#RolandMartinUnfiltered - FL GOP Try to Block DEI in Education, FL Propose Flag Ban,7 Deputies Charged W/2nd-Degree Murder

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

3.15.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: FL GOP Try to Block DEI in Education, FL Propose Flag Ban,7 Deputies Charged W/2nd-Degree Murder Florida Republicans are using new legislation that threatens Black fraternities and sororities by stopping college funding for any program or campus activity supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, or Critical Race Theory. We will speak with State Senator Shevrin Jones about his efforts to protect the divine 9 in Florida.  We have some good news out of Florida. After serving 34 years of a 400-year prison sentence, a man is finally exonerated after a new probe finds he was wrongfully convicted. I'll talk to one of the attorneys from Innocence Project of Florida who helped the Broward County State Attorney's Office, free an innocent man.   Seven Virginia sheriff deputies face second-degree murder charges for the death of a black man held at a state mental hospital. We will tell you the emerging details of a harrowing trend in state mental hospitals.  It's been a tumultuous few days for the banking industry. We will speak with the President and CEO of the National Bankers Association about how the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapse could impact minority-owned banks. Reading is an essential part of life, and one group has created a web-based reading support program to increase reading levels in children of all ages. We will speak with the creator of Reading Revolution Online about how they help children build reading skills and confidence using cultural identity development.Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. black fraternities and sororities by stopping college funding for any program or campus activities supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, or critical race theory. We will speak with the state senator, Servin Jones, about his efforts to protect the divine nine in Florida. We have some good news out of Florida also. After serving 34 years of a 400-year sentence, a man is finally exonerated after a new probe finds he was wrongfully convicted. I'll talk with one of his attorneys from the Innocence Project of Florida, who helped the Broward County State's Attorney's Office free an innocent man. Seven Virginia Sheriff deputies face second-degree murder charges for the death of a black man held in a state mental hospital. We will tell you the emerging details of the heroin trend in state mental hospitals.

It's been awesome. It's been a tumultuous day for the banking industry. We will speak with the president and CEO of the National Bankers Association about how the Silicon Valley Bank and the Signature Bank collapse could impact minority-owned banks. Finally, reading is an essential part of life, and one group will create a web-based reading support program to increase reading levels in children of all ages. We will speak with the creator of Reading Revolution Online about how they help

children build reading skills and confidence using cultural identity development. It's time to bring the funk on Roller Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling Yeah, yeah It's Uncle Roro, y'all Yeah, yeah It's Rolling 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 Rolling Martin Now As always, we have to start with the state of Florida. As we talked about last night, the state of Florida has House Bill 999 and Senate Bill 266, which are directly aimed at higher education. The bills seek to eliminate all forms of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from state colleges. It's funny how they used to, you know, at least lie about what they were trying to do.

Now they just tell you up front, we are going after diversity, equity, and inclusion. So sometimes I appreciate their candor. We told you last night how Senate Bill 266 threatens the divine nine. We're going to take you to Senator Jones's tweet. I'll just read from Florida Senator Shervin Jones during the show. She said, I would like to publicly thank the bill sponsors of SB 666 Senator Aaron Garle for hearing the concerns of the Black fraternities and sororities by removing language that could have been an unintentional consequence to our organizations. As a proud member of Alpha

Phi Alpha, thank you. Florida Senator Jones joins me from Tallahassee. Senator Jones, how are you this evening? Doing well. How are you? I am doing doing great. So can you tell us about the latest developments with regards to this, these Florida efforts to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion, particularly as it may have impacted black fraternities and sororities? Yeah, I appreciate you all bringing light to this issue. I think it's important for people to understand that the House Bill and the House Bill 999 and the Senate Bill, Senate Bill 266, they're two separate bills. You have the House Bill that had language in it, which was problematic because the bill specifically said that basically any membership or organization that promotes support or maintain any program or campus activities that violate equity, inclusion or that espouse anything dealing with diversity, equity, inclusion or critical race theory can no longer receive funding from the from the state. A lot of our programs here, whether it's in Florida A&M, whether at UF or any other schools that have divine nines, if they fell into this category who receive money

through student activities and SGA, they will have the vagueness of that language assume and get colleges and universities to begin to quote unquote defund D9 programs. But currently, in the Senate, that language was totally eliminated from out of there and then placed in an exempt. Activities of student activities are exempt from this period. OK, and so with that, one of the questions was was raised, you know, what about things like the Black Law Students Association or NASB or National Associates of Black Journalists? Are there still going to be student organizations for groups like that?

Those student organizations will still be able to function because they fall under the category of student activities or student organizations. Okay, and so this was the Senate bill that this happened with. Is there any movement on something like this happening in the House? And if the House doesn't adopt that type of language, what will be the next legislative step? Yeah. So here's what I will say, that I think the the the advocacy around this is valid for those individuals who think that this is a win because the Senate has put language to basically protect a lot of these affinity groups and specifically like the Divine Nine. That's one thing.

But I think they need to stay on the House to make sure that the House adopts our language in the next committee stop. Because remember, the House language is really what the governor wants. But the Senate language is probably going to turn into a bargain and two, as it stands right now, the Senate president and the bill sponsor have made a commitment that our language is going to stand. And so I think the voices still need to continue to be raised that we protect our divine nine

and other organizations like our black student unions or the black law association that other organizations who might fall into that category. But for the public, can you kind of talk a little bit about why it's important to protect these types of programs? Because I'm sure somebody or opponents of the change of this language may be listening and saying, well, why should we have a special group that cuts people up? Shouldn't we just have all the students together? Shouldn't everything just be all the engineers, all the journalists, all the whatever the groups are? Why separate them out? Well, when we talk about not just diversity, equity, inclusion, but we talk about communities, I'm not going to talk about groups, communities.

Individuals can be a part of whatever community they want to be a part of, especially with our college and university campuses. But why are these programs important? Because everyone needs to have a place where they belong and where they can go to, whether it's the Black Student Union, whether it's the Hispanic Unity, whatever those groups are, it doesn't matter. Everyone should be able to go to a group to be able to feel as if they're heard and they can have thought partners within these groups. It's not saying that other individuals are not welcome there, but in this

standpoint, this is where we are. Let's look at Black fraternities and sororities. Why were we created? We were created as groups back during a time to when we weren't welcome in other groups, and because we weren't welcome in those other groups, we found ways how to empower our own, to advocate for our own, to educate our own. And that's still important to this day. Although we have probably moved on, quote unquote, in society, these groups are still necessary and needed because these are areas where we continue to move our agenda as a community. Now, Governor DeSantis has made kind of the backbone of his potential 2024 presidential campaign that Florida is the state where, quote-unquote, woke goes to die. Will Governor DeSantis sign a bill with this type of compromised language in it, or will it be reinserted?

I can understand the last part of your question. Sorry, will Governor DeSantis basically saying? This is where what goes to die? Would he even sign a bill with this type of compromise language in it? Well, I mean, I can tell you this. The Republicans, they're not going to want to be embarrassed. So that will probably be worked out prior to even making it to the governor's desk. I can guarantee you that someone from the governor's office are already talking to the fourth floor on whether or not they do or don't want this. What should people do if they want to make sure that they can put the type of pressures that you mentioned on the House to make these changes? Because often these things get through community, get through here and before most of the public even know what's going on. What can be done to breathe the proper amount of tension and pressure to the House side to make the proper changes?

You know, this is a great opportunity for fraternities and sororities and other groups to use this as a chance to reach out to the governor's office, reach out to the Senate president's office, reach out to the speaker's office. And I really think the national presidents from these awardees and universities should be the one to do that. Why is that important? Because if these individuals of high regard reach out to the governor and reach out to some of these other chamber heads, I think it can make a hill of difference for a response that will come from the Florida current leadership. And just finally, with this concerted attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the state of

Florida, what can be done to protect those programs that do exist for things such as bringing in more African-American students to higher education, making sure we have programs that are specifying Black history, that are specifying Black thought on this kind of macro issue of Florida going after diversity, equity, inclusion. What can be done to fight back against that larger effect? You know, one, currently now in the legislature, we don't have any leverage in the House, nor do we have leverage in the Senate. So the first part of your question, I'll say that we need to be working now in ensuring that what we are seeing, that we do something about by electing those people who are reasonably minded when it comes to these type of issues. But I also want to point out that everyone has to realize where this conversation came from. And briefly, I'll tell you, we see we saw since 2018 after the death of George Floyd,

this whole uprising of the elimination of DEI, which started with Donald Trump, because there was a Pew poll that was done that showed that over 61% of white men and women saw the word white privilege over and over again during that time. And individuals started implementing DEIs within corporations, within schools, and everything else. They didn't like that. And because they didn't like that, we are now and we saw this whole uptick of removing DEI from federal programs, removing DEI from states.

And that's where this continuation is happening. This is a power grab. This is nothing but a power grab. It has always been a power grab. And we will continue to see this until we as a people across this country stand up to let this know the DEI is not the boogeyman. Y'all are. Well, you know, Florida has always been the canary in the coal mine. So if things are happening in Florida, you best believe they're going to continue in the rest of the country. Thank you so much, Senator Jones, for joining us. Please keep us updated on any legislative developments there. Appreciate it.

Thanks. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I got to be a gangster. I got to shoot. I got to sell. I got to do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle.

But when someone comes around and makes another, oh, we don't, you know, they don't want to push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix, too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't got to be a rapper. You don't got to be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer. You can be an opera singer. You can be a damn whatever, you know, showing the different avenues.

And that is possible, and it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does it. On the next Get Wealthy, with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right money habits? Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right?

If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made, but don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Hi, I'm B.B. Winans. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. What's up? I'm Lance Gross, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered.

