U.S. Capitol to keep a voter suppression bill from passing. Well, what happened there? The governor then got real petty and he decided to actually veto their funding. Talk about being weak. The governor says Democrats overstepped their authority. Democrats said the governor overstepped his authority. Sorry.

The governor's office says their argument is, quote, misleading and misguided. This is a statement released from the spokesman for the Texas governor's office says their argument is, quote, misleading, misleading and misguided. This is a statement released from the spokesman for the Texas governor's office. Go ahead and pull that up. The Constitution protects the legislative branch. And as the Democrats well know, their positions, their power and their salaries are protected by the Constitution. They can continue to legislate despite the veto. Folks, what we are seeing here,'re seeing democrats uh try to be as aggressive as they can because they don't control levels of power in texas republicans control all statewide positions including the governor lieutenant governor they control both houses

uh the house as well as the senate let's go to my panel abel jones the weaver leadership strategist joins us right now michael brown former vice chair dnc finance committee dr omicongo dabinga harper sawyer lecturer school of international service at american university michael i want to start with you uh look democrats don't have many choices here they just we just simply don't they don't have any options but the bottom line is what they do have is they have an opportunity uh to frustrate as best as they can and this is what democrats should be doing all across the country, using everything available in order for them to

stay in control, in order for them to lead. First, Roland, I like your new technology. Congratulations. We're only using this because we are moving offices.

We decided we got to go completely virtual this time, but we're packing up out of our old office by Wednesday. We'll be in our new offices on Thursday and we'll be broadcasting from the new offices on Monday. Congratulations.

Does that mean we get to come back in the studio or we're going to stay virtual? We're probably going to stay virtual for a few more months. We'll see what Dr. Ebony Hilton says later in the show regarding the new COVID variant. We'll see. So, you know, you and I've talked about this a lot, Roland, and certainly with my fellow panelists, we've talked about a lot. Is the Democratic Party, my party, the party I care about the most. I'm glad we're starting,

at least in Texas, starting to fight gunfights with a gun, instead of always trying to figure out how to sing Kumbaya with the Republican Party. They're not into Kumbaya. They're into winning, they're into power, and they're into taking away power from people of color. So there is not going to be a kumbaya moment. So I'm glad the Democrats in Texas took a stand against Governor Abbott, who is clearly, you know, obviously he's off base. I guess he's a Trumper. But nonetheless, I wish we would fight like that in more parts of the country on the state level. And obviously for and Speaker Speaker Pelosi has done her part to fight fire with fire. I know Senator Schumer, they supposedly played by a different set of rules in the Senate.

But McConnell doesn't care about Kumbaya. So it seems that maybe we need to follow the Texas Democrats lead. It's all about, again, doing the best that you can with what you have, Avis. And what the Democrats have to realize across the country is you use power any way that you can. Same way Republicans do. And so that's what first of all, the people in Congress should be taking some lessons from that. But it was smart for Texas Democrats to walk out because the bottom line is that kept the bill from advancing. Absolutely. I mean, you have to be able to fight fire with fire. And, you know, it is it's just very interesting to me that the dynamics of the cultures of the two parties, the Democratic Party always wants to talk about and harp on bipartisanship when the Republicans are only focused on power. And if there was any time, if there

was any time to grow a spine and to show evidence of a backbone, it should be around this issue right here. The degree to which we are experiencing a second coming of Jim Crow now in this country cannot be overemphasized. And quite frankly, I am, although I'm heartened by the Texan Democrats, I'm very disappointed in the Democratic Party writ large in terms of its lack of a sense of urgency around this issue. This should be a five-alarm fire, and every mechanism

at their disposal, at the federal, all the way down to the state level in all the states across the nation that this catastrophe is occurring should be happening I am hoping that other Democrats are watching and are being inspired by these actions because if ever there was a time to fight the time to fight is now I'm a Congo if. The Republicans have demonstrated once again that they don't care about anybody. Because one of the things that Abbott is doing right now, it's affecting Republican staff members as well. I mean these guys who are congressmen, you know, they're not there nine to five, they got other ways of making money, but the average staff person who's coming in every single day day and this is their primary source of income, they're going to be affected by this.

And Abbott doesn't care. McConnell doesn't care. As Michael was saying, this is about that power grab and they will step on anybody to get it. So I commend those Democrats in Texas for doing what they're doing. But like Dr. DeWeaver said, we need more. We need more action. Last week, President Biden was asked about his whole idea about voting rights. And they said, oh, he's going to make a statement on that next week, which would be this week. Seriously? We don't have time for next week. This is a daily action that they're taking to destroy our rights. And they need to step up. Like you said, writ large, they're failing us right now. You're absolutely right that these things are looking look, you got to fight as best that you can. And I think that's one of the things that we're seeing take place here. Of course, the

pressure continues over the weekend, Black Voters Matter. They held their rally here in D.C., had that caravan that went from, of course, the South to the nation's capital. And that has to continue. That has to go on and on and on. We have to see more of that, Abus. And look has to continue. We have that has to go on and on and on. Have to see more of that, Abish. And look, look, we know what took place where Democrats were not able to end the filibuster to even get get the bill discussed on the floor. But this has to be top of mind. You have these Democrat donors who say, oh, let's move on. Let's focus on infrastructure bill. But the bottom line is you can talk about that all you want to. But you're going to actually screw yourself over the next five to 10 years if you do not keep fighting voter suppression. That's why the Department of Justice decision late last week to file suit against Georgia is important.

And again, to me, this is a part of using all of your weapons. What is the whole point of holding back? You got no choice. And so they must also go back to ramping up pressure on these corporations to say, stand with us and withhold these funds when it comes to folks who support voter suppression. Absolutely right. It is interesting to me to see that so many people are just willing to sort of move on, turn the page. And it's also interesting to me, honestly, to be perfectly honest, I think this whole thing was bungled from the very beginning. Why were there two separate bills? Why wasn't there a focus on the John Lewis Act? Why wasn't

there a focus on making sure that we repaired the Voting Rights Act in terms of the damage that it suffered with regards to the Supreme Court? I think bifurcating this issue like this hurt this issue. I don't really understand why the Democrats cannot seem to grow a strategic bone in their body. It was absolutely asinine from the beginning to have it all conflated in this way in the first place. It should have been priority number one. Unless we have our voting rights protected,

they can kiss their majority in the House and the Senate goodbye. They could largely kiss their potential of having another Democratic administration goodbye. They are trying, the Republicans are trying everything possible to undermine the voting rights of the core Democratic voters. The reason, you know, I can't understand why the Democratic Party is so thick-skulled that they can't get that needs to be priority number one. It should have been priority number one from day one. And the fact that it still, to me, seems to be no sense of significant urgency there completely baffles the mind. The thing there about legislative power, at the end of the day, if you're locked out,

gerrymandering is going to be happening because of the census. Republicans are looking to shave off anywhere from five to 10 seats in Texas and Florida combined. That could be a death knell for Democrats being able to stay keep control of the US House next year, Michael. Michael Hodge Absolutely. And I think part of the challenge that the good doctor mentioned, she's exactly right. And part of that is whether it's the president, whether it's the speaker, and to some extent, Majority Leader Schumer, is having to deal with this left flank and the progressive wing of the party. The reason that

they did this other bill was because they wanted all that left progressive stuff in there. They couldn't get it in the John Lewis bill, so they created the new bill. But you're exactly right, Doc. They should have just stuck with the John Lewis bill. That would have protected what was going on in these states. Um, and now you're right. There's a lot of confusion, which built us, which built to support, um, they needed to pass the John Lewis bill. That problem that may have been able to pass in the Senate a little more. It's still difficult, but more likely than, than, than the other bill, the kind

of more inclusive bill, uh, that talks about obviously money and all these other things that you know the Republicans aren't going to go for anyway. But nonetheless, the John Lewis bill needs to pass because that will at least protect on one level what's going on in the states. On the Congo, again, I go back to that gerrymandering issue, which is significant. Again, you're seeing the loss of seats in the Midwest and the East as well. We know that, of course, New York State is going to lose one seat because of less than 100 people counted during the census. That's why the census was so important. This was one of the reasons why Republicans did not really want to fund census efforts because they said, wow,

a shifting population away from white voters is going to help them out. We saw literally in Texas, they went, oh, let's not fund any census efforts. And all of a sudden when they realized, wait a minute, we could actually gain from this, they had a late push forward. But the population increase in Texas is largely due to minority voters, namely Latinos, and Republicans are trying to claim that new population in those seats. And so that was so what people have to understand. We're actually losing power. People of color are losing power because they are basically creating districts for white voters, not new minority voters.

That's right. And we're also seeing an increase in people who are moving to places like Texas as well, because the Republicans played a long game, plain and simple. And they have a history of having the ruling over, I guess, representing the fewer amount of people, but still maintaining the same amount of power, if not more than the Democrats. They played a long game. And the Democrats really have to realize right now that they need to have a three-pronged approach. You talked earlier about the financial aspect of it. The other two parts of it are we have to keep pushing out the rallies, the caravans, everything going on in Black Voters Matter. That's extremely important.

We got to get people registered to vote. The voter education has to continue. But this pressure on the corporations, it also has to matter because some of these businesses are also moving their offices to places like Texas as well and they're not used to having be they're not used to being called out in terms of their financial contributions and the like and so that has to be an aspect of it that we can't lose going into 2022 because we saw that these corporations were indeed responsive for the most part when we were calling them out. But once we, but they also know that many people have short attention spans. So we have to make sure that we keep that up as well, because we

have to talk about who they shouldn't be funding as well as who they should be funding. So that's also a part we can't lose sight of. Speaking of funding, a lot of folks are being very critical of a company like Toyota Because Toyota, they're giving a lot of donations to Republicans who voted not to support the electors And we're talking about a lot of money We've been seeing these tweets uh go uh all around uh all around social media about this and we actually reached out to toyota uh for a statement uh keenan if you can go if you can pull that statement up that would be great uh so i can actually read that statement for folks um and so let me do um here's the here's the statement from the Toyota PAC Toyota's PAC by design is bipartisan in nature

And we contribute equally to the Democratic and Republican parties Toyota supports candidates based on their position On issues that are important to the auto industry and the company We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress Solely based on their votes on the electoral certification Based on our thorough review We decided against giving to some members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification. Based on our thorough review, we decided against giving to some members who, through their statements and actions, undermine the legitimacy of our elections and institutions. Now, the reason this is important is because there are a lot of black folks who buy Toyotas.

