#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Remembering George Floyd, VP Harris Gains Swing State Voters, Jack Yates Roland Martin Scholarship

Episode Date: May 25, 2024

5.24.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Remembering George Floyd, VP Harris Gains Swing State Voters, Jack Yates Roland Martin Scholarship Four years after his tragic passing, we'll pay tribute to George Floyd, reflecting on his impact and the ongoing fight for police and criminal justice reform. Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's brother, will share his perspective on his brother's legacy. In addition, Roland will discuss changes in policing since George Floyd's death and discuss what still needs to be done to ensure fair policing for all. With special guests, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives President will provide valuable insights. Vice President Kamala Harris gains significant support from swing state voters. We'll dissect how her efforts positively impact Joe Biden's standing in the polls. Roland returns to his hometown for the annual Roland S. Martin Scholarships and celebrates the achievements of Yates High School seniors. Don't miss Roland's interview with Sarah McCammon, the author of "The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church," as she shares her journey and experiences confronting evangelical Christian beliefs' political influence. #BlackStarNetwork advertising partners:Fanbase 👉🏾 https://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. 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. Thank you. Today is Friday, May 24th, 2024. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network from Houston, Texas, the hometown of George Floyd. Tomorrow marks the fourth anniversary of the death of George Floyd. We'll talk to family members about him and also how so much has changed over the last four years. And I talked to them and asked them, do they believe America is retreating from the focus on criminal justice reform in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

We'll have that on the show. Plus, we'll discuss policing in America since the death of George Floyd. The president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. Also on today's show, Vice President Kamala Harris recently gained significant support from swing voting states. We'll tell you about new polling from Bloomberg. Also, I was back here in town presenting for the fourth year my annual scholarships to my alma mater, Jack Gates High School. We'll show you a little bit of that as well.

Plus, I talked with the author of a book about white evangelicals. She grew up in a white evangelical church, and she talks about how so much of it is focused on the culture wars, the conversation you do not want to miss. It is time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's got 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 Rollin' Martin, yeah Rollin' with Rollin' now He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Rollin' Martin Now Martin Martel Martel Four years tomorrow marks the day when George Floyd's life was snuffed out of his body in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That murder just

galvanized the country as so many people around in America, around the world, protested over what they saw was police brutality with the neck being placed on his back. As we said, protests happen all around the country. They continue today. Of course, there's been a week of activity in Minneapolis as folks have taken to the streets there protesting change. But a lot has changed in the last four years. Yet we still do not see a bill that deals with criminal justice reform that was blocked in the United States Senate by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Flonis Floyd is the brother of George Floyd. He's also the president of a foundation.

He's joining me now from Baltimore, Maryland. Flonis, glad to have you with us. First of all, I'm here in Houston, of course, Maryland. Flonis, glad to have you with us. First of all, I'm here in Houston, of course, hometown. I was at my high school day, Jack Hayes High School, the same high school, same high school that George Floyd attended as well. And so certainly glad to be here. It's always a tough day, though, for us to do this show because we're talking about, again, your brother being killed by Minneapolis police. When you look at four years later, what do you see that has been positive change in the wake of the death of your brother in this country? Well, honestly, I really don't see a lot of positive change. They implemented

laws. They implemented things for the bill, meaning that they had no-knock warrants for Breonna Taylor. They had the no-chokehold law established for Eric Garner, my brother George Floyd, and so many others. You think about how they spoke or spoke about the database people can't just have a job in washington they ain't gonna get a job in baltimore but the thing that i want to focus more on disqualified immunity because you have to have an understanding that people they have these dash cams and they steady killing us and then they want to turn the cameras off and act like they didn't kill us and i don't care where you at and who you're talking to. We've got to talk to the kids the same way.

And they could be in second grade, third grade, fourth grade. We've got to explain this over and over again. Qualified immunity, qualified immunity, qualified immunity over and his ruling ripped the Supreme Court's decision on qualified immunity and said that needs to be seriously reviewed and changed. And there's the black federal judge in Mississippi. Let me tell you something. Qualified immunity always needs to be respected because you've got too much going on in this world right now. You look at what just happened to Roger Fortson. He was murdered right there in his steps. And the police officer, when he opened the door, he had his gun pointed toward the ground.

The officer shot him six times. And then he said, put the gun down. How can you not sit there and make sure this qualified immunity bill is here? I was just in Washington and it passed in the House and we spoke there about it. But right now we're waiting on the Senate to open up. And I mean, look, the Dems still have a very narrow margin. At the end of the day, they need those 10 votes. And I don't see the path for Republicans. Are you and other family members, I suggested this even last year, a couple of years ago,

that I really believe that you and others should come to Capitol Hill, demand Republicans come to the table with President Biden and say, take another stab at it, let's get this done in this election year. And then let's see, put folks on the record to see who is for this and who is against it. You're right. You're right. And I believe that too. But you know, it's only a one man show. It needs to be spoken to the people in the Senate. But at the same time, if he has the power, because he made this law of the land. So if he can sit there and bring these people to the table, that will be a done deal and a sealed deal for me for them to establish the opportunity to change this law. Because people like Timothy Eugene Scott, he don't care about his own people.

You know, he's a black man. I know he's been arrested before. I know he's been pulled over before. And at the same time, it's racism everywhere around this world. And we're living in it. This is a political fantasy that a lot of these people living on. And they're trying to bring this shady government back to the Stone Age.

That is the case. One of the areas that we've also seen is in the wake of your brother's death, a lot of companies that were committing themselves to diversity, equity, inclusion. We begin to see last year a retreat, a lot of folks laying, getting rid of DEI, laying folks off. We've seen Republicans getting rid of it and colleges and universities. And I kept saying to people, then you got to keep your foot on their necks because white America has always in the history of America, two, three, four, five years after the fact, had a focus and all of a sudden just went by the wayside.

That's what we're seeing happening here. Oh, yes, sir. They're not trying to implement any of these laws. They're trying to walk away from everything. Brown and black people, we've been living in this treacherous world for a long time. And this same world I was born in, this is the way that I found it. And I'm not trying to leave it like this right now. We're trying to get accountability for all nationalities. And we need people to be able to be respected as citizens and not second-class citizens.

This is somewhere where I want my respect because I need respect like hell. I need it to survive. That's what I need right now. And we need to constantly get out here and protest and stand in these people's face and let them know we're not going nowhere and we demand that we get qualified immunity. Absolutely. And unfortunately, what we're seeing is it has to be left up to the states. Republicans are hardening on this. You've got you've got Republican governors like Greg Abbott.

He he pardons this white racist who killed a Black Lives Matter protester there. You've got in Missouri, the governor is saying he may very well pardon a man, a police officer who was convicted as well. And so it's like it is as if we learn a lot. There are people who are focused in the first year or two, but focus has waned ever since. What do you want to say to all the people, black, white, Latino, Asian American, in America, but across the world, who are rallying, who are protesting, who are so energized in the wake of your brother's death? What do you say to those folks who, frankly, gone back home and forgot what took place four years ago?

I want them to open up their minds, and I want them to get out and step out on faith and let's demand that we get these laws changed right now. We don't have time to sit here and play with these people. We have sit there. We went in and vote. You know what I mean? I tell everybody we need to constantly vote because at the end of the day, you don't gain nothing from voting, but you lose everything if you don't vote. And you got to vote for the right people in office right now. We can't be getting out voting for somebody who's talking about, I want you to, when you're arrested, bump their head into the car, the police car,

before you put them in and I pay for your legal fees. I don't want nobody to be talking about that if they looting, then they shooting. We don't need a president like that. We don't need a president making these derogatory comments about women. You know, women are women, and we need to be helpful for our women, no matter their nationality. I'm not racist. I don't want a racist person to be holding nothing accountable because you're not here to do anything right. So if we got people like Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who stepped out when Karen Bass implemented this bill, and Cory Booker, all of these people, they walked in good faith.

And all these people all around the world got out and protested for my brother when it was in the midst of a pandemic that let you know where we stand because a lot of people said that wasn't right. They shouldn't have had their knee on this man's neck for over nine minutes and 29 seconds. And they created a motion cinema picture for the world to see. Flores, we appreciate it, my brother.

Thank you so very much. Thank you so much, Mr. Rowland. Hey, it's a pleasure being here, and I appreciate what you're doing for black America. You're putting everybody on front street, and I'm loving that because I want to move forward, not backwards. I'm not going to the Stone Ages.

