NV Magazine, Oct/Nov. 2000

Today is Tavis Smiley’s thirty-sixth birthday. He is padding around a Washington DC hotel suite, tie loosened, shoes off. And he is visibly tired — it is 2.00pm and well over 12 hours into his day. But this is the wired sleepiness of a man who has something on his mind. Even now, there are innumerable things that he’d like to say. And it is these often controversial, fast-flowing ideas that have made him an icon, a staple on media lists from Time’s 1994 “50 for the future,” to People’s most eligible bachelors.

Smiley is best known as the host of BET Tonight and as a regular guest on “The Tom Joyner Morning Show.” He is an advocate, with coups that range from halting Christie’s auction of slave memorabilia, to temporarily reinstating Fox’s “Living Single” after it was canceled. Smiley’s call to action generates amazing response. In fact, his birthday began with an on-air town hall meeting on Tom Joyner’s show, an appeal to African Americans to register to vote. And in just two days, well over 10,000 people did just that.

Smiley’s role as buppie pundit makes him an ideal candidate to discuss the future of black America. But despite his obvious convictions, he says that he is no way qualified to play prophet. “Despite the reach and appeal I might have,” he says, “it’s not like the black community meets at my house after church on Sunday and gives me the script for the week. I’m just one brother with one voice and I never get caught up in thinking that I represent any more than that.”

Nevertheless, he indulges us with talk of economics and politics, of a need to jolt the system and the coming of a 21st century Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr. And while he speaks of the hope that the so-called hip hop generation holds, he also explains why he can still say that “there are no good times to be black in America.”

“ I don’t know that my ideas are that vastly different from the majority of African Americans. What makes me unique is that I have a chance to be heard on radio, TV and in print, and there’s no other young brother in the country who’s doing what I’m doing on a daily basis. So I’m uniquely positioned in that regard, but I don’t think my position is unique. What allows me to be as effective as I am is the combination of 60 million households on BET, 7 million listeners in 110 markets on radio, five books, and a wonderful opportunity to be heard on lecture circuits around the country. Over the past few years I’ve seen the development of my voice, and I will always be humbled by the response to what we share in those mediums.

Back in the day there was one issue: the passage of civil rights legislature. Everybody seemed to vote the same way. Now there are many more issues. Today, the struggle for civil rights has become a struggle for “silver” rights, but you can’t fight one without fighting the other.
I think young people understand if not the civil rights, then the silver rights, because everyone wants to be paid. But we have to start recycling black dollars, we have to spend money with our own. More important, black folk have got to stop spending money they don’t have to buy stuff they don’t need to impress folk they don’t even like. We have to stop blaming the white man, the system, for 98 percent of our problems while we give them 98 percent of our money. You do the math, it just doesn’t add up.

Black families have to start planning an economic future. We have to challenge the government to do what they can to shrink this economic gap. The thing that opened this gap was slavery and we keep talking about reparations. Reparations would be a start, and yes, I think it’ll happen. But when I say reparations I don’t mean 40 acres and a mule. I’m talking about what America owes to black families for years of labor, and that should come through education vouchers, job training or something of the sort.”

When Smiley talks, it is with the careful consideration of a politician. But he is honest, enthusiastic, and his speech is peppered with an urban vernacular that gives him a “guy next door” appeal. He quotes catch phrases and lines from famous black leaders, verbatim. And like an African elder, he sometimes speaks in parables.

Smiley tells the story of the lion and the gazelle, the hunter and the hunted. Each wakes up with an inherent will to survive, a need to stay one step ahead of the other in order to live. It is a metaphor for life in 21st century America. “Whether you are a lion or a gazelle, when you get up in the morning you better get to running,” he says. “You’ve got to keep moving.”

“I predict that we better get our act together. I predict that we will wake up sooner or later if not because we see the light, then because we feel the heat, because the heat is on! As Frederick Douglass said, ‘power concedes nothing without demand.’ People don’t give up power easily and we have to be prepared to agitate, agitate, agitate! That’s what my books are about — agitating! That’s what my talk show’s about — agitating! You have to agitate for what you want.

