#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Final Farewells Buffalo Shooting Victims, LA Maternal Death Rates, Macy's Targets D9 Sororities

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

5.23.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Final Farewells Buffalo Shooting Victims, LA Maternal Death Rates, Macy's Targets D9 Sororities Buffalo, New York, is still mourning the victims of the supermarket massacre. This week, more funerals are scheduled as the town tries to put the pieces back together. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has put his big foot in his mouth. He said his state's high maternal death rates are more standard if you don't count black women.   The Tennessee college student who was assaulted by a cop who lied about her arrest will join us with her attorney to update us on the case. In Florida, a black woman gets brutally attacked by a white man at a gas station. It took about five days for the violent man to get arrested. You will not believe what charges he's facing, and Jacksonville activists are demanding more from the state's attorney. In our Where's Our Money Segment, we will discuss Macy's new collection targeting black sororities. My question is, are any of the Divine 9 getting any proceeds from those sales? Plus, more about Ginny Thomas and her possible role in the Jan. 6th insurrection. There are emails of her asking Arizona lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden's popular vote.   And in tonight's Fit, Live, Win, we're talking about black men and mental health. We'll meet a husband and wife team who are doing their best to let black men know it's ok to ask for help. Support #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfiltered Venmo ☛https://venmo.com/rmunfiltered Zelle ☛ [e-mail] Annual or monthly recurring #BringTheFunk Fan Club membership via paypal ☛ https://rolandsmartin.com/rmu-paypal/ Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Coming up on Roland Martin on a filtered streaming live on the Black Star Network. Buffalo is still in mourning for the 10 victims massacred at the tops supermarket over the weekend. More funerals took place and more are scheduled as the city tries to put the pieces back together. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy has put his big ass foot in his big ass mouth.

This fool literally said the state's high maternal death rates are standard if you don't count the black women. Yeah, we're going to talk about that. A Tennessee college student who was assaulted by a cop who lied about her arrest will join us with her attorney to update us on that case. In Florida, a black woman gets brutally attacked by a white man at a gas station. It took about five days for the violent man to get arrested. You would not believe what charges he's facing. And Jacksonville activists are demanding more from the state's attorney. And now, where's our money segment?

I'm going to break down Macy's new clothing collection targeting black sororities. And I'm gonna unpack where's the money for black people. And also more about Jenny Thomas and her role in the January 6th insurrection. There are emails of her asking Arizona lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden's popular vote. In tonight's FitLiveWin, we're talking about black men

and mental health. We'll meet a husband and wife team who are doing their best to let black men know it's okay to ask for help. And what's up with this United worker who actually tried to get into a boxing match with a former NFL player. The brother knocked his ass out. Wait till we show you the video.

It's time to bring the funk on Rolling Marked and Unfiltered on the Black Star Network, let's go. He's got it. Whatever the miss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the find. 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 rolling. Yeah. With some go-go-royale. Yeah. Yeah.

It's rolling, Martin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rolling's Roland Martin. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Rolling with Roland now. Yeah. Yeah. He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best.

You know he's Roland Martin now. Martin. Where's the stinger? Folks, we continue to mourn the shooting victims of Buffalo. Funerals took place over the weekend as well as today. The funeral of Catherine Massey took place today in Buffalo. The 72-year-old, known to family and friends as Cat, was described as a civil rights activist with a deep love for her community. The youngest victim of the Buffalo supermarket mass shooting, Roberta Drury, was 32. She was remembered at her funeral on Saturday for her kindness and a smile that could light up a room. Roberta was the first victim killed in last Saturday's massacre.

Also on Saturday, beginning at precisely 2.29 p.m., city leaders and the community held 123 seconds of silence in remembrance of the lives lost at the hands of a white domestic terrorist one week earlier. Hayward Patterson's family said their final goodbyes on Friday. The funerals for at least five of the remaining victims are scheduled for later this week. Now, that white domestic terrorist, Peyton Gendron, is charged with first-degree murder and faces New York's maximum penalty of life in prison

without the possibility of parole. If convicted of federal charges, he could face the death penalty. He is currently being held on suicide watch and without bail in the custody of the Erie County Sheriff's Office. The question that many folks are asking is, how has all of a sudden this story just sort of evaporated, if you will, from the national radar? My pal, Dr. Julian Malveaux, Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at California State University in Los Angeles. Dr. Omokongo Dabinga, Professorial Lecturer

at the School of International Service at American University. Reverend Jeff Carr, founder of the Infinity Fellowship in Nashville, Tennessee. Glad to have all three of you here. Jeff, I want to start with you. I'm thinking back to Charleston. I'm thinking back to Mother Emanuel when nine folks were shot and killed. And this is not about comparing one shooting or the other. But people, a number of people have commented on this as if America's sort of like, OK, got it. Tim, we're killed. We can just sort of move on. Have you gotten the same sense that even though this took place nine, 10 days ago, it is as if folks have just said, OK, fine, what's next?

Sure. I think part of it is the desensitizing of America to violent acts like this. We talk all the time about paying attention and keeping things in the active spotlight. Again, with Charleston, at that period of time, it was so ghastly, it was so horrible that it spent months in the news cycle. Since then, we've had so many shootings. We've had so many people who gathered and put together makeshift memorials on lawns and put together memorials on storefronts, put together memorials and built memorial cities in the middle of town squares, that in many people's minds, it has become par for the course. That's part evolution of society.

It's part evolution of media. But it doesn't make it any less painful, especially for the families who are seeking justice in this space. At the same time, they're seeking to find closure. It's very difficult to find closure when you are not expecting to make the transition from physical life on this side to life after life. We have 10 families who are affected, and they are affected not just in this moment, not just in this news cycle of seven days, but they are affected for the rest of their lives, generation upon generation. When we talk about national media not focusing enough energy on this space, I am ever grateful for a network like Black Star and a conversation, a family meeting like the one we're having tonight, because it gives us an opportunity to recognize one thing. We are national media. We are international media. We are global media. And when mainstream media

does not pay attention to us, thankfully, we have a tool by which we can pay attention to ourselves. We can mobilize the emotions. We can do the mourning that is tool by which we can pay attention to ourselves. We can mobilize the emotions. We can do the mourning that is necessary. And we can initiate the activism we need to truly make a change. You know, Julian, and for folks understanding, I am not placing blame on President Biden on this. But I also think this, one of the reasons why, what also changed is that here, he went to Buffalo with First Lady Jill Biden on Tuesday, last Tuesday.

And I think the other difference was, because what happened was there was a previously scheduled trip to Asia to meet with Asian leaders over the weekend. And so if I look at this with Mother Emanuel, you had this citywide service that became a national service. So Obama comes in, there's this massive service, all of the media is there It's being carried live On all of the networks And you literally had Five or six or seven days Of build up

For this moment You had morning shows Broadcasting from Charleston, South Carolina You had primetime shows There and then you had this massive event. Also, I think that also played a role in this. Because what often happens is, I think after Biden went there, spoke on Tuesday, it's sort of like, okay, we're cool. Now we're

moving on. And I think that also is I just understand how media operates. And with the whole storytelling, I think that's what also happened here. I think you're partially right. But I think, you know, I want to go back to what Reverend Jeff said about people just being desensitized. People have fatigue. This stuff keeps happening and it keeps happening and people don't even know what to do. Of course, we get strength from our activism. And, Roland, of course, you need to be commended because you've been on this. Our show last week, you spent all of the show really talking about this. And the morning shows can still go. There are going to be five more funerals.

They can still go. I mean, the fact is that I think people are desensitized. People have fatigue. People don't know what the answers are. And so they just sort of say, ugh. In addition, of course, one of the competing factors is whatever else is going on with Ukraine. Many folks are in graduation season. I attended three yesterday. And you got several shout outs, by the way. Somebody said, I know that lady. She's all rolling.

I'm like, I'm the nerd team. What you talking about? Anyway, just giving you an FYI. But in any case, I think that people are in the middle of their own stuff, and stories that we're gonna talk about today that you shared, the anti-Blackness in this nation is so damn, and I say damn deliberately, trying to cut out my cussing, but so damn prevalent. And so this just feeds into what all else is happening.

Little boys going to people's houses with whips. Uh, people using the N-word at gas stations. This is not something that made national news. Something that happened to a friend of mine here in L.A., because she didn't get out of the way soon enough for the man to pump his own gas. He was in a hurry. So she had to be on those ends. I mean, it's acceptable in a way that it's never been acceptable before. And so that's part of what's going on. People are like, okay, black people got shot, whatever, because we get shot just about every day. We need something. I don't know what it is, but we need to make this, basically say,

this is not to be tolerated. I think brother Biden did the best he could, but guess what he could do, Roland? There should be a cabinet member at the rest of these funerals. Somebody should be at each one of them. Susan Rice has been charged with dealing with racism. Okay, Susan, where you at? Excuse my abiding. Where you at, sis? Come on. I mean, we need to, this could not be swallowed by the exigencies of the day. This is headline news, if not for all of America, certainly for us. You know, you said, talked about these families, reverberations forever. You see the, it's almost too much to take. And yet the only way we can take it is when we resist it. You know, I think on the Congo, it is interesting when,

as I sort of watched these reactions that we've had, and we discussed this last week also, you know, these folks who are operating from this view of we need a specific anti-black

bill. Now, I get where that's coming from, but the thing that I sort of keep trying to walk people through, and it was amazing to me the number of people who just literally don't understand basic fundamental politics. I was going back and forth and I was just arguing with these people who kept saying,

but the Asians got a bill. But they didn't. These fools would even say, well, the money allocated is only for them. Lie. Just a lie. And then folks like, well, our pain needs to be acknowledged. I totally get that. But the reality is you cannot have a black-only bill.

When a federal law is passed dealing with hate crimes, it doesn't just apply to African Americans. Well, I don't understand. Literally, the domestic terrorism bill the House passed last week deals with all domestic terrorism, not just domestic terrorism targeting black people. And I guess what angers me is when I see black folks who are smart enough to know advancing this, and then they are impacting those who don't understand how this stuff works,

and then they get all riled up, and I'm like, y'all spreading lies. And then it feeds into they ain't doing nothing for us, so therefore I shouldn't vote. So that's why I like when Recy often calls these sort of things, you know, examples of voter suppression. That's really what she's talking about in terms of the net impact of when people are spreading these type of things. Man, you are so right. And this misinformation and disinformation, it's sad because it goes in both directions, right?

Because you have many within the Black community saying this, and they said it with Obama. They didn't do anything for the Black community because they were looking for this specific Black legislation. And then you got folks on the extreme conservative side on the so-called right who are saying, look, Obama and Biden and whoever's in charge who's Democratic, they're just trying to make all of these bills for Black people. So we get played both ways. And so when you talk about this level of sophistication that a lot of us just don't

seem to have, and then you got these fake bots out there on Twitter and Facebook and everything putting out more of this information, this is the time, going back to what Reverend Carr said about having a Black Star Network, where we really have to start checking our information sources. We really, just like you're doing right now, have to continue to call out people in all aspects on the spectrum, but particularly our community as well, because just like you've been talking about with the whole student loans things, black folks saying that Biden ain't doing nothing for HBCUs. And that gets young black people saying, well, I'm not going to vote for him. And so we have to make sure that we do our best to continue to control this information.

