#RolandMartinUnfiltered - MD Man Sues Police for Paralysing him, Arbery Hate Trial Deliberations, Eradicating Breast Cancer

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

2.21.2022 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: MD Man Sues Police for Paralysing him, Arbery Hate Trial Deliberations, Eradicating Breast Cancer A black man in Maryland is left paralyzed after encountering the Prince George's County Police department. His lawyer is here to tell us about the case.A black Florida teen is wrongly arrested for making threats to her school. A bully created a fake profile. It took investigators almost two weeks to find out the girl they had in custody was being framed.Minneapolis is paying a black woman a 6-figure settlement after an officer pointed in her face because the officer thought she might have a gun after seeing her gun permit in her wallet.The fate of the three white men who killed Ahmaud Arbery is in the hands of a federal jury in their hate crime trial.We could know who President Joe Biden is nominating for the supreme court this week. We'll discuss how some GOP members say Biden's promise to select a black woman is racial discrimination.An organization is trying to make it easy for ex-convicts to re-enter society. We'll talk about the Returning Citizens Stimulus Program.In our Fit, Live, Win segment, we'll learn about a coalition trying to eradicate breast cancer in the black community.#RolandMartinUnfiltered partner: Nissan | Check out the ALL NEW 2022 Nissan Frontier! As Efficient As It Is Powerful! 👉🏾 https://bit.ly/3FqR7bPSupport #RolandMartinUnfiltered and #BlackStarNetwork via the Cash App ☛ https://cash.app/$rmunfiltered or via PayPal ☛ https://www.paypal.me/rmartinunfilteredDownload the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com#RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You dig? It's Monday, February 21st, 2022. I'm Ray Baker, sitting in again for Roland Martin, who is on his way back from Liberia. Here's what's coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Blackstar Network. A black man in Maryland is left paralyzed after encountering Prince George County Police Department. His lawyer is here to tell us about the case.

A black Florida teen is wrongly arrested for making threats to her school. A bully created a fake profile, and it took investigators almost two weeks to find out the girl they had in custody was being framed. Minneapolis is paying a black woman a six-figure settlement after an officer pointed a gun in her face because the officer thought she might have a gun after seeing her gun permit in her wallet. And the fate of three white men who killed Ahmaud Arbery is in the hands of a federal jury

in their hate crime trial. We'll have more. We could know who President Joe Biden is nominating for the Supreme Court this week. We'll discuss how some GOP members say Biden's promise to select a black woman is racial discrimination. And an organization is trying to make it easy for ex-convicts to reenter society. We'll talk about the Returning Citizens Stimulus Program.

In our Fit Live Win segment, we'll learn about a coalition trying to eradicate breast cancer in the black community. Plus, Brian Flores, you remember him. Well, he has a new job. It's time to bring the funk, right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered Streaming Live on the Black Star Network.

Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics.

With entertainment just for kicks, he's rolling. Yeah. Yeah. It's Uncle Roro, y'all It's Rollin' Martin, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's Rollin' Martin Now He's fresh, he's real, the best you know He's rolling, Martin Martin The family of a black man who was beaten and paralyzed

by some Maryland police officers is filing a federal civil rights lawsuit. Demonte Ward Blake was left paralyzed from the waist down and suffered a broken nose after the police dragged him to the ground and he landed on his neck during a traffic stop in 2019. Blake's family says there needs to be policy changes in Prince George's County Police Department after consistent reports of excessive force by officers. Renee Ward, Demonte's mother, believes officers need to be held accountable

for their actions. Had his knee. That police had his knee. Knee in my son's neck. My son was already paralyzed, swinging like a rag doll. And they walked around trying to cover up their names and badges and stuff.

But like she said, they always want to say the bad things oh they smell like weed or they did this and that that's that's that's not an issue people are still human at the end of the day amen amen y'all don't say the good things that these people is out here doing but you don't say the bad things that the people that did these things these people was out here doing either You know and that's that's what really pisses me off about a lot of these cases It was on the corner doing this it don't matter they're human and they went out there shoot my bang bang robbing people still in killing So what if they did what they did but they still was not bothering about the time when the people That destroyed these people lies lives, these family lives, did this.

One of the officers involved, Brian Strong, was charged with second-degree assault, misconduct in office, and reckless endangerment from the incident. Malcolm P. Ruff, the Blake family attorney, now joins me from Baltimore. Malcolm Ruff, thank you so much for joining us here again on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Thank you, Brother Ray. Again, it's a great honor to be back with you guys. I appreciate you all allowing us to highlight this very important case. I do have to say the photograph that I just saw, I know for certain is not Officer Strong. He is a white officer of the Prince George's County Police Department. Well, that's one of the things I wanted to get into our conversation with.

And some viewers who are consistent watchers of the show may remember you from last week for your federal lawsuit against Prince George's County Police Department and the work you're doing there. We talked a little bit about black officers, white officers, but you all are making the case that although this particular officer is a white officer, this is an institutional and systemic failure of Prince George's County. Is that a correct understanding? Yes. Our lawsuit that we filed today is a comprehensive indictment of the Prince George's County Police Department and their condemnation, they're allowing, almost facilitating, and in some instances, you could even argue that they encourage this type of brutality throughout their police department. There are dozens of instances of police brutality that are listed in this massive lawsuit, 40 pages, just of hatred, racist acts, unconstitutional acts, and very much

sincere violations of constitutional rights of citizens of Prince George's County. This lawsuit is going to hold this municipality accountable for what happened to DeMonte, because that condemnation, their facilitating excessive force throughout the department in a widespread manner, is what led to DeMonte's demise. It's what led to him being maimed. It's what led to his spinal cord being flattened and him being declared a permanent, nearly complete quadriplegic for the rest of his life. He lived for 653 more days in what we would describe as living hell. And that's why justice needs to be brought in Prince George's County to his family and to the community.

One of the things I'm curious about, Mr. Ruff, is this idea of lawsuit against the Prince George's County Police Department and the municipality of Prince George's County, but I'm also looking at your lawsuit and seeing that you're naming Bryant Strong individually. Do you think the individual component will be a more useful deterrent for law enforcement officers who violate? Because I presume otherwise, it's just the municipality or the department on the hook,

and that individual officer, if they're not facing any criminal charges, don't hold any liability. Well, legally, we have to be able to prove that this officer used excessive force in order to pierce the veil that municipalities have in federal court and their immunities that they have. One immunity that they do not have is if they have a pattern in practice of unconstitutional behavior throughout their department that they are not addressing. And so, in order for us to pierce that veil towards direct liability of Prince George's County, it's going to be necessary

for us to prove that this officer committed an act of excessive force, meaning an unreasonable use of force under the Fourth Amendment. And so it is absolutely necessary for us to sue this officer directly. I do believe it does have deterrent effect because the allegations in this complaint are damning. We allege that this officer intentionally slammed DeMonte on his face so hard that he broke his C4 neck bone in half. Those are the types of words that I would never want to be on the record of my life. And certainly, there will be a warning to anybody who's potentially thinking about hiring this gentleman who's been charged with criminal charges for what happens to DeMonte. This absolutely is necessary to hold both the

municipality and the officer accountable for what they've done to this family. Mr. Ruff, I'm anticipating what a defense attorney in this case would say or what they may even try to argue. And it seems as though the outcome would be heartbreaking for everybody when you begin to talk about spinal damage and whatnot. But to prove intent or maliciousness, to prove a violation of one's civil rights, that seems to be at least a step too far. And I can anticipate how defense attorneys may come and say that was never the intention, despite that being the outcome. And that often tends to be one of the places where we who see things on video and it looks so obvious to us find that our understanding differs from the justice system. How do you all anticipate being

able to overcome that? Well, we really are talking about two different courts, right? We're talking about the criminal case and the civil case. In the criminal case, we are, the state's attorney's office in Prince George's County is going to be faced with the hurdle of proving that this officer did intentionally injure DeMonte. However, the devastating nature of his injuries are overwhelming. And there is no accident about the nature of his injuries. And I think that the state's attorney's office will be able to prevail based on expert testimony, based on the witness the eyewitness testimony that will come out in this case. And then when we go over to the civil case,

we're talking about a different standard. We're talking about an objective standard that is not viewed in 20-20 hindsight. But how would an objectively reasonable officer handle this situation based on the totality of the circumstances. So if we look at the facts of what happened to DeMonte, he was handcuffed behind his back and being searched up against a squad car when he was slammed to the ground. There was nothing about those circumstances that made DeMonte an immediate threat to anyone. So the use of force

taking him to the ground in the manner that he was taken, while he had no ability to protect himself or to catch his fall or to stop himself from having a catastrophic injury and being made an invalid for the rest of his life, there's nothing reasonable about that. And I believe a jury will absolutely be able to see through any potential defense that the county may try to assert or the officer may try to assert. This was unreasonable, point blank, period. And it's every black mother's worst nightmare. Now, Mr. Ruff, you hit a word that all of our listeners here have wrestled with so often, which is objectionably reasonable. Because the things that feel

objectionably reasonable to us, often as we find both in criminal and or in civil court of laws, aren't always objectionably reasonable. So what type of framework, and forgive me if I'm asking for your game plan as an attorney, but what type of framework would you approach to make something that seems demonstrably and objectively reasonable, perhaps to myself and the panel that will join us in a second, make it seem so reasonable to judges and or juries? Well, that type of evidence really will be left up to very, very qualified experts in police use of force,

police conduct, and police administration. There is an expert, Michael Graham, who has weighed in on Prince George's County and the way they operate their administrative policies and how they are not followed. And that's how the group of officers who came on your show, I believe two years ago from Prince George's County, were able to prevail upon the county in their case. In this type of case, we would use a use of force expert to show what training these officers would have received and what their training would have dictated in this type of situation.

And I believe that we will be able to show evidence from a very qualified expert that there were no set of circumstances where his training, Officer Strong's training, said to throw this young man on his face like an animal in the street. And honestly, I think it's high time that the objectionably reasonable standard shifts. And I think that we're seeing that shift throughout the jurisprudence all across this country. We're seeing tenants like Qualified Immunity start to crumble from their foundation. So I understand that the term objectionably reasonable is really a sore spot for our community. But I think that with the actions that we take in the advocacy community, in the legislature, in the courtroom, that innocuous term is shifting into the favor of justice. I'm going to go to my panel in just one second. But before that, one last question as briefly as you can answer this, Mr. Ruff. What is the relationship between a civil case and a criminal case? Does one have

to proceed before the other? Is there evidence or information that may be presented in one that can be used in the other? What is the relationship in that situation? Well, I can't say exactly what will happen in this case, but I can tell you that it is commonplace for the federal district courts, which is where we filed this lawsuit, and the judges on those benches, to oftentimes put the civil case on hold in order for the criminal case to resolve, because there doesn't want to be any, the courts don't want to allow any prejudice to occur to the defendant in the civil case. So if there's a pending criminal case while a civil

case is going on, that could potentially create certain prejudice in the public sphere for a potential defendant. So I think it's more than likely that the criminal case will be resolved prior to the civil case being moved along. These civil cases take quite a long time, and they are very expensive. And we're dealing with a county who, in a recent piece of litigation, spent nearly $26 million defending a case that it ultimately settled for $2 million. We're hoping that the county will be much more judicious

with the resources of the county in attempting to resolve this case in a manner that shows its humanitarianism, but also shows what real justice is. This seems like a place where even those who may be fiscal conservatives would want to see better behavior from the police because it's costing our local jurisdictions so much money. Let me go to our panel and bring them in,

see if they have any questions for you, Mr. Ruff. Joining us is Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Dean of College of Ethnic Studies at California State University of Los Angeles. Also, we're joined by Dr. Omokongo Dibenga. He's a professorial lecturer in the School of International Services at American University and our good friend, Reverend Jeff Carr, founder of the Infinity Fellowship.

