#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Obama Appointed Judge Assigned Trump Trial, OH Reagan Tokes Act, MO Derontae Martin Death Update

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

8.2.2023 ##RolandMartinUnfiltered: Obama Appointed Judge Assigned Trump Trial, OH Reagan Tokes Act, MO Derontae Martin Death Update Former President Donald Trump has been given a court date to appear before a judge appointed by Obama to face his federal election fraud indictment in D.C. Tonight, we'll take a closer look to discuss the implications of this court date for Trump and the future of American politics. The Ohio Supreme Court recently upheld the Reagan Tokes Act, which grants the authority to prison officials to prolong the sentences of certain inmates based on their conduct in prison. Tonight, we will speak with an Ohio legal professional to further explore the implications of this controversial law on citizens' rights. Missouri Teen Derontae Martin was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head in the home of a known white supremacist. We will speak with Derontae's mother and The Chief of Staff Campaign Zero to shed light on the absence of arrests and their ongoing fight for justice. In 2023, a white bus driver asked two Black Men to get to the back of an empty bus. We will show you the disturbing video. I had the opportunity to speak with the University of Minnesota Professor Timothy J. Lensmire to discuss how white people form their racial identity based on interactions with people of color. You won't want to miss this insightful RMU Book Club conversation. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, folks. Today is Wednesday, August 2nd, 2023. Coming up on World of Modern Art and Culture, streaming live on the Black Star Network from Birmingham,

where I'm attending the National Association of Black Journalists Convention. Donald Trump gets a court date where he is going to have to appear after being indicted. We'll tell you when that is going to take place. Also in Ohio, the Ohio Supreme Court recently upheld the Reagan-Tokes Act, which grants the authority to prison officers to prolong the sentence of certain inmates based on their conduct in prison. We'll talk with an attorney about this, the implication of that for citizens' rights. Also, Missouri teen Durante Martin was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head in the home of a non-white supremacist. We'll speak with his mother, the chief of staff of Campaign Zero, to shed light on the absence of an arrest in this case.

Also in 2023, a white bus driver asked two black men to go to the back of an empty bus. We'll show you disturbing video. Also, I talked with a professor who wrote a book about the issue of, first of all, Professor Timothy Lemire to discuss how white people form their racial identities. A fascinating conversation. It's one you do not want to miss. It is time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin-Unfiltered

from 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. It's Uncle Roro, y'all. It's rolling,oro, 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. Yeah. Martin. All right, folks, Donald Trump, he is set to appear in court on Thursday after being charged federal judge who has not been kind to folks involved in the January 6th attack on this country.

My panel, Robert Petillo, he is the host of People, Passion, Politics, News and Talk 1380 WALK in Atlanta. Rebecca Carruthers, vice president, Fair Election Center, Washington, D.C. Robert, I want to start with you. Judge Tonya Chutkin, she was chosen at random for this, but she is somebody who does not play around when it comes to the law. And so Donald Trump, he is going to have one hell of a task on his hand. Well, the biggest task that Donald Trump is going to have is trying to create a coherent story, at least a coherent defense. Right now, the Trump defense sounds a lot like the Falcons defense. Just let anybody in, anybody through, they ain't even trying. Well, I had a debate earlier on Iranian TV with one of the Trump

supporters. And when they asked the simple question of, well, what is Trump's defense? They started talking about Hillary Clinton. They started talking about Hunter Biden. They started talking about John Kerry and Al Gore and Stacey Abrams and Kamala Harris and all these things. But it gets down to it. Let's look at the charges that are against President Trump. I think the easiest to prove is incitement to or conspiracy to disrupt an official act of Congress. He is on tape saying, everybody, we're going to walk down to Congress and then we're going to go into the building. I'm going to go with you and go inside the building.

What is the defense for that? I'm just trying to figure out for all the Republicans, for all the conservatives who keep saying, well, this is a political prosecution, the judge is biased, the DA is biased. If you are charged with telling people to go interrupt Congress, and you're on video telling people to go interrupt Congress, what exactly is the defense you're going to put up around that?

And I think the reason we're hearing so much hemming and hawing, particularly on conservative media, so much discussion about all these distractions, conspiracy theories, is because it's going to be very hard to get away from the fundamental fact that Donald Trump admitted to most of the things he's accused of and the rest of the things or have witnesses or cooperated witnesses, people like Mike Pence, the former vice president of the United States of America, is going to testify at this trial. Mark Meadows, the previous chief of staff to the president of the United States, will testify at this trial. If you look at the unindicted co-conspirators who will probably face charges later, people like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and John Eastman are all going to have to take the stand. This may be the most damning of all of the charges

against the president. He's currently facing 78 charges, which could put him in jail for 600 years. Once the Fulton County case comes down, they will probably be looking at over 80 felony counts that might put him in jail for the next thousand years. I think they have to have a come-to-Jesus meeting about all this bluster and the campaign trail and attacking the prosecutors. They really talk about how to keep this man from dying in jail. You know, Rebecca, I've been cracking up laughing, listening to a lot of these Republicans, and they've been talking about the First Amendment, the right to free speech. Here's the problem. What special counsel Jack Smith said,

and he puts it in the 45-page indictment, oh, you can say whatever you want. You can even lie. But when you act on interfering, that's criminal. You know, Roland, this is so interesting watching this play out. After I watched your coverage last night on the latest indictment that Trump had, I actually turned to Fox News because I just had to see what was Fox going to talk about. And just like Robert said, they were talking about, oh, Hunter Biden, or they even tried to say that this judge, Judge Chunkin, at one point worked at the same law firm, but at some point in Hunter Biden's career, he also worked at that law firm. So presumably a law firm that's had thousands of associates over the years and multiple partners, that was their only defense to watch, you know, what's happening with Trump.

I would say the only winner in this, if you could call it a winner, is Tim Scott. I think by Trump's latest indictment, especially with us seeing who the six, or even figuring out who the six co-conspirators are, you know, this really puts Tim Scott in a good position to actually cinch and get the Republican nomination next year. So it's going to be really interesting watching this unfold. I also want to point out that regardless of which judge Trump got, dozens of judges have tried over 600 people associated with the January 6th insurrection, and over 600 people have been tried and convicted. So Trump is in good company because I expect for him to be tried, and I expect him to be convicted. Here's why I would disagree about Senator Tim Scott. When you look at how people responded on yesterday, he had the most weak, impotent response, Robert, that was actually shameful.

And so he keeps talking about these two forms of justice. He looks like an idiot saying all of this. Well, not in, we'll talk about that, but also he's currently in a fight with Ron DeSantis over whether or not slavery was bad. And just for Republicans who are watching, I just want to let you know, anytime you're talking about whether or not slavery was bad, regardless of you think you have a point or not, you're losing, You're losing that conversation. That's just a conversation that you can't win. But him and Ron DeSantis going back and forth, and Ron DeSantis then comparing him to Kamala Harris, because I guess that's the only other black person he could think of, and basically saying, boy, go get my sweet tea.

I ain't asking for your opinion on this. So Tim Scott's looked very weak this week. He's looked like he's going to be ineffectual. If you can't go back and forth with Ron DeSantis on the campaign trail, how can we expect you from the conservative side of the aisle to go head to head with Bernie Sanders or AOC or with Chuck Schumer? And then that leads us into this particular indictment where we've seen Mike Pence come out. My wife said today, I've never heard Mike Pence talk this much and talk this strongly and assertively. He's looked like the real adult in the room on the Republican side of the aisle.