And going back to your other point about how the Buffalo massacre has lost attention, I would say that on the side of these Tucker Carlson's and Republican politicians and the like, and I'm working on not calling them, you know, we got left and calling them the right because they're so wrong. They're actively working to keep these stories up because they want to control the narrative on that as well. And so I'm listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene, one speech, and I'm listening to Tucker Carlson, another speech. They're all saying the same things, mentally ill, child, parents weren't paying attention. What about the violence on the streets of Chicago? There's no such thing to have need to support,

to stop, protect this country from white supremacy. These guys on every level, conservative AM radio shows, got all of their talking points in order. We have not developed a sophistication enough to be able to get all of our ducks in a row on these issues, and that's why they are winning today. And then when you add on top of that, you got Ukraine, you got a baby formula crisis,

and you got these elections, and it makes sense that why they would throw it off the table in terms of their media coverage, but we have to make sure that we are not doing that. It's all about that sophistication, and sometimes our own people are the worst enemies, but we got these folks on the other side who are actively controlling the narrative like they've been doing on so many other issues. Indeed. And so and I love these folks. All you doing, you just trying to protect Biden.

No, I'm trying to protect facts. That's right. I'm literally trying to protect facts. And what I also understand, like I literally literally trying to protect facts. And what I also understand, like I literally had to walk people through, again, the passage of the Voting Rights Act was driven by black people, but it didn't only apply to black people. And so here's what I would say to all the people who are saying this here.

Fine. Write a bill up and let's see where it goes. Seriously. I want you to write a bill. On any level. I want you to write and let me know where it goes. As soon as they can write.

As soon as they have the sophistication to write. Again though, it's... The thing that I keep saying is is that what it does is, and we got to be real careful, and I really want our people

to understand this here. This is not just us as African Americans, but I need Black people to be fully aware of how we respond emotionally to things and how people are very good at playing on our emotions. Even our own people, how effective we can be at playing on our emotions to get somebody riled up and they don't necessarily understand the nuances.

I mean, I walk people through the COVID Hate Crimes Act, which was anniversary on Friday, and the number of people who like the Asians got a bill, that bill is only for the Asians. Because in the top of the bill, they reference attacks on Asians. But the remedy is for anybody. And their deal is like, yeah, but they got mentioned.

And you're like, so you tripping on they got mentioned, but the remedy impacts anybody impacted by hate crimes. So you ignore the remedy. That literally makes no sense. Then I had this one fool going, oh, so the money this congresswoman set aside, how we know we can get some of that money, because it's a federal grant, because it doesn't limit who can apply. It literally says community groups.

But how much was set aside for us? No amount, because no money was set aside for Asians. No money was set aside for Latinos. No money was set aside for any group. It's for community groups. But where's our set aside? And you're like, but there's not was set aside for any group. It's for community groups. But where's our set aside? And you're like, but there's not a set aside. And again, they're going through this and people like, that's right. We need to make sure. And I'm going, what are you talking about? It literally doesn't

even exist. And so it's the playing of emotions. And I just need people to understand how folks are playing with your emotions to get you to respond to stuff. That is important. I'm going to go to a break. We come back. We're going to talk about several things. One, we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the Senator Louisiana. Y'all, what this fool had to say about black women and maternal... I keep trying to explain, y'all, these white Republicans don't give a damn about black people.

And Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy essentially laid it out. He don't give a damn about black women. And for all of y'all folk out there, you know, I call you a lot before now told y'all with Gary chambers who's running against Senator John Kenney, Louisiana. How if we register black people, Louisiana, we could literally defeat Senator John Kennedy and you could have somebody black sitting in that position to

deal with issues like this here. But then a lot of those same loud mouths, oh, no, we not gonna do that. But y'all cool what this fool said. Wait till I explain this. Then, y'all, we got our Where's Our Money segment. Because again, I told y'all, black people, how emotional we get.

We love white validation. And we love when white people show us some attention. And I'm going to walk y'all through how this whole thing with Macy's, putting out the clothes in the colors of sororities, and all these black folks all hyped and excited. I'm going to show y'all how it's a perfect example of us praising folk and giving them our money, us getting little in return. All of that.

Trust me, you don't want to miss it. You're watching Roller Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach and host of Get Wealthy. Let me ask you a question. Are your financial affairs in order or are you like Prince Aretha Franklin at Chat with Bozeman's celebrities that passed away with no will? Well, that's the topic we're covering on our next Get Wealthy program. Do you have the proper strategies in place to make sure that your assets and everything that you've worked so hard for pass on to the next generation and you create legacy wealth. So I encourage people to be thinking about what is the long-term plan as opposed to just for today

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It's Ryan Destiny. And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Okay. Okay, so I've told y'all when we're sort of unpacking these things, who cares about us and who doesn't. And, you know, I get these people who, man, Democrats this, Democrats that. In fact, I literally just saw something that was just, something that was stupid that comedian Eddie Griffin posted. And I like Eddie. I like Eddie. But again, I'm going to call out something that's stupid when I see it. You know, and I commented on his page when he posted

this item. And I'm going to see if I can pull it up. I just want you all to see this. And again, what happened. So he posted this. Trump may have hurt your feelings, but Biden is hurting your family, finances and your freedom. It's got 9,858 likes and it's gotten 1,696 comments and I said

this is literally idiotic. Are we having a fact-based conversation or some shit meant to go viral? The bills being passed by GOP legislatures nationwide are obscene, and they are specifically being targeted at black people. And so let me just see if anybody responded. So somebody responded. Then you got some folks. So you got one person here.

You're going one person. You have no influence. Okay. So let's see who this person is. Says somebody who, okay, some A&R dude. So Selah Dean or whatever. So let me just go ahead and just blow his ass up. And then this AHK Jones, I don't know who this fool is,

somebody who 351 followers, okay, and then got 12 other people. And then other people, you have to become disappointing. The jig is of our people are on the blah, blah, blah. Keep going on and on and on, okay? That's the kind of sort of stuff. See, again, I've yet to see a bill where it says black people are the target. Can you tell us more about these bills?

See, I want you to understand, okay? Somebody else up here, this Chicago kid, oh, we didn't nominate you, blah, blah, blah. Oh, somebody else. So you see all the people running their mouths. Okay, here we go. Of course, you would defend those donkers no matter what. You're part of the problem. Y'all see this here?

Not sure what bills you're talking about since the House and the Senate is both Democrat. If you're talking state legislator as well, it's up to the states and people can vote them in or vote them out. So don't hate because the Democrats are failing people of color. They always have. They need to have a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

OK. And all that sort of stuff. All right. The next story is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, how all of those people posting right there are stupid. Bill Cassidy is the United States Senator, one of two from Louisiana. He gave an interview to Politico. And this is what he told Politico when they were talking about the maternal birth rates in his state of Louisiana. Press play. Louisiana, about a third of our population is African American.

African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So if you correct our population for race, we're not as much of an outlier as it would otherwise appear. Now, I say that not to minimize the issue, but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. Y'all, he just said. Matter of fact, play it again. Louisiana, about a third of our population is African-American.

African-Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. Give me one. So if you correct our population for race, we're not as much of an outlier as it would otherwise appear. Now, I say that not to minimize the issue, but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. If you correct our population on race, how the fuck you gonna ignore one third of your whole state? Seriously? If you correct our state, oh, if you get rid of the black people, hell, our numbers look great. Oh, shit. If you get rid of the black, I hope y'all heard what he said.

Yeah, if you take the black people out, and we don't count the black people, hey, our numbers look good. Then he said, see, that was offensive, but y'all may not have heard what he said at the end of his comment. Play it again. About a third of our population is African-American. African-Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So if you correct our population for race, we're not as much of an outlier as it would otherwise appear.

Now, I say that not to minimize the issue, but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. Huh. For whatever reason, Black people have a higher incidence of infant mortality. Now, some of y'all may be watching me right now, and y'all might be saying, well, Roland, he's a United States senator.

And he said, for whatever reason, they have it. Go to my iPad let me go to this other pull up over here pull up right here pull up the iPad. Y'all I told y'all he's a United States senator, right? Come on, pull it up in here.

He's not just a United States senator. Bill grew up in Baton Rouge, attended Louisiana State University for undergraduate and medical school. Come on. Bill joined LSU Medical School teaching medical students and residents at the Earl K. Long Hospital,

a hospital for the uninsured. During this time, he co-founded the Greater Baton Rouge Community Clinic, a clinic providing free dental and health care to the working uninsured. Beal also created a private public partnership to vaccinate 36,000 Greater Baton Rouge area children against hepatitis B at no cost to the schools or parents. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Beale led a group of healthcare volunteers to convert an abandoned Kmart building

into an emergency healthcare facility providing basic healthcare to hurricane evacuees. In 2006, Beale was elected to the Louisiana State Senate. How your ass don't know how black women have a higher infant mortality rate when your ass a doctor? When you work with the uninsured? Of anybody in the Senate, you would think a doctor from Louisiana working with the uninsured, providing free dental and health care to the working uninsured might know why there's a

higher rate. It also could be the poverty rate in Louisiana. It could be that you're one of the broken states in Louisiana. It could be that the education in Louisiana is at one of the lowest levels in America. But here you have a white United States senator saying, if we remove the black people, everything will be well. This is the level of racism in the GOP, but some of y'all caught up in saying oh, Trump wasn't that bad, but Biden is worse, and this is a United States senator

representing Louisiana who is representing 33% black people in a state. He basically said to the black people, I ain't your U.S. Senator. Julianne, your thoughts.

Ooh, Roland, this angers me so much because obviously this man, this man has been a negligent physician. If he does not know why black women have higher infant mortality rates, die giving birth. All you have to say is Serena Williams. This has had more money than God.

But she still could not get the care she needed. We just had an event last month where a young brother, his wife died in childbirth because the doctors did not pay attention to her plummeting blood pressure during delivery. This was a middle class Black man, middle class sister. They don't pay attention to us. They don't hear our voices and they just write us off.

So most sisters I know who are basically of childbearing age, they're looking at dualas and others to help them get through the childbearing because they don't trust their doctors. And with Bill Cassidy as a physician, graduated from a med school, that's why people don't trust their doctors. And with Bill Cassidy as a physician, graduated from a med school, that's why people don't trust their doctors. You can't talk about if you adjust for them.

How you gonna adjust? What you gonna do, put us all back on slave ships and send us somewhere? That's the only way you're gonna... Black women are part of Louisiana. This man needs to be pimp slapped from one end of the state, from New Orleans all the way up north Louisiana,

if not all the way up north to Canada. That is just so absurd. It makes me so angry because I'm seeing black women's health. I'm seeing what's going on. I'm seeing how many black women don't get the health care that they need because of their assumptions. I always say that health care is about three A's, access, assets, and attitudes. And too many people who deliver health care have funky attitudes towards Black people, and especially Black women. Black folks are supposed to live in pain. That's why we don't get painkillers.

We're supposed to, uh, languish in our pain. No attention paid to us. We're... It's absurd, Roland. But this man, really, this is the anti-Blackness that we were talking about earlier, and he had the nerve to articulate it. Omicongo, it gets better. In 2014, he was elected to the United States Senate.

He sits on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Oh, it get better, Omicongo. His wife is a doctor. His wife is a doctor. His wife Laura is a retired general surgeon specializing

in breast cancer. Go ask your wife about how black women get breast cancer at a lower rate than white women but die at a faster rate because of the healthcare crisis. But he don't know, for some reason, why the numbers are so high with black women in Louisiana.

Wow. Wow. Going off of Dr. Malveaux's last point, this kind of goes back to our last segment with the Buffalo shooter, because this actually is a high-tech version, high-tech vocabulary of replacement theory. Because if you just get rid of the Black folks, get rid of the Black women, it's not an issue.