Good evening and welcome to all of our Monday Night Friends. Dr. Malveaux, I'll start with you. You've heard what we just got from Mr. Ruff in this case in Prince George's County. And Dr. Malveaux, I know you've spent so much time in D.C., so you're familiar with Prince George's County. When you hear about this, Dr. Malveaux, first I'm curious about what you think about something like this happening in Prince George's County, and then I'll turn the floor over to you to offer a question to Mr. Ruff. Well, first of all, I want to thank my fellow panelists for their kind wishes. I had some COVID earlier this week, and I'm okay now.

I have been boosted and everything I was supposed to do. So it wasn't that bad, but it was not that good either. I was supposed to be in D.C. on Monday, and I didn't make it there. So I want to thank both Jeff and Makongo for their good wishes and their peace and blessings. And I want to say that everybody brown ain't down. What I mean by that is that police officers are police officers. And that means that they operate out of a space that has really nothing to do with race.

It has a lot to do with power. And so whether the person who oppressed this brother was black or not is immaterial. What's material is the way that people are empowered to oppress other people. And we know that all too often, that oppression comes on Black folks. So I would ask, Brother Attorney,

and I'm grateful for your presence in this case, I would ask you to assess how much community pressure can make a difference here, or is this something that's gonna be internal? Thank you, Dr. Malveaux. That's a great question, and it highlights what happened at our press conference this morning. We announced the filing of this lawsuit

in front of the county administration conference this morning. We announced the filing of this lawsuit in front of the county administration building this morning, and we were joined by seven or eight different community advocacy groups, especially the mothers of sons who have been killed in Prince George's County. If you see the image that's playing right now, these folks are not family members. These folks are community members. We had speakers today from community justice co-founder Kima Hutchinson-Harris. We had Nia 2X from the greater D.C. chapter of, excuse me, the National Ashing Network. We also had Nikki Owens, who is the cousin of William Green, who we represented and settled a historic lawsuit with the county, who is the

founder of the William Green Foundation. And they all spoke about how this community will stay with this family, just like they have rallied around numerous other, like I said, dozens of other victims of police brutality. So it will be absolutely important to prevail upon the leaders of this county to make sure to prevail upon the leaders of this county to make sure that they hear the voices of the community. And what they want is justice. They shouted it loud and clear this morning, and that's what we're going after. Dr. McConville, when you hear about this and you know what's going on, we've discussed this. I believe you might have been with us last week when we had Mr. Ruff, if not my apologies. But as you

observe everything that's going on, you heard Dr. Malveaux almost echoing our dear sister Zora Neale Hurston, all our skin folk ain't our kin folk. Do you also have that comparable takeaway when it comes to police-communal relations? Oh, most definitely. I mean, and first of all, Dr. Malveaux, so great to see you, for sure. Great to have you back. And I wasn't on when you talked about this last week, but when you see what's going on, you know, I live in D.C. and I'm a business owner in Prince George's County.

So these stories are all too familiar to me. And it's just very scary. And so when we talk about, you know, this pattern, it really doesn't matter. It comes down to this power that Dr. Malvo was talking about and this idea. And I was wondering, Mr. Ruff, when we were watching the video, who was that, the guy with the picture of somebody else saying, we miss you? I'm like, didn't DeMonte survive? But you're sitting here talking about

these are other families that are dealing with the same thing every single day. And so absolutely, it doesn't matter if you're a black cop, white cop, the responses that we deal with in our community, especially when officers don't know our community, is the same don't know our community, is the same. So, Mr. Ruff, my question for you, I want to take it to President Biden.

You see that we failed to get the George Floyd policing reform bill in place, and he has yet to issue his executive orders. I'm wondering what types of things do you wish he would put in place when he issues his executive order that will make it easy for you to do your job as it relates to tracking the patterns of these police and making sure that the punishments that needed to be doled out are all about justice and accountability? So I'll talk about two things that I think would create so much more transparency. We deal with locally in Maryland, the Maryland Public Information Act, but there's also obviously the FOIA Act,

which allows for citizens and lawyers alike to request public records of any federal agency. Those requests are largely ignored, delayed, and curtailed to a degree that is almost criminal. I can think of at least two FOIA requests right now that I've had pending for months and months and months now, and there is very little to no recourse in attempting to compel that information to be handed over. So I would ask President Biden to lift the obstacles and the hurdles of getting public information and allowing us to take back the curtain and see how the

sausage is made. That's the only way that our communities will ever trust the police. And then another piece of legislation that was offered in Maryland last year, I talked about the law enforcement officer's Bill of Rights being repealed. All types of legislation like that, codified bargaining agreements that are codified into law, should definitely be nixed. But also, there needs to be a duty to intervene, compelled upon other officers that sit and idly by watch other officers brutalize our citizens and our kinfolk. So I think those are the two pieces that President Biden could think about that would create that much more transparency and that much more safety for people as they're dealing with law enforcement. It's fascinating you say that, Mr. Ruff, about the duty to intervene, because we're going to talk

a little bit later in the show about Ahmaud Arbery and his killers, and we found that throughout the United States, there have been a number of Americans, particularly white people, and particularly when they observe black people, who often find themselves and find the motivation to intervene in those instances, but to your point, Mr. Ruff,

our law enforcement officers who may see something that goes beyond the pale, they are reticent to intervene. Reverend Carr, I want to bring you in on this conversation. And I'm curious, Reverend Carr, about the local organizing work that you have done. Because one of the things that Dr. Dabenga asked about was federally, what could we do? And I thought that was valuable to the conversation, but I'm interested in also looking at what we do locally. And so, what are the ways, first, obviously, I'm asking you this, and then once you've answered, please feel free to offer Mr. Ruff your question, but what are the ways that local activists help drive police to behave in better ways? And then feel free to, as I said, ask Mr. Ruff whatever

question you might have. Sure, sure. First, thanks to everybody. It's good to see everybody here. Good to see you, Ray and Dr. Omikongo. And of course, Dr. Julianne, we're never the same without you, but it's great to see you here. You're lighting up the screen as usual, and we're glad that Radi a battle between officer strong and attorney rough, I'm going rough because I do speak that you're going to have a victory in this. When we talk about what's on the ground, yes, sir, we're speaking it in advance. We speak things into existence and then we back it up with action, right? So when we think about locally here in Nashville, 2018, 2019, there was a movement to have community oversight. There was a group that was formed, a community coalition called Community Oversight Now. A few weeks ago, Joy Kimbrough, who was involved in that, Attorney Joy Kimbrough, and tons of activists,

many groups partnered to put a referendum on the ballot here locally so that we could have a community oversight committee that would be charged with basically policing the police in an independent way. It overwhelmingly passed and was put in place a few years ago. Now, that said, that was the short-term victory. Little did we know that there were going to be obstacles presented, that the police were not going to cooperate with the committee, that they were not going to give the committee subpoena power, that they put the force of Metro government at the table to say, how can we do everything we can to preserve the culture of law enforcement?

It's important that we understand that, as Brother Ray's shirt is telling us, culture is not for sale. We understand, though, that when we're talking about law enforcement, we're not talking about skin color anymore. We're talking about a system. And a system built around a culture is very, very real, and it's very, very powerful. The root word of culture is cult. There is a cult of blue. There is a cult of the nomenclature. There's a cult of actions. One of the things that Brother Ruff said that was important was how would an objective and reasonable officer had handled this? We are existing in a culture where, as it pertains

to black people, we are not seeing objective and reasonable handling of black people, period, in the system. So when we say that we've got to organize, we've got to keep the noise going, we also have to put laws in place, but we also have to make sure that we can recoup things. We can recoup some kind of restitution when these laws are violated. And so I congratulate you for the work that you're doing there and for what we're hearing, even the energy out of Sister Renee. Renee vibrates with my wife. My wife is very social justice oriented

and when something goes wrong with her kids, she says, listen, I'm not gonna hold it, I'm not gonna be cool, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm in a forgiving space, I'm gonna tell it like it is. We're seeing this energy coming. Prince George's County, unique situation to talk about this culture, 59% black, 21.2% Hispanic or Latino, about 11% white, and yet still operating,

backing up the culture of law enforcement, which is against our best interest. Let me ask a simple question for people who hear the $75 million and they say, wow, where does this come from? How are settlements like this paid out? How are judgments like this paid out? Is it a rainy day fund? Is it municipal insurance? What becomes the space that provides this coming restitution in cases like this? Well, I won't speak for Prince George's County. I will say that each municipality decides how they want to deal with their risk and

their liability as it comes to dealing with law enforcement. So certainly some municipalities may have, may self-insure themselves through pools of insurance. Some municipalities may use taxpayer dollars to pay for these types of settlements. I can't tell you what Prince George's County would do in trying to determine how they will address this. But I will say this. There needs to be justice for DeMonte Ward-Blake because what happened to him should never have happened to anyone. No person deserves to ever be treated like this. Like I said before, thrown down in the street like an animal. And there were clear signs that this officer would treat someone like this from his past history. We will discover as this case goes along, I'm sure, that there were

instances in the past where this officer decided to use unreasonable force, and it was ignored. And case in point is that internal policies within the Prince George's County Police Department that were supposed to flag officers like Corpustal Strong, who used force on a very consistent basis, were completely ignored. That was actually evidence that was admitted to in another case where black and brown officers sued Prince George's County. I think I mentioned it earlier in the segment. And the chief of police and other high-ranking commanders had to admit that they simply just were not following their own principles that were designed, again, going back to assess their risk and to ensure that all of the communications and contacts with county residents was within constitutional

parameters and was fair and just, just for the sake of the fact that that's how we all deserve to be treated. Indeed. Mr. Ruff, we are so grateful for the work that you're doing on this, and we hope that you will stay in touch with us, both on this particular issue and as we move forward with whatever upcoming developments may be, and our lips to God's ears, but in the event another one of our people are victimized, that you and the firm that you're with are on the front lines doing that good work.

Let folks know how they can find and follow you if they're looking to find or follow any of the work that you and your firm are doing. I want to keep abreast about the resolution of this particular case. Absolutely. We look forward to championing the fight for civil rights, the new civil rights movement here in Maryland. We join with all of our colleagues across the country who are fighting this fight. Me and my senior colleague, Billy Murphy, the legend of Baltimore. He's been practicing for over 50 years.

