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New Day
Former Miss Alabama on Dallas Shooting; CNN Money Now; D.L. Hughley Comments on the Racial Divide. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired July 13, 2016 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:30:00] JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Did he?
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Gentlemen, thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, he doesn't know. Jeffrey, come on.
CUOMO: Thank you - thank you. Oh, I know, it's time to go. Fellas, thank you very much. Appreciate it, as always.
All right, so let's take a little break here. When we come back, a former Alabama beauty queen, Kalyn Chapman James, is taking heat for comments she made in this FaceBook video after the Dallas attack. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KALYN CHAPMAN JAMES, FORMER MISS ALABAMA: I don't feel sad for the officers that lost their lives, and I know that that's really not my heart, but I can't help but feeling like the shooter was a martyr.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: She's going to join us live. She's going to explain why she said what she said, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEW DAY.
Kalyn Chapman James, the first African-American woman to be crowned Miss Alabama, right now taking heat for comments she posted on Facebook in this video after the Dallas police shooting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES: I'm dealing with a bit of guilt because - because I don't feel - I don't feel sad for the officers that lost their lives, and I know that that's really not my heart. I value - I value human life. And I want to feel sad for them, but I can't help but feeling like the shooter was a martyr.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[08:35:38] HARLOW: That video has since been taken down, and she has been placed on leave from her job. She says she's received death threats. So, she's with us now to talk about it. Kalyn Chapman James joins me.
Thank you for being with me this morning.
JAMES: Thank you, Poppy, for having me.
HARLOW: Out of the gate, let me ask you, what we just watched, that was a few days ago, that was Sunday after you left church, is that still how you feel today?
JAMES: You know, what people witnessed was a lot of emotions in progress and - and like I said in the video, guilt, confusion, and really a conflict about how I was feeling. And I processed those emotions and I think any person with a heart and a conscious has to realize that, you know, the death of those officers, and the death of the men who were shot, I mean, it's tragic. And it's senseless violence that affects all of us very deeply.
And a lot of people said, oh, you know, she did that for attention or, you know, she's spreading hate, but it wasn't about that at all. I think about Dr. Williams, the trauma surgeon, who treated the officers, who admitted that he had been so deeply affected by all of the things he'd witnessed in the media, and - and those - those - that -- the way I was affected was in direct conflict with my personal values. I do value human life. And since then I've had a chance to watch the memorial for the officers and I couldn't help but feel extremely sad when I watched the son of one of the officers draped over his father's casket. I mean I lost my father. I know what that feels like. I suffered and mourned with him.
And, honestly, the video was me trying to reconcile my feelings, trying to understand why I felt that way, and even asking for guidance. And I think people latched on to one word, and it's amazing that a world could watch the exact same video and get two totally different responses by latching on to one word that I really used in the context of a person dying for his beliefs, not my beliefs.
HARLOW: And that's what is so important here. And that's why this is such an important part of the debate. The word you're talking about is the word "martyr."
JAMES: Right.
HARLOW: And we heard the Dallas police chief, David Brown, say earlier this week, words matter. Words matter.
JAMES: They do.
HARLOW: And we heard the president yesterday talking about the equal value of all lives. Would you use the word martyr again today?
JAMES: Well, again, I wasn't saying that he's someone I celebrated, that I hold in high esteem. A martyr is truly and simply defined as a person who dies for their belief. And that's really all that I - that I - that's the context in which I used it. That's not belief. I would never support -
HARLOW: But - but you expressed sympathy - you expressed sympathy for him. That is part of the context as well.
JAMES: Right. It's complex being an African-American in America, watching people being gunned down. It doesn't mean that I don't value all human life, because I do. But I think that I've been, you know, more directly affected by the atrocities I've seen done against people of color, so I had to deal with that as an African-American woman.
And I do have to admit, while I, the test, the killing of those officers and the taking of innocent lives, I did, in a way, I understood what could drive the shooter to do something like that. I would never do it. I don't condone it. I don't consider him a hero. And I think it's really important for people to realize that I don't canonize him. I don't consider him a hero. I don't advocate the killing of innocent people, regardless of their color or their lifestyle.
HARLOW: What do you consider him?