Chris Christie has acquitted himself very well during this entire process for Trump. As if the voices that have been just the most severely anti-Trump and not trying to kowtow to his supporters, they're coming out looking great. These other ones who are trying to play this middle-of-the-road game, the Tim Scotts, the Vivek Ramchandis, the Nikki Haley's of the world, where you still want to keep the Trump supporters, but also try to distance yourself from him. I don't think that's the eye of a needle that they're going to be able to thread. I think they're going to be weeded out, as Trump has weeded out this race also. You cannot keep trying to kiss the man's butt. And here's the other deal. You can't keep trying to say, oh, it's these Democrats and they're just you can try to keep bringing up Hillary all you want to.

Here's the deal. We're now in criminal territory, Rebecca. And that is you've got to have a defense and a Fox News television defense. Don't fly in a courtroom. Look, these D.C. juries aren't having it because even on Fox News last night and even this morning, part of the rebuttal was, well, I don't really think that January 6th was that big of a deal. No one I know really is talking about January 6th or even understood that even happened or even paid attention on January 6th to see that there was even anything that did actually happen on January 6th. But what these folks have to realize, these D.C. juries lived this. Living in D.C. when January 6th happened, many of us knew people who worked on the Hill. Many of us lived even in adjoining neighborhoods where we could see that there was something going on. Many of us watched local TV, local radio, was on local social media, and we were able to follow some of the events as

it unfolded in real time. So we are very uniquely aware of what happened that day and the subsequent days. We're also very uniquely aware of the things that Trump was doing around town in November and in December. Many of us walk down the street, and we constantly see the presidential motorcade, and we see where the motorcade is going. And then you could actually go and see on the White House's website to see actually what the president's public agenda is. So, we lived and breathed it. We were around it. We know that it happened. And that's what Fox News and their various defenses that they're talking about right now, it isn't going to play with

any D.C. jury because a lot of these folks were acutely aware of what happened on January 6th. Well, that's right. So y'all can say whatever you want to, but trust me, that means nothing when it's time to go to court. All right, hold tight. One second, we come back. We're going to talk about this

situation in Ohio, folks, that is just strange as all get out, where somebody can actually spend more time in prison than they've actually been sentenced. We'll unpack that next on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network, live from Birmingham, site of the NABJ convention. Back in a moment. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary

mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st. And episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hatred on the streets a horrific scene a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence white people are losing their damn lives there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s capital we're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has

been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear.

Next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes, our special guest, Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement. We're going to discuss her new book, The Purpose of Power, How We Come Together When We Fall Apart. We live in a world where we have to navigate. You know, when we say something, people look at us funny. But when a man says the same thing less skillfully

than we did, right? Right. Everybody flocks towards what they said, even though it was your idea. Right here on The Frequency on the Black Star Network. Hi, my name is Brady Riggs. I'm from Houston, Texas. My name is Sharon Williams.

I'm from Dallas, Texas. Right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamn believable. You hear me? So, the House Supreme Court has upheld a law that allows prison officials to extend the sentences of certain inmates based on their behavior behind bars. Christopher Hacker and Damon Simmons Jr. challenged the law, saying it infringes on the state constitution's separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches, which allows prison officials to act as prosecutors, judges, and jurors in determining extended sentences.

And the 2019 law, known as the Reagan-Tokes Act, gives the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction the authority to request the parole board to keep felony offenders in prison beyond the minimum of their sentence range. Joining us now is Ohio Attorney Fannin A. Ruckert to explain this. So, Attorney Ruckert, glad to have you on the show. So, okay, so let's understand this. In fact, there's a similar law in Texas. I know a pastor, a former pastor, Terry Hornbuckle, who was convicted of rape, was sentenced to prison, sentence was up. Based upon his actions, based upon him never admitting any remorse, he was literally sent to a psychiatric facility where he still remains because they felt he was still a danger.

So what's still strange about this is, so how can you have a court of law that makes a determination, but then there's an arbitrary decision made by the prison system to still keep somebody in prison? So, Roland, first of all, let me offer, I am so humbled and grateful to be able to join you again and certainly talking about important legal issues that impact us all broadly. Let me just give some background. As you said, this was passed in 2019 under the guises of criminal justice reform. And what this law said is that for certain first and second degree felonies, which are the most, you know, the highest degree of felonies in Ohio, judges are required now not to give a certain sentence, but have to give an indefinite sentence.

They have to give a minimum and they have to extend that to have a maximum. The law says there's a presumption that folks are going to get out on that minimum. But as you pointed out, and this is where it becomes an issue, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has the ability to say, eh, we don't think that this person is ready to go out into society, so we're gonna extend the sentence. And they can extend the sentence from that minimum

up to the maximum, which the statute also prescribed, is 50% of the minimum. So if you get a 10-year sentence, now you got 10 to 15. And so even though you could get out of 10... Okay, I'm confused here. So I'm used to I sentence you

to 20 years in prison. And then, based upon behavior, you might get time off of good behavior. And then you could get out earlier if you're paroled. So you're saying that when somebody is now sentenced in Ohio, there's no precise sentence. It's 8 to 12, and then it's up to the prison to decide whether you get out 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12? Which is the reason for the challenge. Let me just offer it. I was a prosecutor. I was a judge

for most of my career before I retired. I spent 13 years on the bench. And as judges, we appreciate our independence and the ability to enforce the sentences that we impose. And why this is a problem is because you got the judicial branch, which says we're going to make the decisions about the person's guilt or innocence, and then we're going to decide the appropriate punishments. And then the executive branch, which is not supposed to be making those decisions, making the decision that even though you sentenced them, we're going to allow that sentence to be expanded by our rules and by our determination, and there's no specific parameters about how those determinations are made.

That's a problem. So, again, I guess what's strange to me is how then does the prison come to that conclusion? How arbitrary is it? Is there a defined rule? How did that even happen? Yeah. In the law, it says that the DRC, the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, may rebut the presumption of the minimum sentence if, and they have about four factors, if the person has had an infraction during their prison term, which suggests that they're not ready to go back out in

society, if at the time of their minimum sentence they're classified as a certain level of offender, or if they decided. And then there's a little three word, at a hearing. It gives no specifics about what kind of hearing, who's representing, who's represented, whether the offender himself or herself actually has the opportunity to present this hearing. I mean, it gives no parameters, which makes it really an arbitrary, one-sided decision made by an entity that has at its core keeping folks locked up to say, we're going to keep you for longer. And that's where there's a problem with this decision and, of course, with the law. Wow. Question from our panel. Robert, you first. So, with this, what are some efforts that can be made to try to change this? Now that you've gone through the judicial system, does it have to be a legislative solution? And

what exactly do you think would be necessary for the community to push through a legislative solution? So, yes, a good question. You're correct. This was a legislative issue. The court has said, ah, it's okay, it's constitutional. So now the only fix to it can be back to the legislature. And what can the legislature do? They can remove that arbitrary decision-making authority by DRC. Will they? Not likely. Why? Because Ohio at this time is a state that is primarily controlled by the same entities that passed this law in 2019. And so for them to reverse themselves where they have a supermajority is extremely unlikely. But it does just say, look, folks, be mindful

of who you're voting for. Be mindful of what they're enacting at the time and stay out of the courts. I tell my clients, then I told folks who appeared in front of me back then, the best way to deal with the legal system is to stay out of it in the first place. Absolutely. And just I want for the people online who are always asking these questions, you know, well, I'm not going to vote because I don't like Biden. I'm not going to vote for this or the other reason. There are still these state and local issues that are so crucial. So even if you don't want to vote on national issues, you have to remember that if you want to change laws like this in a state like Ohio, you're going to have to register. You're going to have to vote.

