An Interview with Roland Martin

CNY Vision's Jill Bradway recently interviewed the popular journalist and CNN contributor, Roland Martin. Below is a transcript of her interview. (Roland also hosts a show on TV One called "Washington Watch". It airs locally on Sundays at 11am.)

What sparked your career in journalism and did you consider other career options?
I've been doing this since I was 13-14 years old. I haven't changed. We had a radio station and newspaper in high school. I've been doing it since then. It's clear this is what I have always been destined to do.

Do you have any political aspirations?
Folks have approached me to run for any variety of offices, but I operate from the concept in terms of what is God's will for your life? And my gifting is immediate. The reality is everyone is not meant to be in politics; and everyone is not meant to be doing media. I had a guy who emailed me the other day who said he wanted to go into ministry and I had to explain to him that being in ministry does not necessarily mean you are pastor of a church. There are people doing ministry work in other areas. You have to decide what area you should be doing it in. So no, the opportunities have been there, but that's not what I'm here for.

What was your first job after graduating from Texas A&M?
Austin American Statesman. I was a neighborhood reporter in Austin and did that for about 5 ort6 months before they named me county government reporter. I started there about ten days after I graduated from college.

And how did you end up at CNN?
I've spent 17 in the business and been in Austin and Fort Worth. I've run black newspapers in Houston, Dallas Chicago -

You've actually been the publisher of a newspaper.
I was publishing a paper in Dallas. It's a combination of stuff in terms of making the transition from print to broadcast and then to online, and so all of those experiences position you later for what I do on TVOne and CNN. I want to make it clear; I actually was on TVOne before I was on CNN. I always do my commentaries on TVOne a couple days before we even sign the deal with CNN. So the first opportunity to get paid for what I did came from TVOne.

Having won more than 30 professional awards for journalistic excellence, do you have any advice for someone interested in pursuing a career in journalism?
I think the importance of a work ethic goes beyond just being in journalism. There are people who are enamored with the idea of being on television; they are enamored with the idea of being in the public eye. But there is a work ethic that is involved. There is a level of commitment. There is a level of sacrifice and a lot of people don't want to actually do all of that. I think the same thing applies to whether you work on an oil rig, whether you are a blue collar worker, whether you are working as a doctor - it's the same thing in media - that is you have to have a work ethic to actually succeed.

Be the best at whatever you are.
Simply do the best that YOU can do. There is always somebody who is more talented. There is always somebody who it comes natural to them. But if you study the people who have been most effective, they have tremendous work ethic. We sit here as a society and we laud athletes and we laud entertainers, but if you go behind that curtain, you'll see they are working on their game 24/7 - they are always looking to be the best, refining every aspect of their life and I think that is the most important thing - it is the work ethic.

Last year you received your masters degree In Christian Communications (2008) from Louisiana Baptist, which is a conservative evangelical institution?
Um, no. I wouldn't label it as a conservative institution.

Evangelical?
Yeah, I mean obviously - Louisiana Baptist - but let's deal with that. Evangelical does not mean conservative. African Americans are evangelical. At the end of the day when you talk in terms of who are people of faith? We rate higher actually than whites. The polling on that is very clear. If you go to black (neighborhoods) you swill definitely see more black churches than liquor stores. That's the mistake people make, that evangelical means conservative. Evangelical means 'a believer' - that's what it is.

Okay. So do you consider yourself an evangelical?
Yeah - I'm a person of faith. Absolutely. Evangelical is a term that is often used in a political realm as opposed to in a theological one. That always happens. Typically when you hear on television that this is what evangelicals think, they are largely talking about white social conservatives, oftentimes not even including African Americans. That's why you see, even in the last election; you get people who said that it's time to take back evangelical from the political movement, because it has nothing to do with politics.

Well, taking that concept, has evangelical been perhaps co-opted by the white evangelical movement?
No, not co-opted by the white evangelical movement, co-opted by the Religious Right. There's a difference, because there are white evangelicals who are progressive. And that was a political calculation. If you study the civil rights movement, that was a movement led largely by preachers - they were evangelicals. Abernathy, king, Young, Shuttlesworth - they were all ministers. They were all evangelical. But there were leading a different type of movement.