In fact, in fact, there are African-Americans who sit on the board of directors of Toyota. And I've read some stories, and I've been pulling those up, where Toyota actually has the largest market share, the largest market share of black voters. So the question is, black purchasers. So the question is this. The question is this, Omicongo, if that's the case, what should black consumers be saying to Toyota as a result of who they're from? Black consumers need to put the pressure on Toyota. And look, I am a long-term Toyota brand. Members of my family as well, I was not aware of this until you brought this to our attention. And you can guarantee they are hearing from me. We need to let them know that, as you say, Roland, all the time, that Black dollars

matter. And whether we're talking about car loans, credit cards, whatever, Toyota makes it a point to try to have these advertisements on Kwanzaa and Black History Month and all of these things. But if you're going to support people who wanted to undermine an election that was going to take away the freedoms that you're allowed to enjoy as a corporation in the first place, this is unacceptable. So, Toyota, you're on notice. Many of us were not aware of this. We're aware now, and we're gonna be coming and knocking at your door, whether physically, whether through emails, whatever, because this is unacceptable to support people

who are actively working to take away the rights of your customers that we can't stand for that. Ava, I think you've got to make it an issue. People who did not support the 2020 election. Oh, yeah. You definitely have to make it an issue. And, you know, the beautiful thing is that we know. We know now. And if there's one thing that we understand as a community, it's about organizing. And this is really about us putting Toyota on notice, as was mentioned, that we have substantial financial power that we can flex. And as we have flexed it your way in the past, we can flex it against you in the future. This really needs to be a full-out PR disaster for Toyota. And so everything that we can do in terms of social media and also in terms of our buying choices,

it needs to reflect our dissatisfaction and disdain with this idea of supporting people that not only were seeking to overturn an election, but was doing it based on lies that specifically focused on states that were largely decided on the votes of African-Americans. This is a complete attack against the respect due to the black America voting power. And we need to make sure that Toyota understands that this is something we're not going to forget and they're going to have a price to pay for it. That's right. I'm a Congo. Excuse me. I'm sorry, Michael. Yes, I certainly co-sign on everything that both of my fellow panelists said. And I'm glad, and Roland, that's why your show is such a service. You bring these issues up so then we can then talk about

them and other people can talk about them. One of my sons drives a Toyota. Obviously, if I was aware of what you just said before he purchased it, I would have suggested maybe he select another vehicle. And I think, but that's where the economics will be so important because for example, how will, whether it's magazines, these other charitable organizations, when Toyota calls and says, I want to buy ad space or I want to be a contributor, it's so hard for companies of color to say no to those dollars. The discipline comes saying, you know what? No. I understand if you wanted to support some folks because they wanted to overturn the electoral college because there was some actual evidence, but there wasn't. As the doctor mentioned,

it was based on lies. So I'm curious about their kind of U.S. operations there. They're U.S., frankly, they're lobbyists here in town, whoever they got the advice from why this would be a good idea. Because the only way you change behavior, especially with folks on the Hill, is you impact their bank account. And when they see that Toyota is now not supporting their golf tournament or their dinner or their gala, then all of a sudden they say, well, you know what? Maybe I need to change my view on that position, on that issue. Well, first of all, you're absolutely right. And so, again, there are a lot of companies who came out there after the insurrection

saying, oh, we're not going to be supporting. Then they quietly begin to give money back with their political action committees. And so we should be monitoring that as well. Speaking of monitoring, we were doing that when it comes to where's our money segment. We've been frozen out. Facing an extinction level event. We don't fight this fight right now

You're not going to have black on you Alright folks, last night was the BET Awards And really I think I would call it BET Commercial Fest Interspersed with the peak performances. There were a ton of commercials that were on the BET Awards last night. A lot of major

companies were spending money. BET no longer, of course, is black-owned. They're black-targeted. We're going to roll through. I want to show y'all, again, all the corporations that dropped ads last night on on uh on the bt awards uh you had uh axios capital one uh state farm apple nissan procter and gamble uh macy's

burger king warner brothers pepsi columbia pictures t-Mobile, Sprite, M&M's, Kellogg's, Walmart, Little Caesars, Verbo, Ashley Home Furniture, Intuit, QuickBooks, Red Bull, Universal Pictures, McDonald's, Amazon, Facebook, Coors Light, Garnier, Serum Cream, U.S. Department of Health and Human services uh geico you also had a number of different um get a number of different uh i guess all of them right there folks get a number of different uh makers first of all yet snuggle invisalign absolute paramount plus l'oreal um you also had uh let's see here pizza hut uh let's see i got uh like i mentioned Procter & Gamble. You had Dove. You also had, let me go through here, Facebook. Macy's. Let's see. Other companies.

Like I said, you had Modelo, T-Mobile, Apple, Disney. You had, of course, Marvel. Of course, Disney makes those movies. Then you had the drugs, of course, Marvel. Marvel. Marvel. Of course, Disney makes those those movies. And then you had the drugs for Stasis. Do you pick new picks it? You also had one of the drugs as well. It was one more that I missed.

I don't see it on my list here. I can find it here. You had Bounty. Let's see. Doritos, Ford, LinkedIn, Domino's, AT&T, Netflix, Popeyes, Target, Coors Light, Charmin, Pampers. And there you go. Those are all the sponsors there. the logos on my social media and then asking the question all right how many of them are supportive of black-only media I see that's a lot of money in fact ad age dropped the story over the weekend that said the demand was so high for BET that they added 30 minutes to the show. Wow. 30 minutes to the show for the advertisers. Now, they also said they had such a strong response when it comes to performances.

Mm-mm. That was a money thing. A three and a half hour awards program. That's what you saw. Joining me now is Ty Brown with the Urban Edge. He, of course, they've launched HBCbcu league pass hbcu league pass glad to have him on the show so ty this is a a major deal here and again what this says is corporate america they ain't got a problem trying to get money from black people they want to sell their wares to black people. They're fully in support of BET

and their board show because they're black targeted. But we keep arguing are all of these companies supportive of black owned companies? Yeah, Roman, I think what you're saying is important for two reasons. One is it shows that they know how to

purchase black. And that question is only put because the questions that we get every day from advertising agencies and from brands is, are your platforms safe for my brand environment? Are you providing the kind of innovation and connection with the audience? And moreover, are you going to denigrate the messages that I'm trying to send? And a lot of people would argue that those questions should have been asked around the show we just saw, because of course it wasn't at the fringe of a lot of entertainment. But the bigger thing is brands overextended

themselves to check a black box on a white platform. And we're seeing very little of that spin, lots of meetings, lots of talks for black owned. And so we're driving a bigger conversation, Roland, and you've been part of that conversation in a major way around categories of spin and categories of consumption. And then when you look at the consumption and all the key categories that were represented during the BET Awards, you should see that same level of flow to Black-owned media. And as we said in our collective, we're not seeing that in any material

way. We're seeing drips and drabs here and there, but we're not seeing the level of commitment that you're making to iHeart with Blackface on white media. We're not seeing the level of commitment that you're making to iHeart with blackface on white media. We're not seeing the level of commitment that you just had the exuberance on during the BET Awards. By the way, not just the show, the pre-show and the post-show, all the inventory was fully, fully stacked. And so we know they know how to do it. Now we need to see them and hold them to account for doing it on black-owned platforms where we control the narrative we control the message and we control the images that we are putting out uh and the stories that we're putting out to our people all those things are important because it's not just the ad support it's the ability for them to tell our story and to paint our narrative which is also very impactful um and

and we talk about that uh again there were a number of companies that I mentioned also, I think I did not cook a cold Walmart I mentioned McDonald's tech companies as well a number of them And so one of the things so what I did I was I saw I've been posting these on social media LinkedIn all of these platforms and in fact Procter & Gamble clearly saw our post and then reached out to us saying hey Want to link y'all up with the right people to connect with. And I purposely said this here, you know, Coca-Cola, they're one of our sponsors for our essence throwback. And I said I gave them credit for that, that their announcement of their their spin with black and other minority media.

Walmart, we're we're having conversations with them. We have not closed a deal with them. I said we certainly are looking forward to a long-term partnership with all of these folks. But we need to be very, very specific with the companies that are not responding. I fired off an email to an executive at Apple asking about their black-owned spin. Same thing in all these companies.

These companies have blackboard members and there are people and a lot of these companies have refused to even publicly commit to a black owned media spin. And we need to be demanding this. And for the person who is watching, who needs to understand the difference between advertisers supporting BET when they were black-owned and advertisers now supporting BET when they are owned by ViacomCBS, not black-owned. Brett Pulley in his book,

The Billion Dollar Bet, The Unauthorized Biography of BET and Bob Johnson. When ViacomCBS bought BET, Todd, they were shocked to discover how much BET was getting for a 30-second ad compared to what MTV was getting for the same 30-second ad. Explain that to our audience, the difference. I think it's important because it wasn't just a BET phenomenon.

So I had the pleasure of being an executive vice president and group publisher of Ebony and Jet magazine. And what we find is that generally in black publications, we get 78% less than the market rate and we get 95% less than the market volume. And what that really means is that if an ad rate at BET is $1,500 an hour for a 30 second spot, that same ad on any Viacom network was fetching $8,500. And if you really think about that, Roland, what that means is that instead of $3 billion, which was the closeout price for Bob Johnson when he sold BET to Viacom, that price should have been on the order of 78% higher. And if you think about that, that's about a $15 billion market cap.