And you can follow us at our website, www.murphyfalcon.com, or you can follow me on Instagram. I'm brother underscore Malcolm ESQ. Or on Facebook is my name, which is Malcolm Ruff. I appreciate you all. I hope you all stay abreast of what's happening in Prince George's County, because we absolutely need the spotlight to be shined

on these egregious violations of our people's civil rights. Yes, sir, and we thank you for that work. Have a good evening. That is Attorney Malcolm Ruff. Now we're going to talk about another story that's going to keep some of our interest, and we're curious about what's going on here, so let me tell you about that. The family of a black Florida teen who was bullied for months, falsely accused of threatening her school, and wrongly detained for 11 days

in a juvenile detention center, is filing a lawsuit against the charter school and a social media company. One of Nia Wims' former classmates at Renaissance Charter School created a fake profile impersonating her, threatening to bomb the school and kill others. A teacher reported the threat to the police

and Wims was arrested. Wims denied making threats and her family gave police her iPad as proof. Now, after nearly two weeks, Pembroke Pines police investigators realized that the IP addresses did not match Wims. They tracked the 12 year old who it did belong to down, charged the student with written threats

to kill or do bodily harm, and falsifying a police report. The lawsuit blames the social media site for not giving the police access to the accounts at the beginning of the investigation, and the school did not do anything to stop the bullying. Now, the school responded by saying this. Our highest priority remains the

safety and security of our students. We always have and always will take all appropriate actions to ensure our students and staff are safe. We are not at liberty to discuss any private student issues, and we do not comment on pending litigation. Again, we're joined by our panel, Reverend Jeff Carr, Dr. Omokongo Dabenga, and Dr. Julianne Malveaux. Dr. Dabenga, I'll start with you. When you hear about this, it is terribly disheartening to know that the young person who was locked behind bars

wrongfully and erroneously had to be done so in that way. I'm curious, and I don't want to play devil's advocate. Lord knows devil doesn't need an advocate. But I am curious, Dr. Dabenga, because you have this particular expertise that could help us. Did the investigators and authorities and the school, did they initially

respond correctly, save perhaps for not looking at the young girl's iPad? Oh, absolutely not. And I would go further before all of this happened. The family had requested meetings as it relates to the bullying that was taking place before she was eventually taken out of the school. So from the beginning, there were failures because these schools have a tendency to not listen to our children who are speaking up on these issues. So there were failures at the needs of our kids.

And if they're saying we'll do an investigation where she can just rot and just be locked up and deal with these particular issues, that's another failure of the school. with this constantly, whether I'm talking in public schools or private schools or charter schools. The ability to not listen to parents, especially black parents, when they're bringing up real issues, is real. And it happens too often. And it's not until something extreme happens like this that people start paying attention. So the school can make its announcement that our first priority is the safety of the school,

but what about the safety of this child? The family offered to be able to give up the iPad to be able to do this investigation. It doesn't take two weeks, regardless of what the social media company does. You have a tech department in your school. You have police resources as well that you could have used to figure this out. They just did not care. And though this sounds like an extreme example, we have minor examples of this happening every single day where our children are not listening to. And also coming out of COVID, our kids are dealing with more mental illness and

stress as they're coming back into schools. I'll be in a school tomorrow, for example, and the girls are dealing with issues getting back into school more than the boys are because there's issues of like physical appearance and how you look after being quarantined for so long, and the mental stress is real. And so what's gonna happen with this child having to deal with this experience that didn't have to last two weeks? They failed her in the beginning, they failed her when, you know,

throughout the beginning of this process, and they're failing her now. And the family deserves better than this. Reverend Carr, when you hear Dr. Dibanga talk so passionately about how he... how the young girl was failed, were there any spaces where we could have intervened to prevent this from happening in the way it did? Oh, sure, sure.

But again, it goes back to your shirt, and it goes back to the conversation that we had in the last segment. It's about the culture that you create, and it's about the culture that you create in a school. My wife has founded over the last 11 years or so four different PTOs at school because we were involved in schools that didn't have a PTO or had a PTO that was not functional because the principal felt, in some cases, we've got great principals now, but the principals felt as if they could run the school without parental engagement and without parental involvement beyond rubber stamping. That's a poor culture for a school environment. We go and we advocate for young people. I remember just last semester having to advocate for a family because a small child, a boy, middle school age, came to school on banking day and actually paid another large child a small amount of money that he was supposed to put in the school bank to beat

up two young black girls. Fortunately, the young man went directly to the principal and said, I feel really wrong about this. And when we brought the situation to a court, to threw it to a table and we sat down to talk. Even the parent defended the young man's actions and the school was unable to even say, you know, we've got to do something about this. We can't investigate it even further. We have to create cultures in schools where kids are believed, where they are protected from bullying. The pressure now is a whole lot different than it was when I was growing up. I grew up in a culture where if you had a bully, you were sent back to school and you were sent to fight the bully and there was no problems. But I also didn't grow up with

Instagram. I didn't grow up with Facebook and Twitter. I didn't grow up with TikTok. When you watch your children deal with the pressures that they're dealing with on these social media platforms, you recognize we are living in a new era. I think about one night that I spent when I was 17 years old in a juvenile cell for doing something absolutely dumb as 17 year olds tend to do. And I remember lying on that metal bed and saying, never again, I'm going to change my life because of the hell that I am seeing around me. It was terrifying. And that was one night for a boy who was on the cusp of manhood. I cannot imagine what that little baby went through. And I'm going to say little baby. Y'all forgive me a second, man, because I got a daughter that'll be 13 this year.

And my youngest daughter is 10. My oldest is 27. So when you think about a culture that will not protect, especially our little girls, then guess what? We've got to step up in these spaces and make sure that they're protected from a parental space, from a school space. The school is liable for this. As Dr. Omikongo said, listen, you could have gotten the iPad immediately. You could have gotten to the bottom of this in 24 hours. You could have called a tech specialist with the school system. They could have helped intervene with the police.

And this is not rocket science. To let a little girl sit in a juvenile cell for 11 days. It's unbelievable. It's immoral. And absolutely, whoever had any involvement in this, from the school administration to the local municipality to the police department, everyone should pay for this. And they should pay for it not only financially, but by creating a new culture in these school systems where our babies are protected.

Dr. Malveaux, I don't even know how to begin to ask you this, but can you begin to theorize why or how the school system and police can all equally drop the ball? First of all, Black women and girls are seen as at the bottom of the totem pole. We're less than. We're simply less than. We're not seen as human. We've seen over the years videos of, like, a police officer grabbing a young girl by her braids. We've seen all of this.

This hurts me to my soul, because much of my work has been about uplifting Black women and girls. And when you see 11 days, as Reverend Carr has said, I mean, I was a horrible child. They used to just send me to juvenile to try to straighten me out. Anyway, and they'd get me there.

My dad was an assistant superintendent of schools. They'd get me there. They'd get me out in about four or five hours. And by then, I was scared straight for like another two weeks. So I can't imagine a child being put in juvenile for 11

days away from her parents. But Black women, you know, Ray, we're seeing the vitriol against Black women from the bottom to the top. We see it at the top with this crap that this Georgetown professor says a lesser Black woman is going to be considered for the

Supreme Court. Give me a you-know-what break. Then we go to the attacks on Lisa Cook, a phenomenally accomplished economist who has been nominated for the Federal Reserve. And we see how she's been attacked as a black woman with that idiot Tucker Carlson, who somebody just needs to give him a lobotomy. And that would probably solve some problems. When he says that, you know, she's not qualified to teach principal economics at community college. Bull, you know what? Bull duty. I mean, and so it trickles all the way down. And we do understand, and let me make it clear, the first sexual harassment case that was brought to the United States Supreme Court was brought by a sister named Michelle Vinson.

And the case was vincent versus meritor and it was a bank in dc called meritor bank where they basically had men extorting sex from women and telling them they won't keep their jobs unless they gave it up um so that and blessedly the court found in in Michelle Vinson's favor, but it took a couple of decades, and, of course, who knows what happened to her. But here's the point. Black women have always been at the bottom of the totem pole.

We've been sexualized, we've been marginalized, and so this is not surprising, but it's extraordinarily disturbing. And as Reverend Carr says, if you have young women in your life, and, you know, I'm an educator and was the president of a women's college, this hits you to your soul. It really does. What did this girl do? How does she feel? And how will she be impacted...

six months from now, a year from now? How will it change the way that she engages with the world? We are so... Everybody involved needs to be effing quiet. Everyone. So sorry for stepping over you there, Dr. Malveaux. We are so thankful that you introduced the academic aspect about

calling upon the history about discrimination cases, because the idea of a discrimination case making it to the Supreme Court is going to be very, very useful and also is what we call in this business a bit of a segue, because our next guest that's joining us is going to talk a little bit about Brian Flores. Now, for some of you all who don't know, NFL coach Brian Flores, yes, the same one famous for the discrimination lawsuit against the NFL in three of the NFL's franchises, has a new job. It's

not a head coaching gig, but he is coaching in the NFL. Flores will be joining the Pittsburgh Steelers as a linebackers coach. Mike Tomlin, the winningest black head coach in the NFL history, made room for Flores. To talk more about this is the co-host of the Run Tell This podcast and a contributing writer for The Root, Keith Reed, coming to us from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Keith, thank you so much for making time to join us here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Keith, I do know that you are a former past board member of the NABJ, so I know you're enrolling like this, so forgive me if you're a little heartbroken that you got the replacement role in the seat with you today. That's all right, man. Me and you go way back, so we're good. But I do want to ask some questions about the Brian Flores hiring. Beyond just whether or not what this means for football,

should observers, folks who are cheering for Brian Flores in his discrimination lawsuit, to truly hold the NFL to account? Should they be encouraged or discouraged that he's now back employed with the NFL? So I think it's kind of hard to really make a blanket statement about that, whether or not you should be encouraged or discouraged. So it's two things, right? It's a good thing that the Steelers, and in particular, Mike Tomlin, are going to give his brother an opportunity to be employed in the NFL because it was clear, and he even stated in his lawsuit, that he did not expect to work in the

NFL as a coach again. So for him to get that call, for him to get an interview, and for him to be coaching in the NFL under Mike Tomlin. It's a great situation for him. Tomlin has never had a losing season, and he is definitely going to add a lot to a coaching staff and to a team that has aspirations to try to go rebuild and go far in the playoffs after

their franchise quarterback just retired. So that's a good thing for Brian Flores in terms of whether or not it's good for the NFL overall and whether or not it means anything um for for hiring african-american coaches across the league i don't know that it necessarily moves the needle i mean listen it's brian flores is employed but brian flores should be employed as a head coach in the nfl not as a senior defensive assistant for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I'm a Steelers fan, so I'd love to have him,

but he shouldn't be a senior defensive assistant. He shouldn't be an assistant. He shouldn't be a coordinator. He has the credentials to be an NFL head coach. It's arguable that he should have never been fired, never been terminated by the Miami Dolphins, but even if he were terminated by the Miami Dolphins, some of the team should have not only interviewed him, but interviewed him, took him seriously as a candidate and made him an offer to be head coach. That didn't happen. And so he is in the situation that he's in. Mind you, he has not yet dropped that lawsuit and walked away from it. So it could be a situation where he coaches for the Pittsburgh

Steelers while he is in litigation against the NFL for the entire season if it comes to that. One of the things we heard when Colin Kaepernick was blackballed from the NFL was that with each successive year, well, Kaepernick is no longer useful. He might have lost the mechanics. We heard all kinds of wild talking points. He forgot how to throw. He doesn't know this modern NFL offense. Does Brian Flores being employed this year, is it good that it keeps him around the game so at least no one can use that as a potential argument as to why he doesn't get hired several years down the line?