What is your response when Right Wing evangelicals compare President Obama to Hitler or demonize him in other ways?
Well, first you have to understand what the intent is, and the intent - whether you talk about the right demonizing president Obama or the left demonizing president bush - is to cast aspersions on that particular individual. I don't get involved in those silly little arguments because they are ridiculous. Whether it's president Obama or whether it's President Bush. So you have to understand in terms of what the calculation there is. What has to happen, individuals who are evangelical, who are people of faith, have to be willing to challenge those who have a different ideology from them on those issues. During the election Tony Perkins from the Family Research council and I were debating and he made a comment dealing with Reverend (Jeremiah) Wright. He said the purpose of a pastor is to influence people sitting in the pulpit. I said no - Jesus gave the responsibility to pastors to save souls. I said, so you need to get clear what the priority or objective of a pastor is. So he had to back up from there. Typically people who are progressive, who are moderate - they will not have that kind of conversation because they are not well versed in the bible. They don't know what they're even talking about. And so I can provide push back because I understand what the faith sector is all about. So you look at what happened in Alabama with Governor Bob Riley - he wanted to change the tax code in Alabama. He used Jesus as the model - because in Alabama, they begin to tax you at 4600 dollars. He said this is ridiculous - he said we should not be taxing even that low. Business community was with him in changing the tax code. He used Jesus as the model - who were his most ardent critics? This is a guy who was a social conservative - a white evangelical - his biggest critics were fellow white evangelicals. So therefore, they called themselves evangelical, they called themselves conservative, but they chose to vote more along their political ideology versus their faith. People who say they see everything through their faith prism - abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage - when in fact, when it comes to other issues, their money is more important to them than their faith is.

Is President Obama assailed for things that he would not be if he wasn't African American? And is there a segment in this country that seems to want him to fail?
And? I mean I don't think anybody black is shocked. Have things changed? Yes. His mere election does not mean that racism left. This whole notion of a post racial society is ridiculous. When you have six black kids in Chicago who are stopped from going into a bar that was actually rented out by 200 students, they let the white kids in - the black kids didn't... when you have a black kid who changed jeans with a white kid, the white kid put on the baggier jeans, the black kid put on the less baggier jeans the white kids still got in. that was two weeks ago. So the whole notion that somehow we've moved beyond race is ridiculous. I mean has it changed? Yes. But we have not completely got there - absolutely not.

In light of these and other questions, what do you feel is the real significance of the presidency of Barack Obama?
Like any other president, his job is to lead the country. I can separate the symbolic nature of his presidency from the practical nature of his presidency. He still has to make commander in chief decisions. He has to decide whether we're going to send troops into Iraq. He has to decide in terms of how we are going to utilize government funding. He has to make decisions in terms of how we are going to deal with the environment, so his job is no different than that of the 43 white guys who preceded him. It is still to be president of the United States, leader of the free world. None of that has changed. Certainly the dynamic is different because of the historical nature, but at the end of the day, a job is a job. So therefore he has to be accountable to the same standards.

So you don't feel he's being held to a different standard?
It's the same standard. The standard for being president is you gotta follow through. You have to achieve victory. You have to pass legislation. Same standard.

And what do you feel African Americans are most concerned about today?
Same as white folks. You can say the economy is number one - jobs, dealing with unemployment. It's the exact same thing. There's no difference between the issues that white Americans care about and black Americans care about. When you're broke, you're broke. When you don't have money and resources, you don't have money and resources.

So if our concerns are the same as white people, then why is a Roland Martin there to provide the African American's perspective?
Actually, I'm not there to provide the African American perspective. I'm there to provide a prospective through the prism from which I exist. I see the world in a different way. And so, because I am African American, because I have worked in the black press, how I view the issues is different from somebody who is white, who grew up in suburban or rural or America. It's a different perspective. You want people to bring all these different perspectives. Secondly, there is no such thing as an African American experience. There are different African American Experiences. There are African Americans who grew up in the city, those who grew up in rural America, those who are middle class, those who are lower class, and those who frankly come from rich homes. All of that encompasses the black experience. The black experience is someone who sits on a farm in Mississippi, as well as the person who goes to Martha's Vineyard every summer. And so all those are experiences. I only bring my particular experiences to the table. But I can also articulate issues - when you talk about how African Americans view the economy it is different. So although that is issue number one, when you begin to delve deeper, then it goes into what kind of jobs, what is the skill set, what is the educational level - all that brings to bear. So our issues are the same. But the emphasis is also different. We see workplace discrimination differently from somebody who is white. Women see workplace sexism issues differently from how men see it. White men, black men, Hispanic men. And so everybody has a different emphasis on the same issues. For some people, they say this is more important, other people say that is more important, all in the same area.