You're going to turn other people out. We have the number to which we need the people motivated and registered. That's right. What do we say all the time? All politics is local. We may be excited about presidential elections. We may be excited about governor's races. But all politics is local. It's the local elections that ultimately decide our direction

and impact us the most. And this is the perfect example of that fact. Rebecca? You know, I want to ask so many questions, but I won't for the sake of time. I'm going to forget my due process question that I have, because I don't even see how this is remotely constitutional and how this is not a violation of due process. But that aside, I'm going to suspend my disbelief right now.

Let's assume that the prison system in Ohio is saying that it is their job to rehabilitate those who enter into their penal system. So just to make sure that I'm understanding and viewers watching also understand. So if someone is showing bad behavior, i.e. showing that they're not rehabilitated, how is it their fault that they're not rehabilitated? Wouldn't that actually be on the prison system in Ohio? And wouldn't it be the prison system's fault that rehabilitation hasn't happened? Well, that's an interesting point. What is the title of the entity that's over this? It's the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. this is the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

It's the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, which says in its name that its primary concern should be the rehabilitation and the correction of those individuals who have to come through those doors. And that's correct. If they're not rehabilitated, there's an entity to blame for that, and that would most likely be the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for not ensuring that those who pass through those doors are different than when they come in. Laws like this, rules like this, make it less of a responsibility for those departments to act consistent with their mission and their stated purposes. So with a quick follow-up then, if it's now the role of the rehabilitation department to rehabilitate, and if they're saying by their own admission that people aren't being rehabilitated, then technically couldn't prisoners sue, like under a property claim, that they're not getting

what they're told that they're supposed to be getting during their experience in prison? I imagine that they could, and I'm guessing that there probably have been similar cases. But as someone who practices constitutional law and civil rights law, I can tell you that there is a presumption that there are fewer and less enforceable rights that prisoners have than folks who are not incarcerated. So, for example, I do medical malpractice. In medical malpractice, you say that the standard of care that a person received fell below a certain threshold. In prison, that threshold is actually lower because they're allowed the minimum standard of care when it comes to medical treatment that they receive.

So is that possible to have a lawsuit saying, look, you all said you're about rehabilitation. I'm not rehabilitated. So I'm going to, you know, I'm entitled to compensation or even release early because you're not doing your job. Sure, that argument can be made. But a lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

The demand curve in action, and that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, It's really, really, really bad. Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod.

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus

King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I would argue that that would be an incredibly high hill to climb for an inmate to successfully argue that it's their responsibility and that they have a constitutional responsibility to ensure that that happens.

All right, then. Fannin, we certainly appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much. All right, Frat. Thanks so very much. All right, folks, I'm going to go to a break. We'll be back on Roland Martin Unfortunate on the Black Star Network.

Don't forget to support us in what we do. Download the Black Star Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. You can also, of course, contribute to what we do by senior checking money order to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, Donaldson, RM Unfiltered. PayPal, R Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. ...happens in Black culture. We're about covering these things that matter to us, Thank you. cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it. This is about covering us. Invest in black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people, $50 this month, raise $100,000. We're behind $100,000, so we want to hit that. Your money makes this possible. Check some money orders. Go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash App is $RM Unfiltered.

PayPal is RMartin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. On a next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, how are you being of service to others? Doing for someone beside yourself is such a big part of living a balanced life. We'll talk about what that means, the generation that missed that message and the price that we're all paying as a result. Well, now all I see is mama getting up in the morning, going to work, maybe dropping me off at school, then coming back home at night. And then I really didn't have any type of time with the person that

really was there to nurture me and prepare me and to show me what a life looked like and what service looked like. That's all on the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, here at Blackstar Network. My name is Lena Charles, and I'm from Opelousas, Louisiana. Yes, that is Zydeco capital of the world. My name is Margaret Chappelle. I'm from Dallas, Texas, representing the Urban Trivia Game.

It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching. Roland Martin on Unfiltered. Folks, we've talked about this story before. On April 25th, 2021, 19-year-old Durante Martin was found dead in the attic of a white Missouri man's house with a gunshot wound to the head. The white man, James Wade, is said to be known by supremacists. Local coroner quickly ruled Durontay's death a suicide. It took months to get a second autopsy, and an in-panel jury ruled Deontay's death resulted from violence, not suicide. But still, two years later, no one has been arrested for his death. There are discussions about the DOJ's potentially taking over the case. Katie Ryan is chief of staff for Campaign Zero, and she joins us right now.

So, Katie, this is strange here. We had the family on before discussing this case, and apparently there was supposedly a party at this man's home. So can you bring folks, those who don't, who didn't see us then, bring us today on what the hell happened here? Don't think we have Katie's audio. She might be on mute. So let's, all right, Katie, let's try it now.

Are you able to see and hear me, Roland? We got you. Actually, we see you and hear you. Go right ahead. Perfect. Okay. Yes, thank you so much again for using your platform to get this story out and for welcoming us again. And I, you know, wish I'll – spoiler alert – I wish I really had some compelling and exciting and positive news to share about their big movement in this case.

We are not there yet. But as a quick refresher for people who have not followed the case of Durante Martin, you're correct. young African-American man, aspiring football star, preparing to go to college to live out his dream of playing football, was taken to a party. So, again, this was not a party he intended to attend, but he was taken by some of his friends, acquaintances, we'll call them, in a rural part of Missouri. Durante was the only Black individual attending the party. The party was for a girl who was a minor at the time, her father known to be a white supremacist. We don't know the full description of what occurred at that party this evening, other than we have the audio of the 911 call in which James Wade is calling the police to alert them that he has discovered Durante's body shot in the attic of his home.

What we do know is that Durante had surgery on his dominant hand, on his right hand. So he was in a full cast from wrist to elbow. He did die by a gunshot head to gunshot rather to the temple in the upstairs of this home. And police very quickly took his body from the house. The scene was already cleaned prior to medics arriving. And then his mother, Erica Lotz, had to, by way of sort of telephone, learn both of her son's death and then the whereabouts of his body, which was already at a coroner's. So that's what's so strange here, the actions of cops in this case. And there literally has been nothing, nothing from state investigators? So as you mentioned earlier, right, the death was ruled a suicide immediately. I believe within 48 hours, Durante's death was ruled a suicide.

So, the family had to finance and find a second individual to conduct an autopsy, who very quickly ruled that the death was actually by means of violence, that the distance at which the gun fired, that it did not appear that it would have even been possible for him to have done this. Based on that, a jury was impaneled, reviewed his case, also said that this was officially a death by violence, not possible for it to be a suicide. One piece of background information is that prior to Durante's death, there were two alleged suicides that had also occurred at James Wade's property. So this is the third death that has occurred at his property. Despite all of this information. That's a lot of dying. In one place? Right. Right. Affiliated with one person? Precisely. So what we have seen since then was since there

were conflicting reports after the jury was impaneled and ruled the death homicide, then the investigation was turned over to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. That was to move it out of the local law enforcement. They closed the case and said there was nothing more to examine. So we are still in the streets. We are still pushing for the FBI, for the Department of Justice, for anyone outside of the state of Missouri who can conduct a thorough investigation with integrity that does not have special interest in local politics, to actually answer so many of the outstanding questions we have and actually get truth for Durante and his family. Have you gotten any sort of feedback from the feds?