This is what I meant when I sent out a tweet last week saying the Buffalo shooter was not a lone wolf. He didn't act alone. He was a foot soldier playing on the messages that are given out by these so-called politicians, these leaders, and these talk show hosts. This is what Senator Cassidy, this is another example of

their saying in broad daylight all of the things that these other racists are thinking. Reverend Al Sharpton talked about it earlier today. Back in his mother's day, Reverend Al Sharpton's day, he said the Klan, they had their hoods on and everything. Now they come and kill you. They live stream these things. Now these senators, they come out here and say it blatantly. And they make it sound so professional and they make it sound so professional. They make it sound so academic. But at the end of the day, they're just proving what Malcolm X said. The most disrespected person in this country is the black woman. And he put it right out there on Front Street for all of his constituents to accept. And like you said, Roland, the sophistication level of black folks,

we got to get out there and get rid of him, and all the white people who stand by and watch this happen as well. He should be getting American Medical Association, all of these guys. He shouldn't be a doctor anymore. You know what I'm saying? It's like they should be coming for his license for putting out something ignorant like that. But this is the day and age where you can get by with these. This isn't even subtle.

This is direct racism. If you get rid of the black women, we are doing okay. What are we going to do about it? We need more people to be raising the alarm just like you're doing right now, because this is nonsense. Well, here's what I find to be real hilarious here. So, Jeff, this is what he said in response.

He said, Individuals are cutting off and misquoting my statements, highlighting minority health disparities to create a malicious and fake narrative. My entire conversation was about my work to address racial bias in health care and address high maternal mortality among African-American moms. Okay, where's the evidence? And here's the whole deal here. Just so people understand, in

Louisiana, black women have the second worst maternal death rate in America with four black women dying for every white woman in the state, and 58 women die per 100,000 live births, four times the national rate. That is Syrenabelle Cassidy's Louisiana.

Yeah, absolutely. In that moment, I think back to the days when I actually did watch football every now and then several years ago. I think it was CBS or maybe Fox had a segment to call, come on, man. Anytime I hear something like that, I immediately go, come on, man.

You got to be kidding me. You have to absolutely be kidding me. All of the facts in his bio, it leads me to be confused. It leads me to say obviously this does not make sense. This is a space of cognitive dissonance

where reality is not operating parallel to experience, to what he should know as a trained medical professional. What did you learn in undergrad as a science and biology major? What classes did you take in medical school when you were doing your internships, when you were doing your residencies? Every single doctor I know, black, white, or other, knows about health

disparities, particularly for black women. I think this would merit some amazing Ph.D. student going back to research the Earl Long Hospital, where he taught in the 1990s, to see how. That's exactly like the preface that said, I don't mean to sound racist, but that means that the next thing that is coming out of your mouth is the most racist thing you ever heard. So for him to be backlogging and say, for whatever reason, the disparity is not there. You are aligning exactly with what Dr. Omokongo said. We've got the same issues coming from that last segment. It's what Dr. Malvo said. We do not matter. It's what Omikongo said.

There is a coordinated messaging that is being spoken out aloud. This man has common sense. He knows about, he knows the issue is health disparity. He's a doctor. His wife is a doctor. He knows the stats in Louisiana. He knows that for every four black women that lose their life in a natal and prenatal situation, there's one white woman that loses hers. That's a gross health disparity. And it has to do with economics. It has to do with

access to care. It has to do with insensitivity on behalf of medical professionals. All of this is documented history. With all of the stats pointing to this, the conclusion is really clear. He simply does not care. It does not matter. It's not that on, it's not on his radar. Well, and for him to say things like for whatever reason, and I say that not to minimize, it surely means that I don't care about the lives of black people, even the ones that I am duty-bound by law and by vow to represent. And, of course, he posted a series of tweets. Go pull it up, please, where he talked about,

oh, people are misquoting me. He puts in here his work to get different bills signed into law. You can watch the full conversation. Here's the real issue here, Senator Cassidy, and that is you see it for whatever reason. Why would you even say if we remove the black women, our rates would be what they are? Well, hell, if you in West Virginia

and you remove all the poor, broke white people, guess what? Their education numbers will look amazing. Touché. white people, guess what? Their education numbers will look amazing. Touche. But you can't just remove the folks. That's how stupid it is. All right, y'all. Got to go to a break. When we come back,

we're going to talk to a sister. She was a college student. Got jacked up by a cop there. You know, we covered this story beforehand. We're going to give you the update on this particular case. Again, just showing you how we are treated. Should we be joined by her and her lawyer right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered? I'm going to also break down for y'all.

I'm going to be all hyped about Macy's having some clothing for some Deltas and some AKs and some Zetas and Sigma Gamma Rho. But where the rest of the money at? Once I break it down, y'all are going to understand what I'm talking about. Folks, don't forget, download the Blackstar Network app on all available platforms. Apple phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung

Smart TV. Please also join our Bring the Funk fan club. For all of your dollars go to support our show. Checks and money orders go to PO Box 57196 Washington, D.C. 20037-0196 Cash App app, dollar sign are M unfiltered. Paypal's are Martin unfiltered. Venmo's are M unfiltered. Zelle is rolling at rolling at smart.com rolling at rolling martin unfiltered.com. We'll be right back. next on a balanced life with me dr jackie summertime when the living is easy or is it

summer vacations class reunions kids in summer camp all fun but stressful you need to get into a summer mindset and have a plan oh yes our panel gives us their favorite summer planning hacks. On the next A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie here at Black Star Network. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not. From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives And we're going to talk about it every day, right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Hi, I'm Eldie Barge.

Hey, yo, peace world. What's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon. And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, y'all, last week we showed you the video of a Knoxville, Tennessee cop tackling a sister for no reason. Now, he lied about it. Here's the actual video. What you on?

I didn't do nothing. You tripping. Hey, bro, you tripping. What the fuck? Here's the actual video. Now that cop Joseph Roberts lied about his reason for arresting Trinity Clark, again, who he tackled, assaulted, and leaving her topless, as you heard her and saw in the video. Trinity and her attorney, Lance Baker, joins us now from Knoxville. Glad to have you both. Sorry, Trinity, we had to show that video again. First and foremost, why the hell, why was he walking up on you? What was the reason?

I'm still not sure, like sure what his total reason was, but it was just a normal night for me. The first traffic stop that he made, he actually was outside of my house, and my house is a busy street where I live, and I walked out. They waved at me, and I didn't wave. I just mind my business and walked to my car.

But I didn't- Okay, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm confused. So, there's a traffic stop in front of your house? Yes, the video of- Somebody you don't even know? Completely unrelated to Ms. Clark. So you walk out the house, I mean, first of all, hell, I grew up, if I see some flashing lights outside, I mean,

outside, my natural instinct is to walk outside and see. So you're standing in the front yard, and then you're just seeing what's going on, and then all of a sudden, he decides to just walk into your yard? No, no. I actually was leaving to go to a friend's house because I was packing for school, and he followed me. He followed my car. He chased my car down, but he never had his sirens on, so I never knew that anyone was following me. Never heard

any lights or anything. Okay, so there's a traffic stop. You get in your car. You leave. So this is the video right here. So this was the end of... That was the traffic stop, right? That was the beginning of the video when he chased me. All right, so, but that's not your car.

That was your car that just went by, right? Yes. Okay, so all of a sudden, he then comes flying down the road at you. And again, he's going real fast. He's gonna catch up with you. Is there audio on this, y'all folks? Go ahead and turn it up.

All right. So he's going. So he got no emergency lights on. 36. Thank you. Yeah, go ahead. He comes to a stoplight there. It's a biker. No lights, no nothing.

Okay, all right. You turn left. You're about to turn left. Okay, so the video ended. And was that you going into your front yard? That was me going into my friend's front yard. So you go into your friend's front yard. Do y'all have any more of the video?

Or is that it? So you. OK, so you go into your friend's yard, and then that's when all of a sudden he walks on you. At no time, what, lights not on? Nothing? No, he didn't turn his lights on until he got out of his car. And I was already outside of the car, almost on the porch.

Okay, so you're on the porch. Now roll that video. Now I need to see that. So he walks up to you, turned up. What you on? I didn't do nothing. You crazy. Freeze right there. Okay. Freeze right there. Freeze right there, y'all. Come back to me.

Come back to me. Thank you. So he comes out of the car, turn lights on. What does he say to you when he walks up to you? He doesn't tell me anything. I asked him why was I getting pulled over, and he still didn't respond. Then I asked him what was the issue. He still didn't respond.

All he did was reach for my hands and try to arrest me, but he never told me why he was arresting me, never read me any of my rights, never said what the issue was or what I did wrong. Okay, so, Lance, are you as confused as I am? Roland, I've been doing this for just a little under a decade now. I've never seen anything more egregious than the conduct that Officer Roberts displayed in this video. What's even more shocking is that he was allowed even after this,

and after supervisors, three different supervisors watched this video, rubber-stamped it. The only thing that they disciplined him on at all was the foul language that he used to Trinity's friends and other innocent bystanders that actually came out of their houses when they heard the loud screams and just wondered what was going on. Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. At any point in this whole deal, has the department stated why he stopped her? None.

This occurred on August 11th of 2021. Trinity had to endure months of felony prosecution. It wasn't until December 7th when she finally said, no, I'm not taking any plea deal. What were the charges? What did they charge you with? Charged her with felony evading arrest, reckless driving, assault on a first responder, seven different charges.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold up. How was she evading arrest when she was driving down the street? He was engaged with another driver and she pulls in front of a friend's yard. I mean, what did they say? She was speeding? Did she run through a stop sign? Run through a red light? Failure to yield was one. You know, he also, you just showed the video, the first part when she's actually making, Ms. Clark has to make a wide turn around the original stop,

the red car that he had pulled over. Yeah, hold on, hold on. Roll the video, y'all. Roll the video. Keep going. Right here in his arrest warrant, he says basically that Ms. Clark nearly clips him, which is not supported at all.

I mean, there is several feet. She's on the other side of the street. The only other place she can go to make a lawful turn around this. It just goes to show you, from beginning to end, Roland, this was a hit job. This guy, he ultimately got what was coming to him. The problem was, is Sierra Davis, who in January

was pulled over by this cop, he has actually turned off his body cam. But unbeknownst to him, he chased her going over 100 miles an hour, and department policy is when you go over 100 miles an hour, that body cam turns on. Ultimately, in chasing Sierra Davis approximately six months after Ms. Clark's incident, there is a wreck after his lawful chase. When other officers arrive on scene, he lies and says, I hadn't been following her. I hadn't been chasing her. Obviously, that is contradicted by the body cam that he turned off. He is now facing felony prosecution for those lies, those blatant lies. But he has not been charged.

He has not been, you know, there was no discipline, of course, by the department when they reviewed the use of force reports, when they reviewed the body cam and or dash cam. The only thing that he got disciplined over was he might have said a cuss word to some innocent bystanders. So had they properly dealt with him in August, then you don't have this problem in January. And to be honest with you, as I'm watching that video, this absolutely reminds me of Sandra Bland, where there was a police officer, a Texas department, a public safety trooper was engaged in a traffic stop. Sandra Bland comes out of the parking lot at Prairie View A&M University,

not speeding, wasn't like she didn't yield or whatever. The cop turns around, follows her. She's thinking the cop's trying to get by. She gets over. He hits her with the lights and says, you didn't put a turn signal on. Then, of course, that led to him getting mad because she was smoking,

ordered her out of the car. She said no, pulls her out. She gets arrested. And then, of course, she dies in jail. Literally, I'm watching that video and said Trinity could have been another Sandra Bland. No question, Roland. And I mean, just take this, even if you don't know anything about the legal world, I mean, evading arrest, you can kind of infer some things just by the way that sounds. How do you evade arrest when you don't know you're being arrested? Right. It's kind of hard to evade something when you're not under arrest. And you don't have your lights on.

