your critiques are objective. i think with tavis spending three years chasing down the president, unlike anything i ve ever seen before, i don t think that he can say he s an objective evaluator of the obama administration. at the end of the day you talk about the black agenda, there are three key areas we have to focus on, education, economics, mass incarceration in the criminal justice system. we don t understand. they re all connected. you don t educate these kids, put them out here without job, effectively they re more likely to go to prison. that is undermining the integrity of the black family. black women don t have men to marry because they re all locked away in the american prison system. i think president obama understands that. i hope he does. we have to hold america accountable to make sure our issues are on the table. this next block, we re going to talk about exactly this problem within the black community. i want to have you talk about this in response, reverend. in th
first area to tackle the president has so much on his plate and all those issues you chronicled of being challenging to the black community. where is the first place to start? you have to start with jobs. right now, we talk about the american unemployment rate at about 9.7%. the black unemployment rate is 17.3%. the black male unemployment rate is 19.5%. but does some of that stem from lack of education, the high school dropout rate, people that aren t getting the education to get those jobs? yeah. don t you even need to take a step backwards and get back to the beginning to get to education? you have to take a lot of steps in a lot of different directions. what the president needs to address right now to protect his presidency, he has to address jobs. i ve been saying that about the last six months while we spent all our time talking about health care. once you stabilize the economy, you ve got to attack the education system. when you ve got black boys being four to five t
among some african-american leaders. does president obama need a so-called black agenda? the topic started when tv talk show host travis smiley criticized the reverend al sharpton for saying the president didn t need to have a black agenda. sharpton let him have it when smiley called into the sharpton radio show. i don t think the president needs a black agenda. that does not mean that the president does not need to deal with the black agenda. the president does not need to get out there and do what we need to be doing. saying the president should not value a black agenda does not say that the president should be held to a black agenda. don t talk to us like we stupid, tavis. smiley plans a discussion on march 20th in chicago called we count:the black agenda is the american agenda. he invited al sharpton, who joins me now, along with
education than the white kids and you ve got all these kids that aren t graduating, these kids going to schools that don t have the same resources as the schools in the suburbs, that s a problem. that is jim crowe in the flesh. take the next step, mr. eric holder, you ve got to realize we ve got modern-day slavery in the prison system. the united states incorporates excuse me, they incarcerate more of its citizens than any country in the world, most of those citizens are african-americans. that leads to the deterioration of the black family because all these kids are growing up without their fathers. when you marginalize these men once they ve been released from prison, you re further adding to the marnlalization. so, economics, education and incarceration all equal together. that s what i m saying. you ask for one thing to focus on and the fact is that it s all tied together. nothing wrong with your answer. it s all good. reverend al sharpton and boyce watt k watkins, thank you.