No. I will say what's promising is recently the family did meet with Senator Hawley in Missouri, and he has committed to pushing to whatever capacity he has in his office to getting a sort of larger platform. There is an upcoming meeting with Congresswoman Bush. She will be meeting with Durante's family this week. So we are also hopeful that she'll be able to apply some level of pressure. But we have not been able to get the FBI or the DOJ to publicly commit to actually looking at his case. Because as far as we've seen, the investigation has been so botched from top to bottom from the moment of his death. We don't have any more faith in law enforcement and the investigatory bodies in the state of Missouri. Our ask is just at a minimum

that we have an external body at the federal level to actually step in and start doing some of this investigating. Literally a stunning, stunning story that makes no sense whatsoever. Rebecca, your first question. Thank you. Thank you so much for being on here tonight. Just to make viewers aware of what's going on. This is a little hard for me because I grew up in a rural state in the Midwest. And I remember family members pulling me aside when I was a teenager and letting me know, do not go to any parties and you're the only black person there. That was the type of conversation that we had within my family and even my extended family. So my question for you, how often do these things or have these things happen in Missouri

that you know of, of these strange deaths and, you know, no one knows anything. It was a homicide. It may not have been a homicide. It might have been a death by suicide, but then no one knows anything. How often does this happen? Yeah, I mean, that's a brilliant question. I don't have a global perspective on how this actually has manifested over time in Missouri. There's no mystery here that our criminal legal system is actually much more quick to stop investigating violent deaths of young black and brown men in particular. And one of our commitments is to make sure that Durante doesn't become one of those statistics, right? That it's easily swept under the rug that, oh, like he must have, there were no witnesses there who will actually

step forward and actually explain, A, why he was there, B, James Wade's actual affiliation with local law enforcement and or his affiliation with any sort of white supremacy groups, and then C, why the coroner and law enforcement were so quick to side with James Wade. This is like one of the saddest tales as old as time, just as you're saying. And part of our scream for justice is that we shouldn't be living in a world where parents have to say, you may not go to a party where you're a minority because if the outcome is violence, then you will not be a recipient of justice. Robert. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding.

But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing.

So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this

quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter. Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't

working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes

one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And so, listening to your story, it's just amazing. Because this isn't isolated. I think to the story of the black woman who went on the girls trip and she was the only black person in the party and she ended up dead.

I was also ruled to be a big suicide or an accident, something along those lines. I'm curious as to what the Justice Department, why they haven't started investigating this yet, going through particularly the Civil Rights Division, what are they saying needs to be done in order for them to launch a full investigation? Yeah, so actually, I think there is, from the DOJ, we're not getting the most clear responses. I'm glad that you're asking this in a very public

and vocal way, is that we have only been declined for their investigation on behalf of the DOJ, but the actual substantive reason for that is not clear to us. Even clarity that says this is not within the DOJ's purview for X reason would be something. But we are getting sort of stonewalled at every single turn, and that is part of the frustration of this case. And I'm also reminded of the Ahmaud Arbery case, for example, in South Georgia, where the local prosecutor would have prosecuted and went through three separate prosecutors before the state's attorney stepped in because of the public pressure on it. What has the state's attorney's office, the attorney general of the state, said? What do you think would be necessary

in order to get them to at least put some attention on? Because that's a case in Georgia where we did not get immediate action, but after several months of public pressure, we were able to get the state to step in. Yeah, I mean, so we have gotten, I wouldn't say stonewalled as much by the state's attorney, but we have received a lot of conflicting information and also have heard that apparently the information that made its way to the state's attorney office was not complete and in full. In fact, we learned that the prosecutor, once he inherited the case file for Durante, it did not include the fact that a second autopsy had ever been conducted, that it only had information regarding the first and initial autopsy by the local coroner, which to us was just mind-blowing,

right, that the state's attorney was only getting a portion of the story and not getting the actual ruling that his death could not have been by suicide. Again, just speaking to the point that at every single turn of the investigation, whether we seek answers or when we ask about the version of stories that people have received, it has been botched from top to bottom. All right, then. Look, it is an unbelievable story, and certainly the family just needs some answers as to what in the hell is actually going on. So great work there, Campaign Zero. We appreciate it. Keep us abreast if you're all able to make any movement. Yes, Roland, and if I can, while we have your viewers who were so engaged previously, I want to remind everyone that we do have a website titled Justice for

Durante, D-E-R-O-N-T-A-E. And on that page, not only can you learn more about him as a human being and the light that he was as a person, but there is a call to action with contact information for the FBI and for the Department of Justice so that you can make your voice be heard and demand that we get some answers and an external investigation. All right. Katie Ryan, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, folks. Got to go to break. We'll be right right back. Roland Martin unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Next on the Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We welcome the Black Star Network's very own Roland Martin, who joins us to talk about his new book, White Fear. How the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book

explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol. Because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin. The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence.

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

there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the rise of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is Whitefield. I'm Faraiji Muhammad, live from L.A., and this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation, you and me. We talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard. Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's The Culture. Weekdays at 3, only on the Blackstar Network. Hello, I'm Jameah Pugh. I am from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, just an hour right outside of Philadelphia. My name is Jasmine Pugh. I'm also from Coatesville, Pennsylvania. You are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Stay right here. Tatiana Allen has been missing from Montgomery, Alabama since June 29th.

The 16-year-old is 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighs 145 pounds, with light brown hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information about Tatiana Allen should call the Montgomery, Alabama Police Department at 334-241-2651. 334-241-2651, 334-241-2651. All right, folks, a white bus driver asked two black men in Fargo, North Dakota, to actually move to the back of the bus. No, seriously. And the bus was empty. Watch this.

Okay. Oh, you got me on camera? I got you on camera. We have six cameras on this bus. So they didn't know that nothing was going on. Thank you for saying that. Thank you, camera. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Do you want to ride or not? Oh, you got me on camera? He has six cameras on this block. So they know that nothing's going on. Thank you for saying that. Thank you, camera.

Thank you. Do you want to ride or not? You're bothering me. I'm doing what you're asking me to do. I'm back here. I took a seat. Okay. Right. Right.

All right. I have to use the restroom. No? That's it? All right. I have to use the restroom. No, no, no, no, no. Let's go home. I'm going to go to the studio. I'm going to call the police. OK. And we're going to have the camera watch you.

Sure. That's cool. Hold on. Hold on. Come on. Let's go. No, I have to go. Where you going?

Where you going? No. I have to go. I'll call them right now. I have to go. I'm right now. I have to go. Are you going to report?

Are you going to report? Are you going to report? Are you going to report? Are you going to report? Are you going to report? Are you going to report? Are you going to report? Are you going to report now. I have to go. Are you guys trying to start something? I went to the back of the scene. We did nothing wrong, so I'll call them right now. Because we did nothing wrong. We're not monitoring. You have an attitude with us. I asked you a simple question. I did nothing to you.

It's uncareful. So if you really want to do this, we can do this. Oh, oh, oh. You said you weren't going to call them. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will. I will can do this. Oh, oh, oh. You said you wanted to do this. I will. I will do it. I asked you a question. That's what I asked. I didn't want to do it.

I'm not going to speak all the time. Jeff is around. I want to speak all the time. He's a wonderful guy. He's a wonderful guy. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.

The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get

right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod.

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding

of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We'll be right back. You came across with attitude. No, I didn't. We wrote. Everybody was wrong. Yes. No, sir. This is the morning.

Okay, hold on. Hold on. It's cool because I'm asking him. It's on camera. All right. It's on camera. It's on camera. We all have cameras, but that's why I'm saying if you really want to call a police, we can

call them because nothing was wrong. Nothing did wrong. There's no physical assault. Go take your seat before I change. All right. Go. All I'm saying is I asked you a simple question. And I tried to answer it, but you were interrupting me.