You don't have your sirens on. Again, Ms. Clark hit the nail on the head when she said the only time that this officer and that she was aware, if you watch that video and you roll the whole thing back, Ms. Clark's car is maybe at one point in time way off in the distance down a long straightaway. But she had no idea that this officer, any reason for him to come. Yeah, that's why we played the video. Y'all just roll it. Lance, keep talking. But, yeah, we played it.

I mean, she goes by. I mean, he has to speed like hell to catch up with her. She's gone. And keep in mind, Roland, too, this officer had just been released from his FTO program where he was supervised by another officer doing ride-alongs with him. He had only been solo by himself for one month before Ms. Clark's incident happened. And then, of course, just a few short months later, we have the Sierra Davis incident, and he's at it again. I mean, it just completely erodes public trust in people that are in a position of power and authority. And, you know, we have a lot of good officers in this country, but we have a lot of officers like this that need to be called out a lot sooner, and we wouldn't have these situations repeat themselves over and over again. Y'all keep rolling videos.

So what is the status of the kid? First of all, she wouldn't take the plea bargain. So are they still pursuing charges against Trinity? Have they dropped the charges? Are they now admitting he lied? What's going on? So where we are right now, Roland, of course, this incident with Ms. Clark happened on August 11th of 21. It wasn't until December 7th of 21 that Ms. Clark finally got her opportunity to have a preliminary hearing and got to actually face the officer. He swore an oath again when he took the stand and lied repeatedly again on exactly what he put in the sworn affidavit, which initiated the criminal charges. I've been doing this quite

a while. I've heard a lot of preliminary hearings, had several, a lot myself, and I've never heard a judge say at the end of this, I'm dismissing all charges after watching this video. I find this video disturbing. Said it was disturbing. And is this, is he still on the police force? He is not. So in December 7th, after the preliminary hearing, you had the Sierra Davis incident occur, where he was caught lying shortly thereafter, and they fired, terminated his employment. He is being prosecuted for falsifying an official report. It's my understanding that he's going to be placed on probation for a period of two years. I don't know if the state attorney is opposing diversion. It's going to be apparently left up to a judge.

But there's been nothing. It's the same type of scenario that Ms. Clark went through where he's lied not only on the official report, but in Ms. Clark's case, you actually have a preliminary hearing tape where the man got on the witness stand and further tried to justify his actions. He committed perjury on the stand. Yeah. And Roland, exactly. 100%. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that perjury was committed. And I'll tell you, when asked to comment on whether or not there was going to be charges in relation to Officer Roberts and Ms. Clark's case, the official statement from the lead DA, the district attorney, says the role is to determine

whether criminal charges are warranted. As such, the DA will not open an investigation into Clark's arrest. We do not review cases to determine whether violations of civil law or violations of departmental policies and procedures occurred as those determinations would be outside the purview of this office. How? How is perjury outside the purview of a DA? He lied. If I lie on the witness stand, my ass will be prosecuted for perjury. And here's the thing. Listen, I had a guy last year that was prosecuted for a felony over calling 911 too many times or falsifying a 911 call. OK, if you have two murder cases, somebody kills two people just because you get them a conviction on one doesn't mean you don't prosecute and get justice for the second victim. It's no different in this case. Instead of getting two years on probation, if that's the case, he should at least be getting

four, another two with Ms. Clark's added on. It's just not only is it a repeated failure by the Knoxville Police Department and the supervising officers, it's a failure on the part of the district attorney general who just ultimately refuses to come down on officers when they're caught with their pants down, so to speak. I mean, ultimately, the guy was caught blatant. And Roland, if you roll even that video further, he has fellow officers that have to calm him down and tell him, listen, you don't need to say another word. And then you see a congregation of about three or four other officers shortly thereafter, and they sit there and say, gosh, you know,

we've told him, are we really here over, you know, a little bit of weed that was apparently found scattered in the yard somewhere? I mean, we've talked to him about this. The only thing you can infer is they're talking about Officer Roberts, who initiated this whole thing. Unbelievable. So sorry that you had to go through this, Trinity. And again, but thank God that, again, you're still here. Because we've seen what cases like this have gone south. And we're talking about your funeral.

And we've been talking to your mom or dad or family members because we've covered many stories like this here. Keep us abreast of what happens. And hopefully, Lance, I take it y'all are going to be filing suit against this officer in the police department? We certainly plan to. We're getting everything together, of course. things just keep trickling out left and right. It should have been in front of the police advisory and review committee. Apparently, KPD never turned over the use of force report to them. Unbelievable. You know, there's just, there's so many things that could have been done differently. And officers all the time, when they do certain things,

they say hindsight's 20-20. There was a video, there was plenty of stuff to get this guy off the street and get his badge away from him in August and not have any of this happen further. And unfortunately, that didn't happen. Crazy, crazy. Trini, Lance, we certainly appreciate you joining us. Thanks a lot. Thanks, Roland. Jeff, I'm gonna start with you. You're there in Tennessee. This is why I have long said that I don't care what any lawyers say. If a cop lies on the police report and it is proven that they are lying, automatic termination. And this is also why the state must change the law and say that officer cannot be hired at any other law enforcement agency in that state.

And this is why there should be a national database of any law enforcement officer who has been fired where it lists why they no longer have a job. Because all too often, guys like this fool easily get a job in a neighboring county or city. And I think I need to add to that, Roland, in concert with what you're saying, that it needs to be not just a federal database, it needs to be a law, a federal law, and it needs to include state universities and private institutions that also end up hiring people for their security force. So often we see this. If you can't get with the Metro Police Department, you end up going to the state troopers.

If you can't get with the state troopers, you end up going to the sheriff's department. If you can't find a sheriff department somewhere to help you in some small town, you end up on the security force at a campus, and it's disconcerting. This is a situation that very easily could have turned, as you pointed out, into a situation and circumstance with Sandra Bland, who also had a state trooper, Encino, Brian Encino, who also lied, who also committed perjury. So we see that this is a state of a police state of anger, of frustration. And we're dealing with people who clearly define themselves for what they are.

They are patty rollers. They are patrollers. They are predators. He hunted this sister. I say to the sister and her family, I thank God. I thank the ancestors that you're still here to tell this story, to Sister Trinity and her entire family and friends who were traumatized by this predator hunting her down and then ripping her clothing off and exposing her, that this will not end with victory for anybody other than you all. This is going to be a part of the story. We have to also be on hand. Knoxville is right up the street. I'm an alumnus of Tennessee State University, so my heart goes out to her. I've got a son who is her exact same age. And for those who watch the video and say she should have just been quiet,

she should have just closed her mouth, she should have just figured it out later, if there wasn't that much noise that drew so many people out to be witnesses, we don't know what could have happened. So I'm glad the sister was cussing. I'm glad the sister was fighting. I'm glad the sister was saying, I've got to protect my life and I've got to protect my dignity. And I'm most glad that in this case, footage proves that people do lie. My mama used to say, if you got a mouth cut from left to right, you're capable of lying. And we see that this officer has a history of not only lying, but predatory behavior. You're absolutely right. We should be able to have legislation passed

to make sure that these kind of officers not only get fired, because often firing is the easy route. We can't be satisfied with firing. We need firing, prosecution, removal of any benefits they got paid to the victims of the people that they targeted. And we also need them to be blocked from ever being able to be in a position where they are engaging with the public ever again. Folks, hold tight one second. When we come back, we're going to show you all this video out of Florida. Shocking and stunning. Black woman in a convenience store. This white guy just comes in and just starts beating the hell out of her. And why is the DA there, frankly, going south on this, frankly, white domestic terrorist?

Yeah, we're going to unpack that next. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. I'm Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach and host of Get Wealthy. Let me ask you a question. Are your financial affairs in order? Or are you like Prince Aretha Franklin and Chadwick Boseman's celebrities that

passed away with no will? Well, that's the topic we're covering on our next Get Wealthy program. Do you have the proper strategies in place to make sure that your assets and everything that you've worked so hard for pass on to the next generation and you create legacy wealth. So I encourage people to be thinking about what is the long-term plan as opposed to just for today or just right after I pass away. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Carl Payne pretended to be Roland Martin. You are watching Roland Martin and I'm on hisstar Network. Carl Payne pretended to be Roland Martin.

Holla! You are watching Roland Martin and I'm on his show today and it's... What? Huh? You should have some cue cards. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your boy, Jacob Lattimore

and you're now watching Roland Martin right now. Eee! Orange County, California, Sheriff's Department needs help locating Naya Anita Jolene Jingles, who left home on foot on May 5th of this year. The 15-year-old is 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighs 140 pounds, with black hair and black eyes. Nya was last seen wearing blue jeans, a blue sweatshirt, and black Air Force 1s.

The teen has developmental disabilities and needs her medication. Anyone with information on Nya Anita Jolene Jingles should call the Orange County California Sheriff's Department at 714-920-0835. 714-920-0835, 714-920-0835. Let's go to Florida, where a black woman brutally punched in the face repeatedly by a white man at a convenience store. 23-year-old Rain McCoy was a target of a racially motivated attack by Kevin Troy Williamson

in a Jacksonville gas station. It took about five days before Williamson was arrested. Watch. Folks, he is literally beating the hell out of this sister. Williamson faces a misdemeanor battery charge for that vicious assault. He's currently out on bond. The white man has a history of violence. He's a registered sex offender and had charges dropped for domestic violence and aggravated assault. He's currently out on bond. The white man has a history of violence. He's a registered sex offender and had charges dropped for domestic violence and aggravated assault. Civil rights leaders demand state attorney Melissa Nelson upgrade his charges to a felony, specifically a hate crime. Now, here's what also bothers me. Go back and play the video. Who's that punk-ass

black dude who literally is walking in the right of the screen who does nothing as this sister is getting viciously beat and this brother just just walks his old lazy ass up and acts like it's no big deal joining me is ben frazier he's the president of northside coalition of jacksonville being glad to have you back on the show seriously a misdemeanor uh you're muted Coalition of Jacksonville. Being glad to have you back on the show. Seriously, a misdemeanor? Oh, you're muted. Are you there? Let's go ahead and try it now.

You know, there you go. We think that the state attorney, Melissa Nelson, should in fact stop straddling the fence rolling. She needs to stop beating around the bush and kicking the can down the road. She needs to be moving instead with all the limber speed to add on charges to this man who actually conducted this vicious, brutal, and savage attack. This incident was, in fact, a hate crime. Anybody can look at that and see, and it should be prosecuted as such. Here are the facts. Twenty-three-year-old Raymond McCoy, single out and targeted because of her race, targeted because of the color of her skin. She's left bruised, battered, and traumatized by this man, 59 years old and white and 220 pounds, beating on her as if he's in the ring with Muhammad Ali. In addition to that, this alleged assailant, ranting and shouting ethnic slurs during the entire event. Derogatory insinuations.

You all need to go back to wherever you came from during this event. It's a hate crime. It warrants the charge to be upgraded from a misdemeanor to a felony, a 20-second attack, Roland. It consisted of at least 10 single and combination punches. And in addition to that, he threatened her saying he had a gun in his car. This attack. I mean, that is just. McCoy injured and.