I'm not going to be around picking cotton. I'm not racist, but I know what's going on. I've seen it all before. The same thing that they're trying to take out of these books. I want to keep implementing it because people need to know because it's too many people, bodies who lost their lives because of this sensitivity of these police officers not wanting to do their job the right way. My brother's blood is on that bill, and Breonna Taylor and so many others on that bill, Tyree Nichols' blood on that bill. These people need to be held accountable right now, and we need to get the job done. So people stand with me, and let's get up and fight, and let's get the right person

in office to solve these issues that we got going on. All right, then. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, folks, going to go to break. We come back. We'll talk about America four years after the death of George Floyd right here. I'm Roland Martin, unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. A lot of y'all have been asking me about the pocket squares that we have available on our website. You see me rocking the Chibori pocket square right here.

It's all about looking different. Now, look, summertime is coming up. Y'all know, I keep trying to tell fellas, change your look, please. You can't wear athletic shoes every damn where. So if you're putting on linen suits, if you're putting on some summer suits, have a whole different look. The reason I like this particular pocket square,

these shibori's because it's sort of like a flower and looks pretty cool here, versus the traditional boring silk pocket squares. But also I like them a little different as well. So this is why we have these custom-made feather pocket squares on the website as well. My sister actually designed these after a few years ago. I was in this battle with Steve Harvey at Essence, and I saw this at a St. Jude fundraiser. I saw this feather pocket square, and I said, well, I got some ideas.

So I hit her, and she sent me about 30 different ones. And so this completely changes your look. Now, some of you men out there, I had some dudes say, oh, man, I can't wear that. Well, if you ain't got swagger, that's not my problem. But if you're looking for something different to spruce up your look, fellas, ladies, if y'all looking to get your man a good gift, I've run into brothers all across the country with the feather pocket squares saying, see, check mine out.

And so it's always good to see them. And so this is what you do. Go to RollinusMartin.com forward slash pocket squares. You can order Shibori pocket squares or the custom-made pocket squares. Now, for the Shiboris, we're out of a lot of the different colors, and I think we're down to about 200 or 300. So you want to get your order in as soon as you can because here's what happened. I got these several years ago, and the Japanese company signed the deal with another company,

and I bought them before they signed that deal. And so I can't get access to any more from the company in Japan that makes them. And so get yours now. So come summertime when I see y'all at Essence, y'all could be looking fly with the Shibori pocket square or the custom made pocket square. Again, rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. Go there now. 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 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 man. 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. What's up, everybody? It's your girl Latasha from the a and you're watching roland martin unfiltered Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Martin! joining us right now is rodney bryan president the national organization of black law enforcement executives out of atlanta rodney glad to have you on the show. First, in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, we saw changes being made. We saw police chiefs and city councils and mayors, some governors making changes. But what you've now seen is a backlash. You've seen Republicans in Tennessee pass a law stripping the Memphis City Council of being able to outlaw certain stops. You see Republicans in other states do the exact same thing. And so are you afraid that the further we get away from the death of George Floyd, we're going to see a backlash, if you will,

and a continual retreat from the progressive policies that we saw being put place? Yes. You know, I think quite often what we see politically is when we see increases or decreases in crime, it becomes a tool for political conversation. And it is concerning when you start to see politicians decide to have such an impact as it relates, their hands involved in addressing crime as opposed to the police chief. It does become more concerning. Well, I think what jumps out at me is that we talk about these police shootings. We've had Samuel Sengawi on. We've had an increase. And you still have people making these multimillion-dollar payouts.

And, look, we talk about Roger Fortson, what happened in Florida. We are still seeing people who end up dead after basic traffic stops. And so what the hell needs to happen for there to be real change in this country? You know, Roland, absolutely. When you look at the law enforcement in the United States, we have over 18,000 law enforcement agencies. And those different agencies train completely different from one another. And that's a problem. There's no universal understanding of how law enforcement is supposed to be operated in our country. And so you can have one agency do one thing right and try to work with the community to evolve. And you'll see another one go in the opposite direction.

And so that's I think that that plays a significant role when we have no general universal standard as it relates to how we police, how we relate to the community and how we address issues. And then we talk about that training. Look, millions upon millions have been plowed into training, yet we continue to see the problems persist. Well, like in any other training, just like you see in the educational system, sometimes you have to take a look at it and see just because you're being trained don't mean that you're getting the proper training and we have to again make sure that we're taking a look at some of the agencies that we believe that are doing it right making sure that we're having conversations with the communities that we serve and ensuring that we have the right training you're absolutely right just because you're getting training don't mean that you're getting the proper training. Don't mean that you're getting the right training.

Um. 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. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 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 Caramouch. 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. The George Floyd Justice Act, passed in the House by Democrats, gets to the Senate, Fraternal Order of Police, others brought to the table. It ends up getting stopped because of Senator Tim Scott, Senator Lindsey Graham.

And Noble was not happy at all. You had Tim Scott saying, oh, he was saying that all Democrats wanted to defund the police. And and that was that just that was no good. Is it possible to get this back on track is it possible uh to put pressure on this senate this year to get them to act because frankly it's still needed and you still i don't know if you saw the ruling of the federal judge the black federal judge mississippi uh who just who laid out in very clear terms qualified immunity and the problems with it. Yeah, you know, I think that we have to re-engage as it relates to the George Floyd Act, as

you stated, Noble was in support of it as other law enforcement organizations. And we think that it is the right thing to do. We think that it is incumbent upon us to have policies and procedures in place to make sure that law enforcement is operating properly to protect the citizens that we serve. We have to do that. As it relates to the immunity, you know, it differs from one place to the other. I think that having policies in place, having laws in place to ensure that law enforcement officers are doing the right thing at the right time is important. So we have to continue to reengage, continue to fight, continue to have conversations with our policymakers. But I'll tell you this,

one of the things that I think that is so important as we address this and what is also missing is having the right people in these chairs, the right chiefs in place, the right mayors in place, because they too can adjust the policies to make sure, even though there may not be a law in place, there can be policies in place to make sure that we're doing the right thing. I'm going to bring in my panel now. Joining me is Matt Manning, civil rights attorney. Joining us from Corpus Christi, Texas, Dr. Cleo Monago, social architect, chief advisor, Black Men's Exchange. Joining us as well,

Michael Inhotep, host, African History Network show out of Detroit. Matt, I'll start with you. Your question for Noble. So my question relates to qualified immunity. And the question is, what reform would you be in support of either individually or on behalf of Noble as it comes to being able to hold accountable officers who are demonstrably doing the wrong thing. I ask that because I understand why law enforcement wants protection, but we talk about this like it's a much larger conversation than it needs to be. Some of these are egregious situations, and you and I both know how difficult it is to hold accountable some of those officers. So what reforms in particular would you be in support of to fix that? So right now, when we talk about it, I truly understand the position that people see

when law enforcement officers aren't being prosecuted properly as it relates to the law. But again, I think that a great part of that falls on the DAs and the policymaker or the lawmaker at that particular jurisdiction. But we're in support of it. We're in support of holding law enforcement officers very accountable. And whatever that looks like, no one's willing to be at the table and have conversation as it relates to it and address it as we see fit because we serve the community. And if that's what the community desires, then we're supportive. Cleo. Good evening.

My question is, is noble or black officers united in a critical mass number against lethal injustice against black people? Is Noble taking macro level positions against the mistreatment of black people by their peers that are not black, et cetera? Absolutely. When we see a level of injustice, we know we'll need the first organization to come out and speak against it. Now, we also recognize that as an asset, we have to ensure that the investigation is played out. But it has been my policy and some of the preceding presidents that we speak on what we see and then understand that the investigation has to play out. And after that investigation plays out, we speak on it again. But we are very vocal as it relates to what we're seeing in this profession. Michael. All right, Brother Rodney, thanks for coming on today.

When we talk about the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act and we talk about police killings in general, it's—even though African Americans are disproportionately killed, at twice the rate of white Americans, but each year, especially when we look at fatal force from The Washington Post, which is the largest database probably of police killings, each year, white people make up 50 percent of those shot and killed by police. Now, we know white people, the majority of the population, 57 percent. But are there any ways you think that we can hit on this point and talk about how this is much larger than just a Black issue? Because this impacts all of America, not just African-Americans.

Absolutely. You know, I think, and this is my position on it, I think any time that we start engaging and looking at it at micro levels, that's when people become disengaged, because everybody believe that we are trying to play the race card when we know that there is a racial component to it. Address it holistically. You're right.

It's a human problem. It's a societal problem. But when you have these disparities, we have to call them out. Can I ask a follow-up, Roland? All right. Well, look, we certainly—yeah, go. Oh, right now, there's a nationwide shortage of police officers. And a few minutes ago, you mentioned how police officers and chiefs and things like this can

enforce policy, etc. Would this be an opportune time for African-Americans who want to be the type of officers that we say we want to see to actually apply to these departments and gain power in these police departments and enforce these policies, et cetera? I'm so glad you brought that up. That's one of the things that we're working on in Noble right now currently is going out to communities and going out to schools that typically don't get the attention of recruitment as it relates to law enforcement. We believe that if we have more people of color in this profession that resemble the community that they serve, that they can have a phenomenal impact on the policies that are in place. Having the right chiefs in the seats, I think, is so important. But that's one of the things that we're working with right now with the Bureau of Justice on

making sure that we're going out to these HBCUs and having a conversation with these students to come into this profession to be the change that they desire. Right. And want to see as well. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We can be the change you want to see. Thank you. All right. All right, folks. Look, I certainly appreciate it. Thanks a bunch. Keep up the good work and we'll keep pressing the case as well. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Folks, when we come back, I'll check with the panel.