JAMES: I consider him a killer. I consider him a frustrated, angry person who decided to take the law into his own hands. And if that continues to happen, our country will continue to deal with senseless violence that's absolutely unnecessary. And that's - it's really bigger than this video. What this is about is the way that all Americans are deeply affected by the senseless killing that they're witnessing on a daily basis. Some people are becoming desensitized, and that's - when I came out of church and I was grappling with my feelings and I prayed about it, you know, I realized, there's something really wrong here. I'm being desensitized because I know I would never feel, I would not ordinarily feel any sympathy for someone who decided to take a human life, and, you know, to kill police officers.
[08:40:03] I've said time and again, I have family members who are police officers. I respect what they do. I know how much they put their lives at risk, but I just had to deal with my own feelings. And that video was sent - it was posted on my personal FaceBook page to my friends, people that I know, know my heart and understood what I was grappling with. If I would - I never condoned what he did. I never celebrated what he did. I admitted on the video that what he did was wrong and that I'm against that. And, you know, it's really all I can do. People are who are racist and want to put their racist agenda, want to lock on to that word and villainize me, but that's not who I am. It really isn't.
HARLOW: Look, it's an important conversation to have. I do appreciate you coming on, talking about it with us and hearing that your thoughts are with all those families of those fallen officers.
Kalyn Chapman James, thank you.
JAMES: Absolutely.
HARLOW: Thank you.
Chris.
JAMES: Thank you.
CUOMO: People come up with a lot of wrong ideas in situations like this. We heard the presidents yesterday, Bush and Obama. Obama said we need to find the character to unify. President Bush said we need to remember our loyalty to humanity. How do we do that? How do we bridge this divide? We have comedian and political commentator D.L. Hughley. He has given some of the most powerful and emotional commentary on this situation to date. He's going to weigh in, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:45:22] HARLOW: Time for "CNN Money Now." CNN Money correspondent Alison Kosik joins us live this morning from the New York Stock Exchange.
Good morning, Alison.
ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.
Two days, two all-time highs. The Dow sitting at a record after a three-day winning streak. The S&P 500, it hit its all-time high Monday. And what a wild year it's been so far for stocks. Those big drops on those concerns about China, crashing oil prices and the Brexit vote, all now a distant memory.
The Nasdaq also hitting a significant mark. For the first time, it's positive for the year. The Dow and the S&P 500 are both up more than 5 percent. The Nasdaq, once again, also up a third of 1 percent. Great for your 401(k) because many funds reflect the major averages. So, if you just couldn't bear to look at your account, at your portfolio earlier in the year, Chris, I would say today is a pretty good day to go ahead and check your account.
Chris.
CUOMO: Pretty, pretty, pretty good day, says Alison Kosik.
KOSIK: Yes.
CUOMO: Thank you very much.
All right, so the last time D.L. Hughley was on the show, he got very emotional and for good reason. He was talking about his life as a black father and his concerns for his kids and what he's forced, he believes, to talk to his kids about. We've got D.L. Hughley back, and we're going to build on that and discuss his ongoing Twitter war with Rudy Giuliani. What matters in this conversation should matter to you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:50:27] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
D.L. HUGHLEY, COMEDIAN, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And I just do not understand, we love our children, we love our parents, our mothers, our fathers, they are brutalized, and nobody says anything. It's too much. It's too much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Emotional words from D.L. Hughley the last time he was on NEW DAY. They came after those two police shootings back to back in Baton Rouge and Minnesota. We want to talk with him again because the situation has grown. Radio talk show host D.L. Hughley, author of "Black Man, White House," is back with us.
D.L. HUGHLEY, COMEDIAN, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good to see you.
CUOMO: D.L., thank you for coming in.
HUGHLEY: I promise not to cry this morning.
CUOMO: Well, listen, let me tell you something, very often vulnerability is strength. And to show you feel in a situation like this is very powerful. Very powerful.
HUGHLEY: Not at my house, it wasn't, but OK.
CUOMO: Why? Why wasn't it?
HUGHLEY: It just - it does make you feel a bit - it was a bit - it was certainly something I didn't intend. And even getting up this morning and being asked to speak on the - to me, ultimately, no person can encapsulate, you know, like one black man with 33 million people, like, one black man, we - we're a race of people. We've got Barack Obama and Flavor Flav. So I don't think one guy can quite hit that note, but -
CUOMO: Well, let's talk about a more meaningful need for balance right now, which is, in the dialogue, there seems to be, I'm with the police.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: I respect the police.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: I believe in the police.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: Or, there's, these shootings are wrong. Black people are not policed the same way white people are and it's got to stop.
HUGHLEY: Right.