So he could have sold a third of his company if he was getting market rates and also for the advantage of viacom they can pay off bet very quickly because as soon as they took over the new rate for bet happened to start to be the market rate of 8 500 moreover they even got further distribution. So the idea of the black rate at Ebony and Jet, which was generally 15 to 20K a page, and in case of Ebony, 7,000 a page. In case of Jet, 7,000 a page. The like white publications were getting 150 to 200,000 a page. That's the difference between paying your writers on time being able to have the best stock in paper being able to pay for the mail and being able to support your staff and have a white house correspondence in dc covering our stories so that that that same problem with black

media that we talk about all the time roland is a is a point of us getting our reasonable fair share and what we find is that that share for black targeted is very small compared to total market, but the black owned share of that is fractionally smaller than that black targeted. So the new move, and I've talked to you about this, is the move is that we've created a space called black owned, but who's benefiting directly in the early days

is black targeted because you're seeing BET be a safe uh creative easy conversation for white brands to have with each other about black properties which is exactly what happened when all those good people went over to BET and Viacom and found themselves flush with cash because they were getting the market rate for the first time and so that it's subtle and it's complicated but it's not blacks are discounted by 78 and we get the lowest volume of purchasing and that's problematic and that's why black media is in such dire straits across the board Can you hear me? And there are people, Ty, there are people who there are people who have said to me, people have said to me, well, you know, why are y'all being so aggressive? Why are y'all doing this? Why do y'all have to be so loud about it?

Why you have to be so in your face about it well this is simple if I got no money last year and I got no money last month and I got no money last week and I got no money on yesterday it's a good bet not gonna get any money tomorrow so I might as well say something. Well, it's worse than that. In my business case, I'm focused on HBCUs around sports, around the bands, around engagement with the culture, and around gaming. And if you look at the economics of an HBCU athletic program versus the economics of the University of Texas that makes $100 million profit on black bodies, largely on their football team, which funds everything else they do.

You look at the University of Florida. As a matter of fact, my brother attended Grambling University as a freshman in 1967. When Grambling played against Morgan State at Yankee Stadium, he was a sophomore. There were more professional athletes that came out of Grambling and Texas Southern than Notre Dame. And so the idea of them understanding how to monetize blackness is a perfect example of why we have to speak to black equity and ownership, which never happens relative to media, and the fact that they know how to monetize our black bodies, which I think we saw a major display of during the BET Awards.

So this idea of why we're loud and verbose about it, we know that silence is killing our potential to tell our story and to have a voice, and moreover, to have basic businesses that otherwise will be harvested in what I think is a form as abusive as slavery, because it's a slow death, and're awake and we're alive and we're aware and we can read and we know that this doesn't work. However, we participate in our silence by answering the question, Roland, of being patient when they already showed us during the upfronts that they see us, they hear us, they just can't quite get to write the check to us. So let's talk about that upfront. So what the audience doesn't realize is that all of these media ad agencies that represent all of these companies,

and we're talking about nearly $300 billion being spent, $300 billion. So the TV upfronts, they make these presentations, the networks explain all their programming, and essentially they negotiate over three or four weeks with these ad agencies and the companies for the entire year. You and I have participated and all of a sudden this year, they created these black upfronts in these minority up fronts because they got pressure uh from byron allen and from us and so many others but here's the deal we've done the up fronts several of them and other than uh what our partnership with coca-cola that's the only one that we've signed and that didn't even come through the ups. I've actually been a Coca-Cola VIP and have worked with them for the past decade.

And that was through my relationships with them. So the reality is, even though we went through all of these presentations, we haven't closed a single deal. And we're still waiting. All the television networks have all closed. Problematic, Roland. So the idea of your patients and them rewarding you with a meeting, and you remember we submitted a couple of RFPs before the upfronts, and the agencies were very excited to say, Roland, you were actually considered this year. We really thought about inviting you to the final rounds. You're not

going to make any money. You're not going to get any allocation. So the reward for the agency so far has been, we hear you and we see you and we had a meeting with you. And as you and Byron like to say off the record is, we cannot spend meetings. We cannot spend nice thank yous. So we're asking and demanding and saying, where's the beef relative to this issue.

And we know that they have quote unquote intentionality, but you can't spend intentionality. We've got to see them lean into our businesses, support us and invest in the cultivation of our stories by us. Because we have shown again that they know how to do it when it's white owned

black media whether it's iHeart whether it's BET whether it's black radio that's owned by you know white members or and that's the struggle it's really an issue Roland where I can't quite see you in my economic equation unless you're just consuming my products and not complaining or making any statements about it. And the people at home are trying, and I get these people hit me up, man, but we got to be our own. I'm like, y'all, that's what the hell we're trying to do. But this business runs on advertising dollars.

Period. That's how Comcast and NBC, that's how Fox News and CNN, that's how all these networks are multi-billion dollar corporations because they're getting the advertising dollars. And what I need black people to understand is they're getting the money

because they're spending your money. You're buying, you drink at Coca-Cola, you eat at McDonald's, you shop at Target, you're using Facebook, you're using Intuit QuickBooks, you're buying Bounty, you're using Charmin, you're using All, you're using Snuggles, you're using all of these products. So they love our money. And again, there are companies that made announcements. mcdonald's made an announcement we're meeting with them we're going to see what that spend is going to be uh coca-cola made their announcement there are 20 companies tied with the agency group m to make the announcement but

here's the problem there are probably another 80 to 100 companies that group m represents that did not commit to even a 2% black owned spend. And so, okay, that's great that 20 companies under group that Group M represents are gonna spend 2%. They committed to spending 2% of their marketing advertising budget with black owned media. 2%, that's it. I'm sorry, it should be five to 10. But the fact that only 20 of their companies agree to that, meaning the other 60, 80 or 100 would not even commit to 2%. General Motors

announced their plan. I have not heard one publicly from Toyota or Ford or Chrysler or BMW or Nissan or Hyundai or Honda. Have you? No, Roland, we have to break this down, I think, in a very elementary way. We're talking about two hundred and eighty nine billion dollars, according to their numbers. And you're talking about black media, black owned media getting in the neighborhood of 100 million of 289 billion. And we're talking about the fact that we drive entertainment, engagement, creative. And again, the new narrative is black creatives. The new narrative is black people in the commercials, black people being part of the dialogue. It's not about black ownership and equity because that portion has historically been severely discounted and put into

damn near receivership. So the idea of the conversation that you're driving is now that you've stirred up the hornet's nest and you have the potential for the awakening of black purchasing to be aimed and weaponized in such a way that we get black jobs from these companies, we get black investments, we get black businesses, we get black equity is a very scary thing. And so I think folks are waiting, Roland, for this moment to pass. They're waiting for this conversation to be about me and you trying to enrich ourselves, as opposed to us trying to get 13% of $300 billion, which by the way is $39 billion as opposed to 100 million. And so if

you do that, then guess what? There's jobs for the HBCU students that are focused on media. There's jobs for production. There's jobs for catering. There's building. Otherwise, we find ourselves where we are today, Rolandland largely outside of the ability to control our stories and our narratives and let's be clear everything that they show on those networks are indicated and managed largely at the top by white owners and you have black workers who have to who have to manage within that reality. And I saw several times and I found it shocking that most black entertainers were thanking BET for an opportunity to appear on white owned media to have the white media commercialize them, as opposed to the reality that BET is 100 percent owned by Viacom. And so we own that, then we can really control

and drive those conversations in a powerful way. And I think a lot of folks think that because we show up in spaces that we actually have control or ability to impact the economics. Right now, we're in a consumer consumption, downloading, not uploading media media and we have to shift

that by continuing to beat this drum and I'm happy to be able to do that but it's something that is uncomfortable because everyone is used to not thinking about this as we're being commercialized it was I got these idiots on YouTube who really don't know they're talking about about. You got these folks who go, like one person goes, oh, oh, if you get reparations, we will be fine. No, Charles Jameson,

you're an idiot. That's not true. You also got this other idiot, Dre Smith, rolling, is this just about Black media or is it really about Black progress and corporations or you just want to white corporations to make your pockets fatter? Well, dumbass Dre Smith, if you were paying attention, we're talking about black owned media. I didn't say just my company or just if we get the investment in black on media, Avis, then guess what?

We get to hire black producers, black reporters, black graphic designers, black set makers, black set makers, black lighting people, black art folks, black folks who edit, black folks, all of that. So we're not sitting here seeing few of us in mainstream media. We could literally go out and create these programs. We could actually have partnerships with HBCUs that have school communications and say, we have jobs available for you. That's the whole point. If we go from getting annually $100 million collectively, and all of a sudden we're getting $10 billion collectively, now imagine the sizes of our companies. And this right here, this discussion we're having right here for the stuck on stupid people who can't pay attention and for these advertisers out there they have to understand these are largely white folks and corporations

giving money to nearly 97 98 white ad agencies who are then giving anywhere from zero to one percent of money to black owned media and then folks wonder why our businesses are small. Absolutely. I mean, I found this discussion to be so riveting and powerful. I was sitting here taking notes. Okay. Here.

You just mentioned $209 billion spent in media. No, no, no, no. 289 billion. You lost. I, no, no, no. $289 billion. Oh my God. I can't read my own handwriting. $289 billion

and by next year, Todd, it's supposed to be $322 billion? $322 billion. Your number doesn't change. You're still at $100 million. And still only at $100 million. I mean, that's just a teeny tiny fraction

of all the money that's being spent out there. And what I thought was especially intriguing and just powerful to me to show you the degree to which this discrimination is intentional was when you had the discussion around the fact that when BET was black owned, we were getting the black wages, right? But as soon as it was sold to Viacom, all of a sudden the money goes to Viacom that wasn't given to the black to the very same company when it was black owned.

You know, I think people really need to understand what's going on here. This is intentional disenfranchisement of black owned companies in terms of being able to fully fund them in a way that would allow them to be able to grow and flourish. Here's what we also know, and the third point I'll make really quickly is this. We all know that Black people are the creators of creativity that the world craves, and all of my travels all around the world, the portion of American culture that the rest of the world loves and craves, not to mention Americans too, are the things that we created.

So the fact that you have Black people being used, our talents, our abilities, our creativity is being used and monetized for white-owned companies that are targeting their wares to Black people. But when Black-owned companies try to lift up our voices, our creativity, our genius, we're getting slave wages. That's a problem with that. That's a real problem with that. And so I'm hoping that people will understand the gravity of this conversation. What this is saying is that they want our genius, but they don't want to pay, quote unquote,

NASA, but refuse to pay us. This is why Oma Kongo, when we were in Tulsa, they had the Tulsa Basket Commission. That was the city commission. They had this economic summit that was supposed for black. And then all these sponsors, I'm going to try to find it in a second. And we discussed it on our show and it was all these sponsors. And our first thing I said was on Congo, how many of these sponsors actually are supporting black owned businesses? Don't sit here and be the sponsor of a summit. If you ain't spending money with black people because you ain't practicing what you supposedly are preaching and i said you got to call these people out i told the black-owned media in uh in oklahoma you got to call them out and and here's the deal let me be real clear omicongo those businesses that we have engaging conversations with, I'm going to publicly give you credit for that.