About four years after the death of George Floyd, what has changed? What hasn't changed? You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Be sure to support us in what we do. Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club. You can see your check and money order at PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 2003-7-0196. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered, PayPal or Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Download the Black Start Network app, Apple Phone, Android phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon fire TV, Xbox one, Samsung smart TV. We'll be right back.

Next on the black table with me, Greg Carr, Brown versus the board of education. The history books call it the court decision that ended racial segregation in American schools. But a brand new book, Jim Crow's Pink Slip, uncovers a devastating unintended consequence of that

1954 Supreme Court decision. We may, if we were lucky, have been the very last generation of Black students to have experienced these generations of black teachers who have never been replaced. Dr. Leslie Fenwick joins us to talk about her book and the actions following that landmark decision that dealt a virtual death blow to black educators. That's next on The Black Table,

right here on the Black Star Network. go back. President Biden and Vice President Harris have lowered health care premiums and expanded coverage for Black families. They also capped the price of insulin at $35. Joe Biden is getting the job done for people just like me. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message. Hi, everybody. I'm Kim Coles. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. Yo, it's your man Deon Cole from Blackist, and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. 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 One, 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 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 Be 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 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. Thank you. Thank you. All right, folks, let's go back to our panel. Cleo, I'll start with you. Four years, four years ago, tomorrow, George Floyd was killed. A lot of attention, worldwide protest. Folks were focused. Four years later, your assessment. Well, when he was murdered, it was during the COVID-19 epidemic. People in this country, from racists, white supremacists, African-Americans, everybody, felt unsure, unsettled, not knowing what to do. We had never experienced anything like that before in our experience. So from my perspective, all of that anxiety and focus on George Floyd's murder, who was number whatever the number is in terms of black men who've been murdered in Jessaly. The reason he got so much attention was because of the uncertainty around COVID-19.

I've said that if it wasn't for COVID-19, what's his name? Donald Trump might have become president. There was some concern about him because of how he responded to that epidemic at that point. My point is that we're no longer in the COVID-19 epidemic in terms of public knowledge. So people relapse back to where they really were. And there is a sentiment in this country that is anti-Black, that is anti-Black male, and it never left. It was just on vacation during COVID-19. Michael mentioned that 50 percent of the people who are shot by cops are white.

But there needs to be some more research on that because we need to look at whether they were unarmed or not. Also, there are small towns in this country, and I travel a lot, and I sometimes wind up in these countries, that don't even report the murders by police officers in their country, in their state or city, because they don't have the mechanism or the incentive to do so. So, again, just to summarize, this occurred during the COVID-19 experience. People were terrified. People were concerned.

Folks were dying. There was a protest that was made of young white people about a block from my office in the thick of COVID-19 against the murder of George Floyd. And I have to ask these white folks who I've never seen before in this part of Baltimore where I work, what inspires you to come here? Why are you caring about George Floyd or the murders of Black people, this man in particular?

And they kind of got catatonic and unable to articulate why. But I think it became trendy. And they were afraid of everybody, including black people and their wrath when they were feeling insecure because of the covid-19 epidemic. Again, we're no longer in that. Matt and the right. We'll go to Matt. Matt, your assessment. Four years later, are we retreating? Have you seen some positive changes? Just your thoughts. Tiger can't change its stripes. And I think Dr. Cleo was hitting the nail on the head. That's why I was shaking my head. I think this is about a few things. First, I think a lot of what

we saw in response to the murder of George Floyd was white people trying to absolve their own guilt about seeing a white person kill a black man on TV in a very graphic way. I think it was about absolution of guilt. I think it was less about standing up for right. And I say that because he used the perfect word, trendy. It became trendy. If you were on social media, everybody blacked out their Facebook profile. Everybody did every kind of hashtag and other movement to show that they were, you know,

aligned with standing against, you know, police brutality. But the deep work that needed to be done to really attack some of the institutional things that perpetuate this was not done. And I think from a corporate standpoint, in terms of insecurity, to use his word, we saw a lot of corporations that didn't want to be left out. They were afraid of not being the corporation or being the corporation that did not respond publicly and say, we stand for diversity and all these kinds of things, right? The way we know that those stripes have not changed is the fact that corporations are now contracting the number of DEI jobs that they have. We're seeing a Supreme Court just on an all-out assault against individual rights, a lot of times via the context of racial questions,

including affirmative action and some of the other things we've seen out of the court. So I think this is a temporary moment in time. I think some of it is based on insecurity. I think some of it, though, is based on self-interest, the self-interest of not being the one left out to respond to the topic du jour. But whether people were doing the deep work, I don't think it was being done. And every time I come on the show, I talk about qualified immunity. I'm so glad that George Floyd's brother was saying that because I do this work for a living. And every time I file a lawsuit, no matter how egregious what the officer has done, I have to apply my client that we have to climb Mount Everest in the Fifth Circuit, no matter what we're seeing, whether what we're seeing is just

obviously morally bankrupt. So I tell you that to say we have a lot of institutional things that perpetuate this. None of those changed. And therefore, I don't think the society at large has changed in that respect. Michael, I think that I warned folks about this. And I think what happened, I think what happened, and I kept saying this to black folks, can't let up. Correct. You've got to keep the pressure on. I'll be honest with you. I think a lot of black people, I think a lot of black organizations got very comfortable with the checks they received from corporate America in the first two years and were like,

yeah, we're good. And I was like, yo, I was a firm believer, and I still believe this, that I kept saying that the death of George Floyd should have marked the beginning of the third Reconstruction. Yes. And what I've argued is that the reason I keep saying the third Reconstruction is that the first two Reconstructions dealt with laws. It never dealt with the money. And if you didn't, and I see it, there needs to be a sustained focus on economics. 20 years at least. And I said, hey, y'all, don't look up. White folk, hey, after three, four, five years, all right, we good.

We done done enough. That is exactly what happened. It didn't even take three, four years to tell you the truth, Roland, because you did not get to the fifth year. Yeah, you didn't get to the fifth year. But keep in mind, you started having the attack on critical race theory September 2020 when Donald Trump did an executive order banning critical race theory being used in federal—with federal employees, training federal employees. Then he attacked the 1619 Project. All of this stuff is connected.

The attack on critical race theory, the attack on DEI, overturning affirmative action in college admissions, Ed Blum filing the lawsuit, not getting the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed because of Republicans blocking it, voting against it in the lawsuit, not getting the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed because of Republicans blocking it, voting against it in the House, even though it passed the House because of Democrats. But Senator Tim Scott, that loudmouth Negro, Senator Tim Scott lying about it, saying that it was pushing defund the police and the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Police Chiefs in late September 2021 put out a joint memo basically saying, your ass is lying, because they said in none of the drafts did it talk about defunding police.

And they both—and both organizations said they supported the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act because protect police officers as well as citizens. So, what we see here is that there is always a backlash when there is any period of perceived advancement that African Americans make. And I was saying the same thing. If you understand history, there's going to—that pendulum is going to swing back, and you have to be ready for it. A lot of people weren't ready for it.

And some of those corporations that made those big donations, some of those corporations that are shutting down DEI, things like this, I think there should be economic pressure put on some of those corporations who financed some of these Republicans who blocked it, who are against it in the Senate, and who block it, who are against it in the House, to put financial pressure on them. Because Representative Sheila Jackson Lee just yesterday reintroduced the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act in the House of Representatives, right? Now, you don't have the votes right now—there's only 213 Democrats in the House—but this should be some type of campaign issue.

And lastly, keep in mind, on the second anniversary of George Floyd's death, May 25, 2022, for those who got, President Joe Biden did do an executive order on policing based upon his Article II powers, based upon the Constitution, that dealt with policing at the federal level, because the majority of control over policing is at the state and local level. So, for those that forgot about it, President Joe Biden did do that. And two weeks ago, when Trump was speaking in Wisconsin, he said he would unleash the police. He said he would unleash the police if he's reelected. So keep that in mind in November 2024. This is on us, Cleo. It's because I fully expected white folks after a few weeks, a few months to go back to business as usual. And you heard me say to Flonis there.

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. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone,

sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll 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. We 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. 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 LavaForGoodPlus 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 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 as I said to the families last year when we were outside of my studios, that it's going to take them coming back and calling out Democrats and Republicans to say, get moving on this thing. And it's going to take that level of pressure.