I'll put a lot of stock into that. Brian Flores wasn't going to forget how to cook, and Colin Kaepernick wasn't going to forget about how to throw football right like you and i could not touch a microphone for the next six months the next year the next two years that doesn't mean that we're gonna forget how to how to talk in front of a camera i could put down the pen and not write but it's my my god-given gift to to write i've been doing it for professionally uh for 25 years and i've been doing it uh my entire life just because it's a passion of mine so to say that colin kaepernick forgot how to throw a football oh he's been out

of the game that's not a thing that you that you lose you go and see some of these retired guys i mean you every once in a while you get a picture of you get a video of uh brett farm throwing the ball you every once in a while you get a you get a video of uh one of the mannings who are retired now throw throwing the football in a few years we'll get a picture of one of the Mannings who are retired now throwing the football. In a few years, we'll get a picture of Tom Brady throwing the football. They ain't forgot how to throw. They might not necessarily be able to do it at their advanced age in their upper 40s like they used to be able to do. But they're not forgetting how to throw a football.

Colin Kaepernick didn't forget how to throw a football. Brian Flores isn't going to forget how to coach. So I don't put a lot of stock in that argument at all. If he were to take a year off from being a head coach and then get hired somewhere else as a head coach, I imagine he's going to stay up on what's happening in the game. He's going to stay up on the latest defensive schemes because he's a defensive-minded coach,

and he's going to know enough to be able to walk in the door somewhere and coach, and that's whether or not he's linebackbackers coaches here for the Steelers or he just or whether he didn't coach uh this season at all that's not an argument that gets made that's not an argument that gets made when we talk about a John Gruden who was away from coaching for a decade before the Oakland Raiders not a not a Vegas Raiders, brought him back to coach. And we see how that ended, right? So don't give me the nonsense that, oh, you know, if he was away from the game for a while, it might have passed him by.

They don't say that to white folks when they come back to coach in the NFL after they take some time off. Bill Cowher's been retired for more than a decade in people, and every once in a while you still hear somebody talking about, oh, maybe old Bill will come back and coach. Maybe he'll get an opportunity, even when a man has said that he doesn't want to do it anymore. So don't run that with Brian Flores and don't run it with Colin Kaep.

One of the things I'm interested in is this particular organization that did hire him. As we alluded at the outset, Brian Flores' lawsuit is against the NFL, but also three specific organizations for what he says and alleges to be sham interviews. But in praise to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and to be fair, this just may be the Steelers are the best of a bad lot, but they are clearly the best because, as you alluded to, Mike Tomlin, a member of Cap Alpha Psi, I'll give him that. Also, he's the head coach of that team,

is ensuring that his staff, if I'm not mistaken, 10 of 18 assistants are African-American. They have also a multicultural, diverse staff, all the way down to the strength and conditioning coach. And it's a very good chance they may have an African-American general manager. Is the Pittsburgh Steelers perhaps the only team in the NFL that would be uniquely qualified to take on Brian Flores,

someone who you just said could spend the entire year as an employee of that organization while in litigation against the league they're playing in? Oh, the only team that's uniquely qualified to do it? No. Any one of these teams could have shown the moxie.

Any one of these teams could have had the balls and just go ahead and say it to bring him on. And I don't think it really takes all that much balls to hire somebody who's qualified to do a job when you need somebody to do that job. But no other team did it except for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And I felt

it important to point that out in what I wrote for The Root that a lot of folks were writing about Brian Flores in the context of his lawsuit but not really taking a look at what was happening with the pittsburgh steelers so a little bit of context the steelers have a history and again i am not trying to hold the steelers out as a franchise if you don't if you don't like the nfl if you believe the nfl is inherently racist i'm not trying to disavow you of that. But I will say that there is one franchise in the league that does have a long history of being pioneers on race or on moving the ball forward, so to speak, on race.

And that is the Pittsburgh Steelers. Rooney rule, which has come in for criticism rightfully, but the establishment of the rule in and of itself was named because the former chairman of the organization, Dan Rooney, put that rule forward. Dan Rooney was a Republican his entire life until he supported Barack Obama for the office of president and then served under Barack Obama as the United States ambassador to Ireland. This is a team that pioneered going after players in the 1970s, and particularly in the 1974 draft. They built a dynasty by going down South, by hiring an African-American reporter at the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, sending him down south to scout players at HBCUs. And they managed to land several Hall of Famers in the 1974 draft that became the nucleus of what we now call the Steel Curtain Defense and the nucleus of a dynasty that won four Super Bowls in the late 1970s.

So that history. And then you talk about Mike Tomlin having been the longest, he was the youngest head coach to win a Super Bowl at the time that they hired him. He was the youngest head coach in the NFL at the time that they hired him. He's been to two Super Bowls, one, one, one. He, in 15 seasons coaching this team, he's never had a losing season. And as much as people around here in Pittsburgh and nationally talk about Mike Tomlin being on the hot seat, the Rooney family hasn't walked away from him. And it's never been even a whisper, at least from inside the building, that Mike Tomlin may not have job security.

So if there was a team that was well-positioned to either take the heat, whatever heat there may come, from the other owners in the league about hiring Brian Flores, or a team that may be in a good position to kind of smooth this over and say, hey, we'll take him on, we'll bring him in. It would certainly be a team that has that track record. Well, you laid out a number of reasons about why the Pittsburgh Steelers would be able to absorb whatever media attention or from some areas of media negative attention that would come from this hire. But you also illuminated that anybody could have brought him in.

Anybody should have had the infrastructure to do it. So beyond the Republican Mr. Rooney, beyond the family having the Rooney rule, beyond the family choosing to bring in black players when that was really an exploitation of a market inefficiency, beyond all of these things, why was Pittsburgh the one who was there? Is it simply just Mike Tomlin and the Roonies are just committed to finding excellence regardless of the circumstances? So we had a local writer in our market at Post Gazette, I think it was Paul Zeiss, a few days ago, who wrote about this. And he said that at present, with the exception of Art Rooney III,

that Mike Tomlin is currently the most powerful person in the Steelers organization. I mean, think about that. With the exception of the owner, not the general manager, but Mike Tomlin is at present present at least in the eyes of this one writer who covers the team the most powerful person in in in the organization uh and so he has a lot of latitude to be able to make decisions like this which is not to say that he can do it unilaterally that he can do so without going without going to uh without going to the room family but certainly there's probably only one other person in that building

that he may have had to have a conversation about, and that is the ownership group. And so when you have a situation like that, again, another one of the things that I wrote about in my piece through the root on this is that when you empower Black executives, and this is taking a step back from football, right? We can have that conversation in our line of work in media. We can have that conversation about big law firms. We can have that conversation about big consulting firms, big accounting firms. Whatever endeavor you're in, whatever industry you're in, when you empower Black executives, when you empower women executives, when you give people

who are qualified the opportunity to build a track record and to be successful, those people tend to bring other people along with them and give them a shot to either have their first go round as a defensive assistant or a defensive coordinator or as a partner in a law firm or as the editor-in-chief of a paper or whatever the case may be, or give them the opportunity that they may have been looking for. Maybe it didn't work out in one place,

as is the situation with Brian Flores. It didn't work out in Miami, but certainly he's been given now the opportunity to have a second shot, and that's because Mike Tomlin is the head coach of this football team. And Mike Tomlin is empowered to give him that opportunity with very few reservations and very few checks and balances on that power outside of the ownerships. I am a native of Baltimore.

I've never played for the Baltimore Ravens, but I've cheered for them several times. And I am a member of Phi Beta Sigma. Ain't nothing about me that's excited about cheering for a Kappa that coaches the Pittsburgh Steelers. But when you get principled injustice in this kind of way, at least two times a year I'm going to root against them, but every other time I might be okay with it. Keith, if folks want to find and follow you and follow your work,

how can they get a hold of you? How can they follow you? How can they find what you're doing? I say my work every day at TheRoot.com. I've been writing for them for the last couple of months. I'm a contributing writer over there, and I contribute. I do some commentary as well as some news writing for The Root. You can catch me on programs like this, and I show up also on many of the networks, the cable networks. You can also

follow me on social media at K underscore dot R-E. So at K underscore D-O-T underscore R-E. Yes, sir. He is Keith Reed. He's the co-host of the Runtel This podcast and a contributing writer for The Root. He has been our guest right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Keith, thank you so much for your time this evening. Appreciate it. Talk to you, brother. We've got so much more coming up for you on the other side of this break. You stay tuned. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live

on the Blackstar Network. We'll be right back. Teksting av Nicolai Winther Norske Kulturskapet I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom.

I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. On the next Get Wealthy, make the shift from earner to owner and achieve the level of success that you desire and that you deserve. You have to know your worth. You can't settle for what someone is going to give you.

You've got to take ownership and be prepared to make some smart money moves. Oh my goodness, it's such a good feeling to achieve the goal that I set. If charity can do it, you can too. So watch Get We, 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. I'm a fighter. Nobody has ever bought me or bossed me. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. Grayson Shearer has been missing from Baltimore, Maryland, since January 18, 2022. The 14-year-old is 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighs 127 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. Grayson has a tattoo of the name Aquashana near his eyebrow.