CUOMO: Why can't we see those as the same continuum of concern?
HUGHLEY: They're not - they're not binary. They're not mutually exclusive. I think -
CUOMO: But they're being treated that way. That's why I ask. HUGHLEY: Well, but here's the thing that's interesting. I think that
black people have always been brutalized by police in this country to a greater or lesser degree, even when nuclear families were together. Like before, the reasons have changed. Before you could get killed because you were looking somebody in the eyes and you were deems disrespectful. But there's always been a need in this country to make us feel maligned and to kind of justify the reasons that people can brutalize us.
To me, they're not mutually exclusive. I think that your biases and fears of police officers biases and fears should not been tantamount to me being able to be killed them (ph), to be killed by them or somebody getting angry and frustrated as the fact that what happened in Dallas is a license to kill police officers. That I think that humanity, when people die, is a sad thing for everybody.
But I think that you will want people to be sad (ph). I don't care. I value human life, whether it wears a blue uniform or has black skin. I don't think that that's the same. The first thing that happens when a young black man is killed is people instantly go on and check his criminal record as if that justifies what happened to him. When the boy fell in there with the gorilla, the first thing they did was check on that boy's father's criminal record. Tamir Rice, the 12 year old boy that got killed, the first thing they did was check on his father's criminal record, thereby trying to malign him to justify what happened to him.
CUOMO: And then what happens? Then you have a pendulum effect, right?
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: Because - so then you have the Mike Brown incident.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: That we all covered.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: And the officer winds up being acquitted.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: The -
HUGHLEY: Everybody winds up being acquitted.
CUOMO: The - well, that's not true. That's -
HUGHLEY: Well, not (INAUDIBLE) who got killed by the police officer.
CUOMO: That's right.
HUGHLEY: He got sentenced and still didn't serve one day in jail.
CUOMO: That - look, justice is certainly not a perfect system. It's supposed to be fairness under the law. It doesn't always work that way.
HUGHLEY: It hasn't (ph) worked that -
CUOMO: But the idea that nobody goes to jail, that's not true either.
HUGHLEY: But here's the thing, about 98 percent of people do not. We have - I can give you a litany of names where people have been killed and nobody has been brought to account to it. And I think that that doesn't happen. When you tell me all lives matter, if you show me a number of white kids or of non-black kids getting brutalized like that, I'd say the same thing, but no one can give me that kind of (INAUDIBLE).
CUOMO: There is - there is a danger in false parody.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: You're right. There's statistics going around now that, hey, did you know that more whites get shot by cops then blacks.
HUGHLEY: You know why?
CUOMO: You don't adjust for population. And there are a lot of other factors that go into it as well. In fact, I had one guy - I've been researching this like crazy because I'm trying to understand -
HUGHLEY: Right.
CUOMO: How I can be of value here. It can't stay this way.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: And I had a social scientist say to me, you know, this idea that blacks resist more than whites -
HUGHLEY: Right.
CUOMO: He's like, you know, I'm trying to put my hand on it. I don't think that's even true because blacks have such an odd disposition when it comes to police. They feel that they have to acquiesce in a way a lot of whites done. They feel they can have conversations and pressure.
HUGHLEY: Let me say something. Yes, more white people get shot by black - by police than black people. About 120 more.
CUOMO: Right.
HUGHLEY: But there are 120 million more whites.
CUOMO: That's right.
HUGHLEY: If you adjusted it for -
[08:55:03] CUOMO: Sure.
HUGHLEY: For percent.
CUOMO: It's not even close.
HUGHLEY: We are five times more likely to be shot.
CUOMO: Right, five times more likely.
HUGHLEY: You know what happens? That racism and bigotry have great PR. They have great PR. People throw out statistics like that, that they know aren't true but people will believe it because they want to. The fact that black people are five times more likely to be shot than white people. Black on black crime. More white people commit crimes than black people. It is true. Even if you adjust it for population, more white people commit crime than black people. But when you say black on black crime, that gives you the incentive to go out there and do something about it. It gives you a call for action. Now we have an immediate situation that has to be dealt with. And when we repeat those things, it gives it - it gives it breath.
CUOMO: You also have a situation where what happens in the immediate sense often context gets lost. Why do you have more blacks coming into contact with police where it turns violent? So you start looking at the numbers. Well, where are these police?