Sir, I was running around and you're sitting there. Hey, I got to go and we got to go. You're standing around and say, oh, oh. This is like you're trying to banter. You're trying to do something else. I asked you a simple question. I told you what, I'm going to walk away. You're standing in front of me, watching me,

and I turned around like this and looked, and I said, okay, I'm going away. Let's back this up to the beginning. Can we just know? Can we just... Let's just go, man. Before you worded my bus. Let that man...

And I asked you your name. And I said, it's right there, so that way you can look on your map. On July 13th, when they showed their tickets to the Jefferson Lines bus driver, despite no other passengers being on the bus, Kobe McFarland asked them to actually move to the back of the bus. Then threatened to call cops. Jefferson Bus Lines has since apologized and is investigating the incident.

I, Rebecca, I'm confused. There's nobody else on the bus. So, spoiler alert, that bus driver needs to lose his job. They need to go ahead and settle and write the check to those two Black men. But, you know, this is one of those things. Things are so stupid in this country right now. Do you fight back when that happens and possibly get arrested, get beat down, possibly get killed by cops or get killed by that person if he pulls out a gun?

Or do you record it so you can live to see another day? You know, it's one of those things where it's like my first instinct is make me move. You're going to physically move me. I'm not about to sit in the back of the bus. But then also trying to figure out what does it also mean responsibly for people to be able to get home safely. You know, and that's where, you know, that's where I'm kind of stuck here. I, yeah, Robert, I think they're going to have to cut a big check.

Yeah, you know, I'm reminded of the Dred Scott decision, which I remind people was never actually overturned by the Supreme Court. It was overturned legislatively by the 14th Amendment, but technically it's still good law. What says that a white, a black man has no rights that a white man is forced to respect. And I think that's what we saw in this situation, that if you just look at the way the driver was speaking to them, he was speaking to them from a position of authority, almost as if he was a plantation owner who had some unruly Negroes on his property. There was no level of understanding, respect, no opportunity to simply discuss it, because he came at them in a very aggressive manner. And I'm still not quite sure why. I'm not quite sure what the predicate of this was. As was mentioned, it's a completely empty bus. This appears to be a situation of an individual who is taking out their own personal

experiences or prejudices on the general public. And as was said, I think that these young men will more than likely be well compensated for this event. Hopefully they will connect with some great civil rights attorneys that can navigate them through this. But also this bus company, this bus line, needs to make sure they are enforcing some HR in those diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that Ron DeSantis hates so much. Well, guess what? Maybe if you train your employees that way, they don't have these sorts of interactions and they don't have to pay it a felony to take a kidnapping. Now, mind you, she's facing charges. Well, this is a perfect example of how nonsensical and crazy white conservatives are.

We're talking one woman, and you want to change state law because of one woman? Robert, this is stupid and it's ass backwards in a place like Alabama. This is what happens in these red states where they have the highest incarceration rates in the country. Of course, and not just that. Think about the chilling effect it may have on individuals potentially reporting kidnappings. You may want to stop the Carly Russell because, you know, Lord knows that happens every day. No, this is an isolated incident. But what happens if you put more barriers in place? Have you put any thought in the minds of an individual that I might be charged with a felony if I report my own kidnapping? Or if there's a misunderstanding or anything along those lines? Well, then you've now put a chilling effect that may put more women in danger.

So I know it's a knee-jerk reaction to do something stupid, but it's a much better reaction to sit there, talk to victims' rights advocates. If you really want to do something, figure out how to assign more state resources to finding the thousands of missing children in the state of Alabama. Assign more resources to batter women's shelters. Work to increase the number of rights that women have in the state. We're passing a law about increasing the penalties for faking a kidnapping. It may sound good on a campaign ad in Marion, Alabama somewhere, but it's not effective in actually fixing the problem. Rebecca? You know, the last time we talked about it, some of your viewers thought that I was defending

Carly, and I just want to make it clear, I am not. What she did was very clownish, especially for allegedly doing this over because her boyfriend allegedly cheated. Great. But that said, just like what Robert said, bottom line, if this was a white woman who did something like this, and we see plenty of white women who claim that someone assaulted them or that they were kidnapped or someone attempted to take them, we don't see this knee-jerk legislation. So while, yes, we think what Carly did was clownish behavior, at the same time, this doesn't make sense. Even some of the state legislators in Alabama said that this might only happen once every five to ten years. Like, I think they're trying to make an example out of her because she is a black woman who, yes, in this instance, was very clownish.

Absolutely. All right, Rebecca. Robert, we certainly appreciate you joining us on today's show. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Folks, we come back on the show. A fascinating conversation with a professor out of Minnesota on how white people actually learn to be white. Timothy Linsbeer's book is called White Folks, Racial Identity in Rural America. It examines how white racial identity actually depends on color and how it is literally formed. It is a fascinating conversation, and we will have that next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger

and that they have the right money habits? Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made. But don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on... A lot of times the big economic forces

we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Cor vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Black Star Network. I'm Faraiji Muhammad, live from L.A.,

and this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation. You and me, we talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard.

Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture. Weekdays at 3, only on the Blackstar Network. Hello, I'm Marissa Mitchell, a news anchor at Fox 5 DC. Hey, what's up? It's and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, Timothy, here's one of the things that I think, first of all, why I want to talk to you, because this is something I've always found to be very fascinating. Anybody who studies American history, what they will discover is that the lives of broke-ass white people, and I use that phrase all the time. I was like, look, broke is broke. You can be white and broke. You can be black and broke. Last I checked, broke is broke. But the lives of broke-ass rural white people have always improved when African Americans were fighting for equality. You can go back to post-civil rights. You can go back to every period in American history when Black people were fighting for rights. The livelihood of

poor whites actually improved, yet they don't understand that connection. Yes, that's true. In my reading of history, I would say yes, that's true. I guess I would add two things to that, right? First of all, I would just say that like W.E.B. Du Bois said, you know, that's on purpose, right? The white elites in society are using what he called a slowly evolved method to make sure that they're successful at pitting elite white people against working white people. And they use all sorts of different tactics to make sure that happens.

And unfortunately, poor and working white people have often gone along with what white elites were saying was the problem, which was to put it on black people and other people of color. The second thing I would say is that in the interviews I did for the book, I think it's fairly obvious that there's at least a partial seeing through of those methods, and that's why it matters to me

to work on these things in educational and political arenas to help white working people, white rural people, kind of understand how the system is set up and so that they, you know, direct their action and direct their anger in the, in the correct direction? Well, during the four, during the four years of Donald Trump, it was, it was, it was crazy to me. I would see these stories and I would see all of his, oh, economic anxiety. And I would see these dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other farmers in Iowa and Illinois, and they would be going on and on and on,

and I would sit there and go, you do know the fool who's causing the trade war with China, which has caused milk prices to plummet, soybeans to plummet, is the very fool who y'all say are gonna save you when he caused your problems, and then turned around and, you know, 25 billion uh went to

farmers nearly all white and it was like yay it was kind of like but you know the money came because he caused the problem that actually devastated you and what killed me the most timidly i just and i said that was a that was a guy i think i think think he was from Wisconsin who literally lost the family business due to Donald Trump's trade wars. And he went, I will still vote for him. And he said, and if that meant losing the family business, so be it. I was going. Whiteness is truly a narcotic. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to remember that the numbers, look, I'm not a political expert. I'm not a political theorist. I'm not a political scientist. I'm an educator. And so I'm mostly worried about how do we figure out how to work with different sorts of people to help them understand their own lives, understand who and where they are in our society,

and so they can take action. I, like many others, am baffled by the support of Trump. I think it's important to say that we still have to remember that it was white people from suburbs that put Trump in office. The numbers of when they tell the election story this way, that it was rural white people that put Trump in office, that's not exactly the truth. First of all, anybody who gets put in office is really a combination of people. Just like Black folks put Biden in office. Actually, no, because yes, he won Georgia, but he also won Arizona. And they mean he won Arizona. So it's a combination of people. But the reality is he also, in the Republican Party, appeals to voters who are with a high school diploma or less.