Yeah. I mean, first of all. A robbery. In the safe space. Shocking. Absolutely brutal. And Julianne, really? a misdemeanor. That's what's absurd about it is that these white people excuse each other for their attacks on us,

just like these fools are running around talking about that boy in Buffalo was mentally ill. Yeah, he was mentally ill, but he was also a criminal. And this man is a criminal out on bail, out on bail. I mean, this is ridiculous. But it's ridiculous that black women, again, we saw the previous segment, where that poor little sister was basically treated no different than someone who had their clothing stripped off them at an auction post in a slave auction. No different than that. Black women, we are, as Oma Kongo quoted him earlier, Brother Malcolm said, at the bottom of the totem pole. And it's just absurd. Just hitting this

woman for no apparent reason, just because he felt like it, put him up under the jail. Watch. If somebody doesn't do something about him sooner rather than later, he's going to do this again to another sister. And then what are we going to do? So this has to stop. It just really has to stop. These assaults on black women, they're beyond hate crimes. They're beyond hate crimes. That's a simple thing to call it. This is a deranged,

rabid, rampant anti-blackness. Again, Ben, what is the DA saying? What is her rationale for only moving forward with a misdemeanor? There's no rationale. She is mysteriously and suspiciously quiet, Mr. Martin. We're wondering when she's going to start talking and addressing this issue,

making clear that these types of behaviors and attitudes will not be tolerated down here in Jacksonville, Florida, which I'm fast becoming to start calling the plantation city. The bottom line is it's time for us to draw a line in the sand that we will not stand by quietly as an organization. The Northside Coalition has made up its mind. We will not allow Black women to be savagely brutalized and victimized by white men. We will not tolerate racist attacks such as this. No, we tolerate these types of white supremacist attitudes to exist without confrontation. Unbelievable. Omokongo. Yes, I'm glad Mr. Frazier ended with that last point about without a confrontation, because

if I read the sister's social media post, she said that there were about 10 other people in the store. That man should have never made it out of the store, period, bottom line. And all of us are about peace here, but we're not about just being beaten up for no reason. It's like you said, that brother walked up and did nothing. That man should have, everybody should have been up on him. No weapon or anything. This man, 59 years old,

you put up some of the charges earlier and there's a post talking about this. This man has had child sex offender charges, violent assault charges with a weapon as well, and these charges keep getting dropped. What relationship does he have with this DA, with this community? At the end of the day, if these folks are not going to protect us, two aggravated assault charges

dropped, one with a deadly weapon, domestic violence injunction. If people are not going to protect us, damn it, we got to start protecting ourselves, period, bottom line. So I'm with Mr. Frazier 100%, and we got to know where to target our social media and phone calls so we can join you and your coalition in defending our system. Thank you so much. But allow me to say that the state attorney is not the only one quiet. The city council and its representatives are also quiet. The sheriff is quiet. The mayor is quiet We don't hear anybody from the faith community standing up and speaking out

against social and racial injustice this is appalling and absolutely absurd this suspicious and mysterious lockjaw that so many people have It's time to stand up and speak out. We're going to continue here at the Northside Coalition, but we're calling on others here in Jacksonville and across the United States to join us in demanding trust, transparency, and accountability on the part of local authorities. We cannot allow things like this to occur without confrontation. Jeff?

It seems as if we are seeing a continuing motif around the country. I keep hearing the same two letters, DA, DA. The DA won't prosecute. The DA won't charge. We've got a ton of DAs who are complicit in protecting this kind of behavior. And that's part of the issue. I don't know how it is, Brother Frazier, down there in Jacksonville, but here in Nashville, those off elections or those spring elections seem to be very, well, they are statistically very low turnout elections. So if we've got 300,000 registered voters in a city like this, our last election, the DA got re-election by the hair of his chinny chin chin with 10 percent of the population turning out. With 23 percent Black

folk, that means that if 30,000 Black people just turned out to vote, we could elect a new DA. I think we need to create a national database, a new database, which is district attorney turnaround. We need to create a concerted movement. And in this case, maybe that's where we need to focus on. How do we practice replacement theory on these DAs when we have places and spaces where we can actually make a change? Yep. Well, Ben, look, y'all keep up the good fight. Certainly let us know what happens.

The sister involved here, she is so distraught by this. She has not talked, nor has she hired an attorney yet, because she's still traumatized by what took place. Thank you so much for your support. I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. All right, folks, got to go to a break. We come back.

We're going to talk about Macy's. Oh, how folks are praising them for putting out clothing in the colors of black sororities. But what are black people getting other than giving our money to Macy's? I'll break that down in our Where's Our Money segment. Next, on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Pull up a chair, take your seat. The Black Tape. With me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network.

Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in. Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. Next on A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, summertime when the living is easy, or is it? Summer vacations, class reunions, kids and summer camp all fun but stressful you need to get into a summer mindset and have a plan oh yes our panel gives us their favorite summer planning hacks on the next a balanced life with dr jackie here at black star network

i'm bill duke this is the all. What's up, y'all? I'm Will Packer. I'm Chrisette Michelle. Hi, I'm Chaley Rose, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. I'm being frozen out facing an extinction level event we don't fight this fight right now you're not going to have black on you All right, folks. So news broke, let's say about a week ago, about Macy's, the, of course, nationwide department store.

Them taking the advice of a sister who works there who's in a sorority, who's a Zeta, about putting out clothing and selling clothing in the colors of black sororities. Y'all go ahead and roll it. So, so here's the, so all of a sudden we're talking about how AKs and Deltas and Sigamagana Rose and Zeta Phi Beta, how they're looking for clothing and attire in their sorority colors to wear. And so this sister came up with the idea, let's put this out front and let's begin to sell to all of these black women. And so folks like it's a great idea.

So what Macy's did is they launched this collection, the Casper Sorority Collection. That's actually what it is called, the Casper Sorority Collection. And again, folks have been talking about this. They've been praising Macy's for doing this. This is a black enterprise story right here. And it was inspired by Kwazia King Thomas. Come to my iPad, please. The director and ad buyer

of Daydresses at Macy's. She's a 32-year-old sister who's a Zeta. She talked about how it was difficult for her finding clothing in the Zeta colors and so this was something that they did. Now check this out, y'all.

In the Black Enterprise story, this is what it says right here. The retailer is expected to hit 10 million in sales this year through the support of its core demographic middle-aged woman. In addition, Macy's has pledged $1 million to bolster education and research foundations of the sororities. Now, some of y'all watching right now and some of y'all probably be saying, I'm telling you I've been on LinkedIn and folks have been talking about, man, this is awesome. Oh my God, this is great. I mean, great idea by this sister.

Not this and her. Of course it's a great idea by her. She's working there. She's sitting here. She's sitting here. She's a buyer. Her whole deal is, my job is to help increase the bottom line for us to reach new customers, for us to raise our revenue. And so Macy's said, man, we're putting this line in 200, about 500 stores. They're sitting here looking at all the AKs and the Deltas and the Sigma Gamma Rho's and the Zetas and the money that they're buying. Oh my God. Yo yo man, let's do this thing.

This weekend, I saw a story by my girl Audra Birch talking about talking about HBCUs and in that piece, she was talking about how folks are now paying attention and how they are now looking at HBCUs. And the headline was called

HBCUs Have a Spirit All Their Own. Pop Culture is Paying Attention. have a spirit all their own. Pop culture is paying attention. Thanks to Beyonce, Ralph Lauren, and hit shows like All-American Homecoming, depictions of black campus life have moved from a different world to center stage. Again, I know, Audrey, great story. Great story.

And the story, it details what black folks have been doing, the shows, and how it's been garnering the attention of networks and advertisers, how Ralph Lauren launched this line of clothing, throwback clothing tied to Spelman and Morehouse and was all done by black designers at Ralph Lauren and how the schools are bidding for them financially. All good. But I want us to think about something that's a little bit different here. I want us to think about something that's a little bit different here.

I want us to examine how we respond when all of a sudden white corporate America begins to pay us attention. I want to say that again. How we respond when white corporate America begins to pay us attention. What we have to understand is that psychologically, we have historically, for centuries, for decades, been ignored by white America. They wouldn't let us try clothes on in stores doing Jim Crow.

They wouldn't acknowledge HBCU graduates. Even today, a black college student makes less money than a white high school graduate. So we respond differently when all of a sudden they begin to pay us attention. Then we are thankful. We are excited. They're doing this and they're showcasing this and they're doing this and we're excited. But don't you know there's always a cost to the excitement? Okay, let me go ahead and explain to you this way. So I asked my ad people, I asked them to send me some information. I asked them to send me some information.

I asked them to send me some information, though, with regards to Macy's. Let me see if I can pull this up. My guys, they, Urban Edge Networks, black-owned owned company they handle third-party advertising for us and so they sent me um some information and this is what they said oh let me turn it this way hopefully this hopefully this you know what i'm gonna do it this way. Hopefully this, hopefully this, you know what, I'm going to do it this way. Just hold on one second. See if I can save this as a graphic. No, I'm just going to pull it this way for you. They sent me this here, and this is what it says.

It says that in 2019 Macy's spent $280 million on advertising. It says that during 2020, it was COVID. It dropped to $206 million. Now it's on the rebound, and it's $215 million. Come back. $215 million. $215 million.

Okay. So I asked them the question, how much money does Macy's spend on black-owned media? Okay. Okay. I told y'all 215 million, right? Okay. So Macy spends 200 Let's see. Let's see if I can go ahead and do this right.

Macy spends 215 million. That means that if Macy's committed to spending 5% of their media budget with black people, black-owned media, I want y'all to hear what I'm saying. Okay? I want you to hear what I'm saying. Cause see, this is where I think we get confused. 215 million. $10.75 million a year. Huh.

Five years. That means that if Macy's spent 5% of their advertising, but y'all, I said 5%. That's it. 5% with black-owned media for five years. Now show it. Macy's would be spending with Black-owned media $53.75 million. Y'all How much money are they making off of us? Oh, I'm sorry According to the Black Enterprise article

Oh, did I get that right, y'all? Oh, did I read that article right? Oh, I did read the article right Huh Right here, please show it Oh, I did read the article right. Huh. Right here. Please show it. In addition, Macy's has pledged to spend, let me scroll back up.

Do y'all see it right there? Macy's has pledged $1 million to bolster education and research foundations of the sororities. Go back. If Macy's only spends 5% of its annual $215 million advertising budget. That's assuming they don't increase the amount of money. Macy's will be spending $53.75 million with black-owned media over the course of five years. So forgive me if I can't get excited about a million dollars going to the sororities foundations and research. I keep telling y'all what they're doing.

What they are doing to black people is getting us excited about white philanthropy and not investment. See, y'all keep, I hear y'all all the time, y'all keep asking, man, why you keep going on about this black-owned media stuff? Because they get you excited when they give a million dollars to the NAACP and to the Urban League, to the National Action Network, or the Rainbow Push, or to an HBCU, and you don't even realize how you're giving them millions more than what you're getting back.

Come on. But I ain't talking just about black-owned media. Macy's uses car service companies for their executives. How many of those are black transportation companies? Macy's does events. How many of those are black catering companies? How many black owned vendors have their items in Macy's stores? Macy's puts on events.

How many of those companies are black event planners? Macy's uses external lawyers. How many of those are black law firms? Macy's uses African Americans in numerous areas. PR, in food. We could go down the line. Do y'all now understand why we call it where's our money? Do you now understand that scene from Malcolm X when I keep saying I'm not satisfied? Do y'all now understand when I keep using the hashtag black economic social justice? Y'all, they playing us small. And we like, oh my God, oh my God.

Macy's recognizes us. They're putting clothes out in the colors of AKs and Deltas and Sigma Gamma Rho and Zeta Phi Beta because they want AKAs and Deltas and Sigma Gamma Rho and Zeta Phi Betas running to Macy's, buying the items giving their money. But you have to ask what is

Macy's returning back to black people beyond philanthropy? Y'all, this is about the money. And we walking around broke as hell just giving our money back ain't no rate of return. And again, I am annually from Macy's. Some of y'all can't figure that.

Okay, gotcha. Let me go back to the calculator. 100 million. Okay, 100 million. Let's just say black people, black companies are getting $100 million. You know what? That's too big for some people. Let me reduce that to 50.