Welcome back. Of course, another Florida story. Another Florida bill has Republican lawmakers pushing for legislation to exempt the Confederate flag from a broad proposal to ban most flags from being flown outside of state government buildings in Florida. So what this is, is they want to ban the flying of Black Lives Matter flags, for example, or pride flags outside of governmental buildings. So they are passing laws that restrict the number and types of flags that can't be flown. But now Florida Republicans want to make sure that if it's a Confederate flag, it gets to be flown right along with the other official flags. So Florida State Senator Jay Collins filed a new amendment to Senate Bill 668, which proposes the creation of a new section 256.045 in the Florida statutes,

which will define the term governmental entity and restrict that only certain flags are displayed on public buildings and other public properties. The Confederate flag is among the 12 types of flags specifically exempted from the ban in the United States. One being the United States flag, the state of Florida flag, the flag of the United Nations, the POW MIA flag, the flag of foreign nations, the flags that represent branches

of the United States military and armed forces, the Florida National Guard, the Florida County's flags, Florida municipalities, public universities and colleges, the flag of the Olympics and the flags indicating beach warnings are right now the only flags exempted from this new legislation. But if you want to fly the red, black and green liberation flag, that will be illegal if this new bill is passed in Florida. The Florida Senate Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability recommends that the bill, if approved, take effect July 1st, 2023. We got to talk about this.

Joining me now is our panel. We have A. Scott Bolden, Fordham Chair of the National Bar Association. Rebecca Carruthers, Vice President of the Fair Election Centers. And Joe Richardson, Civil Rights Attorney, to discuss all things Florida. So, Scott, I wanted to start with you, specifically on this bill, the diversity, equity, and inclusion ban in the state of Florida. What is with this Republican sudden attack, basically being honest about the – they're saying the quiet part out loud now, that we are going after and trying to stop diversity, equity and inclusion. Even if we can carve out something for the Divine Nine and affinity groups, they're going after the meat of the subject of college admissions and scholarships, et cetera.

Why are they saying the quiet part out loud now? What can we do to stop it? Because Governor DeSantis was just reelected by 20 points and they feel empowered. The messaging on this coming out of Florida is just really incredible. It really is. They don't want to say the word gay. They don't want to use diversity and inclusion or list it. They must not want to implement it. And so as a result, you know, the messaging out of Florida is that we have a race-neutral society, and we are going to practice race neutrality. And as a result, if we say it enough and we live it enough, then that could be the case 20-plus years outside of 2043, when black and brown people will be the

majority in this country we call America. It's a very dangerous rhetoric because it empowers white nationalists and white racists. It empowers white oppression and white violence against people of color and the Jewish faith. And so I'm deeply concerned about it. One of 50 doesn't sound a lot, but as you say, this is going to spread to Texas and other more conservative red states. And then you're going to have a higher level of this civil war that we think, many of us think we're in right now. We're battling ideas now. But the closer we get to 2043, we may be battling each other literally, physically, and violently. Rebecca, on that same note, it seems that this should be one of the number one things percolating

through Black media, Black social media, fighting back on this, because just as we saw it stains your ground laws back in 2006. You start with a state like Florida, then the whole country has the law before you can even fight back against it. We saw this with abortion laws, the six-week heartbeat bills. You start in a state like Florida or Georgia, then it metastasizes across the country. to get in front of this type of legislation? Because they are telling you exactly what they want to do, destroy 50 years of progress in diversity, equity, and inclusion in society that has seen Black folks and other people of color catapulting over poor white people. They're trying to reset that social system. Well, first of all, Robert, we're not going anywhere.

That's the first thing that Governor DeSantis needs to know. We were here before him, and we will be here after him. In fact, I'm actually in Florida tonight. And one thing that I will say that, yes, as a member of the Divine Nine, I am a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated. I am glad that Senator Jones is looking for ways to make sure that Divine Nine organizations aren't impacted by HB 999. However, that isn't enough. While it's great for us, it's not great for our overall community and other communities of color that's being unfairly targeted in Florida. I do think Governor DeSantis is going too far.

One, just like Scott just said, you can't say gay anymore. Two, students who are non-binary or identify as trans are now being attacked. Governor DeSantis went after Disney. So Governor DeSantis keeps doing these things, and he's going to go too far. Even seeing in the last couple of days that members of the GOP, like more of the hawkish types people, are going after DeSantis because of some of his foreign policy stances that he's taking. I am hopeful that people in Florida will show up and vote these people out in 2024 because there's enough people who didn't vote in Florida who could

vote and could completely change the trajectory of what's happening down here in Florida. Joe, kind of on that same note, there's always been this, or there's often this criticism that the Divine Nine, the Boulay, the letter organizations, et cetera, separate themselves from the rest of the Black community. That you have the kind of elite bourgeoisie Blacks in one place, and they legislate for themselves, kind of leaving everyone behind. By creating an exemption in the legislation that helps the Divine Nine and other affinity groups, but doesn't address the bigger issue of the destruction of diversity, equity, inclusion,

does that push, kind of support and buttress that argument that they see themselves being separate from the masses? Well, boy, you know know what's interesting is that actually i think uh at the risk of saying so may become a bit of an in-house conversation right uh how we feel about each other how we separate ourselves uh you know uh whether you're talking about everything from organizations involved and are part of and not a part of or light skin or dark skin or whatever that was, we're better off with the divine nine than without it. Okay. And, and with them being able to have every strength that they can possibly have, including, uh, uh, upper mobility in the way of scholarships, community involvement, uh, government support related to that institutional

support related to that. So that's not gonna be the problem right now. You know, to your point, perhaps some people will use this moment as one to express the differences, to point out the differences and the areas, okay, why do they get an exemption, but these organizations don't? Why are they so special? Some will think that, but that was not my first thought.

And I would like to think for anyone that wants black institutions to survive, things that were created from a survival standpoint for a reason to survive and a way to survive, I would like to think that the first thought would be we have to preserve those black institutions, not those alone, not those institutions or those organizations alone, but we certainly have to be with them. And then some of this other stuff that we may be talking about has to be in-house stuff that allows us, we need to talk about whatever we need to talk about so that we present a united front and can't be divided in Congress. And real quick on the issue of this flag exemption they're putting in place,

Rebecca, I wanted to ask you about that. The idea that they want to list the Confederate flag alongside the United Nations flag and the flag of the state of Florida as being exempt from this new flag ban they have, but at the same time, they're going to ban the Black Liberation flag and ban the Gay Black Pride flag and ban Black Lives Matter flags. How do they keep getting away with this level of just bold faced white supremacy? Well, Governor DeSantis and his henchmen and henchwomen that's in the Florida State House and the Florida State Senate, what they're telling us is that they support treason. They support people who turned their back on this country, wanted to rip this country apart, didn't want this country to exist in any shape, semblance, or form. And they're saying that we support treason. So if they want to support treason, once again, I tell Florida voters, you have the opportunity to do something

about this. I even tell Republicans in the Republican primary, you have an opportunity to choose better and not choose lesser. And so I'm telling voters there are enough Gen X, there's enough Gen Z, there's enough millennials to actually do something that changes this course, because we cannot go backwards. And if we go the way that Governor DeSantis wants us to do, we will be going backwards as a country. And that simply isn't good for us. And Scott, on this same point, it seems the Democrats are running scared of DeSantis. You're seeing more and more attention being pushed on him when it comes to attacks, whether it's in late night comedy, whether it's on the rhetoric we hear on the Sunday shows. And so much so that it seems that they're almost supporting Trump over DeSantis, hoping and thinking that Trump's an easier candidate to beat.

Why are people so afraid of DeSantis as a candidate for president? Because he's not Trump. And we don't know whether we can beat him. We know we can beat Trump for sure. And so whether it's the flag issue or these cultural issues, DeSantis is laying a foundation for his campaign that is going to harp on or tap on these cultural differences without the noise of Donald Trump. The Democrats need Trump, who's got 30 to 40 percent of the GOP, to feel comfortable with Biden running again. No one's convinced that Biden can meet anyone but Trump. And that's the cards that are being played right now. And so, you know, the culture war with regard to the Confederate flag, I must tell you, they lost that war, that civil war, and yet we continue to promote them

as the rebel part of the country. But who celebrates a loser? Who celebrates a loser like Trump or the Confederate flag? And so DeSantis is dangerous because he comes without the noise, but Democrats haven't figured out a strategy in regard to how to beat him just yet. And we need to get to getting, as my grandmother used to say, about what that race would look like and who's best positioned to beat him. Because while he's behind Donald Trump, right, the GOP review or the research says that many of the folks who are undecided or not comfortable with Trump would go to DeSantis. And there are only a few others in the race right now. And so that's the power that DeSantis brings, the unknowing. Well, all I know is the last time Democrats started getting behind and hoping that Donald Trump will run in 2016, think he'd be easy to beat, he won. So be careful what you wish for.

We'll be back after the break. Yeah, but he lost in 2020. That's kind of what I'm getting at. String me live on the Black Star Network. We'll be back after the break. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting.

I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. Here's all the Proud Boys guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear.

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. What's up, y'all? I'm Will Packer. Hello, I'm Bishop T.J. What up? Lana Well, and you are watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered. That's Sidney Holmes greeting his family after Florida

Judge, after Florida Judge dishonored him from his 400 year sentence for a 1988 armed robbery conviction after a two and a half year investigation with the help from the Innocence Project his 400-year sentence for a 1988 armed robbery conviction. After a two-and-a-half-year investigation with the help from the Innocence Project of Florida, evidence proved Sidney did not commit the crime that he had already served 34 years in prison for.

Sidney says, despite it all, he has no hate in his heart. Joining me from Tallahassee, Florida, is Seth Millers, one of the attorneys for the Innocence Project of Florida, who helped Sidney gain his freedom. Attorney Miller, how are you doing this evening? I'm doing great. How are you? I am great. Can you talk a little bit about this case in particular and what evidence it was that helped to exonerate Mr. Miller? Or Mr. Holmes, rather. Sorry. No, it's okay. For Mr. Holmes, his case rested solely on an eyewitness misidentification.