And so when you start looking at the demographic numbers, you begin to understand, like, so we say, you know, what is the base? But what just kept us getting me, though, was like just literally this voting against one's economic interests. And I'm sitting here going, you're broke. You're like literally losing your farms and jobs. And it's kind of like, no, no, that's't, that's not it. It's them. It's those people. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, I, I don't claim any, I don't, I don't claim to understand exactly how this works. I would just say that it's part of, it's part of a strategy. You know, you take, you take people who are angry and hurting and you direct that in a different direction, right? And

Trump was very skillful at directing that, at saying, you know, look over there, look at those immigrants, right? Look at those people of color. Those are the reasons that we have these problems. So Trump recognized the real anxiety, the real difficulties that many working white people had. And he skillfully persuaded them that those problems were caused not by him and not by his social class, but by people of color. But when you're listening to these folks talk and when you're talking to them, and again, I'm not disparaging all, but again, as somebody who spent so many years covering these stories and really getting pissed off when I see mainstream white media be clueless about this. It is as if they have no understanding of history and an understanding of how we got to this point and how white supremacy actually impacted white people in their thinking when they begin to look at people of color? Yeah, well, I mean, that's why the book is grounded in a tradition of Black theorizing

of white people, right? It's a tradition that can be traced back in different ways, but I would usually trace it back to W. E. B. Du Bois' Black Reconstruction in America, 1860 to 1880, where he tried to make sense about this dynamic, right? He was saying we should start paying attention to the social class relation across white elites and white working people as part of an engine, right? Part of the engine of reproducing white supremacy. And the other key figure that I

use is the Reverend Tandeika's book, Learning to be White, who tries to make sense of what happens to the relationships of white people within their own families and small communities in a society that's set up to separate white people from black people. And she found that little kids, little white kids as they're growing up, learned that they could lose the love and support of their family if their desires for friendship and solidarity went outside the white community. And so that's a potent mix of things, right? One of the things I'm trying to help people understand is how important white fear is, right? That's one of the reasons I was interested in talking to you because of your book on white fear.

And so white fear includes both the sort of fear of stereotypes of people of color and black people, especially black men. But white fear also includes a fear of your own community, right? And I'm trying to help people understand that in our anti-racist efforts, we have to start making sense of paying attention to and figuring out how we're going to respond to both of these sorts of fears. And so far in many of our educational efforts, we've, pretty much we've just been asking white people to confess their privilege and I just don't think that's a very good basis to base our educational and political work. Thank you. I'm revolutionary right now. Black power. Support this man, Black Media. He makes sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roland.

Be Black. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action.

And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute season one, Taser Incorporated,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means

to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And B-Scape. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig? On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right money habits. Well, joining me on the next

Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made, but don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. Hi, everybody. I'm Kim Coles. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. Yo, it's your man, Deon Cole from Blackish, and you're watching... Roland Martin, Unfiltered.

Here's the thing that I concluded years ago. That the problem, which is why I rarely ever even use the phrase white privilege. Because the problem, and again, as somebody who literally, I live for words, that's just the nature of being a journalist. When you make a statement or use a phrase, it's not what you are implying, It's what someone is inferring. And the issue that I've always had with white privilege is that phrase connotes you're rich. The word privilege.

When we hear privilege, we, I don't care who we are, whether we are black, whether we are white, Latino, Asian, Native American, when we hear privilege, we are black, whether we are white, Latino, Asian, and American, when we hear privileged, we automatically think, oh, country club, rich, Rolls Royce, mansions, wealth, a high status in society. And so the phrase doesn't connect with that white person because I'm not privileged, not really understanding the, the, the deeper meaning. I just simply say it's called, it's called advantages of whiteness and then breaking it down and saying you,

you, you have the ability as a white person, you have the luxury of going off on the cops and knowing you're not going to get beat. You have the luxury of going shopping and not getting followed around. You have the luxury of knocking on somebody's door and they not seeing if they see a white figure, they don't automatically grab their gun and fire through the door like what happened in Kansas City. And so that's where I think using white privilege, it just doesn't work because the person you're talking to is like, I got no privilege in my life. Look at me. I'm broke as hell. Yeah. I mean, in education, we've been influenced by this kind of

white privilege framework for a long time, right? In educational settings, it usually takes the form of helping people understand their, as you said, their advantages. For me, some of the problems with it is it does create resistance, maybe when we don't need it, right? When we wouldn't, there's going to be plenty of other hard things to talk about and figure out. We don't need to start with the sort of reaction that you're talking about. I'm also just really interested in helping people locate themselves in history, right? You started this conversation by talking about whether we do or don't know history, especially the history of this country. And I would say we certainly don't, and it's

certainly not taught in schools, the sort of history that you're talking about. It's certainly not taught in schools. And so, I think we need to have, if anything, a more serious approach to this in education, where we treat people as attempting to make sense of their lives, and then we have to give them powerful ways of understanding that.

And one of the ways to do that is to help them read history, help them understand how things got set up the way they are, and then help them understand that they have a choice to make about whether they want to participate in the reproduction of white supremacy or whether they want to try to figure out how to disrupt it. But often we don't even get to that point where people would be able to make that sort of choice.

And so that's, you know, that's what I'm, that's what I've been trying to work on. I have a lot of good people I work on that with, and most of us look to various, it's usually various black theorists of whiteness, not only Du Bois and Tandeika, but also Toni Morrison, you know, the great novelist was also, has a book called Playing in the Dark that's quite powerful to trying to make sense of the white psyche in a society like ours. And so we're trying to base our work in thinking like that, thinking and writing like that, rather than in the white privilege stuff, which is true enough, but I don't think

it's very pedagogical. I remember after the 2016 election, seeing Michael Moore on MSNBC, and he was talking about how, oh, we've got to go into these communities, and we've got to get them to understand different things. And I remember saying, no, actually, we don't. And here's why I said that. different things. And I remember saying, no, actually we don't. And here's why I said that. And what I said was, I said,

at some point a Michael Moore and others have to understand, you guys sit down and look at the numbers. You're talking to people who literally are living in white enclaves where it's not. And I'm talking about, and of course, you know what I'm talking about here, 92, 94, 96%, they don't see people of color. And then what happens, because I think it was CBS, I think CBS did a story,

CBS did a story about how this community, it was either Iowa or Pennsylvania, I would have to find it, how it began to change. And all of these folks, how it used to be, and we could do this, and we can do that, and all of these

different things. What they really were saying is, before these people, and we're talking about Latinos, before they begin to come in, this is what our community used to be. They are living in places where there is no diversity and their entire worldview is whiteness. And that's, and, and, and, and so we have to understand where people are sitting here going, I don't understand.

We're living in these other places where it's diverse. No, these places are not diverse. Companies have left. The way of life is literally just whiteness, and everything is ingrained in that. And anything that they actually know about people of color is coming from television or social media. Yeah. And anything that they actually know about people of color is coming from television or social media. Yeah, I I actually would maybe it's not it doesn't feel like exactly push back. But one of the one of the reasons I was writing the book and doing what I was was the stories that people told me was to make sense of. I tend to call it a civil war that's going on inside of white people.