50 million. You know what? What the hell? I think that That's too big for some people. Let me reduce that to 50. 50 million, you know what? What the hell? I think that's just too big for some people. Let me go down 25 million. Let me say that black people just from Macy's alone are getting $25 million a year in cumulative economic, direct economic investment. We are providing them a service for black-owned media, for car service,

for event planning, for food, law firms, accounting firms, construction companies, building Macy's stores, or rebuilding them. We could go down the line. Let's just say we're getting collectively, as black people, $25 million a year from Macy's in a year. That means in five years, black people would have received out of 25 million y'all, 25 million, 25 million, 25 million. Okay, do the math. That means we'll be getting 60, look at the numbers, look at the numbers, I'm telling y'all.

I'm telling y'all. We got 25 million a year for five years. It's 125 million. Okay? 25. 25 times 5. That's 125 million. Y'all, we can give a million to our own damn sororities.

That's just Macy's. Now let's go to every single corporation. Let's go to every single corporation where we are responsible for 10, 20, 35, 40% of their market share. How many Toyotas are we buying? What are we getting back? How many General Motors cars are we buying? Ford cars? Hyundai cars?

Chrysler cars? Honda cars? What are we buying? What are our businesses getting back in return? Go to the next sector. Pizza Hut. How much pizza are we buying? What is black-owned media getting from Pizza Hut?

Pepsi. How much Pepsi are we buying? What is black-owned media getting? What are black vendors getting? What are black companies getting? Two days, we are going to be marking the second anniversary of the death of George Floyd where companies made commitments anywhere from 30 to 50 billion dollars.

Y'all those were philanthropic commitments. But what about the money? We had Ron Busby on here. We told you how the federal government, which depends on our votes, spends $560 billion a year on contracts. African Americans get 1.67% of all federal contracts. That's $9 billion. If black people got our share of our percentage, y'all, this is just real simple. If black people got 13% of all federal contracts, that means we will be getting, what, $72.8 billion a year versus the $9 billion right now? What do you think would happen to black America if we were getting $72 billion a year in contracts from the federal government as opposed to nine. But see,

I'm going to show y'all how we also think. And I'm going to show y'all how we have to change our view. So here is the Macy's post I put on Instagram. This is the Macy's post I put on Instagram. It has been liked 493 times.

It has generated 84 comments. Hmm. That's really interesting. Let me find the post. Boom. Here it is. Here is the post I made on May 14th, a week ago about Fox canceling our kind of people hmm Huh. 2,137 comments. So a post about the money gets 493 likes. A post about a show.

Oh. a post about a show a post about us getting real money in real life gets 493 comments 493 likes, 84 comments but a post about a fictitious show of rich black people. A post about, let me roll that back. A post about black people getting paid in real time,

for real real real money got 493 likes and 84 comments but a post about a fictitious TV show about rich black people

got 10 times as many likes and got Got 10 times as many likes. And got, I'm trying to do real fast math here, 40 times more comments. So America knows how we respond emotionally to them canceling a show where we look good and we are rich and we are successful. We are responding emotionally to being rich fictitiously. Yet when it comes to being rich in real life we literally skip right over it. And that right there Julian, economist, explains where is some stuff we can't always talk about what white folks are doing. a real conversation amongst ourselves about our financial priorities and whether or not

we really are trying to secure the bag or we only want to secure it in the fictitious dream world. That to me is a fundamental problem with where we are mentally as a people. You know what I will say, Roland. You know, one of my two favorite words. I'm going to talk about the triumph of predatory capitalism, especially around these dresses. I'm going to tell my sorors and others, don't buy this mess. If you cannot find a soror who is a seamstress

who can make you a red dress or a blue dress or a pink dress or whatever other color dress you want to make, do not buy this crap. First, okay, I will be nice. But that stuff from Casper is cheap stuff, number one. But the $89 dress, they spent $20 on fabric, maybe even $10. And the seamstress who was in some Asian country got another 10. They rake it into profits. When these things don't sell, they're going to sell it for half off. I mean, I'm just outraged at the notion that they're pimping our sororities like this,

but also their sisters are going to fall for it. But even more than that, as you say, the clothing and the philanthropy is just the tip of the iceberg. The little $1 million, that's chump change to Macy's, and they think they're doing something. If they said $10 million for each sorority for DREF, the Delta Research and Education Foundation, for the AK's foundation, for scholarships, for internships, or some stuff like that, I might be impressed. This is nothing more than appealing to our spending nature. We spend too much money. We buy too much. We feel good, we buy some. We feel bad, we buy some. Get a new man, got to get new clothes for the new man. Dude leave, you got to

get new clothes to cheer yourself up. You know, I mean, get a new job, you need new clothes for the new job. Lose your job, you got to get clothes because you need casual clothes because you're unemployed and you can't wear your suits. You know? They are appealing to our consumerism, but it's predatory capitalism that's best extracting surplus value. Everything you ran down from the advertising and the event planners, all of that is correct, but none of these corporations have the mindset to empower black people. And the black people inside, this little sister, bless her soul, but basically she's feathering her nest. I got a great idea.

Let's pick my sorority. This is one time where I'm happy to see Delta Sigma Theta not listed first, but third after the Zetas and the AKs. I'm happy to see us list the third. And I'm telling my sorwers again, you have a sewer who has a caterer, who has a sewing business, and if you all, everybody want to wear the same color red, go buy two bolts of fabric at the fabric store

and get somebody to make your clothes. That's how you empower black people. When y'all sent me that, I just sat, I had to lay down in my office for 30 seconds. Somebody came and said, Doc, what you doing? I said, lay it down because I can't stand up to this. This is craziness. But what it is, again, it's the triumph of predatory capitalism that we fall for every time. There are going to be some sorors who are going to say, oh, yeah, we're going to go get our Delta dresses at Macy's. Don't you do it, y'all.

Let Macy's lose some money on this and understand how they approach Black women, Black communities, our stuff you know, you got me round up but I'm not you, so I'm not going to talk for 30 minutes about this, but I could it just totally takes me off I'm just, I'm a Congo and I got a little wind coming to the next of my guests

just please hold one second but I'm a Congo I need people to understand I'm not even saying don't shop. What I am saying is you should be asking an economic demand when somebody is trying to appeal to you to shop. Now, some of y'all may be sitting here looking at me telling me, oh, man, okay, that's, I mean, I hear you.

But do understand, y'all, this ain't just me. This ain't just me. This is March 3rd, 1967. This is what our brother, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said. Now, the other thing we'll have to do, let me go ahead and let me see if I can, I thought I had this connected. Let me connect it y'all this is literally the night before he gets assassinated

Dr. King said this on March 3rd excuse me April 3rd 1968 knowing full well I'm going to be saying this on May 21st 2022 he literally says now the other thing we'll have to do is this,

always anchor our external direct action with the power of economic withdrawal. Now we are poor people individually. We are poor when you compare us with white society in America, we are poor, never stop and forget that collectively, that means all of us together, collectively, we are richer than all the nations in the world with the exception of nine. Did you ever think about that? After you leave the United States, Soviet Russia, Great Britain, West Germany, France, and I could name the others, the Negro collectively is richer than most nations of the world. What he is saying is Delta Sigma Theta, a.k.a. Zetas and Sigma Gamma Rhoes are collectively richer than one individual in a sorority. We have an annual income of more than 30 billion dollars a year, which is more than all of the exports of the United States and more than the national budget of Canada.

And you know that? That's the power right there if we know how to pull it. He says we don't have to argue with anybody. We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words. We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails. We just need to go around to these stores and to these massive industries in our country and say, quote, God sent us

by here to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support for you. That's literally what he says, y'all. And what he's talking about is, and he goes on to say that, again, that if there are people who choose not to do business with us, and when he say business, he wasn't talking about folk simply letting us buy stuff. He was talking about actually

putting money in banks. Y'all think I'm lying. Go on back to the speech. This is what he says in here. He says we've got the strength in black institutions. I call upon you to take your money out of the banks downtown, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and deposit your money in Tri-State Bank.

We want a bank in movement in Memphis. So go by the Savings and Loan Association. I'm not asking you to something we don't do ourselves. He said SCLC put their money in a black bank. He said, take out your insurance. We want to have an insurance in. Quote, now these are some practical things we can do. We begin the process of building a greater economic base. And at the same time, we're putting pressure where it really hurts. I ask you to follow through here. Last line, Omicongo.

I ask you to follow through here. All I'm doing is following through on what King actually said in his speech on April 3rd, 1968. I'm not saying boycott Macy's. What I am saying to Macy's is, I want you to announce with the same vigor what your black-owned media spin. I want you to announce what you're doing for black law firms, black PR firms,

black catering firms, black transportation companies, black event planners, just like you did for the announcement. I want the black people working for Macy's who have corporate jobs be putting pressure on Macy's saying what is going to be your economic reciprocity with black America. I want the black board member, y'all pull it up right now, find out who's black on the board of Macy's to be saying the same thing. I'm saying I ain't just trying to have a spin conversation where we spin. They need to be having a spin conversation with us where they spinning with us.

Period. Bottom line. And the whole the whole theme of this show tonight for me, Roland, has been sophistication. Whether we're talking politically, whether we're talking about how we challenge the police, white extremism. And now with the economic parts. Look, I believe that one of the reasons Dr. King was primarily assassinated was because of his economic stance on issues people talk about vietnam and so on and so forth but he spoke to this and this is why they only play the i have a dream part of the speech every single year this was the real truth and too many of us get caught up in seeing these little trinkle this, it's like trickle-down economics, almost speaking, with these corporations who promised over $50 billion, and to date, almost about $250 million

has gone out after the quote-unquote summer of racial reckoning. We need to be more sophisticated. You talked about these different, you talked about media, you talked about clothing. I was waiting for you to get to sneakers, man, and all of the money we put in as it relates to that as well. Our level of sophistication is the problem. And if we don't demand more, if we just keep getting happy and excited over this million dollars here, million dollars there, we are going to continually be. And I love when you pull out the calculator, Roland, because it's clear as day when you do that. So we really have to ask black America, what are we demanding from these companies? We're still the 10th richest country in the world if we pool all our resources

together. If we're going to pull Dr. King out, pull that Dr. King out that talks about that. I know I need to do better in making sure that I'm supporting more Black businesses. The majority of the businesses, I support are Black businesses, but I got to go back and relook and see what I can do better because I can't ask other people to do

what I'm not doing myself. But really, at the end of the day, if these corporations are going to be about Black Lives Matter and they're going to be about racial equity and all of that, it starts with the dollars. It starts with the dollars. That's it. Again, it starts with the dollars, period. Bottom line. And like Dr. King said, we just got to go and say, do it or we out. That's it. Jeff, here are the board members of Macy's. Y'all pull it up, please. Scroll it up, please. We see right here, Torrence Boone is VP for Global Client Partnerships at Google. He's on the board.

Scroll up. Let's see. Is anybody else black? Let's see here. Okay, boom. Leslie Hale. She is president and chief executive officer of RLJ Lodging Trust. I think that, not RLJ, that might be one of Bob Johnson's companies.

Not quite sure. That it? So, again, I would hope Leslie, scroll down. I would hope Leslie, no, other way. I would hope Leslie and Torrance are asking these same questions I am and the rest of these folk on here. Again, Jeff, I'm just simply saying, don't be trying to get us to spend money. What are you, how are you driving black economics? Final

comment. Yeah, a final comment. I have to take a sip from Wakanda on this one because when it comes down to it, man, we're talking about self-determination. And we have to use the brothers and sisters who are on the portal, on the board

here as a portal. But we also don't have to let off the hook. That executive who works for Kellogg, he's on the board, too. And black folk eat a lot of cereal. He's the CEO. Pull it back up. Show it. Show it. Take it back up. Pull it back up. Show it. Come on, y'all. A couple of people over from right there. Right there. John Bryant. He was the former chairman, president and CEO of Kellogg Company. Go ahead.