He may need medical attention. Anyone with information about Grayson Shears whereabouts, please call the Baltimore City Police Department at 410-396-2359. We've got some headlines for you and updates in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery. A federal jury of eight white people, three black people and one Hispanic person has now begun deliberations in the trial, excuse me, not of Mr. Arbery, but of the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery. During the closing arguments today, the federal prosecutor told the judge the convicted murderers acted out of, quote, pent-up racial anger, close

quote, and should be convicted of hate crimes. The defense attorney said Arbery was fatally shot in self-defense and had acted suspiciously during previous trips to the neighborhood. Arbery was chased by three white men for about five minutes on February 23, 2020

through a South Georgia subdivision. Also, one of the three former Minneapolis officers on trial for violating George Floyd's rights told the jury at one point Floyd didn't look right. Thomas Lane testified he thought Floyd was doing okay while handcuffed, face down on the street with Officer Derek Chauvin's knee pressed to his neck until paramedics arrived and turned Floyd over. That was the first time Lane got a look at Floyd after the struggle. Before that, as he held Floyd's legs, he thought he saw Floyd's chest rise and fall. Lane told the jury he believed Floyd still had blood pressure based on the appearance of veins

in his arms. And also, last month, President Joe Biden said he would be announcing his nominee to replace retiring Associate Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer by the end of this month, which means we could know his pick this week. Now, Biden has not shied away from his promise to put forward a black woman for the post, but Texas Senator Ted Cruz says Biden's promise is, get this, racial discrimination. The White House said on Friday it still plans to make an announcement on a nominee by the end of this month, which means, based on the calendar, that could be in a matter of days. The president is on record saying he's committed to putting forward an African-American woman. Yet you have

firmly disagreed with this idea. One point you call it offensive. Another point you called it insulting. Does that make you an automatic no on the nominee? Well, listen, Democrats today believe in racial discrimination. They're committed to it as a political proposition. I think it is wrong to stand up and say we're going to discriminate. This administration is going to discriminate. What the president said is that only African-American women are eligible for this slot, that 94 percent of Americans are ineligible. Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland was told, sorry, you're the wrong skin color and wrong gender. You're not eligible to be considered. I think our country has such a troubled history on race. We ought to move past discriminating based on race. The way Biden ought to do it

is to say, I'm going to look for the best justice, interview a lot of people. And if he happened to nominate a justice who was an African-American woman, great. But you know what? If Fox News put a posting, we're looking for a new host for Fox News Sunday and we will only hire an African-American woman or an Hispanic man or a Native American woman, that would be illegal. Nobody else can do what Joe Biden did. And there's a reason for that. Racial discrimination is wrong. Now, that being said, when we have a nominee, I'll consider that nominee on the record. And I'm confident the Senate Judiciary Committee, we will have a vigorous process examining that

nominee's record. And what I can tell you right now is we're not going to do what the Democrats did with Brett Kavanaugh. We're not going to go into the gutter. We're not going to engage in personal slime and attacks. We're going to focus on the nominee's record, on substance, on what kind of justice she would make, and that's the constitutional responsibility of the Senate. I'm going to go to our panel now. Dr. Julianne

Malveaux, Dr. Omokongo DeBanger, and Reverend Jeff Carr. Dr. Malveaux, you hear Mr. Cruz talking, and I took a lot of politeness and pleasantries to even say Mr. Cruz right there. Because so much of what he said seemed... Thank you for taking the pleasantries

because I was gonna say something else, and it was gonna start with an M, and it was gonna have an F in the middle of it, and I'm not gonna even say it on the air, but you know what I'm saying. Y'all know what I'm thinking. He seems, I mean, the hypocrisy, the inconsistencies, the audacity, quite honestly,

to even bring up Merrick Garland to say that Merrick Garland couldn't get a fair hearing. Did you read that the same way I did? Well, first of all, it's not audacity, it's caucasity. I mean, it is the simmering incautasian-ness to look at the... There have only been two, two Black people on the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall, who, of course, lifted us up, and Uncle Tom, who pulled us down.

And we've, you know, how many women? So that he would say what other presidents have said is not alarming. What's alarming to me is a disrespect, the continued disrespect of Black women. The fact that it's okay to publicly disrespect Black women. Ted Cruz needs to be taken to a small room with a big back. Okay, I didn't say all that. But anyway, something bad needs to happen to him because he just really doesn't get it. room with a big bat. Okay, I didn't say all that.

But anyway, something bad need to happen to him because he just really doesn't get it. And you know, I'm sitting here and yeah, y'all know I play elder, I play my elder card from time to time. I was 68 years old. Praise the Lord. I done talked so much spit that I shouldn't be 68 years old.

I should be up under somebody's grave or something when talking too much spit. But that ain't the point. The point is that consistently, I have lived and seen the ways that Black women are disrespected. And this is nonsense. Any of the women that President Biden is considering

are more qualified than one third of the bench. Come on now. If you look at any of those women more qualified than the beer swiller, you know, all these Catholics they've been coming up with, you know, and I was raised Catholic. I'm bad at Catholics. Y'all can be Catholic if you want to. But their position on choice is unacceptable. And the fact is that all this crap that's coming from Republicans never came up before. They basically shut down Barrett Garland. And then they have fast-tracked these marginally, even the American Bar Association, was not in favor of all of them. So how do we get these B-minus, C-plus, even C-minus justices with their detractors

or their supporters saying, Black women are not qualified? Give me a you-know-what break. Reverend Carl, we hear the Black women aren't qualified, and yet President Biden hasn't even put forth the black woman that he wants to nominate. Now, we've heard several names on short lists and things of the sort. Fair enough. But even the idea of qualifications is a little bit of misnomer in the United States. We pretend as though there's only one person who's qualified for this one job, whether we're talking about head coaches in the NFL like we were just now, or a Supreme Court justice.

And so when you hear, not necessarily the Republicans and the silliness of that, but when you hear this animosity, this antagonism that Dr. Malveaux just talked about about how black women are being treated in our country, how do you suggest we brothers stand up to support those black women publicly and in our

intimate conversations so those women know that when they go out into the world and they face the harm that they're going to face, that they know they have allies and solidarity right here at home with us? Yes, indeed. I think we need to begin to see ourselves in Black women. I mean, one of the things we all have in common is we emerge, many of us, out of the womb of a Black woman. If we want to talk about humanity in general, because, as August Wilson said, culture is universal, but the greatest and the quickest path to universality is cultural specificity. So in other words, by me telling my story and being authentic and connecting, then everybody gets to find themselves. And if we use that, we take that and overlay it on human culture, we all historically emerged from some black woman's womb in Africa. So we're all just various shades of some kind of African going back millennia and

millennia. That said, when we see ourselves and we see our connection to black women in a very powerful way, we naturally stand up and we naturally bust out laughing when we get to see people like Ted Cruz being taken seriously by anybody. My mother had a term. It was a word that she used to use when we were coming up. And she used to see foolishness. And it's a word, it's one word, we thought it was one word, but it was ain't nobody studying. And this word ain't nobody studying was a very powerful word. And I want to invoke it now and say, ain't nobody studying Ted Cruz. Ain't nobody studying facts news. Ain't nobody studying people who get up and commit the most egregious acts of racial discrimination and then attempt to convince somebody with a straight face that somehow dominating somebody.

Right. Nominating someone. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful because if you study comedy, comedy is most funny when you have someone who is being silly and someone who is able to play straight. And if you have seen any show that was brilliant, whether it was In Living Color, whether it was the Carol Burnett Show, whether it's Saturday Night Live and its best years, you always found people who were able to keep and hold the straight face when they were saying something really comedic. I think Ted Cruz is really studying to be a comedian

because he can sit there on Fox News and say something so egregiously upside down and insane and say it with a straight face. I think this man has a future in comedy. I wish I speak that Fox News would say,

I'm going to hire a bunch of black people. I wish that Fox News would say, I'm going to get a bunch of black people. I wish that Fox News would say, I'm going to get some conscious people on here who are going to align themselves with history and not just make up things and say them over and over again and hope that by saying them over and over again, people are going to actually believe me.

No, it doesn't work that way. And the reality is, as Dr. Malfoy said, throw a rock. Because when we, you know, we don't hear this when you talk about Clarence Thomas. They say, oh, we're glad we have diversity on the court. We've got Clarence Thomas. We've got a black male. You see, when we're serving their interests, then we don't hear this. But if there's an outside chance that we will have someone in place that will manifest the things that we expect, freedom, justice, equality, equity, and making sure that the Constitution is followed, then all of a sudden we get sidelined by this red herring of so-called black racism.

And we're not paying attention to it. Ain't nobody studying you, Ted Cruz, because you could throw a rock. I wouldn't say throw a rock. You could throw some flowers or something gentle or some tissue, a box of tissue on any court space in the United States of America, and you could hit five black women in the courtroom, and all five of them will have qualifications exceeding yours. You have five of them whose qualifications are unparalleled. You can pick two or three of the people whose names have come up. Katonji Brown Jackson, Leandra Kruger, J. Michelle Childs. Each one of them has credentials that are longer, that are stronger than every nominee that's currently on the court. So we don't play games with you anymore, Ted. I just look at you and I say, man, I turn to the comedy show. We're going to stand up for our sisters. We're going to stand strong. And until we get equity and justice, until we absolutely

understand that we're going to balance this thing out and understand no taxation without representation, we're going to continue to stand and we're not going to study you anymore. Reverend Carr, I like that. The idea of thinking of Ted Cruz as an aspiring comedian now makes me able to watch and listen to a lot more of what he's going to say. Dr. Dabenga, I mean, I know that you approach this seriously, and so maybe we should all take a page out of Reverend Carr's book

and look at Ted Cruz as, instead of a sitting United States senator from one of the largest states in the Union, look at Ted Cruz as instead of a sitting United States senator from one of the largest states in the union look at him just as an aspiring comedian someone who at his best wishes he could be a tenth of as talented as Keenan Ivory Wayne well shoot as long as we're laughing him out of office we can see him as comedic as we want as long as he is being laughed out I mean look this guy I mean the audacity to even bring up Merrick Garland. But, you know, he can do that in a country where so many of us have short memories. Because people who don't live this life, who don't talk about this stuff every day,

they're going to take that and be like, oh, this happened to Merrick Garland as well, Obama's nominee. Because people don't know how to do not even basic research on some of these issues. But the fact of the matter is, you know, the hypocrisy is glaring and obvious. Republicans had nothing to say when Ronald Reagan said that he was going to put a woman on the Supreme Court. They had nothing to say when President Trump said that he was going to put a woman on the Supreme Court with like 28 days to go before the election happened. They had no words. They were all in praise. And when we talk about qualifications, I was listening to the Joe Madison show a couple of days

ago, and Representative Al Green was on there. And you know what he said? He said that out of the 115 Supreme Court justices that we have had, 40 of them were not lawyers. And get this, five of them did not have an undergraduate

degree. So we had five Supreme Court justices with a high school education. Come on, man. And he's saying, you know, he's talking about these women aren't qualified. Seriously? This was what they do.

They have nothing better to do than to poke at strong Black women and do anything to get them off their game. But I got news for you, Ted Cruz. These sisters who Biden has on tap, they done seen it all. They done heard it all. They done went to sleep hearing it all, woke up hearing it all,

and there's nothing you can do to faze them. This is going to happen. And in the case of sisters like Judge Katonji, we had Manchin and Sinema who had already voted for her confirmation just a few months ago. So this is going to happen. Y'all can do all

your talking and yapping, but we are going to see a sister on the Supreme Court. Look, we have our Jewish brothers and sisters who make up 2% of the population, but I believe have had eight Supreme Court justices over the years, and it's beautiful. There's no complaints. We're looking for the same type of representation with our

numbers being in the teens as it relates to proportionality. So I say go for it, Biden. Go hard or don't go at all. And we're going to support these sisters in any way, shape, or form. So Cruz, we laughing, but we're going to be laughing you out of office. We're going to laugh and we're going to laugh you out of office. And I appreciate that.

I appreciate having the academics. Go ahead, Dr. Malvo. One last word on this. One quick thing. We can't get into the trap of comparing these sisters to each other. Whoever we get, we're gonna be happy about. I mean, I think that the right wing is gonna try to say this one is better than this one and Lindsey Graham and that other time in the Senate.

They have their favorite. No, we want a sister. All the sisters that have been mentioned are qualified. We're not going to get into that trap. That's right. Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. We're going to take a quick break. You're watching Roland Martin

Unfiltered here on Streaming Live on the network. We'll be back with so much more. I'm Costa Jackie. Hi, I'm Dr. Jackie Hood-Martin, and I have a question for you. Ever feel as if your life is teetering and the weight and pressure of the world is consistently on your shoulders? Well, let me tell you, living a balanced life isn't easy. Join me each Tuesday on Black Star Network for A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We'll laugh together, cry together, pull ourselves together, and cheer each other on. So join me for new shows each Tuesday on Black Star Network, A Balanced Life with Dr. Jackie. We're all impacted by the culture, whether we know it or not.