I think back again to how the 64 Civil Rights Act how the 65 voting rights act how the 68 fair housing act how those things have things happen and i i just kept saying black folk don't get comfortable do not get comfortable don't get cut i had let me tell you something i remember we were we would meet with general motors after we had called them out on their black-owned media spend. And I told them point blank, I do not applaud you for press releases. I only applaud you for direct deposits. And I said that for a reason. And I just think that a lot of black organizations got real comfortable. And were like, oh, hey,

we're good. These things are going to happen. And now it's like, what the hell? And I'm saying, y'all didn't read a history book. This is the history in America. Always happens. But for black people

of any sort to get, quote, uncomfortable, Always happens. comfortable because you're getting money and you're in a leadership position and you're not using it to resist, counter, or try to put a dent in the murders of Black people, we got the wrong people, of course, in these positions. Because if you actually care about Black people and you care about the life and death of Black people, which I think a lot of people don't, including Black people like Tim Scott and others, then you will not have the capacity to be incentivized into complacency. So I think that we need to look at some scar tissue that over time, blackness and caring about blackness is losing its credibility and people are going into wealth building and money focus. There was a famous song on the radio that you might have heard before that said, I'm living my best life. I'm not going back and forth with those N-words.

And that was a very anti-Black destructive song that was a top 10 hit. But the sentiment, I think, is growing among Black people. I'll reiterate, you can't pay me, and people have tried to be lax and take a back seat or be complacent around the destruction and murder and killing of Black people by anybody, particularly the state or law enforcement. So I think some conversations need to occur about the epidemic of anti-Blackness. And people bring up Tim Scott a lot. But Tim Scott represents a mindset that is so pervasive that we always protest something that's old temporarily. And we shouldn't protest,

we shouldn't be protesting temporarily so-called Black Lives Matters, et cetera. We should protest and resist until we've had resolution. Frankly, like the white gay community has done and other communities has done, who everybody's afraid to mess with because they know people are going to come for them. I don't think people look at black people that way or else they would think differently and we would be more protected. But we have people, like you said, who you said got comfortable, but I don't think they're comfortable. I think they're crazy because if you're going to let somebody buy you into complacency in

the midst of an epidemic of black people being murdered that makes the news every now and then, that's a problem. We need to look at black leadership. Yeah, I mean, but that's the point I'm making here, Matt. When I talk about getting comfortable, when I talk about folks are just like, hey, you know, hey, we had a great 2021, 2022. I mean, I remember I was on a pound at the NAACP Image Awards last year. And I was going off and folks were sitting here like, damn, dog. I mean, because it was a DEI conversation.

I was like, man, you know, you went too hard. And man, you know, you should just like pull back. And I said, are y'all not paying attention? I said, this shit's about to end. I said, you can see it. Yeah, it was CRT. Then we saw what was coming. We knew the affirmative action decision from the Supreme Court in college was coming down.

Then we saw that. And now what you're dealing with is now you've got these folk who literally are saying, oh, that there is just, there's more racism against whites than it is against black people in this country. And so then you're seeing the pulling back, again, of the laws and the state legislatures, overruling is happening in the cities, the targeting of progressive DAs, all of these different things. And they're like, you know, oh, crime, crime, crime. The attack on Chase Bouton in San Francisco, he gets recalled. They're trying to get rid of the sister who was a prosecutor in Alameda County.

And so I'm just trying to get our folk to understand this thing is real. It's real. And there has to be a recalibration in black America. And Matt, I just don't see it. I see black leadership asleep at the wheel. And last point, we did not properly understand how pissed off they were at Black Lives Matter. Internally, they screwed themselves as well. But there was a targeting.

People forget the Black Lives Matter movement was the first movement in the history of America where a majority of Americans supported it. And there were other forces that said, oh, hell no, we got to stop this. And I'm telling you right now, Matt, I can't tell you what was the last major BLM or Black Focus march or protest. I can't. Well, you know, maybe I'm cynical, but I think that presumes that that was true support rather than support coming from self-interest. I think a lot of that was people trying to make themselves feel better and trying to make sure they didn't miss the topic du jour.

But whether people were doing the work and continuing to do the work, they weren't doing it before and they're not doing it after. And I think as it relates to black leaders, you know, I think we have to be honest in our assessment of anything. And I think sometimes, you know, we get too placated by soundbites and by a check and by getting, I don't know, that one sphere of influence where somebody is getting a soapbox on which to trumpet their position. And it looks like that is tantamount to real progress for society. But we know that that's not the case, because not only are black people being killed in the street, not only is unemployment still an issue, not only are a lot of the issues that we still have an issue, we see courts that are in an all-out assault against our rights and against the protections of what needs to be there to ensure that there is

basic addressing of these inequities. And what we're seeing now, for instance, with CRT, the idea that CRT here in Texas and in Florida and other places became this analog for blackness is still baffling to me because CRT is a scholarship, a scholarly discipline that very few people understand. And it is not an analog for blackness. It's an actual scholarship, right? A body of scholarship. But we allowed that to become co-opted to be the thing that stands in for black people. And it has become the analog boogeyman. And we can't allow that to happen. So I think a lot of what the issue is, where we presume there's support, there's not true support. There's self-interest and it's self-interest masquerading as support. But beyond that, the biggest part, I think, is I think sometimes we overestimate how

dangerous we are viewed, dangerously we're viewed collectively. And what I mean is I think Black people are unfortunately often expendable and leverageable. When it becomes advantageous to be on the train of a Black issue, then you see people doing that, i.e. corporations. Once that tide turns, then you see them stepping away from that. And the question becomes, how do you have a sustained progress and a sustained force against some of these issues that is not beholden to other people joining us or joining us in a propensity that it really gets nationwide attention? And I think that's the issue, because a lot of those allies were only there

as long as it made them feel good. Once that went away, they're not there anymore. And I don't know how, you know, how rigid those positions still are. 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. Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated

itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, 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 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 Lott. And this is Season 2 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 ban. 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. The thing here, Michael, when I talk about being comfortable. Legal groups are still battling. They're fighting the lawsuits. Right.

And you've got others who I've heard, I mean, I've heard Derek Johnson, the NAACP, say on many occasions that protest is performative. But the reality is, in order for you to apply pressure on city council, county government, state legislature, Congress, is you've got to have external pressure. And so you've got to have the mobilization

and the organization. And frankly, I've been disappointed in black leadership, black organizations, not pressuring Democrats in the Senate, Senator Chuck Schumer, President Biden, to bring the Joyce Floyd justice bill back up to force Republicans in the election year to deal with it.

I mean, there were other bills, there were other priorities that didn't move, that people kept hammering, kept hammering. You see right now, they're trying to bring back the border security bill, even though Donald Trump shut that thing down. What I'm saying is, this is where you've got to continue to apply pressure.

I remind people, those three civil rights bills, they actually were all one bill that was given to Kennedy in 1961. He gets killed, assassinated, November 1963, LBJ tells King, I cannot get all of this stuff passed at one time so it was broken all up.

It took, it literally took five years. Here we are, four years after the death of George Floyd. Where is the mass protest? Where is the constant, no, we're going to go after

this thing again. Where is it? Do you see it? Because I'm sorry, I don't see it. No, no, I don going to go after this thing again. Where is it? Do you see it? Because I'm sorry, I don't see it. No, no, I don't see the mass protest. But we have to really understand in-game, and it goes even beyond mass protest. It goes to actually winning in the in-game and understanding how to put economic pressure on the obstructionists, OK? Because I have to say, if we go back to 2015, when you had the state of Indiana transgender bathroom bill, OK, there were not a lot of protests, but there was economic pressure. And corporations were tripping over themselves to come out to put pressure on the state legislature

in Indiana. And the governor of Indiana at that time was a gentleman named Mike Pence, who became vice president of the United States. And within about a week to 10 days, they changed the law in the state because of economic pressure. So, when we talk about the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. One of the things that I think needs to happen—and I mentioned this a few minutes ago—is not just on Democrats, but also Republicans who are obstructionists, especially in the Senate. Put economic pressure on them. Go to FEC.gov, Federal Elections Commission.

Look at the top five corporations that donate to some of these Republican senators, and look at the states that have the most numbers of white people killed by police. Bring in crying white mothers to Senate hearings with pictures of their loved ones unjustly shot and killed by police. See, the game—the way some of these groups are moving and playing, they're trying to fight the good fight when they should be taking these people's heads off. And they're not playing to win. They're playing to—we're confusing activity with productivity.

They're not playing to win in the endgame. When we look at the Voting Rights Act, OK, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the same thing. You had 150 corporations that signed on to a memo, I think it was June or July 2021, that said they supported the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. So instead of nationwide pressure being put on the top four or five who finance Republican obstructionists, you had people just marching and protesting and getting arrested in front of the White House. That's good, but the people who need pressure don't care if you get arrested.