Absolutely. And Francis Blake to the left there is where he's at Home Depot, where many of us go to shop for everything from our homes to our churches to repairs. We put money into all of these companies. I think when we talk about the difference between philanthropy and investment, it gets to be pretty clear that we've got to move beyond playing checkers with people who are playing chess. And what you've done tonight, I'll tell you two things you've accomplished. Number one, you've made sure that Macy's is probably going to have 70% HBCU bands in its parade this Christmas. Oh, no, no, no.

Guess what? Guess what? Hold up. Hold up real quick. Alabama A&M was invited to be in their parade this Christmas. Oh, no, no, no. Guess what? Guess what? Hold up. Hold up real quick. Alabama A&M was invited to be in their parade. You know they got to raise their own money. Which makes no sense to me because Macy's gets money from NBC and CBS airing their parade. So I don't understand.

So really, Macy's should be paying the expenses of Alabama A&M to be in a parade. I digress. Go ahead. But what you've done, though, think about this. What you're pointing out, this is the importance of Black-owned media. We're not talking about somebody who is a Black operator, because in absence of Black-owned media, when there's criticism from the fringe like this, then what they do is they pour money into Black-operated shows as opposed to black media. But now that Black Star is here, now that we're having this conversation here with what I call the bishop of black media,

one of our leading economic minds in the world, Dr. Malvo, one of our leading intersectional artistic and creative and historical thinkers, Dr. Omikongo, and me just trying to sit from a Wakanda mug to hang on with y'all. When we're in this space, though, we are putting the spotlight clearly on the real issue. And the real issue is this. I can't take the humanity out of this, brothers and sisters. The reality is most people act up, whether they're children in a store, whether they're people in corporate America, whether they're people in politics. We act up when we're not being seen. And that's why we operate like this. The sister meant well

when she said, hey, I want to see our colors in Macy's and I'm here to do something great. So she was operating from this space. But just like you all know, the car family saying that my mom and dad had, when you open your mouth, you put your brains on display. I add something to that. And I say, when you open your wallet, you put your values on display. Well, and the truth is we are beginning to value having some small space in a larger white construct, as opposed to being self-determining, sitting these presidents of the divine nine down and saying, listen, let's talk about investment. And the difference is very clear. When you were showing the dresses on the rack, get this, investment is, Mesa probably spent a million dollars on those coat hangers with one small business holding those coat hangers, those racks, the labels that go into

those all businesses, tiles on the floor, they're all businesses. Even the tile on the floor went to a construction company. What we're talking about tonight is, don't give us a million dollars that's going to be distributed to a foundation that's not going to empower people. I tell you what, you give us the contract for the floor design. You give us the contract for the coat hangers.

You give us the contract for the media. You give us the contract for installing the lights. That's how you empower black communities. And until we do that, we're going to continue to be behind because Macy's is going to mace and Macy is not required to invest in a dairy factory as long as they keep getting the milk for free. And again, folks, Alabama A&M, Macy's presented them with a $10,000 check to help them with the cost to go to the 2023 parade this Thanksgiving. Again, that's nice, but to your point, when you do that with black-owned companies,

then we can send our own checks to Alabama A&M. We can send our own checks for our foundations. I keep telling y'all, stop falling for white corporate philanthropy and say, where are the bigger checks? That's the money we should be going after. Got to go to break. When we come back, we're going to

talk about the importance of the win segment, mental health for Black America. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Where's our money? Because I'm not satisfied. You know, he brought his own sound. So when you have an artist that creates his own sound, like Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie, you know, they come in the Beatles. They create their own sound.

He kept reinventing himself. He wasn't afraid to change instrumentations or not use drums or not use bass or use the Linn machine or use real drums or use, you know, pots and pans. It didn't matter. It's just like he wasn't afraid to... The sound was different every time he did an album. Completely different, you know?

And the things that he wrote about, it was things that he felt he needed to speak about. So a lot of honesty, you know, whether he would admit to it or not, it was a lot of honesty and a lot of things that were real to him. When he gave, he gave, you know. He, I think, for me, he is my favorite, my number one favorite guitar player in the world. He was. He played with, I mean, and especially,

I loved times me playing drums with him. He and I playing together. When I played drums, it was a whole nother thing. And I just think that he reached people in a way as an artist that he reached you because he was, again, honest in a way that he wasn't he even he said it a million times but he wasn't trying to write the next Purple Rain that was already what it was right I can write that that was

that one time right but it's never gonna happen again so why would I write that again then it's not special I'm not gonna show you no more. Hi, I'm Israel Houghton with Israel and New Breed. What's up, what's up? I'm Dr. Ricky Dillard, the choir master. Hey yo, peace world, what's going on? It's the love king of R&B, Raheem Devon, and you're watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Black men are conditioned to being strong,

which usually means showing emotions is not a, quote, manly thing to do. An organization is doing what it can to break the stigma that asking for help is a sign of weakness. With a 384 therapists and coaches directory, Therapy for Black Men has already provided $30,000 worth of free therapy. Vladimir and Benjamin Kalexi, founders of Therapy for Black Men. Jonas from Brooklyn, New York. I hope I pronounced that correct. Glad to have you all here. Okay, so you know what? Here's one thing that's a trip.

Dr. Steve Perry and I were talking about this here. A lot of times when I'm at Essence or some other place, I might be taking pictures, and there's a young brother, and he ain't smiling. And I'm like, dog, it's a photo. And there's this hard look. And Steve Perry said the same thing. He said, look, he said, how the hell we are conditioning black boys at seven and eight

literally don't even smile in photos. So this idea of being hard, men don't do that. I'm like, y'all, it's a photo. That sort of mentality contributes to this whole psyche, if you will, of black men, keep it all in. And then of course, then we ended up dying early and having all kinds of stuff because frankly, we don't share anything or talk to anybody.

Absolutely, I agree with that 100%. The fact is that we, at a young age, basically are told that we should not, uh, emote, not to express our feelings. We know that we've been habituated to do that. And men are starting to find that suppressing that in terms of their emotions is not something that's healthy. So these tropes of, uh, man up, handle your business,

just do your thing. Just keeping it bottled inside are things that are not gonna really be conducive to you to being healthy. So a lot of the men are starting to see that they need to reach out elsewhere outside of their dynamic family dynamic or friend circle to speak to a therapist to be able to unpack those wounds,

that trauma that they're experiencing in a healthy way. And this is why the practitioners are so helpful in terms of when they're able to sit with someone and they can share what their story is and this person can give them, our therapist can give them some input in terms of on what that is in their life, give them the vocabulary, the verbiage to be able to express themselves. So that's important. Where did y'all, what led to this? What was the tipping point? Well, I mean, you know, as a black man, you know, Roland,

like we go to the barber shop, right? And we know that in the black community, the barber is the de facto therapist, so to speak. And I was kind of just polling, you know, asking friends and asking other patrons in a barbershop that I frequent if they would be interested in going to therapy. And collectively, the men kind of shot it down.

They were like, no, I'm not interested. But when I would catch those same guys individually by themselves, they kind of would be more open to it. Saying like, you know, I would sit down with someone. I've been doing this my way, and I'm kind of, I want to, I want to, I'm looking to change certain things in my life. I'm sick and tired of kind of being sick and tired, so.

Go ahead. I would say, Roland, the catalyst for me was the absence of my father. Growing up without my father in a single-parent household, you know, my mom did the very best that she could. But for me, I internalized his absence, and it just led into me people-pleasing. It led into me performing more than being my authentic, genuine self. And it wasn't until doing my own inner work, I realized it's not that my identity has nothing to do with his absence.

He's a wounded man. So who has multiple children with multiple partners if you're not wounded. So those two combined were definitely the catalyst as to why we felt that therapy for Black men was so important. It's just being able to arm the men with tools so that they can manage life in real life as it's happening. Let's see, questions here. Makongo, you first. Yes, I am in my 40s, and I did not start embracing therapy until I was in my 40s. So the question that I have for you is how young should we be starting as it relates to our community?

I've been in different offices. When I'm in a session, I've seen white children, elementary school age, you know, children who are already starting the process of therapy. And I'm sitting here thinking for many of us who grew up in the hood, crack epidemic violence, one of my friends who's a clinician said, this is not normal. We needed a lot of therapy a long time ago. So how young should we start working with our Black children? And I will say here, you know, our Black boys specifically, giving your organization to get them comfortable in this space. I would say, doctor, as early as four, five years old, we do some, there are clinicians rather who do play therapy with the

kids where, you know, they think that they're just playing, but they're engaging with the therapist. The therapist is asking them questions. They're able to talk about what they're feeling. They're able to now even have emotional language. So I'm feeling sad. This is why I'm feeling happy. This is why. And also a good way for us to start teaching our children how for them to even know what their baseline is, even at five. Okay. So when everything's okay, how are you? How are you being? You know, what do you feel in your body when you're okay? But how do you feel when you're angry? How can you tell you're angry in your body? you're okay? But how do you feel when you're angry? How can you tell you're angry in your body?

Again, I'm arming them with the language, arming our young boys with the language, the vocabulary so that they can say, you know what, I can pinpoint what it is that I'm feeling and then be able to emote it, be able to express it, be able to talk about it, but in a way where it has nothing to do with my being. So as a therapist, my private practice, one of the things that one of the encouragements that I talk about a lot with my clients is constantly separating their being from their

doing. So constantly separating the behavior from who they are as a person. So us arming our young boys with this type of knowledge is absolute power. Jeff. Thank you. Yes. Ben and Vladimir, thank you so much for your commitment to our people. And I always am a fan of good therapy as it is working as a pastor and spiritual counselor. I always know the line when I have to say, hey, let me recommend you to a therapist because there's only so much that you can work out through spiritual tools. I'm going to ask this question because I've been dealing with this in the culture of younger people becoming therapists and actually having their friends as clients and hanging out with them. And to me, that blurred the line a little bit. Is there some point where therapy for issues like codependency can become codependent itself as therapy? And if so, when do you know to make a shift? Well, I wouldn't even recognize going to, I wouldn't even actually encourage going to your friends for therapy because they're not biased.

They're not able to give you an unbiased opinion where there's some kind of... Oh, I give your ass an unbiased opinion. I'm just letting you... Don't assume everybody. I'll let your ass know when you're out of pocket.

Look, my family knows. They're like, no, they only call me when it's time to make a decision. Don't nobody call me for counsel. I tell them, y'all call my wife. God gave my wife a spirit of comfort. She can pray with you, lay hands on you. She can counsel. No, God gave me a spirit of comfort. She could pray with you, lay hands on you. She can counsel. No, God gave me a spirit of discomfort.

Go ahead. But you don't want to use your friends as therapy. Some people do. We're taught to do that. And we're not in the same communities we were in 30 or 40 years ago where you could sit on the porch of the elder across the street. And that was de facto therapy. I tell people it's de facto there, but we don't have those constructs often in communities anymore. So how are you, how, how can we be careful to make sure that, um, we don't become so codependent on therapy that we never actually heal beyond the issue that's there?