And when we look at these cases, we're trying to figure out how does someone get in a lineup? And the most interesting thing is this may be the strangest case I've ever seen about how someone got in a lineup and was therefore misidentified. Mr. Holmes was at a family barbecue for Father's Day, the day of the crime, all day long with his family at the same time that a robbery of two individuals was going on somewhere else at a gas station. And one of those individuals who was waiting in a car, a getaway car, he left while the other two individuals stole the victim's cars. The brother of the victim, one of the victims, said when he heard the description of the car, said, hey, that sounds like a car that robbed me earlier in the day. They went around looking for a car, didn't find a car. Two weeks later, the brother finds a car that is a brown Oldsmobile Cutlass, one of the most sold cars at that time, and says, I think this was the car,

gives the tag to law enforcement officers. It hits Sidney Holmes. So there was no police investigation. They put him in a lineup. He was not identified the first time, put him in a lineup a second time. He's therefore identified. And that's the case. That's the entire case against Sidney Holmes. What we were able to do is we were able to show that that eyewitness identification was unreliable and confirmed the alibi. And the state finally agreed that there was no evidence to even try him in the first place and agreed to exonerate him. Wow. Why would something like that take 34 years to be rectified? Because as you said, there's really no forensics, no kind of things tying him directly to it.

What took so long getting this case finally sorted out properly? Well, I think what people don't understand is that the system that we have to, let's say, overturn a conviction is actually designed to preserve wrongful convictions. So unless you figure this out very close in time to when you're convicted in sentence and after you've had your first appeal, the system is designed to prevent you from continually challenging your conviction. And so we didn't actually have any real court remedies that we were able to go in ourselves and file. Instead, what we had to do was wait for the innovation of this conviction review unit within the prosecutor's office, a unit designed to look back, like at the Innocence Project we do, look back at wrongful convictions, reinvestigate them, and determine whether they are in need of

relief. It was only when that office was created in 2019 by the previous state attorney, continued by the current state attorney, Harold Pryor, in Broward County. They were able to collaboratively, jointly investigate the case and come to an agreement that justice was denied in this case and the case needed to be rectified. And with that, I know there are probably thousands of other cases like this in every state. It's on the board for the National Association of Criminal Offense Lawyers with Barry Sheck. And when we talk about just the sheer volume of this, what can be done to create more capacity within the legal community to handle these sorts of cases, even if it does require something legislative or even an initiative in the prosecutor's office that you just mentioned? Well, I can tell you that only five of the 20 prosecutor's offices in the state that cover our 67 counties have a conviction integrity unit or a conviction review unit. And so, you know, for those that want to have a serious unit that's serious about looking and finding miscarriages of justice, we should have more of these units because I can tell you that for the places that don't have them, I and my team, organizations like ours and other places have to fight tooth and nail for years,

sometimes five years, 10 years, 15 years, just to rectify a, often over the prosecutor's opposition. So if there's efforts to institute these units and they're independent of the rest of the office, they can look back at misconduct by the office, and there's real effort to try to overturn wrongful convictions, we can get these done more quickly and more efficiently and collaboratively, which I think the public expects prosecutors to do justice when they see evidence of wrongful conviction. And these units are the way to do that, and there need to be more of them. All right, I'm going to bring the panel in. Joe, do you have a question for Attorney Miller? Attorney Miller, great work. Congratulations to you. I am wondering out loud, not dissimilar from what was just being said by Robert, is there potential?

I'm really concerned about the potential for the political winds, W-I-N-D-S, in Florida to filter down to this very, very important work. And perhaps the governor wants to weigh in on it that it shouldn't be happening, because the fact of the matter is, it's not very popular. It doesn't get people elected to exonerate people and admit that your system was wrong, sometimes grossly wrong, and for a very long time. But how safe do we feel in feeling like,

believing that the current state's attorney and that there's enough of an imprint with what's going on and how important it is that it will continue to be a priority and grow and not be a political casualty? It's a great question. Listeners might know that the state attorney, Andrew Warren, in Hillsborough County in Tampa was removed by the governor this past summer for reasons that didn't have to do with his looking backwards work to rectify wrongful convictions, but did have to do with the governor's disagreement with him basically about political beliefs and approaches. And we have unique the governor's unique powers in Florida to do that. So it's our hope that that won't filter down. What I can tell you is that my experience of doing this for almost two decades is that whether the prosecutor is one that fashions him or herself as a forward-thinking progressive prosecutor or a tough on crime prosecutor, when we have been able to rectify wrongful convictions with agreements of all different kinds of prosecutors, the smartest prosecutors recognize that they can own and take credit for this work because it is politically viable, because it is politically popular. These are the biggest news stories in the country when they happen.

And when prosecutors can realize they can take ownership of that, it oftentimes redounds to their benefit. And that's kind of what we've been trying to talk about to folks, that this is good policy. And in many cases, good policy makes good politics. Scott, did you have a question for Attorney Miller? Yeah, Attorney Miller, hey, Scott Bolden. Just excellent work having represented Jimmy Gardner out of West Virginia, who was wrongfully incarcerated for 27 years. And I look at your case, your client was incarcerated wrongfully for some 30 years. Two things stick out for me as a lawyer and wanted you to comment. One

was the amount of time each of them were sentenced to. I mean, Jimmy Gardner was sentenced to like 100 years. Your client was sentenced to 400 years. And then secondly, what's remarkable about them having been let out of prison is the faith and hope and resolve they maintained while they were incarcerated. Can you comment on those two points based on your experience in representing wrongfully convicted defendants? while they were incarcerated. Can you comment on those two points based on your experience in representing wrongfully convicted defendants? Well, I'm so proud to hear that you represented Jimmy.

I love Jimmy. He's a good friend of mine and a great advocate for preventing wrongful convictions in the future. Look, in this case, Sidney Holmes was sentenced to 400 years. I think your viewers need to understand that was a compromise sentence. In this case, Sidney Holmes was sentenced to 400 years. I think your viewers need to understand that was a compromise sentence. In this case, the prosecutor, because Sidney Holmes wouldn't turn in people that he didn't commit the crime with,

he didn't know who committed the crime because he was innocent, the prosecutor asked for 825 years. And the judge thought that was excessive and settled on 400. This is insane. I've never had a case like this before with that kind of sentence. But in a case where he wasn't eligible for an actual life sentence at that time under the current laws, the judge threw the book at him for no other reason than because the prosecutor stated he should die in prison, he should never get out of jail. These things are abhorrent. Florida has some of the worst

sentencing laws. And we're trying again to change our death sentence law to allow for a majority vote of a jury to give someone a death sentence, which is going to increase the likelihood of innocent individuals, wrongfully convicted individuals getting executed. So we're going in the wrong direction in that way. Now, as for like these people, I'm always, it's so surprising. They're so resilient. I can tell you that Sidney Holmes has an unbelievable family and it's his family that has with him, his faith has been with him all these years. And I think it's what's going to serve him well as he tries to navigate the path to transition back into free society. He's overwhelmed now, but he's hopeful. And it doesn't really have bitterness in his heart. I will say, if he had bitterness, if he was angry, it would be reasonable. And certainly we'd grant

him that grace. But he's someone who's looking forward, and we're going to help him reintegrate back into society to meet all his goals. Rebecca, do you have a question before we go? Attorney Miller, just a couple quick questions. In your estimation, how many wrongful convictions do we have now? Is it one out of ten? Is it two out of ten? Is it less than that, more than that? And second, how do you all pick and choose and decide or evaluate which cases you're going to pursue? Pew Research has done a study that suggests there's up to 4 or 5 percent of individuals in prison who are wrongfully convicted. You can imagine even more people who are charged with very minor crimes that they didn't commit, but just enter pleas that never even go to prison because they have to get home to their families, don't want to lose custody of their children, don't want to lose their homes, these types of things.

So that's probably a low estimate of the number of people who are wrongfully convicted annually in Florida, the United States. As for, I'm sorry, I forget your second question. Can you repeat it? So how does the Innocence Project pick and choose or determine which cases they're going to pursue? Yeah, so it's a very difficult thing to do. We have hundreds of people who write us each year. And really what we're trying to do is identify issues and cases that we know cause wrongful convictions and use the existence or the presence of those causes as a way to filter cases to cases we can't put resources in to investigate and ones that we do. And then what we're doing is looking for evidence

that wasn't available to the jury the first time around that tends to demonstrate, in a sense, that then we can bring forward to the courts through legal claims or to conviction review in it to reinvestigate collaboratively and try to resolve the case without litigation. But it's very, very difficult to figure it out. And we sometimes get it wrong. And when we get it right, we get situations like Sidney Holmes, who were able to rectify a case after 34 years. And Attorney Miller, most people probably would think, well, after 34 years in custody, he's going to probably get tens of millions of dollars from the system. Can you talk about what the actual reimbursement is and how it works in Florida? It's a great question because that doesn't happen, and I think most people think it should.

In Florida, we have a law that allows for $50,000 a year for each year of wrongful incarceration capped at $2 million. It's been like that since 2008. Not adjusted for inflation, hasn't been raised in that time. We've fallen behind many states, including Texas and Indiana, who provide much more generous compensation packages. The real problem is that it has exclusions that make it be that most people can't get compensated, including city homes, because it has an exclusion for if you have committed and have been convicted of a prior felony conviction, unrelated crime. And so right now we have a bill going through the legislature. We've been trying since 2008 to fix this. And it looks like this year might be the year that would pull that clean hands provision out. And it's going to lead to many, many people who are equally innocent, but for years ineligible to be compensated and finally get that money, the financial support that they need to find

financial stability and overall stability. So we're hoping that our advocacy this year will be able to get that done. Well, please keep us updated. We want to advocate on behalf of that. This whole show has been about Florida thus far. I really thank you for all the work that you do, and hopefully the legislature can rectify that wrong. We're going to continue this conversation on the other side of the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. On the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, re-entry anxiety. A lot of us are having trouble transitioning in this post-pandemic society and don't even realize it. We are literally stuck between two worlds in purgatory.