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: Well, what's going on in those neighborhoods? Now, you can stop your analysis right there and say, they're high-crime, poor, black areas. Feel for the police, they have to do the job. But why are they high crime areas? Where's the education?
HUGHLEY: Right.
CUOMO: Where's the - this is complex, and I often feel that the reason that people don't have an open mind is, we don't want to go there. We don't want to go to the real reasons.
HUGHLEY: Absolutely.
CUOMO: Let's just end it with this one guy and this one cop and leave the analysis. But do you think that's the right way to do it?
HUGHLEY: Obviously it hasn't - it hasn't served us well. Like if you look at Tamir Rice. Tamir Rice was a 13-year-old kid playing with a toy gun, right?
CUOMO: Yes.
HUGHLEY: The police officer that shot him was employed by the Independence Police Department and fired because he was out of the academy - because he was such a bad police officer, they thought that no amount of training would ever make him a reasonable officer. Then they put that very officer, nine months later, in Cleveland, and he killed someone. And society - and we all know this. We all know this happened. And he's let off? And it's not his fault? You cannot tell me all lives matter when someone's treated distinctly different. I can mourn for police officers that got slain and I can mourn for two young black men that were slain. There's no - I don't have a moral dilemma in that - in it.
CUOMO: I think that all lives matter is a perversion of what makes black lives matter special.
HUGHLEY: Sure. Sure.
CUOMO: There is an obvious inequity. Everybody knows that. The reasons for it need to be debated.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: How you fix it needs to be prayed for.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: But there's an obvious parody. My question to you is, I want to leave with us on this. One, I want your promise to continue this conversation. Two, I want you to give me your best sense of how can we get better from where we are?
HUGHLEY: It - it is a simple - you know, everybody asks that question. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I watched the movie, "A Time to Kill," and at the end there he made this great analysis and he said, if she were white, she - he made that equivalent to her being white. People are treated different. Bias - police officers have fears and biases. That - there's no doubt about that. And that's based on any number of things. But if your fears and biases get me killed and my anger and frustration get you killed, we're going to - as humans, we are no less or more human. Every time you turn around, somebody is making a moral reason why someone's slain in the streets. And if - it's an abhorrent behavior and it would be abhorrent if I see a young black man slaughter five police officers or whether you see police officers slayed by a black man. When Rudy Giuliani says that Black Lives Matter are terrorists, like (INAUDIBLE), let me tell you something, I don't think all black people are all anything or all white people all anything. But to be castigated with the same breath that they did Micha Johnson would be equivalent to me telling you that all white people think like Dylan Roof. And that would be deeply offensive. And to allow somebody to say that on air and to go unchallenged saying that on air, because a lot of people support -
CUOMO: Not here.
HUGHLEY: No, no, a lot of people want that narrative because it edifies their perspective.
CUOMO: Well, when it comes from someone like Rudy Giuliani, do you think that - and I've been watching the Twitter war -
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: People can go online and see it for themselves.
HUGHLEY: Sure. CUOMO: But do you think that he was trying to make a more innocuous point? That he was trying to say -
HUGHLEY: I think he's a -
CUOMO: Have love of humanity.
HUGHLEY: I think that there was nothing loving about that situation (ph). I think he was a brutal mayor who had a - basically a reign of terror of black people in this county, in the city. To me, taking parenting advice from Rudy Giuliani is like Kim Kardashian giving me marriage advice. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculous when you have a person who has said some of the most heinous things that ever happened to black people in this - in the history of this country, and to say something like that, every time somebody says something about injustice, they are the terrorist. My - MLK would be considered a terrorist. Gandhi was a terrorist. Mandela was a terrorist. And all they were trying to do was fight for legal - for justice. And to me, to have an old - when old white men tell black men how to act, it's like - that's the most ridiculous thing in the world. Like he'll tell you how you - how you - to - to have - to tell black people to speak a certain way and act an certain way is no different than telling a woman how to dress so she doesn't get raped.
CUOMO: Bush said yesterday, we need to remember our loyalty to humanity.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: Obama said we have to have the character to find unity.
HUGHLEY: Sure.
CUOMO: D.L. Hughley, I feel you're doing both of those things.
HUGHLEY: Thank you. All right, thank you.
CUOMO: Thank you for being here to continue the conversation.
HUGHLEY: Thank you. I will, indeed. Thank you.
CUOMO: Our coverage continues as well. Let's get right now to "NEWSROOM" with Ana Cabrera, in for Carol Costello.
Ana.