Those companies that sign deals with us, I am going to say you are supporting black-owned media. But what I'm not going to do is give folks a pat on the back who issue a press release and then expect me to call it a transformational, wonderful, amazing plan. I told General Motors directly, hey, I will praise you when y'all cut the check. But you ain't cut the check.

Go ahead. That's right. It's like the great philosopher Memphis Bleak said, don't check for me unless you got a check for me. At the end of the day, these guys have to put up or shut up. We've seen the statements of supporting Black Lives Matter. We've seen the statements of we value diversity of the day, these guys have to put up or shut up. We've seen the statements of supporting Black Lives Matter. We've seen the statements of we value diversity and the like.

But where is the money? We're talking about ownership. We're talking about legacies. And to have these conversations about hundreds of millions versus billions of dollars, it is high time that whether we're talking about people who run media entities like you, whether we're talking about our celebrities who are on these networks as well, whether we're talking about our musicians, whoever, we have to be at a point right now that we need to say, we need to do more. You need to start putting your money where your mouth is and stop looking at us as just as objects to build up your own wealth. And quite honestly,

we in our own community, we have to smarten up right now. These conversations that you two are having and that you have on a daily basis, we in our own spheres, whatever platforms we have, we have to do what we can do to maximize the number of people who are hearing this because the average cat on the street doesn't know this and they don't understand that we're being taken advantage of.

So we have to keep calling them out. And once they see that we're starting to wise up, to really start to understand that you only value our bodies. Look what's happening with our sister in the hammer throwing competition, right? People are saying, just shut up and play. And she's like, no, I'm an activist. I'm more than that. Once we start doing that in large numbers and speaking up, these companies are going to have to come around. And if we don't do it, they're going to keep undervaluing us. And so we really have to step up this campaign to make sure that that money is coming to us because this is about legacy. This is about

ownership. This is about reducing that wealth gap. And we can't do it if we keep playing footsie with these guys. Like you said, we got to call them out. We can't just say, oh, we're just happy that you showed up at our event. We're just happy that you put up a flyer or a poster. We need more. We need partnerships. And that's what you're doing, Roland. Coca-Cola and the like, you're talking partnerships. And we need that right now more than talk. And I'm going to go to Michael, then I'm going to go to Michael, then I'm going to close out with Todd. And Michael, this is why I need all the people who follow us on social media to comment on those posts on Facebook, on Twitter,

on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Fanbase so those companies see 100, 200, 300 responses, people liking those items as well. This is what we have to do because, again,

this goes directly, and I'm just gonna get just real straight. I got the people need to understand something But people need to realize this dear is this here is Michael still there folks? I'm not saying Michael. Okay. There he is. There he is. Okay, so this is the thing that people understand I Was a contributor at CNN for six years that meant I was a contributor at CNN for six years. That meant I was paid. When you turn on MSNBC and CNN and they have these contributors or analysts, they're getting paid by the networks. Well, if we're able to generate more money, I can actually pay folks on our panel. They can actually get paid, which means they're also supporting their families see that's what i think people don't get we're trying to connect the dots here for people to realize

that there is a multi-billion dollar system an ecosystem of advertising and media that exists that we are helping to fund that we're not getting any that we're getting little money back and they're sitting there just cashing and making billions off of our support and then i got black folks saying oh why why you have to go through all of this because please show me another damn way that exists because todd knows you we have presented numerous proposals numerous one company that reached out to us today we reached out to nine months ago well we don't really buy new shows but then when I called him out now they want to talk to us well guess what I guess the damn call-out works well you know first of all fascinating conversation and I don't want to take too much time away from your closeout with Todd,

because I pretty much co-signed with everything that my fellow panelists said. I have a question, if you don't mind, Roland, for Todd, if you don't mind. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Hey, Todd, have you done any kind of market research? Because clearly as fascinating as this conversation is, how many people, particularly in the black community, know that BET is now not black-owned? Now, obviously, I know a lot of people know that, oh, Bob and Sheila Johnson made a lot of money on a sale. But those are people that may kind of either be in the business or just understand

that that happened. But how many average Joe folks know that BET is not owned by black people? Well, Mr. Brown, I think you said a couple things there that are important. One is we have been socialized from claiming things from our block that we rent on, to our street, to our hood, to claiming BET as an an equity owner and i think mr johnson and and and sheila made three billion dollars that was great unless they should have made 15 billion so i'm happy to go from whatever number they awarded three billion uh i think largely this is not a matter of research uh or or awareness we know these things we just don't want to process it because we can identify and connect with the shine and not have to process the abuse so we're talking about a

third of a trillion dollar industry and we're talking about blacks largely being erased from it other than employees and window dressing and we're talking about a conversation which has everything to do with cover which black employees give and i used to be an employee of comcast and biocom and other big media companies but the world shifted when i went into the black space because then you really start to see what the reality is the reality is is that we don't have an ability other than our call on our community to stop the behavior that's that's participating in our own demise and so that's the big conversation what we get distracted at is diversity inclusion bipod minority dinners uh matter of fact one of our and i say this every time i'm on one of our large partners asked me, what gives you the right to launch an HBCU League Pass for sports, bands, gaming, and culture?

Did the UNCF give you permission to have the audacity to do that? Because we give our money to the UNCF. So I asked them, when you're talking to other groups, do you get permission from their advocacy groups in order for them to launch their business? The short answer is no. So we have to get out of this uncomfortable conversation of awareness into this conversation of putting a light on where the issue is and forcing this uncomfortable conversation where we get out of the diversity, inclusion, dinner buying, and those people in the advocacy groups who are in the position to give cover for this crime, they need to be exposed as well.

And I see here with the Democratic National Committee. They're also guilty of this. You know, we have the same conversation at all levels of media, which I think is impactful and uncomfortable because no one is standing up and saying, stop it. Do the right thing by our community. And by the way, giving us a job is completely different than giving us an opportunity to create jobs for our community. Thank you. So so to everybody out there, understand, I'm going to be posting every single company that took an ad out in on the BET Awards. I'm going to post those images on all my social media. And I'm asking the question. And this this is this is what I asked. Very simple to each one of them. And this is the language you'll see it is. What is your annual black owned media spend? Have you made a commitment to join other companies in making a specific spin with black owned media?

Who is your ad agency and are you holding that agency accountable and making them work with not black targeted companies, but black owned? Those are the questions that I, and then I'm saying Roland Martin and other folks who represent this will be reaching out to you tomorrow to get answers to these questions. That's what we're doing, and we want to get those answers. Todd Brown, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Tell folks where they can download the HBCU app. Yes.

HBCU League Pass is available on all streaming platforms. Apple, Roku, Android, Apple TV, everywhere you can get a streaming signal, you can download HBCU League Pass. We're going to be the premier source for live games, bands, sporting, talk, and gaming. We believe HBCUs need the opportunity to have their experience in the lexicon as opposed to just when you get a chance to physically live be there. That's what we're about.

We're about bringing that energy and you can get us on all streaming platforms. All right then, Todd Brown. We so appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you, sir. Folks, got to go to a break. When we come back on Roland Martin Unfiltered,

we'll talk with Dr. Ebony Hilton about this new COVID variant and why you must not play games, folks, and stay vigilant when it comes to your mask, keeping your hands clean. Yeah, we're not out of the wilderness yet. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. We'll be back in a moment. I believe that people our age have lost the ability to focus

the discipline on the art of organizing. The challenges, there's so many of them and they're complex and we need to be moving to address them. But I'm able to say, watch out Tiffany, I know this road. that is so freaking dope hello I'm Nina Turner. My grandmother used to say, all you need in life are three bones. The wishbone to keep you dreaming, the jawbone to help you speak truth to power, and the backbone to keep you standing through it all. I'm running for Congress because you deserve a leader who will stand up fearlessly on your behalf. Together, we will deliver Medicare for all. Good jobs that pay a living wage and bold justice reform.

I'm Nina Turner and I approve this message. George Floyd's death, hopefully put another nail in the call for the racism. You talk about awakening America, it led to a historic summer of protests. I hope our younger generation don't ever forget that nonviolence is soul force. Right. What's up? This is Aldis Hodge, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Hey, everybody.

It's your girl, Sherri Shepherd, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Hey, Roland. This is Tim Story, director of Chad. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. What up, y'all? This is Method Man, Mighty Rutan, Clay, and you're watching Uncle Roland Martin. And the show is unfiltered. Make sure y'all tune in. Laura Ingraham, you suck!

I believe in you. All right, folks. Now, there's a new COVID variant that is causing significant problems all across the country, which means you've got to stay vigilant. The White House is trying their best to warn people of that. Joining us right now is Dr. Ebony Hilton. Of course, she's been on the show many times with the University of Virginia anesthesiologist. Glad to have her back as she is trying to get her Twitter account verified as best as possible.

I'm trying to help her out out y'all she was sort of complaining earlier she mentioned all these media outlets she's been on cbs npr and usa today and i'm kind of like well you might you might get your check mark you mentioned you would roll them out on a filter but i'm just saying i did say your name is right. You know what? This is why y'all see how he does me every single time. How are you rolling? I'm fine. I'm fine. You look like you're tanned. You been out?

You been out? You look like you're tanned. You know I'm not afraid of the heat like you are. Yeah. If y'all follow her Twitter feed, y'all know what I'm not afraid of the heat like you are. Yeah. If y'all follow her Twitter feed, y'all know what I'm talking about. She's afraid to get

a little toasty. All right. When I say it was hot, it was hot as Hades, Elsa. I tried to go outside and work out. I almost passed out. You done? Yes.

Alright, let's talk about this COVID variant. Stuff is opening up. Folks are running around. They think the world is just wide open and you keep saying, man, y'all better settle the hell down and stay vigilant.