The people who are obstructionists don't care if you get arrested. You have 16 sitting U.S. senators right now who in 2000 voted to reauthorize the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and every last one of them, including the other 34 Republican senators, voted against the John Lewis vote, even though they all talked about how great John Lewis was. So there's a difference. And, you know, there's a phrase in the African-American community, and you all probably heard it, the struggle continues. I don't use that term. I use the term it's not over until we win because to continue to struggle, you need an opponent to struggle against. If you focus on whipping that goddamn ass and defeating it, you don't have nobody to

struggle against. We need to focus on winning as opposed to struggling. Well, I agree. And, you know, what's going to happen tomorrow? You're going to see social media posts. You're going to see George Floyd photos and murals and things along those lines. This photo here is my high school, Jack Hayes High School. This is outside on the sidewalk there, excuse me, on the street, uh, that black lives matter there. You still see it, of course, uh, on the street there, uh, outside of our studios in Washington, DC. Um, it's, it's, but the question now is what are you going to do?

And so I think, uh, a lot of folk need to be rethinking in terms of their strategies, need to be rethinking what their focus is, because some things have changed. Some cities have done some good things. But frankly, there's a lot of places that still need a lot of work to do. So we certainly appreciate it. Let me thank Cleo. Let me thank Matt. Let me thank Michael as well. This is a Memorial Day weekend. Of course, something started by black folks. So we wanted to focus this first hour on the fourth anniversary of George Floyd. We come back, white evangelicals. I talked with the author. She lived through one of these churches and she talked about that experience. Here's a white woman taking us inside the world of white evangelicals, white conservative evangelicals. And if you want to understand Project 2025, you want to understand the appeal to Trump.

You want to understand what the Republican Party is doing. Don't want to miss this conversation. That's next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Next on Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach, women of color are starting 90% of the businesses

in this country. That's the good news. The bad news? As a rule, we're not making nearly as much as everyone else. But joining us on the next Get Wealthy episode is Betty Hines. She's a business strategist and she's showing women how to elevate other women. I don't like to say this openly, but we're getting better at it. Women struggle with collaborating with each other. And for that reason, one of the things that I demonstrate in the sessions that I have is that you can go further together if you collaborate.

That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Black Star Network. Farquhar, executive producer of Proud Family. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Sarah, glad to have you here. Let's jump right into this. I want to start this way. two or three myths about the white evangelical church that are often framed in mainstream media that people really don't quite understand and get? I mean, I'm not sure if there are myths, per se, that are asserted. I think it's more, but I do think there are things that people don't understand. I think that often there's a misconception, first of all, just broadly that evangelicals are all the same. And I'm glad you said white evangelical, that is the subtitle of my book, because I think it's really important to be specific about what we're talking about. And, you know, the, the differences, you can have two churches that have very similar theology on

paper, but if the racial composition is very different, people are going to prioritize very different things when they go to the voting booth. And so that's why so often in the media, when we hear about evangelicals, we're really talking about white evangelical voters. So that's one piece of it. I think when it comes to evangelicalism as a whole, though, I think people don't realize many times what a large group of people we're talking about. And evangelicalism is notoriously hard to define, and the definition is contested. But, you know, generally, when we're talking about

evangelicals in the press, we are talking about both a political and a theological group. And within that group, there are millions of people who, you know, some of whom hold very different theological beliefs. They exist along a spectrum of beliefs. And, you know, once again, the politics tend to be pretty divided by race. See, the reason I wanted to start there is because you're right. One of the biggest problems that I have with mainstream media, and I'm going to call it mainstream white media, is that they don't want to make that distinction. So what you will often have is, oh, President Biden meets with a black clergy, meets with a group of black ministers. But they'll never say Donald Trump meets with a group of white ministers. And what you have in this country, you have in this country where people love to talk about identity politics,

but when they talk about identity politics, they often are talking about, oh, black people, Latinos, women, LGBTQ, but they don't want to see whiteness as an identity. And the reality is it is, and it has always been that. Right. And of course, it's an identity that has shifted and evolved and who was included in whiteness is different, you know, in the past than it is today. It's something that, you know, arguably groups have kind of competed for because of white supremacy. You know, I descend from Italians among others, and that's one of many groups that are now considered white that weren't when they first immigrated here. I just make that point to say

that, you know, it's an identity, but it's also a contested identity, but it's one that shapes, it's an important category that shapes the way, you know, not just people think and vote and what they prioritize, but often who they associate with. And I think it definitely shapes our theology to a large degree, too. So you're right when people talk about often about Republican politicians meeting with pastors, meeting with evangelical leaders. Usually, you know, there might be a few people of color mixed into those groups. But very often when you're talking about conservative politics, it's a predominantly white group. And I think it's important, you know, not to gloss over that reality. I often remind people of this here when we talk about white evangelicals, and I love when people, I was talking about loving Jesus, and Jesus is the model. And I remind them when it was Bob Riley was the governor of Alabama

and he wanted to change the tax code because in Alabama they were taxing people beginning at $4,600. And he said, that's crazy that we're taxing poor people at that level. And so he literally used Jesus as the model in the campaign and went around the state and was talking about the importance of the poor and going on and on and on. Yet when it came to voting time, it lost 65-35. And guess what? All those Jesus-loving white evangelicals who say they love the Bible and they follow it to the T. They voted for their white pocketbooks and not for Jesus. And I use that because this is why I'm always talking about the fallacy of folks who run around and they're swinging their Bibles and they're talking about uh you know moral

standing whatever and i'm going come on now you're playing games with the bible because you're putting your ideology frankly before your faith and they try to mix those two together and i use that example all the time because it was a perfect example of a white evangelical conservative Republican using the language they often talk about, but they did not vote according to their Bible. They voted according to their pocketbook. You know, it's interesting as someone who covers politics, I've done a number of stories over the years about how people talk about faith and political spaces. And I think there are really interesting debates about that. You know, first of all, there's a question, should we talk about faith? And if so, how? You know,

and I think it's a difficult one for a lot of people across the political spectrum in a society that, you know, by its very founding is intended to value separation of church and state, right, and create space for religious pluralism, for people with multiple religions, different religions, or no religion whatsoever. But the reality is that many people do talk about their faith and their values when they talk about how they vote and the kinds of issues they prioritize. And so it's interesting to hear how that kind of language is infused into, you know, so many different issues. And, you know, I tend to feel like sometimes it's a Rorschach test, you know, I mean, people think that Jesus would have voted for whoever they want to vote for. They think that Jesus would prioritize the issues they prioritize. But you're right. I mean, the Bible talks a lot. Jesus talks a lot about,

in the Bible, about feeding the poor and healing the sick and helping the needy. And in fact, one of my favorite passages, there are a couple of passages where Jesus talks about the afterlife and sort of, you know, separating the sheep from the goats, the good and the bad. And, you know, in those contexts, very often he's talking about the people who land on the right side of that are the people who helped those in need. Now, you know, what does that, how does that translate into public policy? I mean, that's not for me as a journalist to say. And I think, you know, I've heard a number of, you know, people of faith, a variety of political persuasions argue about that. And I think people can come to different conclusions and do come to different conclusions. But it is fascinating to see how that religious rhetoric

is employed for a lot of different purposes. Take us inside a white evangelical church in terms of, I mean, look, I mean, I'm African-American, born and raised Catholic. I later joined a Baptist church. And we often see comedians make jokes about how different we are. Dr. King always talked about the most segregated hour in America is 10 a.m. on a Sunday morning. And so for you growing up in that world, what was it like? Yeah, you know, the vast majority of my religious spaces, the vast majority of people in them were white. So the two most formative religious spaces in my childhood were my church and my Christian school, and they were separate from one another. So the Christian school I went to was operated by a church, but not the one that I attended. And when I said earlier that evangelicalism

is, you know, a large movement, a large group of people, and includes a lot of different people across the spectrum. I mean, I think those two institutions are a good example of that. So my church was much more charismatic, expressive worship, raising your hands, closing your eyes. Some people spoke in tongues. Some people believed in gifts of healing that you could lay your hands on someone and they would maybe be healed directly by God. My school wasn't into that stuff so much. It was a little more kind of buttoned down, a little more traditional, a little more towards the fundamentalist end of the spectrum in the sense that girls had to wear dresses every day. I think people were, you know, just a little more, it would maybe be more like a

Baptist kind of expression of worship, although it was also an independent church and school. But in those spaces, most people were white. And, you know, what that meant was there were a few people of color in my class, you know, and I've talked to some of my former classmates and schoolmates, you know, since then. And some of them, I think, have talked to me about having some difficult experiences in that environment. Some of them I'm not at liberty to share, but one friend reached out to me recently after the book came out and told me some of the things he'd experienced in our Christian school that I just had no idea, you know, kind of overt racism and so forth because of his heritage. And, you know, I of overt racism and so forth because of his heritage.