And also Ralph Ellison helped me a lot with this, his essays in Shadow and Act. I found in interviewing the people I did in the small rural community in Wisconsin where I did my work, I found that there was a lot more conflict inside than what your account would suggest. And I ultimately located that with the help of Ellison in a sense that white people still wanted to believe that they were part of a country that where equality was part of was like an aspect of the sacred creed of the country and then at the same time they understood that this country was not characterized by equality and was you know radically unequal and Ellison asks then what happens when we, when white people understand that they say they believe in and want something, but they see that it's exactly the opposite in everyday life. And some white people, right, a small number respond to that conflict by trying to become part of groups of people trying to change their communities and societies and make it match up more with the sacred creed of equality. them by scapegoating people of color, by using stereotypes to give temporary relief to the,

you know, to the conflict inside. And so what I was interested in is using the stories that people told me to help readers understand this inner struggle, And then to think about, I didn't do this in the book, but hopefully it becomes a resource to thinking about how do we respond as teachers? How do we respond pedagogically to this conflict? And are there resources in this conflict that we've not been drawing on yet. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. We welcome the Black Star Network's very own Roland Martin, who joins us to talk about his new book, White Fear,

how the browning of America is making white folks lose their minds. The book explains so much about what we're going through in this country right now and how, as white people head toward becoming a racial minority, it's going to get, well, let's just say even more interesting. We are going to see more violence. We're going to see more vitriol. Because as each day passes, it is a nail in that coffin. The one and only Roland Martin on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. On a next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, how are you being of service to others? Doing for someone beside yourself

is such a big part of living a balanced life. We'll talk about what that means, the generation that missed that message and the price that we're all paying as a result. Well, now all I see is mama getting up in the morning, going to work, maybe dropping me off at school, then coming back home at night. And then I really didn't have any type of... A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news

show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,

and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Time with the person that really was there to nurture me and prepare me and to show me what a life looked like and what service looked like. That's all on the next A Balanced Life with me, Dr. Jackie, here at Blackstar Network. Hey, what's up? It's Tammy Roman. Hey, it's John Murray, the executive producer of the new Sherri Shepherd Talk Show. It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching,

Roland Martin Unfiltered. When we talk about, again, this rural versus city dynamic, it's also, it is a battle of land. And when I say land, it is a battle of how political lines are also drawn. And the reality is how power is now determined. So when you now look at a lot of areas, and I'm actually speaking more state than actually federal, but it also applies to both, where you have very few people who literally have more power than places where there are a lot more people. And the places where there are a lot more people are far more diverse than those places where there are few people. And so now what happens is the individuals who are living largely in these white enclaves, in these rural areas, they have real power. And their votes are determining actions that are taken in states all across the country, whether

we're talking about, we're not talking about just Wisconsin, just Iowa, just Illinois, but we're talking about Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee. We're talking Michigan. I think people don't understand. You go outside of Detroit, Pontiac, Lansing, Flint, Michigan is rural America. And so now you have that power dynamic in terms of where they hold significant sway in state houses and, yes, in Congress as well. And I think this friction, that that power dynamic is also a part of this. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would defer to you on that. I mean, you're smarter about those things.

I'm much more focused on trying to figure out how people are making sense of their lives and then figuring out how we would then work with them and be with them to lead towards them being mobilized for anti-racism, like and for me in their teaching, right, in their living. A former student of mine, Ezequiel Joubert, and I edited a special issue in a journal dedicated to research on rural education. And we looked at Black Lives Matter protests in rural areas. And one of the points of that special issue and what the authors were taking up is just to remind people also that many Black people

live in rural areas too. And so we have this image of rural areas as kind of monocultural, you know, and all white. And so it's useful to remember, especially historically, right? Many Black farmers are losing their land now, but... Well, that's also a function, frankly, of mainstream white media, that when they're doing these diner stories, it's like, I swear, ain't no black people don't go to diners. I mean, and you turn on Fox, MSNBC, I don't care what the network is. But part of this thing is what media has done to create this impression that when you say rural, it means white.

Yeah. Yeah. And I I have to say, when I went into the research, I fell into a version of that. I fell into a version that I would somehow be describing people in a community because what I actually found was that white people were always creating themselves up in relation to people of color. And like you said earlier, it is not necessarily or not mostly in creating themselves in relationship to actual people of color, right? They're doing it in relation to images and going back to novels and radio and TV. They're using it in, they're using these images, often these stereotypes of black people, and they're creating themselves as white people in relationship to those.

And so that was another thing I was trying to explore is what does that look like? In the first chapter, it's why I decided I wanted to look at some storytelling that I'd done at a high school, you know, an all-white high school in the same rural community where I was telling Uncle Remus stories. And so I talk about a performance that I did when I was a senior in high school telling these stories. And it, of course, was based on the Disney movie of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox. What is it?

Song of the South. And so I do an interpretation of my performance as a latter day blackface minstrelsy without blacking up, but certainly using black materials to create a sense of myself and not just, you know, entertain my audience, but also do, I was somehow doing this serious work of creating us as white people, right, in the telling of these stories. And so I worked through that in the first chapter to try to make sense of these processes of how white people, even in rural areas, even who have

very limited contact with people of color, how somehow, right, how somehow, especially Black people are part of that construction. And then again, wondering about what are we going to do about that? What sorts of educational activities are we going to need to be engaging in, in order to make sense of that, unearth that, figure out how it created our insides, right, and created how we think about things, and then move forward? When we look at where we are now, and so much of this, again,

when I talk about politics, the reality is, I tell my audience audience this year you can't talk about economics and culture and not talk about politics because the reality is that they actually all go together um and and one of the things that it is hard for people to have to continue with is that the america of yesterday simply is not the America of tomorrow. And you used to have a different distribution of resources, companies, people, when you think about manufacturing, you think about textiles, all of those different things. And the reality is that how our economy has changed is also. And that one plant, that one company used to literally drive the entire town, county, region in that folks worked there. The money that they earned there, they bought homes, they actually drove the businesses. Now that company, that plant leaves what you literally have left are people, buildings who are in frankly, no man's land and trying to figure it out.

And the thing is, if you live there your whole life, like many of us who come from other places, you want to stay there. But the world that you knew then simply doesn't exist now. And how did you feel when you were listening to your subjects talk about how where they live has changed and altered from what it used to be? I don't know if it was describing is definitely an aspect of sort of white consciousness, white thinking, white feeling. I think especially among the older people that I interviewed, that sense of change and sense of loss was definitely there. It didn't come up so much among the people that I was talking with, maybe because we often were, I was asking them to talk, you know,

to remember experiences that they had had when they were younger. I would say that the sense of economic precarity was there. So they definitely, especially William who's in one of the chapters was one of these farmers that wasn't sure that they were going to be able to make it, you know, make it go and that the farm that had been in their family was going to, they were going to have to sell it. I didn't see quite the nostalgia for, I guess, for the way things had been in these interviews.