From politics to music and entertainment, it's a huge part of our lives, and we're going to talk about it every day right here on The Culture with me, Faraji Muhammad, only on the Black Star Network. Hi, this is Essence Atkins. Hey, I'm Deion Cole from Blackist.

Hey, everybody, this is your man Fred Hammond, and you're watching Roland Martin, my man, Unfiltered. The United States has some of the highest recidivism rates in the world, according to the National Institute of Justice. On average, 44% of those

released returned before their first year out of prison. In 2005, 44% of those released returned before their first year out of prison. In 2005, 68% of the 405,000 released got arrested for a new crime within three years, and 77% were arrested within five years. One of the biggest factors contributing to high recidivism rates includes not being able to find a job. The Center for Employment Opportunities hopes the Returning Citizen Stimulus Program makes that transition a bit easier.

Derek Bowers, the Director of Social Enterprise of New York City at Center for Employment Opportunities, joins me now from Tom's River, New Jersey, to tell me more about the program. Mr. Bowers, thank you so much for making time for us here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Thank you for having me, Ray.

We're excited about the program because the name alone, the Returning Citizen Stimulus, it invokes the same ideas that so many of us received stimulus checks when we were at our worst economic points during points of the pandemic and during points of the Great Recession. Is that what viewers should think about when they hear this? Yes, that's exactly what they should think about when they hear this? Yes, that's exactly what they should think about. You know, in the onset of the pandemic, you know, we saw so many Americans in need. And the previous federal administration made sure that there was a stimulus

and unemployment benefits for Americans. But when it comes to those recently released from incarceration, they did not have the work history or the tax returns to qualify for those benefits. And so CEO realized that there was a tremendous need to make

sure that individuals returning from incarceration had access to cash assistance. Mr. Bowers, I'm going to interrupt you for one second. Our folks on tech are telling me that we're having a difficult time trying to get your connection through, and we apologize for that. They're going to call you right back. I'm going to talk a little bit and just give some folks some background while they connect that with Mr. Bowers for our control room.

I'm going to talk a little bit about what that stimulus program is. I'm going to invite our panel to join us just for a quick second. Again, Reverend Jeff Carr, Dr. Omokongo Dabanga, and Dr. Julianne Malveaux. Now, let me give you guys some background about this, because when we get Mr. Bowers back, we'll have him to elaborate on this a little bit more. But the program, Reverend Carr, is supposed to target those folks who are returning, and as we know, those folks who are returning home

don't have the opportunities to get on their feet with any meaningful resource, and unfortunately, that helps build the bridge of recidivism because if you don't have money and you need money, but because of where you came from keeps you from getting above board money, you're going to get money under board. Oh, sure, sure. When you're locked out of opportunity,

when you're locked out of spaces where you are empowered, you find that, again, there's nothing else to do. You have to find a way to feed yourself and to feed your family. Unfortunately, the prison industrial complex that exists now that makes it so that the for-profit system begins to look at things like reading scores and grades of kids in the third grade so that it can determine how many beds they're going to eventually need when they get into juvenile and they're 18. It still persists. So you have this revolving door.

And we ask ourselves, we often sit outside in judgment. I don't get to do that as a spiritual leader. I have to deal with people as they come. And I get what I inspect and not what I always expect. But many times we think about recidivism and prisoners. We classify people. We just say, oh, man, they just, you know, they've been in the joint, they did a stretch. That's just my cousin who gets in trouble all the time. But the reality is, if we found ourselves in the same space, if we found ourselves in the same environment where

we were not allowed to have access to opportunities. And we found ourselves involved in the criminal justice system. Once we get involved in the criminal justice system, between fines, between court dates, between delays and hearings, every single part of this system, once we find ourselves in that, it's extremely difficult to get out. And it's extremely difficult to get out when you're educated, when you have a degree, when you have a lesser amount of education, then it becomes almost impossible. That's why programs and programming is important to give people opportunities to jobs, job training, financial resources in the short term so that they don't find themselves attracted to either the lure

or the necessity of making money off the streets. So I'm excited to hear about this program and the details of this program because we have to have programs like this to stand in the middle and to stand in the gap and connect people to resources. And that's the only way that we break this chain of recidivism. That's absolutely it. And we're grateful to have Derek Bowers back. Mr. Bowers, we had you. Glad you're back connected. You were telling us a little bit about those returning citizens. I was asking you, was it the same type of stimulus that the rest of us know? And I believe you were saying that it was. While you were gone, we began to unpack a little bit about what the challenges are that those folks have to overcome.

But in the time that we do have with you, I want to pierce in more specifically onto the ways that you all are helping those folks get back up on their feet by not just giving them money and cash direct handouts. But there is a work requirement is not the same inhumane kind of work requirements that we see from our federal SNAP benefits or our food stamp programs or even welfare. These are attainable things that these folks can do involving resumes and things of the sort. Tell our viewers about what some of the milestones that it is that your organization asks these returning citizens to meet in order to continue to receive their cash payments. Yes, definitely. Thanks, Ray. You know, these milestones are employment related, you know, and out of the 10,400 individuals that CEO was able to give out the cash assistance through this RCS program, nearly two-thirds, more than two-thirds of these individuals did reach employment-related milestones, and that could be anywhere between, you know, creating your resume, going to employer workshop, or actually getting a job.

Yeah, we understand that. If I'm not mistaken, 90% of those, at least in the New York City area who then qualified, reached the second step, which is the three steps of cash payments. The first is when they first come home. The second is after that first milestone you're leaded to. And then upwards of two-thirds for the third. How important is it to make those types of milestones, as you guys call them, attainable, something that people can do? Because so often we hear about programs that are supposed to offer assistance, but the things they ask those who qualify to do are so unreasonable that folks either can't attain those things or don't even bother trying.

Well, we know that, you know, we have to make our programs and our services barrier-free. And we already know that when individuals come home from incarceration, they face massive barriers. So, you know, CEO believes in the transformational power of work, and we believe having access to services with a job coach, a job developer to get you in touch with the many employer partners we have, as well as retention services, ease these struggles of individuals coming home from incarceration trying to have access to work. And this cash assistance

through the RCS program, you know, the MDRC study, you know, showed us that there was so many benefits from receiving this cash assistance. Not only did it provide some financial security during these times, but it also helped individuals get access to housing through this funding, transportation to and from jobs or job interviews. And it also helped with the mental and physical well-being of individuals who, you know, so often can be stressed and burdened with having to figure out what their next steps are going to be from day to day. And so, ultimately, what is the goal of CEO Center for Employment Opportunities? What is the goal for you all when you engage someone

who's first coming home from having to serve time? Well, our hope is that we try to figure out what it is that they want. You know, it's listening to individuals, right, and helping them tell their own stories and then find their own path. that when individuals come home and they come to our program, that not only do they... are they able to access fruitful career and trajectory and a journey, but they're also less common to recidivate and also, you know, commit new crimes and then return home into their societies and the well-being and reconnecting with their families.

One thing we know about those folks who are sometimes laborers while in prison is that the prison laborer is often exploited. Conversely, so too is the laborer who comes home who's involved in reentry. What are the ways that you guys have tried to make peace and resolve those folks who

come home and want work, right? So they're willing to take work at almost whatever dollar amount they can get, and the rest of those folks who are out here demanding livable wages or sustainable wages, making sure that those workers aren't being exploited to the detriment of the workers who are already home. How have you guys tried to massage both of those needs of the community? For sure, and that's a great question. You know, we work with employers that understand our mission. We also help many employer partners with inclusive hiring. You know, what we see is that there's many organizations and companies that would love to open up their doors to those who are formerly incarcerated, those who may have criminal convictions.

But many of these organizations do not know how to hire or retain those individuals who have a criminal justice background. And so we work with SHRM directly to build out a workshop to ensure that employers, their HR staff, and those who are hiring managers in their organization understand what are the specific needs of individuals who are recently released from incarceration. And not only are we doing that, but we also have an amazing model that provides a year-long of retention services. So when that manager comes to CEO and wants to hire our individuals, we want to make sure that that employee, our participant who becomes an employee of that organization or company has all the tools necessary to meet success at that job.

And we all know that those coming home from incarceration, those who have been impacted by the criminal justice system, there are many barriers that can happen with them on a day-to-day basis, whether it's meeting with their parole officer, probation officer, whether it's going to their parole officer, probation officer, whether it's going to court, back and forth, trying to do so many things to put their lives back together. Many times when they're at an organization or a company, these things can bleed into their daily life.

And we want to make sure that they have the support and that that employer understands that we have that support and we're able to share with them what it is that they may be going through on a day-to-day basis so that they can help support them as well. Now, the RCS, the Returning Citizen Stimulus Program, took shape in 28 different locations across the United States. But yeah, I noticed that the piece highlights seven of the cities to be specific, including Tulsa, Denver, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Detroit and New York City. From your experience in New York City, is there anything that you guys done in that city, such a large and important city of so many people that has been usable, that has been modeled in other places because of what you all have been effective at doing in New York? Yes. I mean, you know, CEO started in New York City. It's our flagship location.

And we are the largest reentry organization and provider that uses a transitional work model. And what we are doing in New York City is that, specifically in our program, outside of this RCS initiative, Our model is to provide individuals with transitional employment. And what that means is that when an individual enrolls into CEO, they have immediate access

to many of our transitional worksites throughout the country, in New York City specifically, upwards of 30 to 35 transitional worksites that are working throughout the five boroughs in association with city and state agencies, you know, providing supplemental maintenance and labor to these agencies in order to provide immediate training, paid training, and immediate paid employment to a participant

in our program. So at the end of each shift, they're seeing money transferred to their bank card every single day. We run payroll for thousands of individuals in our program because we know how hard it is to be able to get your life together, be able to go out and find a job, pay for those immediate living needs unless you have immediate cash at hand. And working every day and getting paid at the end of each shift is the most important part of our model. I got one more question for you before we bring our panel in to converse with you. I know you didn't have the opportunity before, but I appreciate that you talked about daily pay because so often when people start jobs, particularly if you're a young person coming

out of college or whatnot, you sign a job, you're excited, I'm going to make X amount of money, and they say, see you in three weeks. And you tell that to somebody who's a returning citizen, they may find some other ways to get their hands on immediate cash in the meantime. Was that one of the reasons that you all understood how valuable that end of shift pay would be, particularly for this population? Most certainly. You know, that is, you know, we realize, you know, how important it is to have cash at hand. You know, we know that individuals who are returning home from incarceration, you know, more than likely are those coming from underserved communities, impoverished communities. And what we realize is that when you take someone out of poverty, right, and then return them back into poverty. You know, it's like insanity.