What's up? Settle down. I mean, so we know the, how, where were you to start? The CDC changed our mask guidance over, it seems like a month and a half ago now. And I do, and I said immediately, I think this is very premature. One, because they were basing it on data, real life data, that was largely based on what was happening in Israel. What we know is that Israel, by April the 3rd or 4th, had over 60% of their entire population vaccinated. We still are 60% today. And even with them getting that to April the 3rd or 4th, they didn't lift their

mask mandate until April the 18th. They still said, we still need to be vigilant and get as many people as possible vaccinated before we say, okay, maybe we can take off our mask. And guess who's now stepping back on that? Well, those very same countries because of the Delta variant. The Delta variant, if we go back, we had the UK variant, that's the Alpha variant. We had the Beta, that's the South African. We had the Gamma, that's down in actually in South America. And now we have the beta that's a south african we had the gamma gamma that's down in actually in south america and now we have a delta variant and the difference between the uk variant and delta variant is that the delta variant can actually evade the immune system meaning that is it makes our vaccines although yes our vaccines are still effective in keeping you most likely

alive that we're seeing more people actually get sick, though. And to give an example, I have a friend who she was received her last dose of Pfizer vaccine on February 12th. Her husband actually was fully vaccinated back in January because he's a health care worker. And she traveled for work and unfortunately picked up COVID-19, likely on an airplane going to Atlanta, Georgia, but picked up COVID-19 the first week of June. And she presented with chest pain that she had to go to the emergency department because she was in such discomfort, loss of taste, loss of smell. And she infected her husband. Five days later, he started to have symptoms and now he has achy joints. And

both of them had COVID positive tests. So this is not just symptoms, but this is literally confirmed testing. So we cannot lose our guard or think that we have control over this thing yet. The virus is continuously trying to outsmart us. And we have to be two steps ahead, which means until our numbers are down, until we see our cases literally go down to zero, like they do in New Zealand, right? We got to keep our masks, wash your hands, don't go into these large crowds, to these concerts that I'm seeing pop up everywhere. We're going to really go into this fall in a very precarious situation. Okay. So,

if we've been vaccinated, but we've been told, hey, you can take your mask off. You don't have to do these things. So, what the hell? Now, Grant, a lot of airlines I've flown in the last eight days to New York, to LA, Chicago, the airlines to require you

to wear your mask. But I can tell you, Ebony, it was a lot of folks rolling up on me in Chicago, no mask, LA, no mask. Folks are having events. Very few people are walking around with masks. I don't see folks

with a Pirell or a hand sanitizer. That's what's happening. What we're seeing is that although, again, people have to realize what we report nationally as far as numbers can mean absolutely nothing in your neighborhood. We're seeing U.S. cases, yes, they're down,

but they're up by 68% in Oklahoma, up by 45% in Missouri, 42% in Arizona. It's all because if you're looking at where vaccine uptake is higher, we're seeing that those cases are staying pretty well in the Northeast, doing pretty well. But down South, where you're struggling to get people vaccinated in Alabama, for instance, we're seeing the COVID cases number go up. And then what I urge the CDC and the World Health Organization to do is to be transparent to say, yes, vaccines do a fantastic job at keeping you alive. But that is not the only consequence of COVID-19.

We know there are many people who have survived COVID-19 who now can have difficulty walking a full block around the neighborhood and they're 30, 40 years old. They should be able to do that we have people would who have survived covet 19 who now have covet brain where they can't hold a string of thoughts so they have um basically a severe form of just attention deficit um and that's one of my friends she has now word finding difficulties we have people who are survivors of covet19 who now have chronic pain issues. Their back and their joints are hurting. That's what her husband now has. And it's only been for three weeks and I'm hoping that that will subside and that their symptoms will get a little bit better. But it's been three weeks of them having chest pain. It's been three

weeks of them having joint pains. And the thought is, when will this end? I have another mentee, she's in her 20s. She was infected with COVID-19 in January and she still to this day cannot taste or smell. Now, what does that mean when we now have studies out of Stanford that shows that people who have died from COVID-19, who weren't necessarily coming into the hospital because of neurologic deficits, but when they did an autopsy, their brains are resembling those of persons with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And I talked to you about this last year before we had studies to show it. My question was, what are the long-term consequences of people

who say I lost my taste and smell? That means that it infected your brain cells. There has to be something that's linked to that. Yeah, and so it's just simply not worth the risk of going to a concert without a mask on and having fun for two hours if it means for the rest of your life you're going to have this strain of impairment. All right then. Well, Dr.

Ebony Hilton, it's always great to have you on the show. When you're headed back to Charleston, South. Well, Dr. Ebony Hilton is always great to have you on the show. When you hit it back to Charles in South Carolina next month. Next month. Well, let's stop consulting so we can help save the world. Yeah, I have a business meeting. All right. Well, I'm going to be actually there, I think, July 8th through the 11th. So I'm going to golfing. Yeah, I'll be I'll be a team that with my man, Darius Rucker. So we're going to hit a little golf. So I just want to know if I mean, did Black Woman Views. We're going to be on Twitter to ask about where we invited to this. We've been promised resorts. We've been promised. No, no, no.

Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Let me correct something. You have not been promised. You have suggested that I somehow, somewhere, someday in real life, which I think is imaginary, said I was going to give y'all an all-expense-paid respite at a resort.

But you clearly had an edible. No. No, I don't do... No, no. I don't do no, no, sir. I don't do trust, but what I do do is show up and I will show up on a golf course and we will have this resort. So I thank you in advance and may God bless you. Y'all love throwing God in there. All right. Everything.

I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Y'all have a good one. All right. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, let's go to our next story here. Michael, a Macongo and a visit. This is pretty interesting. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about a report that was done when the collective PAC said they did polling that was done by a black owned firm, Dr. Colin Belcher, that said black people were against defund the police. Now, Terrence Whitbury of Hit Strategies has a report that shows black folks' view on defunding the police and police reform.

It's a little different. Terrence Jones is right now. Is Terrence there? Hey, Roland. How's it going? How's it going, brother? Thanks for having me on. All right, then. So we're going to ask you some questions here. We've got Michael Brown, I'm a Congo Domingo, Dr. Avis Jones DeWeaver. And so we're going to chat about this here. So let's talk about this polling data. You've been spending lots of time out in the field talking to black folks and Democrats have been saying, oh, they've been getting killed. People don't want against defund the police, even black folks. But you say that's not necessarily true.

That's exactly right, Roland. You know, attitudes about policing and defund have been evolving in the black community since since since last summer, since the summer of unrest, when we really saw folks taken to the streets to express frustration after George Floyd. And for the first time, our recent polling, a BlackTrack poll, a poll that we conduct every month, shows 53% of Black people support defunding the police. And even more interesting is when we asked if they supported reallocating resources away from the police and overhauling police, 67% support. And this is across all groups, Roland, across Black men, Black women, under 50, over 50, even Black conservatives. A majority of Black conservatives say that they support reallocating resources away from the police and overhauling. And so I think it's incumbent upon Democrats

now to figure out how they're going to start talking about this and even more important, how they're going to start getting it done. Is that because Black people know what defund the police is, they understand the difference, and they're not falling for the okey-doke from Republicans? Is that what the difference here is? Well, see, that's a part of the problem here, Roland, is that we are allowing Republicans to define.

Activists have done a very good job. Organizations like Campaign Zero, Color of Change, and Black Lives Matter Global Network have done a very good job of redefining defund so that Black people do not think that the only outcome is abolishing the police. But at this point, the Democratic Party really has to lean into this. Now that their most loyal voters are evolving on this issue

and are saying that this is what they expect, then it's now in common on Democrats to figure out which elements of defund are actually appealing to people and to start redefining this issue. The fact of the matter is, Roland, defund is going to be a huge part of the 2022 cycle. We already see Republicans in races like the congressional race in New Jersey too, beginning to lean into and paint Democrats as anti-police. So if Democrats ignore this or even worse, begin to treat our activists like they are our opposition, then it doesn't mean that the community doesn't hear about defunding.

It means they're only hearing about it from Republicans. Michael Brown. Terrence, I understand the great work you're doing. Congratulations by the way on, on hit strategies. Um, you know, in polling, uh, and as a former elected official, you know, public, obviously we rely on polling quite a bit. Um, why do you think there's such a dichotomy between a whole lot of folks that seem to say, yeah, defund the police, and then people that say, oh, absolutely not. We need police to protect our neighborhoods. There's just such a difference. Why do you think

that is? Because it's so strange to see. I mean, it's one thing if it was one or two or even five point difference, but this is a major gap depending on which pollster, obviously, you talk to. That's right, Michael. And frankly, even depending on when you talk to them, this polling has changed drastically since the last time we asked the question. And I want to point out a couple of things because I think you're asking, you're raising the right questions here. One is that, you know, when we say 53% of black people support defunding the police, that means almost half of black people don't, right? That's the other side of that coin. And so this is a trend line that we see moving, but it does not mean that all black people want to defund the police. In fact, it means that half of them do not want

to defund the police. The second thing I think is important is the timestamp of when we're asking this question. Another question that we asked during this poll was whether or not the police treatment of Black people and minorities was improving since the Chauvin trial. And 56% of Black people said that it has not improved, and they don't expect police treatment of black people to improve post the trial. And so I think that what we're beginning to see is a frustration with the system, but also these things aren't happening in a vacuum, right? The attitudes about defunding the police are also happening in a context where we see increase in crime and

violence. So in the same poll where a majority of Black people say that they want, that they support defunding the police, when we asked them in the same poll, what were the top issue priorities for their community? We see gun violence and crime rising as a higher priority even than criminal justice reform. And this is new. Crime and violence has not been a top three or top five issue in the Black community in quite a while here. And so to see violence and crime rising above healthcare during a pandemic, rising above criminal justice reform, it really does show the nuance and the diversity within the opinions of the Black community. Thank you, Terrence. Omokongo. Thank you very much for the work that you're doing in this space. And we've been talking

this whole show about honoring Black voices and Black partnerships in corporate spaces. So as we move over to the political side, do you feel like these politicians, Democrat, Republican, are listening to the voices of hit strategies and the work that you're doing? Are they taking Black pollster seriously? Has it started to change? Where do we stand with that? You know, we still have a lot of work to do. And if they are listening to us tonight, then someone from the party is going to give us a call, because defund is the single biggest issue that I believe we must solve moving into this next election cycle. It is a tool, a weapon that has been, I'm sorry, a term that has been weaponized by