And, you know, I don't want to say that that was commonplace or endorsed. That wasn't my impression. But at the same time, there were moments which, you know, one of which I describe in, I believe I describe in the book where a girl in my class during prayer requests openly expressed that she didn't want Black people moving into her neighborhood. And I just remember, you know, knowing that that was wrong. My parents had taught me that that was wrong. And, um, yeah, I don't remember much of response from the teacher. I think she just was kind of uncomfortable and kind of move the conversation along. But, um, you know, it was just kind of, I think it was baked into the culture, maybe more than I even realized then. At the same time, you know, my church was also predominantly

white, but not exclusively white. And at the same time, you know, I heard a lot of good messages about race. I heard like the explicit messages that my parents taught me were that people were all made in God's image, that we were all, you know, sons and daughters, children of God, and God loved us all. Skin color didn't matter. And that racism was wrong, and that the civil rights movement... 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. 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 man. 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 podcast it was was a good thing you know so i'm grateful i was taught all of those things and i think those ideas really helped form the way i try to look at people but what i didn't have was a lot of exposure to people living, you know, in my community who had different, different life experiences, different backgrounds. And that's, you know, to an extent, that's just how life is. Many of us sort of grow up in our community and

it is what it is. But I think it's because people have to recognize that our commun community in America, we that community is defined neighborhoods are defined in America has largely be Uh and it's always amazin when I'm talking to people, they don't understand the intersectionality of those things. And the fact of the matter is we tend to go to churches that are in our neighborhoods. Well, the neighborhood is going to look like it looks because of the

folks who live there. And there are very few, there are very few truly racially integrated communities. And then when you, even if you have a racially integrated community, it is driven by income. Yeah. And that income typically is also determining ideology and political preferences and policy. Yeah, very often true. And I think, you know, while we actually drove across town to go to my church and my school, I do think it was, you know, class comes into it, race comes into it. And I think what I didn't understand also is just how much history goes into that, right? I mean, I didn't know growing up that there was a tradition of, you know,

that the Black church had grown out of a completely different experience and in response to racism and often, you know, exclusion by white churches, in some cases, overt racism and exclusion in the case of the Southern Baptist Convention, which of course, as we know, the SBC later apologized for that history. But that is, you know, opposition to abolition was baked into

the founding of that denomination, which is, of course, the biggest white evangelical denomination to this day, even though it's been losing members. So I didn't know all of that history. And I didn't, to your point, understand the ways that income and neighborhoods, you know, shape who we know and what we see of the world. But I will say, you know, there was at least lip service in my church growing up to the desire to be more racially integrated and more diverse. But one of the things I write about in the chapter called Leave Loud is the fact that, you know, a lot of churches in the 90s were doing that and talking about that, and many still are. But, you know, in talking with a number of Black

Christians in particular who've spent time in those spaces, many of them have said it's one thing to hire a Black pastor and put them on your roster, and it's another thing to really center the experiences of Black people and other people of color and have that shape you know not just who's on your website but who's sort of making decisions and shaping the way that you know the issues that the church values and prioritizes yeah as i was sitting here as you were talking i thought about uh pastor tony evans uh who chose to align with the Bible Fellowship. And what happens when he comes to Dallas and he's attending these different churches? Basically, the white folks tell him, you need to go start your own.

And so when you talk about Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship was born out of racism be by these white churches i the realities. When you t uh for for African america the phrase uh that white holder religion. And and of the things that is difficult, again, and this has been going on for decades in citrus here, is that you've had little introspection. really confronting the reality of being a Christian and also the reality of whiteness and Jim Crow

and how Jim Crow was driven for 92 years, largely by the church. And had the white church been, had there been more John Browns, had there been more white abolitionists, then frankly, Jim Crow could have ended a hell of a lot sooner if white Christians had truly believed in the Bible and the Jesus they say they did. Well, I think this is a really important point point and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier with the idea that people to kind of make Jesus into whatever they want him to be very often. You know, I, growing up, heard a lot about the role of

Christians in the anti-slavery movement. I heard a lot about the role of Christian, you know, Christians and the resistance to the Nazis. We didn't talk at all about the role of Christians and the resistance to the Nazis. We didn't talk at all about the role of white Christians in perpetuating and endorsing and promoting slavery. We didn't talk at all about the role of the German church in platforming and accepting Hitler or the Catholic church, right, in turning a blind eye in many cases. We just talked about the Christians who did the right thing, but we didn't talk about the Christians who did the wrong thing. Right, and that is so American.

That is so American how we love to talk about the good stuff, but we never want to deal with the bad stuff because that's just too painful and messy. No, it's because it's uncomfortable and i think because talking about the good guys it advances the narrative it makes it lets us pat ourselves on the back and say we're on the good the good team the side of of the righteousness and um you know anybody any of those christians who did the wrong thing yeah they existed but they

weren't true christians right that's sort of the easy, easy, sort of lazy, I think, response. I think for a Christian, for a person of faith, I think a much more thoughtful and productive and honest response is to look at all of it and to, I think, reflect on the fact that many, many people over human history have claimed to be people of faith, people of God, and have still done the wrong thing. And, you know, I went to an evangelical college and I think one of the most important things, one of the most memorable things that one of my professors told us, my philosophy professor was, we were talking, I believe it was about the civil rights movement and the history of slavery and racism and racial justice. And he said to us in this classroom, you know, full of evangelical kids, mostly white evangelical kids, he said, you know, we can all look back and we can see that that was wrong. But what is it in

our midst today that we are endorsing and participating in that's just as wrong that we don't even see? And I was just stunned by that. It really stuck with me, you know? Absolutely. You write, you mentioned, you write a lot about Bob Jones University in the book. For people who don't understand presidential politics, who don't understand the white evangelical movement. Bob Jones University was and absolutely has been a critical, a critical player in the rise of white evangelicals in politics. Yeah, I think, I mean, this is, this history is a little before my time, but I think there's a history there, right, of hosting Republican presidential candidates. I think that position has maybe kind of been taken more by Liberty University in more recent years.

But I think it played kind of a similar role. Is that fair? Yeah. Prior to the rise of Liberty, I mean, it was mandatory for Republican candidates to make a pit stop at Bob Jones University. And it was, I remember when George W. Bush was running in 2000, and even then it was an issue because for the longest, Bob Jones University practiced Jim Crow, barred interracial dating. And it was, and again, and Republicans and white evangelicals lauded

Bob Jones University for its focus on Christianity, but didn't really want to talk about its racism. Yeah. And, you know, I do know that the clash between Bob Jones and the IRS over civil rights rules that were going to require Bob Jones to be integrated and allow, for example, interracial dating, which they didn't for a very long time. That clash, historians like Randall Balmer have argued, gave birth in many ways to the current religious right, you know, to groups like the Moral Majority, who were sort of built on the backlash to that policy. Of course, that began to encompass many other issues, including abortion and same-sex marriage and so forth. But you make an important point. I mean, schools like Bob Jones, which, again, have a

fairly recent history of segregation, have been, you know, instrumental to the political process in the past. Again, that's something that they ultimately reversed that policy, but it was in place for a long time and it led to a court fight with the IRS. Right. And the point there, them having to reverse the policy, they were forced to do so. They chose to be, they chose racism. They chose to be racially segregated. And then by doing so, what they were doing is they were saying to other white evangelicals, this is okay. This is the way forward. And folks embraced that and were silent in telling them, this is wrong. This is not the way of Jesus. Right.

One of the things that I trace in the book, too, is the fact that a lot of the textbooks that were, you know, widely, widely used in Christian schools like mine and by homeschoolers came from Bob Jones and also from the Becca books, which were out of Pensacola University, both, you know, white Southern universities. I don't think Pensacola had the exact same history as Bob Jones, but, you know, I document in the book, some of the texts that we were taught just, you know, as, as, as fact, they were just kind of the atmosphere, the air we breathed,

you know, at best glossed over some of the ugly history of the, you know, treatment of the indigenous people or the history of slavery. And in some cases, much worse. I mean, I quote a couple passages that going back to them this many years later, I was kind of shocked at just how egregious they were in terms of, you know, talking about, you know, one of them, and I can't remember if it was a Bob Jones text or an Abeka text, but it's cited in the book. One of them talked about, you know, the South having warm air and slaves staying healthy, you know. And I mean, this was in a Christian school textbook that was being taught to young white Christian kids. And again, you know, I don't I think if you had asked my parents, they would have said, yeah, that's actually really bad, you know, but the fact that it was kind of just part of the culture in such a way that it didn't raise huge red flags, I think says a lot. Yep. Again, silence. Silence sometimes is even more powerful than the loudest voices

championing certain things. There's a chapter in your book called A Virtuous Woman, and it's perfect that we're having this conversation right now because Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Buckner recently delivered his commencement speech at a Catholic college that has gotten lots of attention. His speech was condemned by the NFL, a lot of other people as well. Catholic college that has gotten lots of attention. It got, his speech was condemned by the NFL. A lot of people, other people as well.