You mentioned your personal health care experience. It sounds like it was a nightmare.
Well, I wouldn't call it a nightmare. It's just the reality of people in this country, and that is - you're sitting here and all of a sudden you get sick and things change. All of a sudden you're in the hospital having surgery, and then all of a sudden the bills come due. People go through it every single day. Seventy-nine percent of the people who file bankruptcy do so largely because of health care issues. That's to be expected. So it's recognized in the reality of this country. That's why when people begin to hear those stories; it puts a personal face on those issues. You cannot talk about health care reform in the abstract. You have to look at it from the perspective of what people are dealing with every day.

So health care obviously is a hot topic for you as well as other Americans, what are some of the other areas of concern for you?
I think one of the most fundamental areas of concern for Americans is education. We actually pay lip service to it. When I was on Air force One, I asked the president his Number one issue and I said for me it's education, he said "That IS it." If you look at all the critical issues that are there, they're all tied in with education. But out of all the papers I've run, the worst response I've received in terms of selling papers is when education has been on the cover. I can't say for African American's that education is the priority number one, but then we don't show up to the PTA meetings. That is a different focus. You can't say that education is a priority focus, but then won't mandate that your kids read when they come home. Or I'm going to allow them to watch more television as opposed to reading or writing. That has to be our fundamental priority. You're not going to change the economic condition of black America unless you change what is happening with education. You're not going to be able to change the prison industrial complex unless you change what is happening when it comes to education. So all of the ills that we talk about go back to that central issue and that is education and I think that as a cover over that, fundamentally, is the breakdown in the black family structure. when you have a two-parent household, a man and a woman raising a child, child born in wedlock - that child has a greater opportunity to actually get an education, get a high paying job, live a different life than the person who doesn't. Those two go hand in hand. We can sit here all day and talk about police brutality, we can talk about drugs, we can talk about crime; we can talk about all those different things. But if we do not confront the reality of a breakdown in the black family structure and then follow up with the breakdown in education, none of that stuff matters.

As you approach all of the issues, how does your faith impact?
Same thing. Faith drives the black family structure. So we have to be willing to speak to it in that way. Challenge people to understand that we cannot accept certain things. If you speak publicly about kids being born out of wedlock and being raised by single mothers, black people get naturally defense. "Don't you dare criticize single mothers." You're not criticizing single mothers - you're just making it perfectly clear it was not destined for you to raise a kid by yourself. I don't care how great of a single mother you are, it is not a model way of raising a child - sorry! Okay, People may not like it, but they gotta get the hell over it. That's just a reality. If you look at it financially, it is not a model way of raising a child. So you look at it through a faith prism. I wrote a blog and I said no pastor should have any baby dedication unless he's made an effort to talk to the father of that child. And the sisters got all up in arms about it. I'm like: "What the hell are you getting upset about?" the point I'm making is very simple. Somebody has to have a conversation at the outset of that kid's life with the father about responsibility especially if that individual is not married to the woman who had the baby. We have gotten it confused. We now act as if a critical analysis of a breakdown in the family is an assault on the child, is an assault on the mother. It is not. It is an assault on how we now view it. And so black people used to look upon it unfavorably if the kid is out of wedlock. Was the kid raised? Yes. But you didn't see us throwing baby showers and parties. It has changed. Values have changed. The focus has changed.

One last question: 69 million people voted for Obama. Do you think black people were voting for something different than white Americans?
Yeah. First of all, Americans were largely rejecting Republicans and their leadership for a variety of reasons, the economy, and the war - take your pick. But clearly, you had African Americans - some who voted for Barack Obama because they wanted to see a black president. But if you look at the stats, 92% of African Americans voted for John Kerry in 2004. 95% voted for Senator Barack Obama. It's not like there's a huge difference. 92% voted for bill Clinton, voted for al gore - that's how we voted. But the turnout made a difference, so the intensity was there. But again, his victory was a rejection of 8 years of republican rule. That also was driving it. So when you had independents, and democrats and republicans voting for Obama, that was the primary factor.

So what did we say "Yes we can" to? Do you know?
Well, first of all, he laid it out there, a different vision, and a different way of operating. What was appealing to folks who had to deal with the war? What was appealing in terms of how we used the government resources. All of those different messages played a role in terms of how people reacted to the candidacy.

So why are his numbers falling in the polls, if he is doing what he said he was going to do?
Because that's the reality of politics. All the people say their sick of crime, but when you actually get police action, they say "oh, that's too much." It's a natural human function. Then you also have people reacting to a lack of information. You have people who believe a source, not realizing that that source is lying to them.

Why does it seem that the mainstream media refers to Obama as Mister Obama?
I've heard black folks do it. Same thing happens. At the end of the day, he's the president.