the right and that we now need to reclaim. But you know, I mean, there's still significant work to be done here. Black voters remain very optimistic and even very supportive of the Democratic Party. We see folks, we see Joe Biden reaching 86% approval, Kamala Harris at 78%, and Democrats even at 81 percent. You know, Joe Biden is nearing Obama level job approval here. You know, Obama was was at 94, 95 percent. So to see Biden really hitting that hitting hitting marks this high, I think it shows a level of trust and even a a cautious optimism in the black community. But that's also, that is in the context of an economic crisis that is affecting black folks, in the context of increased crime and violence,

and in the context of them still demanding pretty significant and swift action on criminal justice. So the optimism and the support is there, but it is broader than it is deep, and Democrats have a lot of work to do. All right, Avis. Hi there. So I have a question about the specifics of unpacking the definition of that question on your survey, because I heard that you said that you asked about opinions around defunding, and then I heard you also ask about opinions around reallocating. I was wondering if you had another question on your survey where it just straight up asked people what do they think defund the police means and provided a wide range of options so that we can really get a sense of

how people unpack it. Because unfortunately, I really don't think it's quite as clear to the populace as we like to think it is. You're absolutely right. It's not clear. And that's a part of what the left has to do now. It's a part of what Democrats have to do is to begin defining this. You know, the fact of the matter is there are a lot of elements within the defund movement, the defund platform that are quite popular to the general public. Things like, you know, investing in social service, nonviolent first responders, conflict mediation. These are all elements of the defund movement, demilitarization, training in less lethal use of force, these are all elements of the defund platform that are actually quite popular amongst the general

public, not just Black people and not just Democrats, but amongst the general public. And this is where Democrats have to stop saying, have to find a better response here than being against defund, than treating our activists like opposition and start saying what they are for. Especially when we can prove, when we can show proof points around the country of how these policies have actually made people safer. And you just don't see this on the right. You know, you don't see Republicans treating pro-life activists or pro-gun activists like they are their opposition. In fact, they are their greatest asset. And so as long as Democrats have this rub with our activists,

then we are not harnessing the most energy that we have in the party. And that's going to a lot of that is going to hinge on how we address this issue. All right, then, Terrence Wilbury, folks are asking they want to be able to see the results of this record. They actually go read it for themselves. Absolutely. Please follow us at HitStrat. I'm sorry, at HitStrat on Twitter or on our Web site, HitStrat.com. I'm sorry, at Hitstrat on Twitter or on our website, Hitstrat.com. And also you can find answers to Avis'

question there about how folks are defining defund. All right, then. Terrence, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate it. Thanks, Roland. Talk to you soon. All right, folks, got to go to a break. We come back. A recap of the first weekend of Essence Festival 2021. It was virtual. We had some great performances. We'll be talking with the top editor at Essence Festival 2021. It was virtual. We had some great performances.

We'll be talking with the top editor at Essence, Corey Murray. That's next. Roll the Martin Unfiltered. White supremacy ain't just about hurting black folk. Right. We got to deal with it. It's injustice. It's wrong.

I do feel like in this generation, we've got to do more around being intentional and resolving conflict. You and I have always agreed. Yeah. But we agree on the big piece. Yeah. Now, conflict is not about destruction. Conflict's going to happen. Every time the life of an unarmed black man is cut short by police violence, we're outraged. When it happened here, I said enough is enough.

Not as a state senator, but as the mother of a black son. I led Ohio's first bipartisan community police task force to stop racial profiling and address police brutality. We established standards for accountability, hiring, and use of force. I'm Nina Turner, and I approve this message to be a voice for change. Before Till's murder, we saw struggle for civil rights

as something grownups did. I feel that the generations before us have offered a lot of instruction. Organizing is really one of the only things that gives me the sanity and makes me feel purposeful. When Emmett Till was murdered, that's what attracted our attention. I'm Kirsten Sinema. I found the time to train and run the Boston Marathon. I think it will be the most emotional run of my entire life. I found the time to train and complete the Ironman competition in New Zealand.

And almost a dozen other races. And I had plenty of time to summit Mount Kilimanjaro. But I just couldn't find the time to come to Washington, do my job, and vote for the January 6th Commission to investigate the domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol. Kirsten Sinema. Bad for Arizona. Bad for America. Let's get a real Democratic senator in Arizona Welcome back to Roller Martin Unfiltered. This weekend was the 2021 Essence Festival.

It was virtual, I guess it was last year. Folks, a lot of stuff happened. First of all, it kicked off on Friday, went from Friday, Saturday, Sunday. A lot of performances, a lot of things happening. First off, guest appearances, Israel Houghton, Lucky Day, Jasmine Sullivan. They had a great conversation with the man, D-Nice, as well. Here is a recap of some of the performances right here All the time, all the time, you are good. Say it again. Say it.

You are good. All the time, all the time, you are good. I heard him sing a good song. I heard me at his time And so I came to see him to listen for a while And there he was this young boy

was dragged up to my eyes Holding the thing with his fingers. Come on, come on. Singing my life words. Killing this song. Feeling this song.

Killing this song. Feeling this song. Telling my words. We've been working this song I can't stand the rain And I can't stand the sunshine Sing it if you got it You can take the pain And I can't make your sun rise And you can't stand the rain

And I can't stand the sunshine And you can't take the pain And I can't make your sun rise I can't stand it I can't stand it It's my window I can't stand the rain For those of you who don't know, my first time ever performing as Tank

was at Essence Festival in 2000 at the House of Blues. So if Essence ever rolls around and I'm not there, I feel empty inside. Essence, don't leave me out. Always count me in. This experience for me and every experience at Essence and all of you beautiful people, every time I've come, you always make it absolutely amazing. Incredible. All right, folks, you can go to Essence.com, EssenceStudios.com and see all three days of the festival.

Joining us right now is Corey Murray. She's the deputy editor for Essence Magazine. Corey, what's happening? Not much and you? Glad to see you. We saw each other at the Dick Gregory screening, Tribeca Film Festival in New York, Saturday before last. So obviously it's a little bit different experience, experience Essence, experience Essence virtual, but the reality, experience, essence, virtual. But the reality of the show must go on. So take folks through the process of putting all of this together to have this three day experience over two weekends. Well, thank you for having me, Roland. So like a lot of big major festivals, we all had to pivot and shift as COVID continued to, you know, wreak havoc, if you will, unfortunately, on a lot of our outside plans.

But as we were coming into the 2021, and especially as people, you know, started getting vaccinated, you know, restrictions were lifting a little bit. We were like, well, how can we bring the spirit of New Orleans to the virtual audience? We went down, had several meetings with Mayor Cantrell's office, the city of New Orleans to see how can we activate down in New Orleans proper and still be safe. And so the plan we came up with is instead of, you know, unfortunately, we could not be in the Superdome or the Convention Center. So we decided to find about four outside venues for proper ventilation. And then we invited essential workers of New Orleans and then a few other special guests to really keep the audience small, but curated in that we really wanted to say thank you to a city that has been a home for us for upwards of 27 years. So that's how we looked at it. But then, you know, when you showed that beautiful clip

with Jasmine Sullivan, not all of our headliners and artists could come down to New Orleans when we were taping. So while we were able to film Tank in New Orleans down at the Lakefront Arena. We filmed Jasmine Sullivan in her Philadelphia hometown, which, you know, was beautiful. So this year, you know, obviously the aesthetic of whether you're on a stage or having a studio performance, we wanted to give our audience a little bit of variation, you know, to have that feeling of what it's like to be there and then, of course, revving up to be fully back together in 2022. And obviously that was the performances, but then, of course, you also still had, normally if you were in New Orleans at the convention center,

you have the empowerment stage where you have your panels and things along those lines. Some of them, yes, you were virtual, but you still also did some stuff that you also shot there as well. I caught a little bit over the weekend of the conversation with Amanda Nice. Yes. So that was another thing that we wanted to do. And again, those were for the audiences, for essential workers. But yes, it was these beautiful airstreams we had. I was at St. Augustine's football field, which was, you know, made me nostalgic for my high school days. But more importantly, was the conversation I was able to

have with D-Nice and Angela Yee about pursuing your passion. And the big takeaway I had there is, you know, D-Nice was telling his story. And I didn't know that once things kind of, you know, slowed down for him as a hip-hop artist he started designing websites for people like he designed yeah like alicia key's first album for albich packing whatever so he had kept working but you know fast forward to now we all love and adore him for club quarantine you know he looked at me he said listen my he said no one could have ever said this i am a 50 year old dj that's what i am and he like, and look at the life I have right now. And that really stuck with me. So it's like, you know, it's like, don't ever count

yourself out no matter what your age. But yes, that was a conversation that we had right there in New Orleans. And you know, D-Nice has been such a friend to the brand. He's DJed a number of parties for us before club parent parent quarantine. And now we were able to have a little small set, just a little one at Howlin' Wolf. And that was presented by Copacola. So he did a DJ, a 30 minute DJ set for us. And Roland, I got to tell you, even with just maybe I think it was maybe 40 people that were in there masked up. Still, when he hit Before I Let Go by Beyonce, well, the remix by Beyonce,

we all got together safely and did that electric slide. So it felt just like Essence Fest all over again. So one of the things that, so it was Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And so now the second weekend is gonna take place this weekend. So what you got planned? Well, of course, you know, we got to do another one with DJ Khaled and friends. He's coming up next weekend. So excited for that. We have Neo, we have a Marie who's going to do a,

you know, who we taped a performance again, back at Holland Wolf. And of course we have a lot more conversations that we have a lot of previews and new shows, cast coming, and then something I'm very excited about, and not to be a plug, but I was able to talk to Robin Roberts about her new show that she has called The Turning Tables with Robin Roberts. And again, we're going to have some other rich conversations for our Wealth Empowerment Stage, as well as Beauty Carnival and of course another revisit of our gospel stage on sunday so again so friday let's go over times because a lot of folks only look at performances six to ten but y'all actually had stuff uh in the daytime uh panels that were taking place as well yes we were so on friday uh from six 10, it's the beauty carnival. And then

you can on Saturday from 10 to about one is our wealth empowerment. And then we take a break and then you come back for entertainment access, which is usually between three and six, take a small break. And then at seven o'clock, the evening concert series begins. And then on Sunday is a full day of get lifted. And I also can't forget our Girls United After Dark series that we do on Friday night as well. All right, then. All right. Well, Corey, we appreciate it. We'll definitely be checking it out. We have been partnering Coca-Cola to push as many folks as possible to watch the streams. We've been running throwback videos and photos every day on the show. And we're going to be doing that all throughout this week and this weekend as well.