You know, the same results are being produced. So the powerful transformation of work and the immediate access to income is what makes our model so successful. Dr. Omokongo-DeBenga, you have a question for Mr. Bowers and his program. Yeah, so first of all, Mr. Bowers, you are doing incredible

work, and we really, really just want to commend you for your dedication to this. The question that I have is I'm somebody who pays a lot of attention to language, and clearly with this program, you're doing the same thing. I wonder if you can talk about the whole idea of using the term

returning citizens. When I was growing up, it was ex-con, then ex-felon. And, you know, people talked about the stigma relating to that. It seems like you're very selective in the language that you use, returning citizens coming home. Could you speak to a little bit about that, the language and stigma associated with this? For sure. I would love to speak to that.

And, you know, I think that the one thing, you know, the immediate thing that we realize with them. We can't forget about their humanization, right? And so what sometimes we see with the stigma of being incarcerated is when individuals return home, that stigma stays with them for much longer. Even after they've redeemed themselves, they've paid their dues to society, they're ready to come back and be a part of society, be a part of their families, be a part of their communities, and be an important asset to those communities. And so the first thing we want to make sure is that we recognize their humanity

as we're helping them get back into society. Dr. Malveaux offering any questions for Mr. Bowers in the program that they're working. Sure. I'm excited about this program. Let me give my own institution a shout-out. Cal State L.A. has a program where we just graduated 40 incarcerated people into a B.A. program. They're now Cal State L.A. graduates,

and there are a whole bunch of services and resources for them. 40 is a very small number, but on the other hand, it's a huge number. And so I got a shout-out by Provost Dr. Jose Gomez, who has basically instituted this program. I want to know from you, are there any... There are not very many programs like this, but there are some. There were more in the 80s. And then, you know, the crazy people took over and they took programs away. that allow people who are incarcerated to get a path to productive life through higher education?

Yes. Well, you know, we, you know, CEO is a part of a coalition, and specifically I'm speaking for New York City. It's called the Alternatives to Incarceration and Reentry Coalition. And we're one of 11 organizations that provide so many reentry services to those coming home. You know, and while CEO, our focus is specifically on work, there's many organizations like the Fortune Society and Osborne Association that provide housing and mental health services for those coming home from incarceration. And education is extremely important. I wrote an op-ed a few years ago about the necessity for institutions to understand the importance of returning citizens and granting them access to universities and education for the betterment of our entire society and our community, specifically HBCUs.

And Reverend Carr. Thanks, man. And I'll be brief because I had a little say-so while we were here. Looking you back up to tech, Brother Bowers. First off, thanks for everything you're doing. Again, to add to what Dr. Omikongo said, reframing the language so that we're talking about returning citizens is very important because it reframes the way we treat people when we interact with them. Let me ask you about, in that tradition of reframing language, in another iteration, I would say, what are the unique challenges that you face when trying to get an employer to be a part of the program and to deal with the stigmas? And that would be, I guess, in this language, what are the unique opportunities that you have? If I'm a new employer and I say, hey, I want to be involved in hiring some returning citizens, what are some of the first things that you have to deal with me on to get me to be able

to be a great partner? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the first thing is understanding the culture of your organization, right? And the values, right? And the values align with, you know, our mission. And the mission is second chances and redemption and believing in the power and development and the growth of everyone, no matter their background, you are a great partner to CEO. And also, educating employers and our partners

more on the value of returning citizens in the workplace. You know, we see that individuals who were recently released from incarceration and accessing employment, they're more likely to retain that, to stay at that job. They're more likely to be on time. And then when we've done interviews with employers throughout the country, you know, those employers have stated that individuals who recently released from incarceration are returning citizens, are just as valuable and just as capable as any other individual that they've hired.

You know, once we're able to educate those employers and partners through that and then moving them past the stigma, you know, and then seeing our program up close, you know, through our transition to work program, through our success stories, you know, they are more likely more comfortable working with us, because, you know, the individuals, this population is a pool of Americans who, you know, 600,000 individuals who turn home from incarceration every single year and millions more from local jails. You know, these are the individuals who will help us get through, you know, the economic issues that we're having today, especially with the great resignation. They're the individuals who will take these jobs and will be able to take us into the

next wave of what the workforce should look like. Ashe, good brother Bowers, Ashe. Where can folks find or follow you if they want to know more about what the organization is doing, more about what you're doing? How can they stay plugged in? Yes, you can go to www.ceoworks.org to learn more about CEO. If you want to donate to the program or if you have interest in, you know, starting a location in a place that

has tremendous need, we would love to hear from you. Again, that's CEOWorks.org, and that is both for donations, that is both for support if you want to start it, and if you are a business owner who has a conscience and a commitment to justice. That's Derek Bowers. Mr. Bowers, thank you so much for your time this evening and joining us on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Blackstar Network. Thank you, Ray. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, and we have much more coming up for you on the other side of this break. You stay tuned. We'll be right back. I'm sorry. Thank you. Pull up a chair, take your seat at the Black Tape with me, Dr. Greg Carr, here on the Black Star Network. Every week, we'll take a deeper dive into the world we're living in.

Join the conversation only on the Black Star Network. Once you know who you are, you don't have to worry anymore. Poet, Nikki Giovanni. According to the CDC, 255,000 breast cancer cases are diagnosed in women and around 2,300 in men each year. Those numbers tell us that breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women. There is a one in eight chance that a woman will develop breast cancer. Breast cancer has the highest mortality rate of any cancer in women between 20 and 59. African-American women have a 31% breast cancer mortality rate. That is the highest of any racial or ethnic group. Breast cancer incidence is higher among African-American women younger than 45. Younger African-American

women are more likely to present with triple negative subtype of the disease, which is more aggressive and associated with a higher mortality. Triple negative breast cancer is diagnosed more often in African Ameri... in American women of African descent, and these numbers motivated CEO and co-founder of Touch, the Black Breast Cancer Alliance, Rikki Fairley, to create a space for everyone working on the common goal of eradicating Black breast cancer.

And she joins me now. Ricky, thank you so much for making time to join me here on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. How are you? It's so great to be here tonight. Thank you so much for putting those facts out because we have a devastating situation here. It's really the most fatal disease for Black women.

Ricky, I am so grateful that this is the day that Roland would have called on me to guest host. My mother, in 2015, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Triple negative. She had triple negative markers. And she unfortunately transitioned because of said breast cancer. And in particular, as I was reading about the work that you all were doing, there was not enough evidence.

Her oncologist did not know what would be the best type of treatment for her because she also suffered from sickle cell, which is something that's also going to be unique to black women. So if I'm understanding correctly, the efforts to include black women in trials, we try, if I'm saying that correctly, the efforts to include black women,

it's so that we ultimately can be able to have the types of medicines that we can cultivate that can speak to the specific and unique needs of black women who are already adversely affected from breast cancer in ways that are disproportionate to our percentages. Am I understanding correctly? Yes, yes. Our movement is called When We Trial. And right now, the drugs that are currently standard of care on the market, and especially the drugs for triple negative, have not been tested on Black women.

And so when you look back in history, you know, we just don't have the science for Black women. And so until we get that science, we're going to have mortality rates in these crazy numbers. And I think the one number that you did talk about actually, too, is that Black women have a 41% higher mortality rate than white women. And Black women like me who've had breast cancer, God bless your mom, sorry about that, we have a 71% higher risk of death than white women. Black women under 35, at the age of 35, get breast cancer at twice the rate and die at three times the rate of white women. And at twice the rate and die at three times the rate of white women. And black women get triple negative disease at three times the rate of white women. And we don't have any, we recently just got two targeted therapies for triple negative,

but until the last year and a half, we didn't even have targeted therapies for triple negative. But we don't have the drugs. And so we're on a mission to eradicate Black breast cancer. And the only way to do that is to get women in clinical trials. And there's a lot of fear about it that we have to overcome, but we have to overcome it. Ms. Fairley, that's exactly where I was going to go. We've heard about all the hesitancies that people in our community have with this vaccine. And so to now ask folks to be a part of trials, there's skepticism there. So in what ways are you approaching those in our community to be able to tell them we need you in this trial and it is worth being in this trial? Well, you know, we did a lot of research last year and a

lot of research with breast cancer patients, actually. And everybody says, oh, you're going to get the sugar pill and die. Or, you know, I don't want to be Henrietta Lacks. I don't want to be a guinea pig. But there's so much safety now in place because of that bad history. A doctor would be under the jail to give you a sugar pill. And there's no sugar pills in cancer research. You're either given standard of care, which is a drug that's currently on the market, or possibly a new drug or drug in combination with the standard of care. You know that Advil you took last week for a headache? Guess what? It was in a clinical trial. You know that Tylenol you gave your baby? It was in a clinical trial. And frankly, in a clinical trial, you get better care. You get better supervision. You get more

scans. You have more people watching over you. And if anything could possibly go wrong, they will quickly change you to a therapy that's going to work better for you. So it's really a safe place to be. And frankly, you know, you know, Black women have done amazing things and we need to do an amazing thing here and take care of each other. And we need to do it for our daughters. I work for my three granddaughters. They're four, two, and 10 months. That's who I work for. I do not want them to go through what I went through with this. And we have to get the science. We have to advance it. The science that you laid out seems really evident, but quite honestly, Ms. Farrelly, there are those folks who they have never had any space in their life that they've actually lived in and trusted science and information. So we trust those things that

have positively rewarded us. If we've never had that positive interaction with science, we don't go to the doctor as regularly as we maybe should. If we don't take any aspirin, where some of those folks would say, nope, I'm not putting anything in me. How do we get to those folks? But you get in your car every day. You get in your car and you drive, and that's science, right? You go to the grocery store and you buy food that was, you know, that was

processed in some way to get to the grocery store for you. You know, we touch science every day, every day in some way. Anything you eat, drink, consume, drive, whatever, your sneakers that you wear, they were designed by science, right? And engineering. So it's not something that should be foreign to us, but it is scary. But you know what? We're dying. What's scarier? Is it dying? What's scarier? Do you want to die from breast cancer? And guess what? White women are not dynamic to the numbers that we are.

And Black women deserve better. We deserve better drugs. We deserve better treatment. We deserve better access to care. And we have to ask for it for ourselves because white doctors are not inviting us to be in research. And they're not explaining it effectively to our patients. So we have to advocate for ourselves and ask for it. We have to ask for the best treatment. We have to ask our doctors to treat us like they would treat their own family. Right? That's what health equity is to me.

