Join Jemele and Jemele as they discuss the controversy surrounding Starbucks' new initiative, Race Together, and why they don t want to have a conversation about race before they have even had their first cup of coffee.
00:00:39.000Kira, listen, I know you hate this, being pigeonholed, but I think it struck a chord with a lot of people because you're a black conservative.
00:00:47.000And right away, people are, their ears perk up and go, wait, hold on a second.
00:00:51.000This is an opinion from someone, you know, who we can't accuse of being a racist.
00:00:54.000And so conservatives want to hear what you have to say.
00:00:56.000And liberals have to listen because they can't just use the go-to strawman argument of racism, right?
00:01:02.000So tell us from your point of view, the Starbucks, what it is, this race together, and why you were so worked up in a tizzy about it.
00:01:11.000Well, the Race Together, if you haven't heard by now, you've been living in a hole, but it's Starbucks' new initiative proposed by their CEO, Howard Schultz.
00:01:20.000The idea is to get people talking about race by putting a hashtag race together on the cups of customers in order to initiate a conversation with customers about race and advance race relations in the United States.
00:01:35.000Now, I don't want to belittle the idea that it's constructive to talk about race relations.
00:01:44.000We've been talking about a national conversation about race for as long as I can remember.
00:01:52.000We've never been able to have that conversation, honestly, in my opinion, and I don't think we ever will.
00:03:02.000I'm to the point where I am fatigued about talking about this.
00:03:06.000Because like I said, we're never going to have the honest conversation.
00:03:10.000The national conversation in quotes about race that we keep having is white people bad, everybody else good.
00:03:18.000Now, I'm not here to defend white people or to say that white people never do anything wrong and people need to get over that.
00:03:26.000But what I am saying is that this is a nuanced debate.
00:03:28.000And if black people want to have this conversation, we need to be willing to have some uncomfortable conversations and make some uncomfortable admissions as well.
00:03:37.000And I have yet to see anybody who's willing to do that.
00:03:41.000I mean, Bill Cosby, God rest his soul.
00:04:12.000Out of wedlock birth rate that we have, because the family is the bedrock of any successful society, and when you break down the family, you break down that society, and that's what we're seeing in black America.
00:04:25.000We've got to stop these terrible crime rates.
00:04:28.000We have to stop these horrible dropout rates.
00:04:43.000Half of young black males don't finish school.
00:04:45.000I have yet to see one Republican come into the hood and pull a young black man out of school and say, son, you're just not going to finish.
00:04:54.000So there's some responsibility that we have for ourselves.
00:04:58.000And white people also have a responsibility.
00:05:01.000I'm not for this idea that we shouldn't talk about race at all or that it doesn't matter.
00:05:07.000But I do think that there's got to be some uncomfortable conversations that have to be had if we're going to really have a national conversation about race, but we sure as heck are not going to have them at Starbucks.
00:05:54.000The abortion rate is one of the highest in the industrialized world.
00:05:58.000very similar to black Americans who have about the same chance of being born as they do of being aborted in America right now.
00:06:04.000So you see a lot of those correlations in the French Canadian community that you would see with the black American community, which tells me, again, having been a witness to that, it's not a race issue.
00:06:15.000In that sense, those numbers aren't a race issue.
00:06:19.000You're not born black and decide to not be a father.
00:06:24.000And do you feel like while we're talking about co-opting, people saying you're co-opting blackness if you're white, like Eminem.
00:06:30.000Well, isn't the whole hip-hop culture a co-opting of blackness to begin with?
00:06:36.000This idea of BET and gang-related imagery and symbolism and culture, even if a black person is doing that, how is that not co-opting blackness before white people do it?
00:07:58.000Yeah, I was just thinking about blues and Motown music.
00:08:02.000Motown's phrasing of how they described their music wasn't, this is for black America.
00:08:07.000It was, this is for young, the music of young America.
00:08:12.000And everyone, black, white, you name it, was putting on the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Temptations.
00:08:19.000The whole nation was embracing that music that came out of Detroit.
00:08:23.000And I'd hate to think that every time I strap on my Fender bass and try to play Bernadette, and nowhere near what Jamerson did, that I'm co-opting.
00:08:33.000Because that's the greatest bass line of all time.
00:08:45.000I don't think Katy Perry or even Gwen Stefani, she went through a phase in her career where she was all into these Japanese Harajuku girls.
00:08:53.000I don't think that you should be accused of co-opting culture that you admire and you want to participate in the expression of that culture.