And so I just, before I really get into it, I just got to get your take on that because what you're laying out here, if people think, oh, that's just, that stuff is just so old. Nope. That was just last week. I know. I, that's, yeah, He's a Kansas City chief. That's my hometown. Although the speech wasn't in my hometown, but it was somewhere in Kansas, I think, but a Dictine college, a Catholic college, not an evangelical college, but I

think there's some cultural overlap there. And yes, right. He said he, he, he addressed the women who were just getting their college degree and essentially warned them against being too ambitious in their careers and seeking promotions instead of prioritizing their families. And there is a chapter in my book, as you said, where I talk about being told something very similar. This was more than 20 years ago when I graduated from college. And I and, you know, the mother of one of my male friends, I'm sitting in the cafeteria. She's visiting. I'm sitting in the cafeteria. She's visiting. I'm sitting there with my friend who wanted to go to medical school. I, at the time, was thinking about going to law school. We said so. And she said, don't do that. That'll take

you away from your families. Now, neither of us, by the way, were even engaged at this point. So this was like a hypothetical family, not that it would have been okay if we were. But yes, that mentality, you know, I was, I was kind of aghast and also just kind of sad to see that it's still out there. You know, there is this trope that women have to choose between being, bringing, really, they can't be, we can't be our whole selves. We have to choose either a family or a career. And I thought- You literally called it a vocation. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is, I'm a mother.

I have two wonderful teenage boys. I'm also a wife. I love those roles. I'm grateful for those roles. They are more meaningful to me than my career. I'll say that. Maybe that's regressive. But I think a lot of men would say, yeah, my family is more meaningful to me than my career. I'll say that maybe that's regressive, but I think a lot of men would say, yeah, my, my, my family is more meaningful to me than anything

else. There's nothing wrong with any person of any gender feeling that way, but to pretend like it's somehow uniquely a woman's job to do those things. And if you don't have those things, your life is going to be, you know, empty and you're going to regret your career. I mean, it's so insulting and so offensive on so many levels. And I, you know, empty and you're going to regret your career. I mean, it's so insulting and so offensive on so many levels. And, you know, a couple of things, women, men are not asked to make these choices, first of all. Second, not all women have these choices. And I think that the entire conversation about, you know, traditional wife versus career woman, whatever, it's an incredibly privileged conversation because the reality is in this day and age, most women don't have a choice

to stay home. And most people, their career, if you're lucky, your career is something that you get fulfillment out of. But a career is fundamentally a way to pay the bills, right? First and foremost, for most of us. Yeah. My mama did. Right. Right. I mean, the dude's mom is a physicist. Yeah. A clinical medical physicist at Emory University. It's like that. What the hell are you talking about? Yeah, it's so much. It's so much privilege. It's such a place. The people who don't understand and I'm telling you that people, people are not understanding what's happening right now. When you look at the debates over the issue of abortion, reproductive rights, great replacement theory, this white fear. I'm talking about my book, White Fear.

I call it White Fear, How the Brown of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds. What you have is in the white evangelical space. 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 Lott. And this is Season 2 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 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 2 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.

I need to buy Speaker Mike Johnson. Is this worldview that white America has been destroyed because how dare you white women go off and get degrees? How dare you go off and get jobs and sacrifice birthing babies and being wives? And they are, I mean, it literally came up in the Dobbs decision, in Amy Coney Barrett, in the question in the writing. And people have to realize that what he spoke about, that worldview is literally being touted in high political spaces because that's being spoken and that's being driven. And I don't think people understand how pervasive it is today in 2024 as compared to what you talked about when you were in school. I think one of the most compelling comments I saw on this was,

I can't remember the woman's name. I wish, I'm not going to try, but on Twitter, there's this long thread, which I retweeted on X. In which she essentially says, argues that when you pretend like a woman's natural vocation or space is home and children, and that's just what she should be doing, and that's just what she should be doing and that's just what she wants to do, well, then you kind of erase the fact that that is work and that that is something that we all need to recognize as a society is work that needs to be attended to, compensated, planned for. And I think that's a really important point because, you know, if we assume that there is a woman at home taking care of everything, well, that makes a lot of people's lives a lot easier. And it also makes women easier to control.

But, you know, that's not the world we live in anymore. It's not the world that we live in, but it's there. It's there. And so what happens. I think there are those who want us to live in it again. Yes. Yeah. And the thing is, they hold public office. And so what they're

doing is they literally are taking those worldviews and applying it to public policy. And we are seeing the impact, especially in states, red states, Republicans have super majorities. And so people need to understand that what you're laying out, this is not some old, old worldview.. If you look at if you look at. Right. I know it's not. If you look at polling, I mean, and I don't think it's even what most Republican women want. But there is a group of people that that would like to go back to a society that's structured in that way. So so so explain that, though. Explain, because this is the thing. And you just hit on something that that um we all we talked a lot about in 2016 where you look at these you look at these studies and you

look at these polls and you see the percentage of women when it comes to the issue of choice uh even when republican women come in you um you talk about Plan B. You could talk about, we could talk about all kinds of different numbers. Look at the polling numbers. But when it's time to vote, 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump in 2016. It increased to 55% in 2020. And white evangelicals, that's his strongest base.

So the question then becomes, for these white evangelicals, that's his strongest base. So the question then becomes, for these white evangelical women, these white conservative women, what is it where they have a position that is the same as progressives, but they're voting differently, and these are significant issues. Well, I mean, polling indicates that, well, until the last few years, most people didn't list abortion as a priority voting issue. People across the spectrum listed issues like the economy and immigration, and that was true to a fairly bipartisan degree. Now we've seen since the Dobbs decision, we've seen a shift among Democratic women who are, and also younger voters and voters of color who are now listing abortion as a much higher priority, top one or two issues for those groups. But, you know, I don't think it's as high of a priority for Republican women. They're looking at other issues.

I think they're more concerned about, at least from having been on the campaign trail in New Hampshire and Iowa, I heard a lot about issues like the border, border security, immigration, a lot of fear about what was happening there. Concerns about international politics or global affairs, the sense that, you know, there's a lot, sort of a scary, dangerous world and a desire to be protected. I heard that kind of thing. And certainly the economy. And so, you know, why do some women prioritize abortion and others don't? I'm not sure I can answer that, but I think, I mean, historically, it wasn't even an issue that Democratic women prioritized in the same way until the Supreme Court decision. So there's been a big shift. And I think that will have an impact. I mean, it's had an impact in the last couple of elections. How much of an impact it will have in November, I don't know, because again,

voters are thinking about a lot of different issues. You're a political correspondent with NPR. And I'm trying to think. Peggy Waymire, who used to be with WFAA in Dallas, was hired as the religion correspondent for ABC News when Peter Jennings was the anchor. When I was at CNN, we had a religion correspondent. I remember there was a black woman who was at Fox News. When I was at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, we had a religion writer. But when you look at media today, I think a lot of, part of the issue, a part of the problem for me is that in media, they have no clue what the hell happens in religious spaces. Many people write about religion from an antagonistic point of view um and you don't and then then what happens is if you do have if you do see

religion conversations it is oftentimes completely driven by white evangelicals that was the case when i was at cnn i was there for six years it was always stunning to me to have I forgot the guy, was it Donahue? He was over the Catholic League. He was always on. They always turned to Tony Perkins. And I used to always go, y'all know there's some other people we can book to talk about politics and religion. And I used to get into these debates with both of them. And I would give Tony Perkins fits because I would say, oh, Tony, you happen to run up against a black person who knows the Bible just as well as you. And that was all it was. But it was interesting to me watching how producers and editors really had no clue about how to cover religion. And I think part of the problem that we are facing today is that media wants to run from it as opposed to lean in.

When religion is a significant part of American society. Oh, yeah. Do you sort of have the same views I do of how media, frankly, has failed in many ways to properly cover religion in this country. I think it's gotten better over the course of my career. I mean, I can point to, you know, a number of writers that I think do a really good job. I think, you know, Elizabeth Diaz at the New York Times and Ruth Graham at the New York Times, Emma Green, who's been a writer for The Atlantic and other publications. You know, there are a lot of those are I know those are all white women. Sorry about that. But and I know them all. And I think they're and I kind of know them

professionally. But I think they're all really excellent reporters. And many of at least a couple of them have a have a faith background. And I think that that helps. I think we need a diverse array of religion writers from a variety of backgrounds. And I think groups like the Religion News Service have done a really good job of elevating the conversation and I know hiring, you know, a diverse range of writers to write about the intersection between culture and politics and religion. But I think you're right. I mean, religion, oh my gosh, for religious people, which is still a lot of this country, even with the decline in religiosity, and even people who are unaffiliated, many of them have a religious context or a family context.