How to get out of purgatory and regain your footing and balance. What emotions they're feeling and being able to label them because as soon as you label an emotion, it's easier to self-regulate. It's easier to manage that emotion. The next A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. Coming up on the next Black Table, a conversation with Professor Howard W. French on his new book, Born in Blackness, covering 600 years of global African history and helping us understand how the world we know today is a gift from black people.

There could have been no West without Africa and Africa. That's on the next Black Table with me, Greg Carr, only on the Black Star Network. Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal.

See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? 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. Hey, I'm Deion Cole from Blackist. Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. Turning now to the state of Virginia.

Seven Virginia Sheriff's deputies faced second-degree murder charges for the death of a Black man while held in a state mental hospital last week. Henrico County deputies Randy Joseph Bowers, Dwayne Allen Bramall, Jermaine LeVar Brant, Brantley Thomas Deese, Tabitha Renee LaVeur, Brandon Edwards Rogers, and Kaylin DeJore Sanders have been charged in connection with the death of Ervo Antieno. During the intake process at

the Virginia State Medical Hospital, deputies physically restrained the decedent and was smothered to death by the weight of seven deputies on top of him. According to the police documents, Irvo was taken to Virginia State Central Hospital after being identified as a possible burglary suspect on March 3rd. He was then placed under an emergency custody order and taken to the local hospital. When he became physically combative with officers, officers then transported him to the County West Jail, but the county sheriff's office personnel took him in around 4 p.m. on March 6th and admitted him to the Virginia Central State Hospital. Virginia State Police have obtained a 12-minute long security video, but there is no immediate plan to release the video to the public.

All deputies are set to appear before the grand jury on March 21st at 9 a.m. Scott, I wanted to go to you first on this. We have these cases, and it seems to black folks at every intersection that they have any contact with law enforcement, you risk death. How can something like this happen where someone is being taken into a mental facility, they know this person has issues, they know that this person may act out, and they still end up killing him while in custody? And they know that they're being videotaped. It's some incredible stuff, man. And it keeps happening over and over and over again in almost every part of the country. Robert, you do criminal defense. Well, let's just think about this.

The police clearly don't care. The police training matters. But I'm not going to let the government off the hook about that. The mental health issue was so huge. And he was in custody, being taken into a mental institution to get the help he wanted. The police didn't have to do anything but take him there. And then they suffocated him because he's having a mental episode. And the other thing that you get in this case and other cases

is what's the rush with the police? If you've got a disruptive, mentally ill patient, right, what's the rush in either moving them or bringing them out of a barricaded situation in a home or a garage or a bathroom? What is the rush? Why not let the mental health experts do their thing? But the police have no discretion. All they know is force, arrest, and arrest with force. That's all they know. There's no discretion on the street. And they do what they're known to do. And people die from it, especially mental health patients. And so, so much has to be done in criminal justice reform and police reform, right, for them to be better. But there again, where is the discretion? And so I've actually been doing rolling for five years, maybe seven years.

I'm tired of talking about these cases. It seems like every week there's another case and it's not getting better. People are dying and it's just not getting better. The police are just dumb. Cities keep paying out multiple millions of dollars. And you get to a point where you think, OK, enforcement or money judgments just aren't working. And all the political statements there are aren't working. The police are just, it's too ingrained in their training and stuff. And what we really need to do is do a nationwide retraining national mandate manual for police training and start to implement it now because they're not going to do it on their own.

The police, in my opinion, are incapable of changing. They just aren't. So that thin blue line has to be changed to be thicker or thinner, but more importantly, transformative and better. On that same point, Rebecca, I feel like we need to start a hashtag mental health while black, because it seems that having a mental health episode while also being

black has turned into a death sentence. What can we do to better protect people, particularly black folks who are going through mental health crises? Robert, I'm pretty sure that's already a hashtag. In fact, just like Scott said, we talked about a similar issue last week when we talked about the young brother in New Jersey where he was barricaded in his home. He was having a mental health crisis, actually worked with mental health trauma. Folks who worked with him showed up to the scene and tried to talk to law enforcement who were on the scene and they weren't listened. Instead, I believe he was shot dead. So, you know, I do agree. What is the rush when it comes to someone who's in a mental health crisis? What is the rush to quickly get the situation, quote unquote, handled or under

control by any means necessary? I don't even know that training is the issue here. I don't think law enforcement should be involved when there are mental health crises. I think there should be a mental health task force that we have. We have the national, what is it, 4-1? I forgot what the national number is now for those who are in a mental health crisis. But police shouldn't be on the other side of that call. Instead, it should be trained people. We should put money into this country to invest and make sure that we have the proper number

of mental health counselors and therapists and crisis folks to deal with what is an increasing population that have mental health needs. And Joe, kind of on that same point, what do we need to do legislatively or policy-wise to stop these things from happening? Because it's very difficult to get any traction on police reform on the national level. But as everyone has said, these stories happen on a weekly basis. We can literally fill up an entire 24-hour network with just cases of black folks being abused or beaten by law enforcement or killed by law enforcement. What should be the solution? What should at least be the road towards a solution? There's a wish list here. You know, there's so many things that need to be done, but could we possibly agree? And I'm just throwing

this out there. Could it possibly become an initiative, become important? Okay, you feel a certain way about police brutality, right? But we all agree, well, at least most of us, that there is some such thing as having a mental health crisis and that it actually ought to be approached differently. So you do one of two things. You make police accountable to make that situation less likely from happening.

And of course, there needs to be this discussion and action related to police not dealing with mental health issues. Or once someone is in a mental health box or in a mental health situation, that there are certain rules that are different than the ones that the police are used to being able to live by, survive by, et cetera, because you're under the guise of mental health. You know, we have been talking a long time about this and, you know, what can change and when it can change. And there's more discussion on mental health. And that's that's important. But should it really be that police should be in a mental health? There's no question that there's a mental health issue going on here.

This guy is in a mental health place dealing with mental health issues. But if you bring police brutality into that, if you bring police culture into that, it should do two things. It should say, no, not here. That's thing one, okay? But thing two, have this larger discussion about what belongs with police and what does not. But I think the consolation prize for now is to find some way

for there to be accountability and different rules that hopefully lend to a different spirit and a different culture as it pertains to people that are being dealt with under the mental health care umbrella. And Scott, you know, we were just on a conservative show a week or so ago, and the people on the other side of the aisle have a completely different view of these things. They say that there's a crime wave nationwide and we need to be empowering officers to be more violent, to be more aggressive, to be more militaristic in order to put down and control these communities. How exactly can we get to a point of compromise where we on this side see a very clear situation where black and brown people are murdered on a daily basis by law enforcement, but the folks on the other side see there being this crazed crime wave that they have

to put down by any means necessary, and they're not willing to even come to the point of having a conversation, let alone a compromise? They want to add to the penalties, too. They want to lock them up for longer. You know, Washington, D.C. is one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, if not the highest, right? And we lock them up for a long time in Washington. And guess what? Like any other urban center, the crimes keep coming. We still got a crime wave. And so I think a couple of things. We have to take a holistic view towards rethinking criminal justice and law enforcement and how we enforce the laws, right? So for example, have you ever done a ride out with the police? You ride out with the police and the police ride around in most jurisdictions and they get a call

after the crime has been committed. And you show up with the police and the police ride around in most jurisdictions and they get a call after the crime has been committed and you show up with the police and the police begin their investigation. Why don't we put more money into preventing crime versus solving crime? If I'm a victim of a crime, I don't care what happens after I'm a victim. Sure, I want them to be arrested or return my property or what have you, but I've been victimized already. So why not increase police presence in my community, high crime or not, so that the presence prevents the crime versus prosecuting or investigating the crime? That's one thing. is looking at a holistic approach to high crime communities and implement with poor communities and rural communities that we're going to require folks to be in school, stay in school,

job training, jobs, entrepreneurship, giving them an alternative to gang violence or life of crime. Most young kids who are selling drugs or involved in the gangs are involved in both of those bad activities because that's the way out of their community, their view. And they don't see an alternative without a doubt. You've got to give them hope, whether it's with the church, with the YMCA, with the boys club, girls club, whatever it is. It's a holistic approach or continuum of care that keeps them busy. We used to have midnight basketball, which was very popular in the 80s and 90s, to divert kids from being involved in crime after 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock. But all of these programs, Robert, take money.

And taking care of poor people or our young people who are preventing crime is far more expensive. And yet we give billions to Ukraine. We give billions to other countries around the world to defend against our national security. And yet we won't give billions to black communities or poor communities or communities of kids and adults who are incarcerated. Why don't we require them to have a skill set and have a job when they come out of the penitentiary? Why don't we require them that they cannot be in a gang? That it's illegal to be in a gang if you're out of the penitentiary, certainly illegal when you are in the penitentiary. Where does the First Amendment come with that? Just a few ideas.

Scott, you know, on that point, whenever I have conversations with some of our conservative friends and they say, well, what about black-on-black crime? I say, well, what about reparations? If you want to cut black-on-black crime, check for reparations. It will all sort itself out. We're going to keep this conversation going on the other side of the break. You're watching Roland

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every day right here on the culture with me for rajee muhammad only on the black star network on the next a balanced life with me dr jackie re-entry anxiety a lot of us are having trouble transitioning in this post-pandemic society and don't even realize it. We are literally stuck between two worlds in purgatory. How to get out of purgatory and regain your footing and balance. What emotions they're feeling and being able to label them because as soon as you label an emotion, it's easier to self-regulate. It's easier to manage that emotion. Next, A Balanced Life on Blackstar Network. Hello, everyone. I'm Godfrey, and you're watching... Roland Martin Unfiltered. And while he's doing Unfiltered, I'm practicing the wobble.