And so last point, this year, last year you guys streamed everything on your YouTube, your Facebook channel. But this year you have it just on Essence.com and EssenceStudios.com, right? No, we also have it on our Facebook page. Yeah. Yeah. You also have it on your Facebook, on our Facebook page. So people, so people go to essencestudios.com. Is there, is there still a signup they got to go through as well for that? Yes. But what's great about essence.com, especially for the stuff that just happened this past weekend, it's already kind of pre-packaged. So once you sign in at quick sign in, then you can go down and see the stages that you want and then you can watch the full show but if you want just those like you know that tank

performance if you just want to see tank i would head over to essence.com or on our facebook page and you can just pick and kind of curate your own playlist of what you want to see but essence studios.com has them all all right sounds great uh cory thank you so very much always good to see you uh and uh and i can't wait when we're actually back in person uh in new orleans because there's always a great time every july i can't wait to see you on that stage roland well you know we're gonna have you know next and of course and next year you know we, we got we got to crack out the white linen suit. So, you know, we've got to do it right. We're going to be in New Orleans with the heat. That's right. All right. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. You're welcome.

All right, folks. As I said, we've been showing you all the throwback moments. And so here is another essence festival throwback moment presented by coca-cola lance gross what's up man how you doing man i'm enjoying this essence fest i love new orleans yeah you got shades on 11 30 in the morning. Yes, I got one hour It's my birthday today. So I got an excuse Birthday today. Oh, you're gonna be turned up tonight. Yeah. Yeah, I was turned up last night Fun this weekend man. Oh, yeah, absolutely a lot of good music a lot of good people This is like a family reunion where you get to connect with people you haven't seen in a while

But you know, it's a beautiful thing absolutely what you're working on uh right now i'm we're about to go back to film the third season of star also i'm still working on macgyver and i got the bobby brown story coming out september 4th and 5th on bt all right man it sounds good what's up i'm lance gross and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. The All right, folks. As I said, this weekend, this weekend, you can catch the second weekend of the Essence Festival 2021 beginning Friday, taking place Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then next Monday, we'll have a recap as well. All right, y'all. Rich Dennis is the owner of Essence Magazine. When he bought it, he

returned it back to being a Black-owned company. And we caught up with him. This is our second throwback. We caught up with him the year after he bought it, talking about what it meant for Essence to return to being a Black black owned media company. You have been on a treadmill set on 12.0 this whole week.

Yes, sir. But you know what? It's been lovely. We're here fighting for a cause and a purpose, and we're delivering against that. And so it's worth it. So you can yank it up to 13, but only for a little bit. I mean, I was seeing you, and you're like, okay, okay, I got you. Okay, hold on. okay, gotcha.

But this is a new experience for you. Very new experience, you know. It's not too long ago I was selling soap in the parking lot across from the convention center, you know, to now having to go through all of this and be a part of all of this. It's just, I mean, you can't ask for more than this type of dream to come through and then to be able to share that with everybody, right, and to be able to take that dream and invest it back so that other people can live out theirs as well. So it's been good.

But when did that hit you, that story you just said, you coming here like a bunch of the folks you see here. They just trying to get their hustle on. They got T-shirts and oils in the hats, and they just trying to make it happen. And then go, whoa, whoa. Yeah, you know, it hits you at not at one moment, right? It's like all of the things that you have aspired to do. And when you start to do them and you realize like, oh, you know, and then, you know, even just like standing here.

Right. Prior to this year, I'd never even been in a room where there was a red carpet. You know, I'm like, okay, this is different, right? But it's those types of experiences, and then that triggers in, hey, now the responsibility is to share this experience and to make sure that we're enabling way, way, way more people to move from that parking lot to come into this room and to be able to talk to you last question I saw the email I woke up this morning I see the email and again as a content creator I see this deal you guys announced with Queen Latifah yeah yeah you know it's it's very it's it's very timely and it's also critically important. You know, we talk about owning our culture, right?

And we talk about creating wealth for our community, right? And the most valuable thing that we have left as a community and the one thing that they can appropriate at times they can misappropriate at times but they can never take is our culture I gave an interview where I said they would say rolling how could when I ran Chicago defender rolling but you know the Sun Times the Tribune and I said let it be clear they can never out black me no they cannot and what stuff but they can never out black me. No, they cannot. They can cover our stuff, but they can't out black me. They can't out black you.

And what we have to do is monetize our culture, right? And so that's what that fund is about. That fund is about monetizing our culture, creating equity for our content creators, for our makers, so that they can have enough of a base that they can reinvest in themselves and back into other young entrepreneurs that are content creators and that are makers. And so that's what that's about.

So we're partnering with Queen Latifah and Shechem, but we're going to have other partners and we're going to talk. All right, now I want to go to comedian Roy Wood. Roy, you there? What's up, brother? What's up going on? The last couple of years, you've been the onstage host at Essence Festival.s festival yeah man i got a chance to get out there and do the damn thing i know they had lani love in that mix uh last year shout out to lani you know it's for it's about black women i'm all with a black woman being in that thing matter of fact that was the year i still came back and

was able to do a little bit of stuff with Coca-Cola and State Farm as well. So, you know, any excuse to be in New Orleans, whether I'm hosting or not, I don't care, man. I'm there. So you. So how many years were you the onstage host? How many years? It was two. It was two.

And then the third year I came back when Lonnie was hosting, but I was still doing stuff. So there was this weird assumption. And I'm like, no, Lonnie doing it because that's what people forget, man. The host, there's an upside and downside to being the host of essence, right? And what's the downside? Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll give you downside first. The downside to hosting essence is that there's so much moving and happening the entire night. You get there at six o'clock for a concert that starts at seven. That doesn't end until midnight and every 30 to 40 minutes, there's something else. So you miss most of the show. You can see parts of it. You can see a third of whatever somebody's doing on stage because the beginning of it, you're doing something else. And at the end, you're waiting to get on.

So it's hard to really see the show from the front, too. That's the other thing. Yeah, you got to see Bobby Brown, but you saw him like this for 40 minutes. You didn't privy to the preparation process of so many legendary black musicians. And to be able, just as a fellow performer, to be able to just sit in the back of the Superdome at two in the afternoon and just watch Mary J. Blige go through her beats and see how the greatness is created, to see Solange go through those beats and see how it's created, like that, that was worth it like I would don't tell Rich Dennis this but I would have done it for free just for that you know do not tell Rich you would do anything for free no no just say no just say just call it call it a free bonus no you ain't gonna have me undercut Lon Lonnie Love. Get Lonnie her money.

It's just that part of it was something that I didn't know I would appreciate. The only person that I didn't get to see rehearse was Janet Jackson because she did all her rehearsing next door at the Pelican Stadium. She didn't even step foot into the Superdome until it was go time. So that one I didn't get to see, but to see even the young artists versus the new artists, the background dancers, and to be backstage and interact with all of these people on differing parts of their showbiz journey. The only thing I can say comes close to that green to the talent green room, in essence, is Showtime at the Apollo, where they tape a bulk of shows in one night. So it's amateurs and vets and y'all all in the same green room are you been there under that stage that little tight ass room it's 10 15 different types of performers down there and like that was always the part that i'll always appreciate about essence was being able to see that only person i say was half ass

on a rehearsal because they just know what they was gonna do was master P Actually some people actually say it I was reflected in the performance See I ain't say that you said that no The I know I got no problem saying it, you know essence went toward these curated Performances and it was really kicked up by by uh diddy and bad boy uh where it was like tight it was on schedule the master p1 was sort of like it was like a a nice a very good cake that was brought out sloppy with icing i mean it still tasted good oh no but but it just the presentation just it didn't win any awards it i mean, Master P ain't doing choreography. I think he also followed Solange that night. So I think that might have been part of the issue, too.

And Solange is precise down to the exact latitude longitude on the stage where Master P is. So I think maybe it's like chocolate cake and spaghetti. They both delicious. But we have one right at the other one. I'm going to. I got you. I got you now. Now, now, now, now sharing people this. I talk about this all the time that people really don't understand. They really don't understand the the kind of black love you get at essence. The average person don't really understand that. It's the one thing I feel like everyone needs to go to. It's bigger than Mardi Gras in terms of people and revenue.

It's bigger than any Super Bowl you can name in terms of people that descend upon. Because it's a whole ass another group of people that ain't even inside the stadium that are there because of essence. And just all of the first of all, it's only the stadium only holds 70,000. It's 400 and 400,000 people who are in New Orleans for the festival. Correct. So, yeah, it's it's I mean mean if you can get a hotel room definitely hell even if you can't just come down there and figure it out but it is it's like a wedding reception with a class reunion with the damn step show concert love like any beautiful event you can name it's all of that rolled up into one.

And it's just folks walking down, just no barking from the dog, no smog. I remember Charlie Wilson night. Black folks was walking from the Superdome. Everybody had on a white linens. And it was just love like people in white. I saw people wearing all white, see other people in all white. And then they would all just walk in a group. And just as you walked along and saw other people in all white, they just walked with y'all.

Like, it's just I don't even know what to compare it to. Like, you know, going to FAMU, the only thing I can really that I even have perspective on is maybe, you know, a black college homecoming, you know, and I, and I'll say this with all, you know, with all respect to the magic city classic, you know, from my home crib of Birmingham, but not even that compares the Bayou classic don't compare, but it has elements of all of those things. Um, you know, and even for white folks, if we're going to keep it 100, come on down. Bring your money. Come get you some of this good-ass culture. And it's ain't nobody looking at nobody sideways. If you're in an interracial relationship, come on down.

Ain't no judgment. Bring your black boyfriend. Now, Roy, I got a good second for you. Why you cut me off? Don't cut me off. No, bring your white girlfriend. Don't cut me off. No, no, no. When you brought that up, I got a great segment because I actually did this and I should have

done it. I should have shot this at Essence, but I'm going to give it to you. I'm going to give it to you. This is perfect for one of those Comedy Central segments you do. Sort of like the one we did at the convention when I showed out. But we're going to talk about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You showed me up with the pocket square game. I'm going to hit your ass one of these days. No, you're not.

