WEBVTT

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- Trump seems to be, he has a problem

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with black people right now, it seems,

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and so many African Americans are nervous

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and they're wondering,
where are our leaders?

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They seem to abandon us.
That's what we feel like.

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But is that true? What is going on

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- As it relates to black leaders?

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I think that when we
think of black leadership,

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we think back to the
civil rights movement,

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and this may be the closest
that some of us have ever been

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to a civil rights movement.

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I wasn't born during that time,

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but Lord knows, it feels
like the Jim Crow laws

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are all coming back.

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It seems as if they wanna make sure that

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I have more encumbrances

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to upward mobility than say
somebody else who just happens

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to lack the amount of melanin that I have.

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And so I think we were used to the photos

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of Martin Luther King kind
of leading everybody, right?

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And, and we know that we had
other amazing figures like the

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John Lewises of the world.

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We know that Rosa did her own movement.

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We know that there was always somebody,

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we had all these amazing leaders.

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And I think people are
looking for that visual again,

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because that's really the
only thing that we know.

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But the reality is that a lot

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of this has been decentralized.

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We have a lot of amazing leaders,

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and I think that people are allowed

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to kind of say, you know what?

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Well, my lane is with the church, right?

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Like my pastor is one

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of those amazing leaders, Freddie Haynes.

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And so some people are
like, you know what?

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I'm gonna rock with the church folk.

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I'm do what they're doing, right?

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We know that Pastor Jamal
Bryant has been very vocal

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as well, and he's been leading the

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charge on saying, you know what?

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Don't spend your money at
these particular stores.

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He has been very vocal.

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So there are people that
are like, you know what?

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I'm gonna take my
leadership from the church.

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Then there's other people that are like,

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we're the political leaders.

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Because back then we
weren't really in position

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like we are, right?

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I'm still only the 55th black woman

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to ever be sworn into the
United States Congress.

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So we didn't really have like
black leadership at the table.

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And I think that most people are

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like, well, you at the table.

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So you need to be the ones
that kind of lead this charge,

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because all of the drama

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that we're experiencing is coming from

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that table that you sitting at.

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So holler at us, right?

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But I think that there were
definitely people that signed up

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to go to Congress

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or go into elected office on
whatever level they're on,

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and they signed up literally
just to do the service.

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They didn't sign up because
they were activists.

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They didn't sign up because
they knew how to be activists.

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They signed up because they
wanted to legislate in some way.

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And I think that saying that just

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because somebody may be a great lawmaker,

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they are also a great leader

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or also a great activist is
kind of where we go wrong.

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I think that you have
people that have a more

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of a natural inclination to be able

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to be the chameleons that you see.

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So some of the people that
you see on the forefront,

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if you look at their background,

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they probably were already engaged

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to a certain extent in
this type of advocacy

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before they ever got to Congress.

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And that's why it's easier
for them to kind of pivot

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because they're used to kind
of being on the front line.