Last week, we saw the second largest bank collapse in United States history with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest that we've seen since the 2008 financial collapse. That was followed up Monday by the collapse of the third largest bank collapse in U.S. history, the collapse of Signature Bank. As a result of this kind of run on banks that we've seen recently. We've also seen the collapse of Seagate Bank, as well as markets overseas working hard to try to reassure up this process. We saw the UK branch of Silicon Valley Bank be bought by HSBC, as well as the Indian government stepping in to reassure startups there that their deposits would be secured. We've seen reassurances from the federal government. We've seen Janet Yellen, President Biden,

reassure people that the banking system is secure. The Fed has announced that they will not be, or many people believe the Fed will not be raising rates in March, despite the last two years nearly of continuous rate hikes as a result of this. But despite these, we're still seeing people who are very unsure about their money. The Silicon Valley bank's customers withdrew $42 billion in a single day, and that's what led to them not having the cash flow balance in order to stay operating. Now, could this bank's demise mean more business for minority banks? Joining me now from Washington, D.C., is Nicole Elam, president and CEO of the National Bankers Association.

NBA was founded in 1927 as the Negro Bankers Association, the organization's mission is to promote minority depository institutions. Nicole, how are you doing this year? I'm doing well. Thank you for having me today. Well, thank you so much for coming on during this very kind of fraught time for people. Akeem, talk a little bit about what led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Seagate Bank and Signature Bank, because I think a lot of people don't understand that these banks don't actually have that money just sitting in a vault. That money is out living its best life while it's deposited. You are absolutely right. Most people don't understand what happened at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

And because they don't understand, it's leading to a flurry of people wanting to take their deposits and take them to banks that are considered too big to fail. But what happened to Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank is that they had a high concentration of their deposits and asset base in things that are considered risky, in crypto, the volatile venture capital, tech startups. And so if you have one leave and you have all of those deposits in that asset base, it makes it very risky. That's unlike most banks all across the country. That's what people don't get and they don't understand, that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are unlike most banks all throughout the country and that they had a rapid growth, a nontraditional banking model that is unlike most banks like community banks that I serve. And, Wilta, you know, kind of the animating point of this was a tweet from Peter Thiel, the billionaire that kind of spooked the market. Can you talk about what caused this bank run on these banks and kind of the current financial fear that we're in? Yeah, so what happens is if you have somebody who says, oh my goodness,

you should fear it, then you have people doing that. People leave the market and they want to take their money out for fear that it won't be there when they need it. And so the interesting thing is the impact, not just that it had on Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, but the impact that it's having on minority banks. Because most people don't understand that Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank were the bank of tech and crypto and venture capital, they don't understand that their money is safe. And so what happens is they lose fear and the entire banking sector. And so we've been spending a lot of time telling customers that your money is safe, that you need to leave it in our banks. 98% of deposits at minority banks

are under $250,000. So they're fully FDIC insured, but people don't get it. And so the impact of that is that our customers are now leaving our banks and they are going to banks that the federal government taught them in 2008 are too big to fail. And so you're seeing a deposit flight. And that has ripple effects, not just only on what happened at Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank, but on not big banks like our traditional smaller minority banks. After the 2008 financial collapse, we did see legislation in Dodd-Frank in 2010 meant to stop some of these risky investment practices, which you mentioned earlier. That time was primarily pointed towards the real estate sector, the liar loans, no money down, no job, no car payment, mortgages that were being given out. But the tech sector figured out kind of ways to circumvent this by giving out large loans to venture capital

funds, startups that really had no history or no evidence they would be able to pay these loans back. Then in 2018, we saw the rollback of much of Dodd-Frank under the Trump administration. Senator, former Congressman Barty Franks was on the board of Signature Bank that kind of freed up much of this lending prohibitions that were created in 2010. Can you talk about the way that legislation has kind of created the situation where banks such as Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank can make these risky loans and go under? And could that become a contagion in the system that people fear spreading out throughout the financial sector?

You know, that is a great question. But the interesting thing is that this wasn't a case where you necessarily had loopholes and it was a loophole that led to the crash. The reality of it is, is that banks have to go through stress tests. And the fact that this is a bank that grew 315% in two years and 60% of its assets were in treasuries that everybody else was saying you need to do something different with, that in and of itself should have been something that would have been alarming and should have triggered a stress test. So what tends to happen when you have these type of big major events is that people's first reaction is, oh, my gosh, we need new legislation. We need new regulations and we need to overcorrect.

But this isn't a case actually that you need new legislation and regulations. What you actually need to do is implement what was already in place. And on that same note, we're seeing with those long term treasuries, the big thing that changed was when they made the loans, we were talking about interest rates being 2%. But then after the last two years of Chairman Powell, what they nearly monthly seems like raises in interest rates, now we're at over 5%, which makes those long-term treasury notes less valuable. It seems that he's following the roadmap laid out by Paul Volcker in 1979, 1980, when it came to breaking the back of inflation by raising interest rates. How exactly have those rate heights impacted small and medium-sized minority banks? One of the biggest ways that we're seeing the rate heights impact us is through deposits. In the post-pandemic, post-George Floyd environment, what we saw is a lot of people now wanting to support minority banks, which is an awesome thing. And one of the ways that they sought to support minority banks is by making deposits.

And so you saw a lot of big banks and corporations really think about making deposits in minority banks. Well, what happened is when that rate environment changed, they then wanted a deal that was market specific and not necessarily impact investing. So what we're seeing is a flight of deposits that were placed in minority banks at one rate and people trying to renegotiate it because of the rate change. And so it really goes to show, are people really in it to have an impact and to support minority banks, or are they in it to say that they're supporting minority banks? And on that same note, what we saw with these banks that go under is that they were very much the banks of venture capital, the banks of startups. Black and

minority businesses often don't have access to angel investors that are going to come in to help get your business or your app started, or access to some of these loans that were considered risky. What role do small and medium-sized Black banks play in filling that gap between those risky investments that something like the Silicon Valley would make versus people not having access to the funds to grow their businesses and really bring their ideas to fruition? Yeah, so our banks really focus on small businesses that are sitting in and serving our communities. Those are the businesses that we are investing in and we

are making sure that they have access to capital. When it comes to larger tech startups that, as you said, are riskier, there are banks that do that. And so what we do is we partner with venture capital companies that are supporting those banks. And we really want to focus on particularly entrepreneurs of color, those tech startups. And so we partner with those venture capital companies to ensure that those small businesses that are in the tech industry have the capital that they need to survive and thrive. But those types of investments are very different than perhaps the traditional community bank lending that you see happen on a local level. And just kind of finally, we saw that in the wake of the collapses on Friday and Monday of Silicon Valley Bank, Syngenta Bank, Seagate Bank, I think there were 12-plus banks that they had to stop trading in the stock exchange

because they had lost 70-plus percent of their value. For nervous investors or people who are thinking about pulling their money out of traditional banks and putting them into crypto or putting them into hard assets like gold and rare earth elements, et cetera. How could they be sure or how can they know if their bank is in danger of going under? Talk to your bank, right? The reality of it is, is that our bank is not a bank that is going under, right? Most of the accounts, deposit accounts that are at our banks are under $250,000. So they are fully federally insured by the FDIC. And for those accounts that are over $250,000, there are a number of tools that are in place to maximize FDIC insurance.

They're called reciprocal deposit agreements, where banks have agreements with one another for amounts that are over $250,000 so they are secure. So what I would say is that our banks are probably more safe than any of the other things that you are seeing out there. So keep your money at a local community bank. These are the ones that have been sitting in and serving your community. We have a long-standing track record for over a century of proving that we are reliable, we are here to stay, we are well capitalized, and we are full of liquidity. So we are here ready to lend and your money is safe. All right. And real quick before we go, where can people find more information about those

small limit sizes with Black-owned banks and community banks? Nationalbankers.org is the place to go to find out more information about minority-owned and operated banks. Well, thank you so much for all the information. I've been encouraging people on the radio all week, learn more about the banking system, because the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank cast out $3.5 million two weeks before they went out of business. The executives at Silicon Valley Bank gave themselves bonuses Friday morning, paid out by Silicon Valley Bank, deposited it in the bank. Then when the bank went under, now that gets picked up by the federal government.

So the FDIC pays them back their money. Learn the way that money works. It helps you out. Thank you so much for joining us. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. We'll be back after the break. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right money habits.

Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made. But don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Black Star Network. A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff push Black people if they're doing a certain thing what that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who you know wants to leave any situation they're in and the only people they see are people that are doing this so i got to be a gangster i got to

shoot i got to sell i got to do this in order to do it and it just becomes a cycle but when someone comes around and make another oh we don't you know they don't want to push it or put money into it so that's definitely something i'm trying to fix too is just show there's other, we don't, you know, they don't want to push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix, too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't got to be a rapper, you don't got to be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know? Showing the different avenues, and that is possible,

and it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does it. Hi, everybody. This is Jonathan Nelson. Hi, this is Cheryl Lee Ralph, and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. We talked earlier about the quote-unquote war on woke that Governor Ron DeSantis launched in Florida. The idea that he now says Florida State where woke goes to die. Well, there's a clip right now that is going viral. Conservative author Bethany Mandel struggled to define the word woke while criticizing a clip that has now gone viral. So they're on the show The Hill on The Hill's web series Rising.