So. So. So here's what I did. I had a photo. I had a photo of like three fine white women. And I would go to brothers and I would say, is she fine enough for you to bring her to essence? I'm going to give you that one. So imagine

if you had like three photos and said okay and is she and one of them i really messed up this one brother it was a white woman in a confederate flag bikini oh no you can't bring that to essence you can't bring up look all right i take back everything i just said it's not all love it's not all barking from the dog you will get your monkey mouth behind pushed into traffic on canal street if you walk around there with some damn confederate flag anything on anything on matter of fact where you want them one of them tennis hats and just wear it low that's that's how you need to show up but not you even have me coming on that. You ain't going to have my black-ass

girlfriend. Somebody going to send this to her and talk about why you was talking about white girls on with Roland Martin. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Amy Jones and we were just in the chat. She goes, how the hell we get on white women? I am in a happy home and

me and my black ass girlfriend are happy and content and you are not going to have me speculating on white women in Confederate bikinis on the way to the Charlie Wilson show. No, thank you. I'm just saying,

y'all are bearing off into very dangerous territory. No, we weren't. That's the whole thing. We was just talking about black colleges and homecoming and then here you come. And then all of a sudden,

white women. What? I said I had a good segment idea for Roy. The whole point is to have a funny segment, Avis. It's called Levin. See? You know, black women got to get a sense of humor, damn it. I'm just saying.

He said white women bring Your black boyfriends Hang on Hey baby Nah that wasn't me talking about white women That was Roland Okay I love you a lot

Told ya You can get me in trouble Roy Wood Jr. I'm going to see you Much respect man When you going to bring Trevor to Essence You know what man we got to get that boy down This would have been the year because the daily show

We just took the summer off until September So we can retool and reshape the show In September with a new look for late night So this would have been the year. So maybe next year I'll bring him down there. All right, then. Well, I'm glad the only appearance I've made on Comedy Central the late show has been on the Roy Wood

Jr. segment when he was at the Democratic National Convention. Y'all gotta see it. And if y'all see it, I want y'all to understand we did not practice that. The ending was completely improv. All on camera. Real stuff.

Real stuff as always, man. All right, man. Well, I'll see you back in these streets, man. I got that first vaccination. I'm going to get me all three. I'm trying to collect the whole set. And I'm going to be back in the streets. All right, my brother. Thanks a lot. Dr. Avis. Pleasure. My pleasure, fine. All right, Avis, Thanks a lot. Dr. Avis. Pleasure.

My pleasure. Mine. All right. Avis, I'm a Congo and Michael. I want to get from y'all before we close out your favorite essence festival moment. I'll start Prince from beginning to end. I have,

I was, you know, the ultimate Prince fan. I've seen him multiple times, but I have to say... That was 2014? Yes. My favorite show of his

was at Essence, where he came out. I swear his initial set must have been a good 30 to 45 minutes, and then he stopped, and he was like, okay, warm-up's over, and then he went on,

and I was just like, oh my God, I was about to have a fit. So yes, that is my favorite essence moment. That was a great set. In fact, that was the only time I've seen Prince perform live. One of my greatest regrets. That was, that was the only time. Yeah, seriously.

Uh, only time, but I will say this here. I will say, no, not take that back. That was the second time I saw Prince perform live. The first one was at a private party at his house in 2011. Excuse me. I'm not trying

to name drop, but I'm just saying. I will say this here, Avis, because you mentioned that year. He was phenomenal. We got some video. We posted some photos of that as well i got some great photos but after that show he went to the house of blues he went to the house of blues and uh until his people van jones others told me that so i get to the house of blues and um they they

cleared out the whole vip section so the house of Blues, Liv Warfield, one of his singers was performing at the House of Blues. And so I get there and I go, and so the VIP section is like in the balcony. So I go over, Van Jones is on the phone, and Van's like, sit down, sit down. And they had just cleared everybody out. And so prince was like close like but he was like bouncing around like a bouncing ball okay so he was there then he like disappeared and so sitting there was actress google in both the raw and i was in the movie

beyond lights she was a co-star with nate parker in the movie so I sat down and we had met before at the red carpet. And so we begin to talk. Then Prince bops in and he goes, now I did see you down there dancing. Because, you know, my seats are like on the third or fourth row right there on the end center stage. And then he turns to Google and says he can really dance. And then he turns to Google and says, he can really dance. And then he starts laughing. Because I was dancing at his house and we were rocketing.

But yeah, you're right. That concert was unbelievable. And it's so sad we no longer have him with us. But we certainly have those memories. Michael, you got a favorite Essence Festival moment? I have two. I'm not sure if it was the same it's a festival a moment. Sorry. I have two.

I'm not sure it was the same year or not. But Doc, you're exactly right about the Prince concert. I wasn't there that year, but spectacular. Two. One was somewhere in the early to mid-90s, new edition, turned it out. And I'm a new edition

fan, so I enjoyed it. The second one, I was with my dad. We were walking through. Of course, we had all the great VIP walking through everything. He gets introduced in the little green room thing.

He walked in and people said, ladies and gentlemen, you guys don't even realize, Ron Brown, that's our next president United States and I you know we as a family and heard people talking about it a lot but then when somebody actually says it in essence you're just like wow maybe the shit is true so those are my two instances new addition and how they treated my dad. Okay. All right. Gotcha.

I'm a Congo. I wish you had asked me first because I'm embarrassed to say that I've never been to Essence Festival. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a damn minute. The black card is in peril. I know. I know. See, if I was asked first first we could have got to all the

print stuff later y'all would have forgot and but damn i'm caught i'm sorry i'll be there next year though how in the hell all these years where your ass been I have no excuse I'm a Congo where you from I live in DC I'm born in Boston I mean you know I ain't been far

that's the problem right there it's that Boston part it's the Boston this is my hometown people from Boston go to Essence Fest I just was never on the plane Boston's cold. This is my hometown. People from Boston go to Essence Fest. I just was never on the plane. Yeah, no. People from Roxbury go to Essence Fest. I'm from Roxbury.

I just missed the plane. Hold up. Not your ass from Roxbury. You ain't never. Do you want? I know. I do. And take a plane is a whole other experience because the plane

is my whole life. Mute his damn microphone. Mute him, brother. No, Mute him, brother. Hey. Oh, poor baby. That's okay. We'll take you next time. Bring his microphone back.

I mean, you're going to bring your ass on here with braids or locks, and you're going to sit here. You know, you like, you know, super black and you... Oh, no. It's just one of those things that happens every year. It's

every year. I mean, you can, like, plan year. I mean, you can plan ahead. It ain't like to sneak up on you. True indeed. I'm going to be there. Y'all got to see me next year. No doubt about it.

Oh, man. Oh, my Lord. I got many favorite Ess essence moments. We've been sharing those on social media for the past week. We got lots more we're going to share with y'all. Of course, one of my favorites I was telling us about over the weekend, I came across a video and a photo of me and Leah Chase kicking it

during my interview with her. You know, she passed away a couple of years ago. And so it was always when I would go to New Orleans, I would always stop by Dookie Chase and just walk in her kitchen. And she's like, you always bring them cameras in my kitchen. And I was like, that's right. She got theme music and cameras following me around. And so that's how we always did it.

So, y'all, we got some great stuff. So all throughout the week, we're going to be having on Roland Martin Unfiltered Essence Festival Throwbacks brought to you by Coca-Cola. We got lots more to share. I mean, y'all, we got a lot of videos, a lot of photos, and so I can't wait to share with those. We've been

sharing two a day with y'all. Tomorrow, I'm going to start sharing three a day. We got so many, and so we look forward to that. Y'all, watch our social media. We've been sharing Six Essence Festival Throwback brought to you by Coca-Cola a day I think beginning tomorrow

I'm going to start sharing 12 a day Y'all that's how much stuff we got And that's just that's my personal archives We got unbelievable stuff And so we're going to start sharing that with y'all Let me thank Avis, Michael And used used to be black, Omicongo. Matter of fact, I know I'm not going to call Omicongo Dabinga.

His new name is Chad. I'm going to redeem myself. So allow me to thank Avis, Michael, and Chad or Chip for being with us here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Let me get him back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you so much.

Hold on. Let me see this here. Let me just try this here. So, Omokongo, have you seen the movie Cooley High? Yes. Okay.

Most definitely. Have you seen the movie Carooley High? Yes. Most definitely. Have you seen the movie Car Wash? Yes, I have. Okay. Have you seen the original Shaft? Yes, I have. Okay. Have you seen the Five Heartbeats? Most definitely. Nothing but love. Okay. Have you seen

Love Jones? Most definitely. Actually... Moving your left or whatever. You know, reciting the poem for Love Jones. You know, soundtrack was off the chain. Actually, I believe you're lying about one of those. You figured, let me just say yes

to everything because you said no. The black card was certainly going to go into receivership. It was going to be... The committee was going to meet when it comes to that. But you

halfway redeemed yourself. But your black card is still in review status, considering you have not attended an Essence Festival brought to you by Coca-Cola. So, yes. I will redeem myself. Yes, you redeemed yourself, and I will have you on

probation until this time next year. Alright, folks, thanks a bunch. I appreciate it. Y'all, don't forget, if y'all want to support Rollerball Unfiltered, please do so by joining our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar you give goes to support the show. What we do last week, man, we had a fabulous two days in Chicago. I'm really looking forward to it. We are completely virtual this week because we are packing up.

We have just two more days in our offices here, and then we're moving to our new office located on Black Lives Matter Plaza in the nation's capital. So please support us, y'all, by joining our Bring the Funk Playing Club Cash App, dollar sign RMUnfiltered, paypal.me forward slash rmartinunfiltered, venmo.com forward slash rmunfiltered, zellroland at rolandsmartin.com, roland at rolandmartinunfiltered.com. Y'all, thank you so very much. Again, I want to thank Coca-Cola for sponsoring our Essence Festival Throwbacks. And don't forget to watch the second weekend of the 2021 Essence Festival Live Loud Experience, all virtual, taking place this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, July 2nd through the 4th.

Go to Essence.com, EssenceStudios.com. That's the graphic right there. You see it, the 2021 Essence Festival of Culture Live Loud Virtual Experience. Again, Friday through Sunday, July 2nd through the 4th, and next Monday we will have the recap of this weekend. Cannot wait. Folks, that's it. I'm going to see y'all tomorrow right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Ha! I know a lot of cops.

They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios.

Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers.

But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else. But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council.

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