We have to continue to beat the drums. We have to continue to convince people that they control their own destiny. And we as a people need to have the will to say and do things that aren’t always popular. We have to raise those issues on the American agenda that we know are important for our survival. As Dr. King said, ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’

We can conquer social issues as long as we have the will to make it happen. The only difference between other communities and ours is that other folk don’t tolerate this nonsense and we do. The Jews for instance would not tolerate anybody putting a swastika on a flag anywhere, and yet a confederate swastika flies on a flag because we let it. We tolerate this proliferation of private prisons in this country, where white folk own the prisons, and black folk are the inmates.

I get the sense that after years of being abused and misused, we’re not keeping the faith. We’re a proud people but because of the mistreatment we’ve faced, we’re questioning our self-worth. Some of us, too many of us, expect too much from other people. And a lot of the challenges that we’re facing in our community — black on black crime for example — are all a result of lack of self respect, a lack of self love if you will. There’s too much hopelessness, so much so that too many people don’t feel that their voice being heard makes a difference. And that’s the work that I’m doing in my commentary, convincing people that through the results of their actions they can make a difference.”

Smiley’s life is driven by what he calls the three Es: “enlightenment, encouragement and empowerment.” Right now, he is in a place where he can best achieve those goals. He dismisses talk of entering politics, though he did run an unsuccessful campaign for a Los Angeles City Council seat in 1990. But his response is noncommittal: “I don’t know 10 years from now what the best vehicle will be for me to continue my mission,” he says, not quite shutting the door on a political career.

Politics is Smiley’s first love. The right to vote is perhaps the most valuable weapon in the fight for equality, and one might expect that this die hard liberal would, without question, endorse Al Gore. But the question of Gore versus Bush appears to be less a clear-cut choice, and more a selection of the lesser of two evils. According to Smiley, the presidential election poses an interesting political problem for African Americans.

“The question here is not whether or not Gore is better than Bush on black issues, it’s also, ‘is he better than Clinton?’ We can only hope that the next guy is going to better than the last. But Clinton was a rare breed. He was born poor and he grew up poor. He had to work his way up to where he is now. He appreciates the black struggle because he’s had to endure some of the same things. Bill Clinton knows every single verse to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” There are a lot of black people who don’t know the first one, and Clinton knows all four, word for word.

Al Gore is the son of a senator, he is a son of privilege. No doubt, Gore will be markedly better than Bush, but it’s unlikely that he’ll be better than Clinton and that’s what our future hangs on. The next president will appoint members of the Supreme Court and Bush said that he favors Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. And he puts people to death! At least Gore is more liberal. If Bush wins, I can tell you, we’re going backwards.”

Smiley never looks more than a year ahead. Life offers too many blind curves and unexpected opportunities to focus too far down the road. He only signs one-year contracts, and his birthday is cause for reflection, to tally tasks completed and set goals for the upcoming year. He is scheduled to launch a syndicated daytime talk show in early 2001 and jokes: “Oprah and Montel got to move out the way and make room for a brother in daytime!”

The added publicity will likely add to his pop star status, but the fame can at times be trying. Smiley’s life is about struggle. It is about hope. And he does not want his work to be trivialized by what he calls “the Hollywoodization of Tavis Smiley.”

Time’s “50 for the Future” article said of Smiley: “In the wildly popular and largely conservative medium of talk radio, a young man unafraid to take on the white establishment would not seem to have a promising future.” The opposite has proven true. Smiley’s unabashed rebelliousness has focused the spotlight not only on himself, but on a need for change. And it is perhaps this disconcerting pronunciation of truth that has prompted a look at the future of race in America, at issues that we as a nation might sooner ignore.

“I see myself as an advocate and I care passionately about these issues, but more and more the line between my being an advocate and my being a personality is becoming blurred. Marian Wright Edelman once said: ‘Service is the price we pay for the space we occupy,’ and that’s what is important to me. I am here to use my God given gifts to be of service to people, though my shows and through the Tavis Smiley Foundation to empower youth.

I say all the time, there are no good times to be black in America, and some times are worse than others. We are politically, economically and socially disenfranchised, and there are still forces fighting our growth. So as long as you’re black you are going to be engaged in a struggle and you might as well fall in love with it. But I believe in this younger generation, the hip hop generation. This is the most culturally and racially mixed group ever and they have been brought up in a world where they understand and appreciate diversity. And struggle is cyclical. Every few generations we have someone who’s willing to struggle, to make some sacrifices, and sooner or later we’re going to have people willing to make some serious sacrifices to advance an African American agenda. We won’t catch up in my lifetime, but we’re well on our way.”