Mandel spoke to Breonna Joy Gray about her latest book on the issue with the progressive left and the leftist agenda. And at one point during the issue, Gray just questioned her and said, hey, what does woke mean? The title of your book, you talk about it time and time again. Well, that clip now has two million plus views. The term woke is something that's often used by Republicans and the conservatives to attack and critique Democrats. Anything progressive is woke. If you make the Little Mermaid black, that is woke. If you make a character that used to

be white into a minority, that is woke. If you have an M&M that's now wearing jeans instead of high heels, that's woke. So I think we have a clip from the interview of Bethany Mandel talking about her new book about wokeness. Let's see that clip. Native Americans consider themselves very liberal and probably fewer of them consider themselves to be woke.

And so, you know, when we talk about traditional. What does that mean to you? Would you mind defining woke? Because it's come up a couple of times and I just want to make sure we're on the same page. So, I mean, woke is sort of the idea that. This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral. I mean, woke is something that's very hard to define and we've spent an entire chapter defining it. It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and reduce society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. Sorry, it's hard to explain in a 15-second soundbite. So the reason it's hard to explain is because it's a made-up thing. And it's a double made-up thing if you really think about it. Because I think particularly

in the Black Hebrew Israelite community and Black communities for the past century, we've talked about the Great Awakening, about opening up your third eye to understanding who you really are within the society as a descendant of the African continent. That idea was taken by black liberals or by white liberals and turned into something completely different. And then you start hearing on college campuses and Berkeley and Stanford, et cetera, about them, quote, unquote, becoming woke. And then woke became about feminism. It came about the LGBTQIAPK plus community. Wokeness turned into a conversation about intersex and about feminism, et cetera. And so the conservative took what white liberals said woke was, and then they perverted it for their own purposes also, saying that now woke was diversity, equity, and inclusion. Woke was anything besides the traditional white American values.

Anything besides John Wayne and Ronald Reagan on horseback was considered woke. We had a black couple at a commercial. Now that's woke. The military wants to have a new policy that allows people to have gender identification. That is woke. So now we've gone so far from the actual origins of the word and the actual concept and definition of what it started out being that we've turned it into something that can no longer be explained or defined. It is now this amorphous term that Republicans simply use to badge and to brand anything they dislike. Meanwhile, they actually got down to some of the roots of where the thing came from.

They would have an entirely different view of things. I think it's time we hold them accountable. Next time Ron DeSantis or any politician or person on cable news says they have a criticism of what wokeism is, ask them to define it. See if they can tell you exactly what it is they cannot because they do not want to say out loud i am against black people having equal rights that's what they mean by woke i'm against women having a place in society outside of what it was 100 years ago that's what they consider woke i don't believe that people should have the right on autonomy to challenge white supremacy that's what they mean when they say anti-woke.

So don't let them get away with it. Don't let them change what you have defined. You make them come to your definition. You don't go to theirs. I'll go on to the panel. Rebecca, what does it say when you have these folks out here, like this author, whatever her name was,

I won't give any more publicity, who write entire books, who build an entire career on fighting against quote-unquote wokeness, but he can't even tell you exactly what it is. Well, she has an entire chapter where she defined it, right? That's what she just told us in this clip. I mean, this is a classic example of someone trying to use A-A-V-E and not understanding what it means. So I would tell a lot of white people out there, including some of my white friends, if you don't know what the word means, don't use it. Don't try to be funny. I mean, bottom line is like just ridiculous. And I would even say like you

wouldn't even, you went back further with explaining where woke came from. And I would say most of the people who are talking about it now, they're just referring to in the last three years. And they saw on Twitter when black folks were using the hashtag, hashtag stay woke. And so they thought it was funny. They thought it was a term they wanted to use and spin against what

folks were activated around George Floyd. They're trying to be funny. I mean, it's whatever. And Joe, on that same note, you know who I blame for this? Childish Gambino. Daniel, or Donald Glover,

ATL native, just as I am. And when he made that song for the Jordan Peele movie with Daniel Kaluuya, where he said, stay woke, you know, he made that song. That's when all of a sudden it entered the kind of national lexicon. And then that's when you started getting white liberals who took the word and kind of perverted for their own purposes. Then after that started to become associated with Black Lives Matter, the social justice movements after George Floyd, that's when Republicans just took the word just about the same time they took critical race theory and just discovered that

and turned it into the new boogeyman. So how can we reclaim something that we created and have used for generations and now is being double perverted by these groups? There are so many things that are actually in this category, Robert. If you go to Merriam-Webster's, I actually don't mind the definition. I love that you give us the full history of it, but the definition in Merriam-Webster's is aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues, including those surrounding racial justice, racial and social justice. If somebody says stay woke, stay attentive, stay aware of important societal facts, F-A-C-T-S, and issues including racial justice, I can live with that. There's a larger story for sure.

There's more to be told. Like so many things that are out here. We can go to music. We can go to pyramids. We can go to a whole lot of stuff that we started, that started with us and became perverted. So I think thing one is, you know, knowledge is key. We're parentalized for what we don't know. So we need to know that history.

Robert, I had to make sure my daughter has the whole story. She can give us the Merriam-Webster's just like I can, but going back all the way to the beginning and what that means for us now, we have to take a hold of that and define that. And it's time for another show. You said what you said. Maybe you weren't kidding or maybe half jokingly, but there's a lot of stuff that gets out here, man, at the top of the radio because of hip hop and hip hop culture where it's being used for that purpose.

But it's not public enemy. You know what I mean? And so, therefore, we really have to do what we can to take this narrative back, and that starts off with even correcting ourselves and making sure that we talk about it the right way and to trumpet the horn that being woke is not something for people to fear unless, of course, you're fearing being outnumbered. I mean, we keep going back to that. There's so many things that have been corrupted, but we've got to be part of it. They're not going to fix this for us, okay? So we have to be on the front lines in terms of making sure that it's defined properly and understanding what it means. But it's

amazing that this woman wrote a whole chapter on it and couldn't explain it in 10 or 15 seconds, you know, with quiet and no distraction. That just lets you know what we're dealing with. And Scott, the amazing thing to me that these people have to understand is white people can't be woke. The entire idea is that through prayer and meditation, you can stimulate and open your penile gland to open up your third eye and to truly understand your position in the five-sided dimension of the positioning of the Asiatic Black man going back 100,000 years

to the creation of society. But they don't want to talk about that. They've turned this down to their own little term that they can say, well, the green M&M doesn't have a purse anymore, so that's being woke. How do we continue to allow our culture, our history, our society to be co-opted and then fed back to us where we're repeating their definition instead of learning what our own definition is?

No, I don't think they're repeating it back to us. They're just using their own definition. I mean, listen, wokeness is not a bad word. Wokeness is a consciousness about freedom, justice and equality in all aspects of American society as we continue to form a more perfect union. White America doesn't want to form a more perfect union. It's been perfect for them over 400 years, from slavery to civil rights, from Jim Crow to George Floyd, right? Make America great again is their form of wokeness.

We don't have to be sensitive to black, brown, and yellow people or physically challenged people or queer people. They want a life that is simpler and caters to white America, rooted in white privilege and the celebration of white privilege, right? So that's their definition of wokeness. We know our definition of wokeness is rooted in civil rights, justice, freedom, justice, inequality, criminal justice, gun control, right? Civil rights, abortion rights, right, gay rights, and all the things that would make America truly a country rooted in equality. That's what you tell white people when they start criticizing a woke culture. You don't want that freedom, justice, equality that the Constitution and the

preamble promises America. You want it to stay the way it is. And so I don't think they've taken it from us. They've redefined it for their own purpose. So we need to keep our definition. And in these debates with them, we define it. Lastly, my third grade teacher, Sister Ruth, at St. Mary's Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Joliet, Joliet, Illinois, used to say to me all the time, if you can't say it, you don't know it. So in English class, if I couldn't say it,

then I didn't know what I was talking about. And she's absolutely right. This woman wrote a chapter. Maybe she didn't even write it, actually. Maybe she had a mental block. But it's so embarrassing to criticize a woke culture but not be able to define it. Just really, really a bad moment for her. But it shows you the air and the lack of depth and substance on how they politicized one of our core principles of wokeness. Look, I will just tell these folks who call wokeness in vain, be careful what you wish for. You don't want to really get black folks looking up and learning things,

because once you have 10 million Asiatic black men coming awakening or having their awakening and becoming truly woke. Ask the French people what happened down in Haiti when the last time that happened. Ask the folks at the Stonewall Rebellion what happens when black people truly awake and become woke. You might not want to play with things you don't really understand. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. We can keep this conversation going on the other side of the break. We will be right back. Coming up on the next Black Table, a conversation with Professor Howard W. French on his new book, Born in Blackness, covering 600 years of global African history and helping us

understand how the world we know today is a gift from Black people. There could have been no West without Africa and Africa. That's on the next Black Table with me, Greg Carr, only on the Black Star Network. Folks, Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Black power. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. is here. Oh, no punching! I'm real revolutionary right now.

We support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared.

It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? A lot of these corporations or people that are running stuff push black people if they're doing a certain thing. What that does is it creates a butterfly effect of any young kid who, you know, wants to leave any situation they're in, and the only people they see are people that are doing this. So I got to be a gangster, I got to shoot, I got to sell,

I got to do this in order to do it. And it just becomes a cycle. But when someone comes around and makes another, oh, we don't, you know, they don't want to push it or put money into it. So that's definitely something I'm trying to fix too, is just show there's other avenues. You don't got to be a rapper, you don't got to be a ballplayer. You can be a country singer, you can be an opera singer, you can be a damn whatever, you know, showing the different avenues.

And that is possible. And it's hard for people to realize it's possible until someone does. I'm Anthony Smith. What up? Lana Well, and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Today's Black and Missing. We have Tashonda Anderson. She has been missing from Fort Wayne, Indiana since New Year's Eve. The 17-year-old is 5'10", weighs about 160 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes.