Treating me like you would treat your mom, your auntie, your grandma, your daughter. So many of us become advocates for this type of thing once we've been affected. If it's my mother or if it's your lived experience, somebody else's, as you said, aunt or grandmother, how do we encourage those to get involved who may not have yet had that awful pall of cancer touch their family or life? Well, you need, we need to know about clinical trials before, way before we need one. And you know, we're trying to make this a

kitchen table conversation. And you said it earlier, black people, we don't talk about health. We don't talk about until somebody's dead or dying, right? We need to bring it to the kitchen table. So we're actually educating young Black women. We have an HBCU internship program because I believe that young women are going to bring these conversations to their moms and their grandmas. Hey, mom, did you get your mammogram? Hey, grandma, what's our her story? And make these conversations happen. But we want our When We Trial movement to educate and

talk to women in a way that's understandable and relevant. So when you go to our website, whenwetrial.org, you're going to find pronouns like we and us, not you and them, because we want Black women to be, we're with it. This is for us, by us, you know, with us. And we want Black women to feel comfortable with the information so they can embody it and talk to their daughters and talk to their mamas and talk to their family about this important movement. We have to do this. We have, you know, we have to save these lives. We can't let people die anymore. It's not, it's ridiculous. I'm going to bring the panel into our conversation. We're joined by Reverend Jeff Carr, Dr. Omokange Dibenga, and Dr. Julianne Malveaux. Dr. Malveaux, I'll start with you. When you hear the work that

Ms. Fairley is doing with When We Trial, have you been able to see this at least modeled locally, and now you're hopefully at least learning about what's happening nationally, or is this something that's the first that you've seen of it? That's the question for you, Dr. Malveaux, and obviously,

please feel free to ask Ms. Fairley whatever questions you may have. Well, first of all, Ricky is a dear friend, a very long-standing. And I've been with her as she has dealt with her own triple negative diagnosis. And as she has really been such a support to so many sisters who have been diagnosed

with breast cancer, and she's just been there for them. She had the, her whole thing has been about really making sure that Black women understand what we must do to take care of our, as she puts it, our boobies and our besties, taking care of ourselves. So I'm just delighted to have her on with us today. The one statistic that I think is most important

that she's been raising is about the incidence of breast cancer among young women, young Black women. In other words, your health insurance probably will not pay for your mammogram until you're 40 plus. But what we've seen, as Ricky has educated me about, increasingly is that black women who are as young as in their 20s are experiencing breast cancer and having to deal with some of that. So, Ricky, I'd like you to say some more about how this hits young women and what we should be doing to help young women manage this, because so many young women, their breasts are connected to their sexuality,

and so they really don't necessarily want to deal with the fact that they may have to have mastectomies and things like that. But we got to put this in context. And like I said, you're, I'm so glad that you're on the program today. I really am. But talk to me about young women and what we should be telling our young sisters about this. So young women, you know, getting breast cancer in way higher numbers, in way advanced stages. And a lot of times what happens, Jules, you brought it up, is a woman will go to the doctor and present with a lump and say, I have a lump here. And the doctor

will say, oh, you're too young for a mammogram. Go back, go away, come back in six months and we'll check you out. And six months later, they're metastatic. And they're not, so unless you know your bodies and we're telling them to know your bodies, know yourselves, touch them, feel them, look at them so that you can advocate for yourself and say, guess what, doctor? This lump was not here a month ago. I did something unusual. And we have to teach them to fight for themselves so that they know to stand up and say, you know, or go to another doctor. Our HBCU internship program, we actually ask our girls to do an interview with both their mom and their best friend.

And in all of these circumstances, of all of our interns, we had 15 last year. We're about to hire 10 more tomorrow. And they had never had a conversation with their mom or their best friend about breast health. And I think what we did, the education they had with us, was to learn how important this is and how important it is to not only know your body and feel good about your body, but also advocate and say, stand up. Wait a minute. This is not right. This is not good. This is not how it's supposed to feel. So go to another doctor or insist on attention. I have so many young breasties who, one of them took five years

before the doctor recognized and let her have a mammogram, and she was diagnosed metastatic at age 31. So we have to have these conversations, and that's why we're so much trying to talk to young women. Reverend Jeff Carr, I want to bring you into the conversation. Great. Thank you. First and foremost, Sister Ricky, thank you so much for your heart. Thank you for your mind. Thank you for your spirit, for the work that you're putting into the world. It is absolutely saving lives.

I'm proud that Meharry Medical College here in Nashville, Tennessee, has a Center for Women's Health, and they provide free mammograms for people. We try to get people to go and be there and to take advantage of this. As a spiritual leader, I've sat next to people when they're in chemo treatment and they're going through and they're dealing with all of the psychological issues that they're dealing with. It often goes into a space of stereotype. And my dad would always say, son, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. When we talk about these clinical trials, briefly, what does a clinical trial actually look like? Because without having gone through it, many people go to the horror story image, but we are dealing with science.

So what does involvement in a clinical trial look like? Well, first of all, you have to advocate for yourself and almost ask to be in it. But that's what our website is all about. When we trial.org, we try to break it down into simple science. But basically, you're either getting a standard of care drug, so a drug that's currently on the market and been tested and is being used, or you get a drug that either is a combination of that standard of care drug and a new drug or a new drug. And so you're basically in a situation where some people are taking the standard of a situation where some people are taking the standard of care drug some people are taking the new drug and they evaluate the performance of the

drug but you are watched really really closely you have a lot more scans than taking normal chemo and people are all over you trying to just see what the side effects are like what's happening in your body whether it's working whether the the efficacy is there. And so it's really almost a safer environment to be in than regular chemo because so many people are all over you when you're getting so much testing around you. So it's really, really safe. And at any given moment, you can get out of a trial. You don't have to stay in it if you're not feeling it. If you don't think it's working for you, you can get out.

But until right now, we only have 3% participation in breast cancer trials. So that's zero. So that means none of these black bodies are being tested with these drugs. And they're not working. I took the standard of care, and I had triple negative. And the three standard of care drugs didn't work for me. My cancer came back within a year. And I ended up going on some experimental drugs to save my life.

And my doctor gave me two years to live. I'm on 10. Jules knows that. So I'm a miracle. I'm very blessed to be here. So I know I have to do this work. I know God left me here to do this work. And so it's so important.

But it's really not that difficult. And in our website, we really do try to break it down. And we have some amazing doctors that we work with that can explain it. If anybody wants to know and know more, just call me, text me, email me, and we will get you all the education we need because it's so important, so critical.

Dr. Omokongo, I want to give you the last word on this conversation. I want you to get in and offer your comments or your questions that you may have for Ricky Fairley. Yes, and Ms. Fairley, first of all, you know, you said you're a blessing and a miracle. But not only that, you're a blessing and a miracle for so many others. I mean, the work you're doing is like literally lifesaving. And so I just commend you for just everything you're doing.

I'm thinking about, in addition to the clinical trials and the participation that we need as it relates to that, I hear so much about what you can do to prevent things like diabetes and heart disease and the like, but I don't hear people talk about breast cancer and things that maybe we can do in our earlier stages to maybe prevent this from happening, you know, so we don't get to the deeper stages. So are there some preventative things that just the average person should know about things they can do on a daily basis to maybe help prevent breast cancer from even happening? Unfortunately, you can't prevent breast cancer. When I got sick, I was pretty healthy. I mean, I do eat ice cream a lot, but I was riding my bike 20 miles a day.

You know, clearly there are things you can do overall just to keep healthy, right? Eat right. You know you're supposed to eat fried chicken and mac and cheese every day, right? Eat right. Do the right thing. But also, you know, breast cancer happens. It's one of the oldest cancers available in the world, and it just happens. And you have to um you can't we

can't prevent it but we can early detect it we can early detect it and so that's why it's so important to know your body to talk about it to teach our daughters and our the women in our family to you know touch your breasts look at them know what they feel like so when something unusual looks or looks different or feels different you can go and go to the doctor and check it out so it's so important to just, early detection is really all we have, all we have. But even Jules and I have a friend who was diagnosed about a month ago with stage zero.

Thank God she was early stage. But even then she's now doing her second surgery because they didn't get clear margins. So it's no joke, okay? So even early stage isn't a given that you're going to be okay. You know what I mean? So, so tell all of them, I tell everybody, check the breasts that you love. I know you have a pair. No, but Rick, the bottom line is, as you always point out, people have to be aware.

Yeah. We have to talk about it. And it's there now you have to deal with it. Talk about it. Talk about it. The law wasn't there before, and it's there now. You have to deal with it. And so often we, as black people, ignore signals about our health because we don't trust the doctors. Or because even when we do trust them, we are afraid. I mean, we have a couple of mutual friends who refuse to get mammograms. Right. Right. But also, you guys, you know, only about 5% of breast cancer is hereditary. So, so a lot of them will say, well, my mom didn't

have it, so I'm okay. That is not the case. And guess what? You can get breast cancer from your dad. So now there's some studies happening, which we need more science around this from, if your dad had colon cancer, it's connected to triple negative. What I had, my dad had colon cancer. It's connected to prostate cancer. So, you know, this is all the science that we need to uncover. We need to have more black people in science. That's the other thing is that men get it too. Men get it.

So 1% of breast cancer is men. 1% of breast cancer is men. And within that, though, guess what? Black men get it at a 50% higher, die at a 50% higher rate than men, 66 higher rate than men. They get it at a 50% higher rate and die at 66% higher rate.

Ms. Fairley, that is such important information. We love on you for being a survivor and recognizing the work that you are still here doing. And we thank you for that. Please tell folks how they can find and or follow you and get on with what you're doing. We know that every time Dr. Malvo is here, she's going to sing your praises. So we ain't worried

about it. But we want you to speak for yourself. Let us know how we can find and follow you and the work you're doing. Great, great. So whenwetrial.org. Whenwetrial.org. Everything you need to know there is there. My foundation website is touchbbca.org, and all of our social media is at touchbbca. You can reach me on Twitter at touchbbca or rickidove, R-I-C-K-I-D-O-V-E.

And call me, tweet me, email me. You can find me. And, you know, also we have a web series every Wednesday night on the blackdoctor.org Facebook page called The Doctor Is In. Wednesday nights at 6 p.m. Eastern time. We're always on talking about anything and everything breast cancer. In fact, Wednesday we're going to have this amazing scientist on who has basically validated that black breast cancer cells look different molecularly than white breast cancer cells.

So the science is happening, but we need more of it. Thank you so much for your work, and thank you for your time joining us here this evening. Thank you. Great to see you, Jules. And I'll... Well, you know what? We're all done with our panel, so Jules, Rick, you guys get on the phone and go give each other a call,

chat about what we did. Thank you, Dr. Omokongo. Thank you, Reverend Jeff Carr. We appreciate all of you being here. And in the host chair, I just want to take a moment of personal privilege to shout out some survivors in my life, Miss Renee Nash, Miss Marietta English, and my friend, Miss Melissa Varner. Long live my mama, Olivia Chairman.

I say. I say. Amen. Before we go, here's a reminder for you HBCU juniors or seniors. You know what we're talking about. Time is running out for you to apply for that scholarship form from Roland and McDonald's. If you attend an HBCU and Thurgood Marshall College Fund member institution,

you can submit your application for the chance to receive a $15,000 scholarship. The deadline is February 28th. Let me look at my watch. That's a week from today, February 28th. Go to tmcf.org for details on how to apply. Now, in addition to the free money, scholarship recipients will also have the opportunity to engage with McDonald's executives working within their respective fields of study. Well, that does it for us here at Roland Martin Unfiltered. I want to thank the panel again, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Dr. Omokongo Dabanga, and Reverend Jeff Carr. Thanks for joining us here on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network.

If you haven't done it already, be sure to download the Black Star Network on all of your devices. If you would like to support us so we can continue bringing you the stories that matter to us. I am Ray Baker. Roland will be back tomorrow. And in parting, let us remember the words

of the Yerba proverb, that if we stand tall, it is because we stand on the backs of those who came before us. Have a great night. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.