00:09:03.000And I think Funded brings up a great Point about wanting to, you know, participate in that and being a fan.
00:09:13.000I mean, there's no, it's not offensive, and it shouldn't be offensive for someone to say, I love the way you express yourself.
00:09:23.000And I would love to see the black American community get back to the point where we are significant contributors, positive contributors to American culture.
00:09:36.000I mean, we have literally built this country on our backs.
00:09:40.000We have been a part of the history of this culture and this continent.
00:09:44.000You know, for hundreds of years, and yet these days we don't conduct ourselves with that level of pride.
00:09:50.000We have so many issues in our community.
00:09:52.000I want to get back to the place where we are considered great contributors to culture.
00:10:00.000Can you stay for another segment here, Akira, or do you have to go to your spin class?
00:11:20.000I know there's other races, but that's the only part I can speak on.
00:11:23.000But I think as a black community, we need to be willing to address the fact that sometimes we play a part in the fear that people have of us.
00:11:32.000We have high crime rates in our community.
00:11:34.000We have high murder rates in our community.
00:11:41.000There's a lot of things that we are doing that we are solely responsible for, that cannot be blamed on other people, that we need to recognize, make it more difficult for us to be successful in this country.
00:12:23.000And part of that is on us to not make, if we're going to have an honest debate and an honest discussion, and if a white person says, well, you know, I do have these questions, I do have these problems, we shouldn't ridicule them right away and judge them right away.
00:13:23.000Because they can't stand being called racist.
00:13:25.000So if I get into, like, a situation where liberals are, like, getting all high and mighty, I'll be like, well, you know, I guess, what do I know?
00:13:32.000I'm just a little old black girl and you're the intelligent, you know, oh my gosh, no, I'm not racist at all.
00:14:26.000When you're arguing with anybody about race, be they conservative or liberal, we don't want to hear about how black people participated in the slave trade, too.
00:14:38.000And there's a lot of slavery going on in Africa right now.
00:14:41.000Everybody knows that, but as soon as you bring that up, it's just a non-starter situation.
00:14:48.000I know you have valid points, and I recognize that it's a valid point, but you sort of stop the intellectual trajectory of the conversation when you go there.
00:15:01.000I think the purpose that it does serve is not saying, well, there's slavery somewhere else, but I would say, you know, listen, the United States is not unique in that it engaged in slavery, but it is singularly unique in that it had a revolution to end slavery.
00:15:14.000Well, for example, you know, both of us being, you know, Canadian, I find it funny.
00:15:17.000I had someone one time actually call in, I think, to this show, and Fundip was here, and he said, you know, my grandfather was a black guy.
00:15:23.000I said, you know, my grandfather fled slavery to Canada.
00:15:25.000And I said, do you know what they would have said in Canada?
00:15:42.000You can look me up on YouTube, Kira Davis, K-I-R-A Davis, where I do a lot of political commentary, just me and my webcam, kind of like you see now.
00:16:09.000And I talked about my experience, which we were talking about during the break, Stephen, in Eastern Canada growing up as the only black person On this little island and pretty much got called the N-word every day and got beat up every school day.
00:16:26.000I related a story about being in a diner with friends one time and this drunk guy like an adult coming in and yelling at me about picking cotton and going back to where I came from, going back to Africa.
00:16:38.000And I was like 12 years old, you know?
00:17:12.000And then you have to take into account that Canada, most places, just doesn't have the same kind of color palette that we have in the United States.
00:17:18.000Like you said, you're the only black person.
00:17:46.000And French Canadians are the most racist people on the planet.
00:17:49.000Then they were trying to figure out how to get rid of Haitians.
00:17:53.000And now we have all these people, these Asian, damn it, we don't want them taking our business over, so we're going to give them a poll tax or something like that.
00:18:38.000But I'm just saying, compared to when people say the best singers of all time, Mariah Carey, Whitney, I'm like, no, none of them are close to Celine as far as hitting notes.
00:18:45.000You can cover up a lot with vocal gymnastics, and that's what Mariah Carey does, where she goes on this, but it's like, have you ever actually just held a note, Mariah?
00:18:53.000Yeah, Celine is a pro, and I know we're supposed to hate her because we got overloaded with Celine during the Titanic years, and I don't own any music by her, but she's definitely a pro.
00:19:29.000Of all the celebrities I've ever met, and I've met a lot of them because I worked as a stagehand at the Just for Laughs, and my mom was a costume designer before I ever performed there.
00:19:37.000John Candy was the kindest person I had ever met, and he died about two months after I met him.