But religion shapes so many things. You know, it overlays with culture in such important ways, and it shapes the language with which we talk about the most important issues around, you know, values and priorities and how to live life. And so, you know, I think you're right. I think that there have been historically a lot of people in the national press who haven't really understood that or understood how to cover it

or understood what, you know, religion looks like in small towns and rural areas and outside the Beltway. They don't even cover religion in large cities. True. When I was at KRLD Radio in Dallas, I'll never forget. That was Bishop T.D. Jakes. They had a massive conference. And I went to the news director, who was Jack Hines.

They had no idea who the hell he was. And I literally said to them, I said, wait a minute. Every time, I think it was First Baptist, I forgot. He was a major force in the white evangelical community to the Baptist Convention. And every time if he showed up on Sunday, he had been ill or whatever, they would do a story. I said, I swear, y'all cover000 people every weekend who's known across the world. They literally had no clue who Bishop T.D. Jakes was.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was like. What the hell it was it was just it was it was it was just it was just it was stunning to me that here we are the the biggest news station the biggest radio news radio station in Dallas Fort Worth and when I mentioned bitch and TV Jake they were kind of like huh I think there's some of it may also be cultural you know I think in the in the northeast and the sort of kind of waspy circles that a lot of people in the press come from or work in, it's there's like a politeness about you don't talk about religion. Right. It's a private thing. And that's not as true in, you know, certainly in the Midwest and South, where I spent a lot of my life before coming to Washington. That's not true for everybody, but I think that's sort of the culture of a lot of the, you know, of newsrooms for sure. And understandably, right, because people want to be objective and fair.

But I think that what's lost is failing to sort of see this layer, this really important layer of life that shapes so much of life for so many people. I do think that the, you know, for lack of a better term, the religious left or progressive religious groups have started to understand that more in recent years. And I've covered some of those efforts and I've seen those efforts, you know, to try to promote a dialogue around religion that isn't just focused on white evangelicals and that is, you know, more comprehensive and robust and that injects into the conversation the fact that, you know, values mean a lot of things to a lot of different, or a lot of different things to different people, but there's not just one voice on that.

And writing your book and after it was published, what have the conversations been like for people who you grew up with, went to school with, work with? Have they come to you? 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.

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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. I had no damn idea this was going on. Have you opened a lot of their eyes to what they literally went through,

but never really saw or understood? I have heard from a number of people, some of whom I know and some who I don't know, who have said that reading the book really helped clarify things for them, help them understand the white evangelical culture. These are people who are sort of outside of it. I've heard from a lot of people, and this would be the biggest group, who have some experience with the white evangelical subculture, some of whom I knew growing up and many who I did not know growing up, who've said essentially, thank you for articulating something for me. Like, thank you for pulling this all together and describing both what this experience is like for so many people in the

evangelical subculture and also kind of, you know, how it came to be and how it affects where we are today. Because, you know, the book is part memoir, but it's also a lot of interviews with a lot of other former evangelicals about their experiences and their, um, sort of wrestling with their faith and the culture of white evangelicalism. And then I pull in a lot of research, a lot of data, um, and primary source research from some of the textbooks and so forth that I mentioned. And, you know, so it's been really gratifying to hear from, from people, from a variety of perspectives and experiences who've all said essentially, like, this book explains so much. And I think I'm most pleased when I hear from people who feel like

it validates and describes their own experience. Because I wrote the book in large part because I knew that my experience was not unusual. And it was one that not everybody had insight into. But to hear that feedback coming in, now that the book is out in the world, it's just been really, really wonderful. And do you all, are you, are you also hopeful that you're going to see a, a generation of white evangelicals,

young evangelicals who are challenging old precepts, who are going to bring in, if you will, or ring in a new perspective, as opposed to what we're seeing the desperation to hold on to the old worldview of white evangelicals. Because I think that's really what this friction is. I've long said, and you talked about George Floyd in the aftermath of his murder in the book. And here we are book years after that happened is that white America was out because one for the f history, a black movement

approved of it and it's n history. It exceed, I thi of americans approved of happened in american hist like 53 or 55% that has n freaked a lot of these fo young white people who we were angry about what hap it has freaked out a lot what I what I just believ seeing is in which I talk white fear, this desperate freaked out a lot of thos what I just believe is th

is in which I talked abou this desperate attempt to world as long as possible that they're trying to dr in textbooks, the whole stripping away different content and banning books and all these different things. And so it's a desperation to hold on to that old world as much as possible.

Do you see young white evangelicals saying, no, there has to be, we've got to move into the 21st century and recognize that that old Jim Crow religion simply cannot be sustained in the 21st century. Certainly some of the ones I talked to and the people who are finding themselves in these ex-evangelical spaces are questioning a lot of these concerns, raising a lot of these concerns. I talked to people who were very disturbed by, I mean, how could you not be, by what they saw with the police killing of

George Floyd and also were disturbed by their church's response to it or what felt like an inadequate response. I talked to both Black Christians and white Christians who had that sentiment. So I think you're seeing some of that and, and, and, and, you know, the also a desire to see more equality, you know, for, um, women, for LGBTQ people. Um, I think all of those, those factors are motivating a lot of self-reflection and change. And, um, so no, I, I think that the younger generation does see things differently. Um, where that goes ultimately, I don't know younger generation does see things differently. Where that goes, ultimately, I don't know.

But what's really clear is that we're in the midst of a lot of religious change in this country. You know, a lot of people don't want to be affiliated with religious institutions for a whole variety of reasons. And I think that means potentially, you know, a lot of social and cultural change, too. Yeah. I mean, the reality is I've been saying even to the Democrats, listen, your old way of trying to campaign by just hitting, whatever you want to call yourself, has to now contend with is that people have been so rubbed wrong by people's views when it comes to church that they're opting not to even go to church. And we're seeing attendance down. We're seeing all those different things. And it has to, to me, it has to force a real look in the mirror to say, what will constitute the church in 10, 15, 20 years if things continue the way they are now? Yeah. You know, I think one of the most interesting data points in the latest public religion research institute survey about disaffiliation about people leaving religion uh was that um a significant number of people who left churches said that they had to leave because of their mental health it wasn't a good place for

their mental health and that was particularly pronounced among people who left white evangelical churches but not exclusive to them my parents were they were attending a predominantly white uh church uh well actually it was a very much racially diverse church in the dallas dallas for the area and they were like no we had to leave because they could not tolerate the hardcore right-wing maga perspective coming from the pulpit. My brother, same thing, a church in Houston, uh, and, and, and, and Beth in a, I've heard that from a lot of different people. They're like, yo, I'm not, I'm not trying to hear that. If you want to find it, you want to support Trump, you want to support the right way. They're like, but don't make that the dominant worldview coming

out of that pulpit. Yeah. And, and, you know, what's driving that sense of church not being a good place for mental health. Exactly. I don't know that this, this survey didn't speak to that, but I think it's really telling and it's concerning too, because historically a lot of people, I mean, anecdotally, I know a lot of people who started going to church when they were going through a hard time in their life and it was a place where they could find support and community. And so, you know, I think that presents a real,

it would be nice to think that there would still be those places where people could find support and community, but be included, accepted, feel like it's a positive thing. Last question for you. I ask this of every book author I've talked to. What was your wow moment when researching or writing this book? Was there that one or two things that where you even went, wow. Well, like I said, it's not a good wow, but going back to some of my old textbooks, I tried to, as much as I could reconstruct the textbooks I'd had

in my own school. So I did that by going to, you know, use book sites and kind of looking at the covers and then trying to order, you know, approximately the same year. Now I wouldn't swear to it, but these are the right ones, but a lot of them I'm pretty sure. And they were definitely the publishers we used from approximately the same time periods. And so just, just looking back at some of that texts and seeing the way that some of these Christian school textbooks talked about race and talked about women was pretty stunning. But it also made me glad that I'd gone back and done it because originally when I started writing the book, it was going to be mostly memoir and interviews and i thought you know some of the stuff that i remember i want to i don't want people to take my word for it that it was this way i want them to hear it from the horse's mouth so that's when i started pulling all the primary

sources you know there you go you like this ain't opinion this fact yeah yeah and i'm not remember i mean like you said you can read some of the stuff about like the way that women are talked about and somebody could be like really is that how it is? Is that really what people said? It is. And it's still being said to your point. It's still being said. Absolutely. Loving, living and leaving the white evangelical church, the ex-evangelicals. Sarah McCammon, we appreciate you being on the Black Star Network. Thanks a bunch. Thanks so much. Good to talk to you, Roland. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 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. 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

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