Tashonda may need medical attention. Anybody with information about Tashonda Anderson should call the Lake County, Indiana's Department at 219-660-0001. Again, that's the Lake County Indiana Sheriff's Department, 219-660-0001. Going to headlines, Chapel State University is not renewing the contract to head coach Juan Dixon. Now, Dixon has been under scrutiny as a former student filed a lawsuit accusing Dixon of not reporting an alleged sexual assault and blackmail by Lucian Brownlee. Brownlee allegedly harassed, tormented, and sexually assaulted the player before publishing confidential information he had obtained from the student. Brownlee was an assistant coach,

the director of player development, and the director of basketball operations at Choppin State. Now, for those of you who don't know, Juan Dixon is a former NBA player and All-American player. He led the Choppin State Eagles program since the 2017-2018 season. Under his leadership, the program has had a mark of 51 and 139 in six seasons. Following the decision not to renew Dixon's contract, Toppin State Athletic Director Derek Carter made this statement. Coach Dixon has been a valuable member of our community, and we are grateful for his hard work and dedication to our student-athletes.

He has made significant contributions to the Toppin State men's basketball program. We wish him all the best in his future endeavors. I want to hop to our panel real quick on this. Joe, on this point, do you think that it was the issue with the failure to address the allegations by the student? Or was it that 51 and 131 record that kind of cost Coach Dixon his job. Well, I guess the silver lining with Pat Ewing's situation is that it didn't seem to be a scandal other than him not doing a lot of winning. So it makes you wonder out loud, right, what's really going on. Because the fact of the matter is sometimes at some schools, you know,

everybody loves a winner when their coach is winning. They find a way to get around this kind of thing. So it certainly didn't help his cause that they weren't winning games, right? But in any event, this is something you, of course, have to take seriously for sure. And to the extent that there's potential that your coach or that the leader of your program is complicit in all that. I mean, you hope that this type of thing, if it's truly about accountability, if it's truly about accountability, if it's truly about keeping a problem from happening, that's the other part, too. It's not just that, okay, we're going to let this guy go because we got our hands caught in the cookie jar, so to speak.

What you really want to do is have a culture of support where athletes aren't considered first-class citizens and people that might have complaints about them considered second-class citizens, right? Are they dealing with a larger issue? Because if they're not dealing with a larger issue, whether Dixon was part of this or not, then this is bound to happen again, because there's going to be more athletes, there's going to be more students, and there's going to be more situations where there's a power dynamic possibility. But in here, this situation, I don't think there's any question that the fact that he would seem to be a loser did not help him. That shouldn't be the final thing, but I'm hoping that they're dealing with a larger culture. And Rebecca, on that same point, there seems to be a culture

in college sports where as long as the coach is winning, they will forgive their players DUIs, domestic violence cases, pretty much any activity. But the minute that you're not bringing those wins home, all of a sudden you have to be held accountable. What can we do to shift this culture in college sports and athletics where they will hold players accountable for activities, or in this case an assistant coach, for activities they do particularly against women on campuses? Well, in this particular situation, it wasn't against women on the campus, but Juan Dixon, as the head coach, was at Charleston State for about six years. I think three years ago, the basketball team was the conference champions. So you're right, they haven't been winning as much lately, but it was also very notable that Juan's wife, Robin Dixon, who comes on the Real Housewives

of Potomac, which airs on Bravo, she mentioned publicly using that platform that Juan handled the situation well and with integrity and handled it the exact same way she would wish a coach would handle it if her sons were in that type of situation. I would have to largely disagree because it doesn't look like Juan handled that situation to the best of his ability. And on top of that, we're in a country that values winning. And when you start to lose and all of a sudden those scandals start to stink a bit more. And Scott, kind of on that point, you know, we've seen scandals at University of Alabama basketball with one of the players there. His involvement with what led to being a shooting and a young lady lost her life.

We have the case of UGA with the football player who's going to be a high draft pick who was street racing while drunk with somebody. And it resulted in the loss of life of one of his teammates and another young lady in that case. How can we get out of this place where it seems that we protect and kind of condone this bad behavior instead of really trying to root it out and making sure we're producing not just great athletes, but great young men also? I don't think we're protecting it or burying it. I guess those are the cases that we don't hear about. I guess they may have been protected. But in both of the cases with Jalen Carter and the other basketball player from Alabama, those are pretty high-profile

matters. The ballplayer hasn't been charged, although he may be an unindicted co-conspirator or he may be a key material witness in that case. I think with the endorsements that come now with college athletes, they can get paid. With it, excuse me, comes great responsibility and additional oversight. You know, remember, these kids are between the ages of 18 and 22. They're going to do some things wrong. They're immature, immensely talented, maybe even super bright scholarly athletes. But they're going to do bad things because you do bad things when you're immature or you have peer pressure. Right. So the supervision piece, in my opinion, is really, really important. Parents send their kids to college. You turn your kids over to college, whether it's University of Alabama or Morehouse College, right?

And you expect proper supervision and to protect them. But kids are going to do bad things and stupid things, hopefully the excellence of these student-athletes, to put your arms around them, to supervise them, and to lead them in a way that they're going to accept your leadership and choose to do the right thing. Whether they're an athlete or not, you hope you instill the values in these kids, your own kids, right, so that they make the right decision when you're not around. Often they don't make that right decision. And so they've got a lot of growth to do as a result, whether you're an athlete, college athlete, or whether you're anybody's child.

But Scott, on that point, you really don't think that these athletes get covered for in these situations? I mean, just look at the case of the Alabama basketball player. He's still playing in the tournament, despite perhaps being an undivided co-conspirator in that case. If you look at back when Florida had Tim Tebow, pretty much the whole team were criminals that were often, you know, you had Aaron Hernandez on that team, who ended up going to prison for murdering people. You have a lot of these players that because they can run fast, jump high, get wins for

the school, make the coach $100 million, they have a culture where very much you are covering up and you're trying to sweep these things under the rug. And I think that as long as you maintain that, you're going to end up with situations like this where if Juan Dixon had won a championship this year, it's very unlikely he would have been terminated just for the actions of this coach against another individual. Well, wait a minute. Let's unpack all of that commentary. Prosecutors decide who's a criminal or not.

You and I don't. And the ballplayer from Alabama, he's not charged with anything. What are you going to suspend him for? Suspicious of being taken part in the murder of a young lady? You can't do that. What do you think? We're in a police state? So I'm not sure you're

protecting or coddling these athletes. Come on, man. You're really showing your conservatism now. Stop. Stop. Okay? These people, they've got rights like everybody else. They do. They have rights like everybody else. What they do, they have rights like everybody else. If he was a chess team and accused of being part of something that resulted in the death of a young woman,

I think they would just say, well, you can't play chess until that's worked out. But because Alabama is the favorite team headed into the head into the March Madness. Well, then, yeah, we can kind of forget that. And so much so that even after he was accused of being part of this shooting, he was doing a pat-down celebration entering the court where one of his teammates would pat him down as if he was looking for a gun.

These kids don't take this stuff seriously because they know the school and the coaches will cover for them. They pass a rule that says they can't play. You can't make up the rules as they go along. That kid hadn't been indicted on anything. And with Juan Dixon, that's an administrative piece that he should have just turned over to the dean of that school and focused on basketball. He may have knowledge.

He may even have failed in communicating or reporting, if you will, but that doesn't get you fired. That's a judgment call. What gets you fired is not winning games. And so the whole issue of cuddling or coddling these athletes who engage in bad behavior, I just don't buy it. I think the pressure to win is really important, which is what you're really getting at. And if you turn a blind eye to bad conduct or even illegal conduct, then you're absolutely right. But we never find out about the cover up until later. These are very public cases you're talking about.

And these kids have rights, just like you have a constitutional right to a lawyer and to be innocent until proven guilty. Let's not walk away from those principles because you want to put some performance standard on kids and that the NCAA just goes soft on them because they want to win games and generate revenue. Whether that's true or not, there's no empirical data to support that. And I think you ought to stop saying that. Look, let's just have an across-the-board rule that if you are perhaps indicated in a young woman's death for whatever reason, car racing, bringing a friend to a party or shoot somebody, those sorts of things, then maybe you don't do sports for a semester or you don't do extracurricular activities for a semester so you can clear those things up and perhaps help to create some family. Based on what rule? Other people who have died. Because someone died. Based on what rule? Give me the rule.

Let's not have the person who died and you're still out here celebrating at the game. Give me the rule. Give me the rule. Give me the rule. Because we just assume that people have the type of moral and values that will result in you not having to pass a rule to say that. Because I bet if it was a

cheerleader, they probably already have a rule about that. Give me the rule! Give me the rule! Robert, give me the rule! Didn't the Alabama student get suspended at first and then kicked off the team? I thought when this happened in late December

that the student was dismissed from the team at first. So wasn't there something that happened? But also I just want to point out what happened at Choppin State is completely different. Here you had two coaches and you had a coach who specifically is accused of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and blackmailing a student

into doing more exploitive sexual acts once that student had pictures taken of him that was then sent to other team members. That's what the assistant was accused of doing. So, Scott, do you think in that situation, maybe you should have

a rule that you get rid of the coach, or maybe the head coach, you know, doesn't do that for a while? You know, I just feel like we're putting in place a system where as long as you win, you get excused from whatever else it is that you do societally. Well, with Coppin State, they weren't winning. And from an HR standpoint, you don't need a new rule. That violates the handbook, if you will. No one

should be shaking down and taking pictures and exploiting young people like that. He should have been fired without a doubt. And if Juan Dixon knew about it and did nothing about it, then Juan Dixon ought to be fired too. You don't need a new rule for that. That's just good HR employment law and it's NCAA rules, if you will. You can't exploit anybody as a college student. So I'm trying to understand your complaint, because it seems like a lot of conjecture, not based on facts or based on reality. My point is that we should start injecting into our public discourse this common decency and common understanding. And then maybe it's not a good look for the university, it's not a good look for the university,

it's not a good look for the NCAA, to have somebody who's accused of being part of the death of a young woman as one of the faces of college basketball and one of the faces of the tournament going forward, particularly when their parents and her family have to see this on a daily basis knowing that there was some involvement.