Well, um, you know, I think one of the things on why, other than outside of your friend circle, it's important to have a therapist is in the sense that a lot of things that are discussed is confidential. There's certain things that a therapist comes aware of that it's not even expressed to intimate people in their family. You could even spouses in terms of my wife does couples therapy as well. And spouses are not even aware of what the other has to express because they haven't shared it to them yet. And one of the reasons is that if they feel that if they want to share that with that person, still look at me and receive me the same way? So I think in terms of where the codependency, it could be something where you don't want it to be a crutch. Ultimately,

I think once you get to a certain point that you have come to feel that you're comfortable, it's better that you're able to practice the tools that you're equipped with in therapy in real time to use them in life, right? So if you are seeing someone and you've been going biweekly or every week, maybe you can scale that back a little bit. And now you're going monthly until this person is ready to be comfortable of being and making these decisions on their own. Because a lot of times with the therapist is that they hold on to stuff waiting to see that therapist for that time they're scheduled to meet. But we know that although you have a therapy session every Monday at two, life goes on outside. Your life happens outside. You know, that therapy session is one where obviously it's a safe place for you to be

able to open up, a safe place for you to be able to fall, but your life does continue outside of that therapy session. Awesome. Thank you. All right. So if folks want to be able to reach you, they're looking for some assistance, where do they go? What do they do? They go to our website, which is therapyforblackmen.org. And we also have a real engaging community on Instagram, which is at Therapy for Black Men. These are the main avenues that that men are seeking support. They are not ashamed to ask for help. They are actually really engaged. They are honest about what's happening. And they are looking for tools, looking for tools.

And I love to say real time because that's what most matters. They're looking for tools so they can be able to navigate situations in real time. And Benjamin and I are really grateful and really proud of our organization for this platform because we have this thing that we believe that our actions impact seven generations over. So we're really excited about impacting our men, our boys, impacting seven generations over. And in addition to that, and having a chance to sit down with our men prior to them going through our financial assistance program, a lot of what's shared is that they've come to this point where they need to make a decision.

They need to really make a change in their life. They want to unpack their wounds and do it in a healthy way. And they're a little bit hesitant initially, but they've been... I have no choice now to really... to make this decision, because I want to be able to move on. I want to grow personally, I want to grow professionally, I want to be a better father. So these are the things in terms of when men are at the crossroads, where ultimately we weren't pushing this.

It's no longer taboo. It's something that we're trying to really brush back the stigma, but the culture of competent care, where you can sit down with someone, ultimately we weren't pushing this. It's no longer taboo. It's something that we're trying to really brush back the stigma, but the culture of competent care where you can sit down with someone who you can relate to, whether it's a male or a female, to be able to discuss something that's on your mind and not feel judged. And that's what's really important about that. All right, Dan. Well, look, we certainly appreciate the work that y'all are doing. Thank you so very much. And I hope people tap into the resource. Thank you. Thank you for having us. All right. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, that is it for us. I want to thank

Makongo, Julian, and Jeff for being on today's show, and I certainly hope people take into account what we laid out. You know, our goal with this show is very simple, is to give you the information, the knowledge that you need. And, you know, far too, far too, I had to send someone a quote about this today, and I think a lot of us really need to do a lot more reading. You know, I told, y'all have heard me say this on numerous times, Dr. King's book, Chaos, Where We Go From Here, Chaos or Community.

And I saw this, I saw this, I had to send someone a quote, and I used this as a reference point. And it really does drive, folks, what we do here. And that is, let me see if I can go ahead and try to screen share this, because I think too many people don't take this into account. We see this all the time, Jeff, Julian, and I'm a Congo.

And that is how we don't pay attention to what is important. So this here, let's see if I can blow this up. So in the book, this is what he wrote. And I told these highlighters up going through this, because some of y'all may be saying, well, man, you were talking about the divine nine. You were talking about black groups and all that sort of stuff.

Well, this is literally what King writes in 1967, y'all. He says, there are already structured forces in the Negro community that can serve as the basis for building a powerful united front. The Negro church, the Negro press, the Negro fraternities and sororities, and Negro professional associations. That's literally what he wrote. Now, the reason why that's important for us to say is because, again, for a lot of us, and I hear these people hit me all the time, for a lot of us, they go, well, you know, OK, but, you know, why you got to bring folks up? Well, because it's not just what he said there. He then said something that I think is important. Go back to it. He said, we must admit that these forces have never given. Let me see if I can pull this up right, have never given their

full resources to the cause of Negro liberation. There are still too many Negro churches that are so absorbed in a future good over yonder that they condition their members to adjust to the present evils over here. Too many Negro newspapers have veered away from their traditional role as protest organs agitating for social change and have turned to the sensational and the conservative in place of the substantive and the militant. He says too many Negro social and professional groups have degenerated into snobbishness and a preoccupation with frivolities and trivial activity. But the failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future. These groups must be mobilized and motivated. I want to emphasize, don't go back,

I want to emphasize right there, the failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future. So if y'all want to understand why Julianne does what she does, and what McCongo does what he does, and what Jeff does what he does and what Jeff does what he does and what we do on this show why we want their voices on this show is that last line there that we can't get caught up on today. We can control what we impart, how we mobilize, how we empower folks today. And that, this is the final comment for the show. So this is that, Julian, I'm going to get each one for you, each one of you before we go. That is why we have to keep doing what we are doing, because if we don't, then we can't blame this on the next generation and say, well, them damn millennials ain't doing this, and Gen Z ain't doing this. Well, hell, if Gen X and boomers ain't doing it, how in the hell the next person is going

to be able to do it? You know, we have to pass a baton on to our young people, but we also have to pass along an example. And quite frankly, middle-class Black people are, as Dr. King would say, middle-class Negroes have become extremely complacent. I remember the president of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Lillian P. Bimbo, years ago wrote a piece in Ebony talking about giving the dance. And what she talked about is how people were so focused on having a dance that you spend $600 to raise $700. Really, all that frivolity, extra activity, why not just give the money to the scholarship? I know we like to hang out. We like to party. Me too. And that's not the problem. The problem is

when we let the party become the purpose as opposed to partying with a purpose. And as Dr. King and so many others have said, basically, if you show me your checkbook, I will tell you what you're about. If you say you're a four-year sorority, but you only wrote your dues check and never gave any money to your foundation, you're lying. If you say you're about black liberation, but you've never gave Reverend Barber or Reverend Jackson or some of these other people money, you're lying. If you say you care about scholarship of the next generation, but there's not a young person that's seen a quarter from you, you are lying. And so we have to become truth tellers. And that means being extraordinarily self-critical, which I fear that too many of us lack the capacity to be.

Omokongo. I believe there was a rapper named Paris a couple of decades ago who said in his song, you know, Martin Luther King did a lot for us, but today it's cool to play the back of the bus, right? And I just think about all of the things that we're able to do that our ancestors could not do because of the way the system was stacked against them, going back from slavery up through Jim Crow, civil rights movement, and all of the sacrifices that they made. And we've been not given, we fought and earned all of these freedoms. And some of us

are just throwing it away. Some of us are just too willing to be part of whatever this thing called an establishment thing is that we're turning our backs on our own culture. And I believe that our ancestors still would have fought just as hard for us to have these freedoms. But with the freedom comes a certain responsibility. There's nothing that I'm doing now that I created, right, in terms of everything I enjoy today, somebody fought for me. So right now, I'm trying to figure out what are people going to say 20 years from now, 70 years from now, 100 years from now, that I did today that is going to help make their community better and their life better in our Black community.

And that's what I'm focused on. And we owe that to the people who fought before us who could not even see the things that we've enjoyed, Black president, Black vice president, the rights that we've gained. And we have to do more to honor them so that the generations coming after us can have even more than we had.

And we have to honor our ancestors by doing it. That's the least we can do. Jeff. As we end this, Roland, I think that when we talk about conversations like this, it brings up a lot of emotion and it brings up a lot of anger. But I wanna remind people that anger is just as valuable

as love, as rage. It motivates you to do something, but that we are working out of a space of love. I love that the therapist couple talked about seven generations. There's a indigenous concept, the Lakota tradition, that every action we take affects the ancestors, seven generations previous, and the future people,

seven generations in the future. So what we do is stimulate ourselves, we educate ourselves so that we can operate from a space of love. To close, I'll just leave you another quote that Dr. King said in Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community? Because it's timeless. And he said that power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. We're going to do this, and we're going to win. Indeed, indeed. All right, folks, I tell you all the time,

we make a point of being transparent and being clear in terms of what we do and what we say and how things are. And that's important because when you give and support this show, y'all, we were sitting here working on our project earlier for getting ready to go to Essence Festival, the broadcast that we're going to be doing there and all those different things. And, again, it's important for you to understand why we do what we do. Look, y'all might be folks like, man man you're going hard against companies like Macy's Well again, if you ain't spending my own advertising then how we able to be a booker past and be able to grow and so

A lot of y'all really stepped up and made it possible for us to be able to do Great work for us to travel and do the things that we do and so Jane and Sydney come here. So Yeah, come here. So, yeah, come here. Come on, come here. So, yeah, I remember we told y'all about interns. So, two of our four interns, a couple of folks had to step away, so we got two. Come on, come on. Stop. That's right. My show. So, look, I'm paying y'all. Get out of here. Come on. So, y'all might remember, so Sidney was the North Carolina A&T student who had an internship with Black News Channel when they shut down.

We stepped in and provided the paid internship. Sidney Wave. OK, so both started today. Jaina is a student. Where you at? Morgan State? Yes. So she's at Morgan State. I hit up Jackie Jones and Dwayne Wickham. And so they started today. They didn't know they were going to be on the camera, so I do this all the time, so don't worry about it. So y'all will be all right. So I throw curveballs all the time. And so when y'all gave for us to do what we do for our interns, it made it possible for them to be here,

so they'll be here for the next 10 weeks. So trust me, we're going to be putting them to work big time. And so glad that they are here. And so now y'all see. So when y'all trying to figure out some of y'all out there, y'all saying, oh, my goodness, we don't just show you equipment. We also show you people. And so when you support Roland Martin and the Black Star Network, your dollars will make it possible for them to be able to have paid internships here on the show. So we're glad to have y'all here. And so good first day?

Okay. Y'all thinking of another choice? What are they going to say, no? So glad to have y'all here. And so, okay, y'all go back in the control room. All right, they like. Wait, y'all should have seen Jayna's face. She's like, did he call us out here?

I'm like, sure did. And so, folks, we want y'all to sit here and support us in what we do. Yes, to HBCU students who are here, when you contribute to the Blacks, to our Bring the Fuck fan club, your dollars make that possible. And so, please do so by sending your checks and money orders. Nope, the other

one. Send your check and money orders to PO Box 57196. 57196 Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. Cash, D.C. 20037-0196. Cash, some of y'all have given during the show. I'm going to give y'all a shout out. I appreciate that.

And let me go ahead and do that now. Let's see here. June Spence has given during the show. Y'all give right now. If y'all give on YouTube, we only give 55 cents on every dollar. So give to us direct. So let me thank June Spence, Sophia Newton, Walter Johnson, Anita Parham, Leah. They all gave during the show.

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We prefer HBCU students. We go to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We posted a description on the website. If you know an HBCU student who is in the Virginia, Maryland, or Washington, D.C. area, we don't provide housing. But if they live elsewhere and they can stay somewhere here, that's fine. Y'all can send their resume to jobs at Roland S. Martin dot com. Is that it, Carol? Is that it? Jobs, J-O-B. Y'all, don't email me. See, that's the first deal. Can you read instructions? Don't email me. Send to jobs, J-O-B-S, at Rolandsmartin.com. Again, we have two positions open right now

for two paid interns to join Jaina and Sidney, 10-week paid internships. And so send the resume to jobsjobs at rolandsmartin.com. Can't say nobody tried. We have those available. They're already funded. A donor, a major figure in entertainment stepped up to help pay for our interns.

Your Dollars as well made that possible. And so please hit us up if you look for the intern. Richard Pettigrew, Pray Up, Brianna Walls, Dee Henderson, Colin King, they also have given to our Bring the Funk fan club. That's it, folks. I'm going to see y'all tomorrow right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Oh! This is an iHeart Podcast.