One way that I did see it happening, and just for my own family that still lives there, I can feel this, is if there's a nostalgia, it's for a sense that America stood for something good, and that's what's been eroded. And President George W. Bush was, I think, very challenging for people like my parents who wanted to believe that the United States stood for something good. And I just remember having a conversation with my mom once about, you know, torture being now on the table as a legitimate way of gaining information. And I could just watch how difficult it was for her to put this together, what she wanted

to believe about America. So I would say there's, that's one of the things that I haven't figured out how to work through yet with people is just a wanting to believe in the United States as standing for something good, I guess, especially internationally, but also internally, obviously, once you start seriously taking up, you know, these racial histories and social class histories, the United States start looking like something different. So. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, the studies show that millennials and Gen Xers will be less well off than their parents. What can we do to make sure that we get to children younger and that they have the right

money habits? Well, joining me on the next Get Wealthy is an author who's created a master playbook. Be willing to share some of your money mistakes, right? If that's what you have to lean on, start with the money mistakes that you have made, but don't just tell the mistake, right? Tell the lesson in the mistake. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network. I'm Faraj Muhammad, live from L.A., and this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation, you and me. We talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p.m. Eastern and let your voice be heard. Hey,

we're all in this together. So let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture. Weekdays at 3, only on the Black Star Network. Hey, what's up? Keith Turino, the place to be. Got kicked out your mama's university. Creator and second producer of Fat Tuesdays, an air hip-hop comedy. But right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? I believe that that the reason.

A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith.

Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multi-illion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This has kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher.

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You got so much friction right now with the 1619 Project and with Black Lives Matter uh, so many other groups out here is because, again, with the demographic shift, you now have people of color who are in position to be able to tell our own story. So we no longer have to abide by, frankly, what white historians have told us. And I think that, for me, for instance, I was going to my bookshelf last night,

and so I've got Stephen Kinzer's book, Overthrow, where he details in his book the 13 different times the United States directly overthrew other governments. And it is unsettling to a lot of people to have a conversation about a bunch of evil stuff that we've done. Oh, no, wait, wait, no, not America. No, we're the greatest country that's ever been created.

God is, I mean, and it's like, you do know, that just didn't just happen all out of witness and love and harmony and and and and i'll use colin kaepernick you know as an example i people were so pissed off by that a lot of white folks were pissed off by it because colin kaepernick dared to say sorry i just don't have the same apple pie. Everything is a wonderful view of America. And I think that is also a part of this white-black dynamic. And even a lot of white folks are having that problem

with their young white kids, nieces and nephews because they are now going, hey, hold up. All that stuff y'all told us, everything wasn't kosher. Yep. Absolutely. I mean, and that's why the Reverend Tendeika's work is important to this book because she really tried to make sense of what was going on between white parents, white adults in a community, and their own children, right? And what she found was this, you know, which I take to,

which I think is true, that children's, you know, children aren't born with racist ideas. They initially have all sorts of desires that go all sorts of different directions for different sorts of friends, for different sorts of songs they like, for their participation in popular culture, their stories they like. And they learn, often not in dramatic ways, they learn that there's something wrong with them for having desires that stretch outside of the white community. And so one of the difficulties here is that a lot of those experiences are buried, both buried in time, that they happened when people were young, but they're also buried because when you're going through these as a young kid or a youth, you don't exactly know what the problem is, right? Tanteika tells a story about, I can't remember what she named him in the book, but he's this little five-year-old kid. And every day he plays with two black kids that live down the street and he's having his birthday. And he says to them to come to his

birthday party. And then these three little kids are weaving their way through all these white bodies, all of the kids, you know, family and aunts and uncles. And the little kid knows that there's something wrong. And he knows that there's something, that something has to do with him inviting his friends to his party. But none of it is named, right? None of it's all this kind of quiet thing that he feels, that he's somehow done something wrong or there's something wrong in relationship to his friends. And Tendejaka uses stories like that to try to make sense

of then this problem that white people have, which is that they learn that the love of their families and communities is very conditional and it's conditional on them staying within their hopes, their dreams, their desires for friendship, staying within the white community. And that's a difficult thing to work with and uncover. I have my students read work like Tandeika's and what I was trying to do in these stories.

And so it's not impossible. And they do start figuring out how the love and support of their community was conditional on them pledging allegiance to whiteness. So it's not impossible to work through and try to figure out, but it's a potent, powerful thing. And I would say it's, you know, like Tendeika says, it's one of the engines of the reproduction of white supremacy, this fear of our own white communities? A couple more questions. I've long said that what America needs is we need a minimum of one million

Jane Elliotts and Tim Wises. And I've said that if we're going to confront what's happening in this country, and I say this in my book, White Fear. It's going to take white folks going in spaces and places with white people to lead, to promote these very difficult conversations. And it can't be black folks, frankly, trying to save white folks again. Yeah. No, I agree. Absolutely. I've been a part, I've been trying to be a part of groups and support groups of people doing that, that work, where we take on the responsibility of working with white people on these questions. There's all sorts of reasons that that's the correct thing to do. We get tripped up sometimes because, you know, we grew up in this society. And so we took on ideas like that it's only people of color that are racialized in this country. And so then

therefore anything having to do with race has to like at every moment have people of color involved, right? Or else we can't trust it or can't do it. So we have to overcome these fears that somehow we're going to do it wrong or that there's somehow like a separatist kind of aspect of this when we say that we're going to work, white people are going to work with white people. But I absolutely agree with you. Absolutely agree with you. And that's, you know, that's the kind of work I've been trying to do and the kind of work I've been trying to support. Stephen Winick, Jr.: I ask every author this question, so I'll ask you this.

What was your wow moment as you were researching or writing this book? Something that you heard or came across where even you went, yo, wow, that's nuts. Well, I don't know about you, Roland. I work very, very slowly, right? So I don't know. I have a feeling you work fast.

I have a feeling you work fast. I work very slow. So my wows are probably stretched out over a long, like a long time. I would say, I would say the, I was actually, the wow moments were actually moments where I listened to people, I guess I'm thinking of two men, especially in the book, who I had this image of them as small children and young men trying to make sense of the world that they were in and trying to use what they had access to to create a better version of themselves. And so I'm thinking about a man I named Robert in the book who was a very serious athlete and who modeled not just sort of,

didn't just admire great black athletes, but literally tried to make his body move like them as part of his, and then also tried to take on the way that he thought they moved in the world. And then he'd read, he'd read biographies of like Hank Aaron and have to confront the racism that Hank Aaron faced. And so I guess the wow wasn't like something like, oh, look at, you know, there's these beautiful white people. What I'm, the wow was just that there are people, there are children, there are youth that are

trying to make themselves up in better ways, and they use what they have to do that. You started this by talking about, you know, the, how social media creates these images of things, right. And another person in the book, Stan, he talked directly about all the ways that Black men are stereotyped in the media, but he was also able to find, you know, documentaries of the civil rights movement. And so he was consciously trying to counter the stereotypes that he was encountering in all these other places by other things that he could find. So I don't mean this as some sort of great big hopeful thing. We're in largely hopeless situations most of the time, but people are trying to make sense of the world, and if we can help them continue to make sense of it

in more powerful ways, I think some things can happen. John Haskell, Right then. Well, I think, again, these books are indeed necessary because and I think that they have to be a part of the regular discourse in media. I tell people all the time the reality is the greatest way for you to reach people is through mass media. The ability to be able to reach them, to touch them, to educate them and to to get them to, again, to see things a lot differently. White folks, race and identity in rural America. Timothy Linsmeyer, I appreciate it. Good luck with the book. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Roland. It was a pleasure talking to you. Likewise. is here. Hold no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Support this man, Black Media. He makes

sure that our stories are told. Thank you for being the voice of Black America, Roller. Be Black. I love y'all. All momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal. See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black Own Media and something like CNN.

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So watch Get Wealthy on the Black Star Network. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin.

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I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir.

Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.