Just common decency. Well, if there was a room that said he couldn't play... We're out of time. We're way over. We'll be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets. A horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence.

On that soil, you will not regret. White people are losing their damn minds. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at every university calls white

rage as a backlash. This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. Here's all the Proud Boys guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white people. 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.

Pull up a chair. Take your seat. The Black Table 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. And tonight's Tech Talk segment, we're talking about the reading revolution. And 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only about 18% of Black fourth graders could read at grade level. Additionally, 15% of eighth graders were found to be proficient at reading. And we all know that after the pandemic, after Zoom school and a couple years of social distancing and isolation, those scores have dropped by as much as 3%. Because of this, the creators of the web-based reading support program, Reading Revolution Online, have created a program that helps children build reading skills, confidence, and cultural identity development by equipping them for success in school and life. TK Ochoa,

the creator of Reading Revolution Online, joins me from Atlanta, Georgia. TK, how are you doing this evening? I am blessed. How are you today? I am outstanding. So talk a little bit about what led you to the development of this program. Because we see so many children, we've all heard the statistics saying that they decide where to build jails and prisons based on third grade reading score. What really inspired you to develop a program to help young Black students read? Well, it started when I was a language arts teacher and a reading specialist when I noticed that, you know, many of our students were not doing well. And in my area as a reading specialist, they sent all the students to me who had not passed the state test in reading.

So every day I would write up a brief reading selection about a Black hero or shero, ancient or modern. And then I would add 10 multiple choice questions that would simulate how they would experience this content on the state reading test, because it was supposed to be similar to the structure. The difference is the content was about our history and about our culture that I knew that they were not getting in their other classes. And so in the process of doing that over time, we began to take that information and then put it into a book called Reading Revolution. That book did very, very well nationally and internationally. But in 2018, we began digitizing the content, and then we recently released Reading Revolution Online. It's an interactive, multimodal platform.

So for each of the reading selections about a Black hero or shero, ancient or modern, there's also a captioned video. There is a vocabulary activity. There is a grammar and writing activity. Because we want to make sure that our children are proficient in all of those different areas. Listen, we know that our children are brilliant beyond measure and that those low scores that you cited a little bit earlier are not an indication of their intelligence or their capability. What it is is it's an indication of the access and opportunity gaps that our children don't have access to quality teachers and to quality programs like this. You know, throughout the show, kind of the theme has been this attack on diversity, equity, inclusion in education, particularly in Florida, which has been kind of the Cassius Belli of the show today.

Can you explain why it's so important to present education in a form that is culturally and ethnically and language-wise amenable and digestible by students? And why it's important to actually have books and programs with topics and with figures that reflect them as they can see themselves in. It's so important to have culturally relevant material because when information is irrelevant, then students begin to check out. We know almost 100 years ago, Carter G. Woodson told us about the damages that miseducation causes when children are given an education or a type of schooling that doesn't speak to their reality or life as they will face it. But then Mwale Mubaruti says miseducation leads to diseducation. And diseducation is an anti-learning psychology. What does that mean?

It means you've lied to me so much. Now I don't want to learn anything. So I have just mentally checked out. Even though I haven't dropped out of college or out of school, I have opted out. So, so many of our children are mentally checking out, but Reading Revolution is changing that for our children. Our children are more engaged. They're learning the truth about their history and their culture, and they're loving engaging in these activities, and it's done in a manner that stimulates their intellectual and academic and cultural growth. All right, I want to bring the panel in.

There's something we lost, Scott. But Rebecca, did you have questions about the reading revolution online? Yes, Dr. Akua, even before kids get to school, what are tips that parents could do to engage their children and help them develop a love of reading? One of the best things that parents can do with their children and help them develop a love of reading? One of the best things that parents can do with their children is to read with their children every single day. And that can start from a very, very early age. One of the things that that does is it increases reading fluency. It increases reading comprehension. It increases vocabulary

development. So simply by choosing books that are reflective of the culture and the values that we want our children to have and reading those books to our children every day can dramatically increase reading and literacy scores. And before I go to Joe, I actually had a follow-up on Rebecca's question because I want you to talk a little bit why it's important to make sure that the curriculum is something that the children can know, understand, and digest and be able to remember. Because the way, as you said, the way my parents taught me to read was we read the Bible every night. So I read the King James Version of the Bible all the way through before kindergarten. So when I get to kindergarten, talking about ye, therefore, thou art and stuff,

they look to me a little bit crazy. So can you talk a little bit about how having relative subject matter is important? Yeah, the relevant subject matter is so important. And, hey, shout out to your parents because they did expose you to that, and that's great, and I'm sure it improved your comprehension and reading fluency skills. But we want to make sure we know that our children are, again, brilliant. Was that good for making friends? Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure. But we know that our children are brilliant beyond measure.

But one of the things that we have to do is we have to take responsibility and bring them up to speed. Reading Revolution Online is being used in a number of schools and school districts around the country and even internationally. However, we cannot wait for the public schools to get a clue. And this is why it's so important that we have this movement where we're going directly to parents and making it available to them so that they can utilize this with their children at home. You can use it at home. You can use it on your smartphone, your tablet, your laptop. You can use it while you're driving around running errands and your child is in the seat next to you. They can be doing the Reading Revolution activities and gaining

tremendously by engaging in these different activities. All right, Joe, did you have a question about the Reading Revolution online? Yeah, sure. Dr. Kua, how does, I remember when I was little, you know, those of us in the old school, we had that physical library. We had a library on Crenshaw in South Central. And Ms. Cohen, I specifically remember because when I brought books late, she would take the card out so that I didn't have to pay my 10 cents a day for the book being late, being brought back. Tell us about the connection with the physical library. Okay, that's still perhaps in some worlds the cheapest resource or the cheapest way to connect, particularly at some places, some communities where Internet is not as good as prevalent. Sometimes people use the library for Internet, et cetera. Is there an encouragement or connection to the library now? Is it more difficult because of you're trying to make sure that culturally sensitive materials and things that they're going to embrace proliferate there? And maybe that's a little bit harder to find. And are there other connections related to other online or low cost resources that will allow families to build on what it is that you're doing with this program? Yeah, so let me say, first of all, that having physical books at home,

I believe every Black family should have a library in their home. Every Black family should have a library in their home of physical books. But we wanted to make this accessible in a multimodal platform, also in a way that children could receive it. And what we found is that because it's visual,

there's a caption video for each reading selection. They're also hearing it. They're watching the words go across the screen. And so they're being impacted on several different levels that allows them to digest the material even better. So I'm not saying don't have the physical books. Please do. But with this, you can have it wherever you go. In addition, it tracks your child's progress

across 90 different reading selections and four activities for each of those 90 reading selections, all in an interactive platform that parents can log into. And so that's why we highly recommend it. In about a minute, can you tell us just kind of the nuts and bolts of how this program works and how it differentiates from any of the other things on the market? Sure. One of the things that differentiates it, first of all, is the cultural content.

One of the challenges that we're facing is that, you know, our children are exposed to a culturally irrelevant curriculum. Even in the few places and spaces where African-Americans are mentioned, it's not an authentic representation of our culture. In addition, when our history or culture is talked about, they start us at our lowest point in slavery or they'll start us in civil rights. And while those periods of time are very, very important, our history and our culture is so much more than just slavery or civil rights. You don't start a people's story at their lowest point. And so that's why we've taken it all the way back to Africa to make that African cultural connection so that people understand why we're called African Americans and that we have a rich tradition that's worthy to be respected. But we have to be the first people to respect it. And we have to do, as our ancestors said, we have to gain knowledge of self. And in gaining that knowledge of self,

you know, I think we'll see our students begin to pull their pants up. I think we'll see them begin to press towards excellence. I think we'll see them take their schooling and their education a lot more seriously. In addition to that, they will treat their peers differently because of the values and the character traits of resilience and self-determination and faith and unity that are embedded and woven into every selection in the reading revolution online curriculum. And so that's one of the things that distinguishes this from any other resources. We've had educational leaders and principals say, Dr. Akua, this is exactly what I was looking for, and I didn't even realize it. My students were engaged at a higher level. But here's the other thing. Teachers and leaders are telling us, I'm learning new things about African-American history and culture that I didn't

know. So parents, as well as teachers and leaders, love reading Revolution Online because many of them didn't get these lessons coming through school. So it's a win-win-win situation across the board. Well, we want to thank you for everything that you are working on. Please keep us updated. I think it's an outstanding resource. I really wish I had when I was a child. Thank you, Dr. Chula, for everything that you're doing. One last thing, can I add? Can I add one last thing? For those that go to Reading Revolution, I'm sorry, for those that go to readingvolution.org, if you click on parents, we have a special that we've made available for Roland Martin Unfiltered. When you go to ReadingRevolution.org, click on parents and put in the coupon code READ, R-E-A-D, and you will get a special discount.

If you pay up front the whole thing, just put that in, you get a special discount. If you pay up front, the whole thing, just put that in, you get a special discount. If you want to pay monthly, put READMO, M-O standing for monthly, and then you'll get a special discount. And that discount is tantamount to really paying a dollar a day. And I have to ask, is your child's future and academic success worth a dollar a day. If it is, go to readingrevolution.org. All right. Thank you so much, Dr. Achoo. I've got to thank our panel for joining us today. Thank Roland for letting me sit in for him. He'll be back tomorrow. Thanks

to Control Room for making all this work. And as I say, the end of the show on words of guilt, Scott, here, no matter the consequences, the fears, the gripping sentences, you've got to hold on to your dreams. Hold on to your dreams, America. Folks, Black Star Network is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now.

Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. Hey, Black, I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scape.

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