brutality. high profile race iraq s, cambridge, trayvon and michael brown. the facts weren t in at the time. he has a vice president that said we re going to put y all back in chains. and eric holder says we re a nation of cowards on race. how do you put all that together? it s very hard to have racial healing when you have people picking at the scab all the time nonstop. you mentioned the comments were made. eric holder was in ferguson a couple days before the decision by the grand jury. and he brought up the case of emmett till who was killed by the kkk, brutalized, mutilated. whatever he may think about the michael brown case, he is not emmett till. you ve got democrats in north carolina basically implying if you voted against kay hagan and kay hagan lost her senate race, which she did, black people would be lynched. leticia james saying that the republican ran for governor reminded her of bull connor, the guy who took german shepherds and fire hoses and used them to attack civi
we disagree on that. and wrong on sending three white house representatives to the funeral of michael brown who fought for a cop s gun. we disagree on that, sean. who fought for a cop s gun. we disagree on that, sean. joe biden saying we ll put you all back in chains, wrong not to confront eric holder to say that we re a nation of cowards on race because none of that is true. i will confront the president when he s wrong i ll confront him. we should confront him hen we think he is wrong. but we disagree on this, my friend, on those issues. i still love you even though you re a pain in my neck. i still love you too. we started our careers together. but we disagree a lot. we did. i ll get you right one of these days, sean. you invite louis farrakhan to your conferences here you go with farrakhan again. i m out of here. a anti-semite and a racist. good night, sean. god bless you. you ought to apologize to america. i ll give you one last chance. ap
have gotten better. meanwhile, the widow of eric garner has come out saying that she does not believe that race was to blame for her husband s death. watch this. i feel that he was murdered unjustly. i feel like i don t even feel like it s a black and white thing, honestly. you know, in my opinion. i really don t feel like it s a black and white thing. i feel like it s just something that he continued to do and the police knew. you know? they knew. it wasn t like it was a shock. they knew. here with reaction to this and much more, author of death of a king, the real story of dr. martin luther king. tavis smiley is back with us. tavis, how are you? good to see you. hey, sean. good to see you. do you have any evidence you can present to this audience at all that either ferguson or eric garner s death was rooted in any way, shape, manner or form is rooted in racism? anything you can present on that or that you believe?
three things. number one, race is still the most intractable issue in this country. i didn t ask you that. i m answering the way i choose to answer. racism is still the most intractable issue in this country. it s a part of everything we do still. number two, too often black men, i know this personally even as a host on national television, as black men too often we re seen as the boogy man and the presumption of guilt is always made toward us as opposed to being presumed innocent. number two, and number three, the clip you played earlier from mayor de blasio is right. when too many parents in this country in 2014 still have to have the talk with their black sons for how to save and protect their own lives, something is amiss, sean. two very different cases. you still haven t answered my question. i just did. wait a minute. there are protests, tavis, going on all across the country. people saying hands up, don t shoot, i can t breathe. two very different cases. i m asking d
and you haven t given our audience one specific thing in this case or either case, have you? i was not in ferguson with mr. brown, nor was i in new york with mr. garner. what i can tell you is that for fifty years of my life i ve been black every one of those years and i know what it s like to try to navigate life in this country i m not doubting that. as an american man. i am particularly angry at the eric garner death. if you listen to the rest of ms. garner s there s cigarette man oh, there is cigarette man, et cetera. which tells me this is about a city and a state obsessed with getting every penny they can out of the high tax cigarettes that they have in new york, is six bucks a pack. but that s a different case. he should not have died this man. he shouldn t have been confronted. he shouldn t have been known by the police. that s right. that to me is more fundamental than and a lot of your arguments i would agree with. but there s no race examples here. in this