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CNN NEWSROOM

Charles Barkley Interview; Reaction to Barkley's Statements

Aired December 3, 2014 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Wolf, thank you so much.

Hi, everyone. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We will get to my interview with Charles Barkley in just a minute. The whole thing. You have all been talking about it today.

But first, the news of the day. Michael Brown's stepfather admits his outburst about burning this bleep down was wrong. And it turns out he's not the only one accused of making inflammatory Local law enforcement officials are frustrated with Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson for revealing that Brown's stepdad is under investigation in the first place. One official said this about Chief Jackson, quote, "we wish he would just shut up."

Those law enforcement sources also say that Brown's stepfather, Louis Head, will not likely be charged with inciting riots since it will be tough to link the chaos in Ferguson Monday when that grand jury decision was made public, to his blowup. "The New York Times" did record it. You've seen the video. Michael Brown's mother had just broken down, learning the officer who shot and killed her son would not be indicted. Head, her husband since May, then embraced her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Burn this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) down! Burn this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) down! Burn this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) down!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Mr Head, there in the green, has since released a statement. I want to read the entire thing for you. He said this, quote, "something came over me as I watched and listened to my wife, the mother of Michael Brown, Jr., react to the gut-wrenching news that the cop who killed her son wouldn't be charged with a crime." He goes on. "My emotions admittedly got the best of me. This is my family. I was so angry and full of raw emotions as so many others were and granted I screamed out words that I shouldn't have screamed in the heat of the moment. It was wrong and I humbly apologize to all of those who read my pain and anger as a true desire for what I want for our community. But to place blame solely on me for the conditions of our community and country after the grand jury decision goes way too far and is as wrong as the decision itself. To declare a state of emergency and send a message of war and not peace before a grand jury decision was also announced is also wrong. In the end, I've lived in this community for a long time. The last thing I truly wanted was to see it go up in flames. In spite of my frustration, it really hurt to see that. Now it's time to rebuild. If we are to honor Michael Brown's memory, we need to work together to make rebuilding happen. I plan to remain here and do my part in earnest and in truth."

If you have been online or watching CNN at all today, you have probably seen parts of my interview with NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley. His explosive comments about the Michael Brown shooting getting quite the reaction. You heard him say the grand jury got it right. You heard him defend all cops, call the Ferguson looters scumbags and even say not all racial profiling is wrong. But that is just the beginning. And over the next hour, you're going to hear the complete interview, along with instant analysis right here starting with this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Michael Brown's stepdad is being investigated for saying eight different times "burn this b down" the night the grand jury decision was made public. And he's being investigated for inciting a riot. Do you think that is fair? Should police be pursuing that?

CHARLES BARKLEY, FORMER NBA PLAYER: No, I think under the circumstances I mean this has just been an awful incident for everybody. And I just think that, that just clouds the discussion. You know, one (INAUDIBLE) this entire situation, it's just so much noise going on, you never get to the crux of the issue you need to be discussing. So, no, I don't think they should peruse charges against him.

BALDWIN: Do you think that a parent or a step parent has a little leeway in situations like this? An active, raw emotion.

BARKLEY: No, I just - no, I think he - somebody died. Somebody's kid died. There are obviously going to be great anger, animosity. So I think you have to look at the big picture. This wouldn't be a situation where - they should let that go.

BALDWIN: What about all the walkouts and all the protests and you've definitely caught some -

BARKLEY: Yes.

BALDWIN: You know, slack for calling some people --

BARKLEY: I haven't caught any slack. Number one, I haven't gotten any slack. I don't do social media.

BALDWIN: I know you don't.

BARKLEY: And I don't sit around and watch what everybody think about me. I have no --

BALDWIN: The scumbag comment, respond to that.

BARKLEY: Yes, when you're looting people's property, that's what you are. That's against the law. It's not your property. You wouldn't want people to do it to your house. You know, you need to go back to the stepdad. He don't - he didn't want people to burn down his house. So it's all just a bunch of noise at this point. But anybody who walks out peacefully, who protests peacefully, that's what this country was built on. I have no problem with that whatsoever. But to be burning people's property, burning police cars, looting people's stores, that's 100 percent ridiculous.

BALDWIN: Do you think that we would be seeing all of that had this been a black police officer? Had Darren Wilson been black and all the facts remaining the same, we would still have a slain 18-year-old, would the outrage be there?

BARKLEY: No, because we have a racial issue in this country. We've always had a racial issue in this country. And the biggest problem with it is, we never discuss race until something bad happens. We never have meaningful dialogue over a cold beer when things are going good. But what happens is, everybody that -- when something bad happens, everybody has a tribe mentality. Everybody want to protect their own tribe, whether they're right or wrong. Let me repeat that, whether they're right or wrong, everybody want to protect their tribe. So we never discuss race when everybody's in a mood.

BALDWIN: What do you mean when they're right or wrong? Are you saying the people who aren't reading all the facts in the grand jury testimony?

BARKLEY: Well, like - well, no. Well, no. Like, yes - I'm going back to even when I saw a lot of my people, my people, going crazy when O.J. Simpson got off for killing those people. That was ridiculous. Not (ph) interesting in a judgment or a no jury in that situation. Two innocent people had gotten killed. And so everybody wants to protect their tribe.

But this is just an awful situation. But I think two things. I think, number one, I'm going to always be my own person when it come to race. I'm going to judge every single person on their own merits. I don't look at white, black, female, Jewish, Hispanic. I'm going to judge - because we've all got bad characters in our group. We all got bad characters. So my grandmother taught me, you judge everybody on their own individual merit. You don't care what any other jackass has to say. You don't put everybody together. Black is not always right and white is not always wrong.

You go back to the Civil Rights movement. How many white folks got - died. We know about the ones in Mississippi. We know about the water (ph) thing (ph). There's always been a white and black fight. Even this thing in Ferguson, I saw just as many whites marching as I did blacks. But people just want a discussion. And then you've got some bad apples who are taking advantage of the situation. That's the point (ph). You've got - and that's unfortunately because this is a serious - somebody lost a child. And this is something we need to sit back and discuss and figure out what happened, what went wrong. But let me say this, the notion that white cops are out there just killing black people, that's ridiculous. It's just flat out ridiculous and I challenge any black person to try to make that point. This notion that cops - cops are actually awesome. You know, they're

the only thing in the ghetto from -- between this place being the wild, wild west. So this notion that cops are out there just killing black men, it's ridiculous. And I hate that narrative coming out of this entire situation.

BALDWIN: How do we fix that? Does that stem from something?

BARKLEY: Well, it's a lot of things. Number one, some black people are committing crimes. So, you know, nobody wants to look at that narrative. You know, there is profiling. We need to take a look at racial profiling. But the truth of the matter is, a lot of blacks in some of these neighborhoods are committing crimes and we ask the cops to come in and clean it up. And then if something goes wrong, we turn against the cops. And that's 100 percent unfair. And we, as black people, we got to do a much better job ourselves. You know, we don't hold each other accountable. We don't demand respect and higher standards from each other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That was just the beginning. I asked Charles Barkley then whether the rioting would have happened had there been an indictment of Darren Wilson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARKLEY: And the thing that bothers me the most, Brooke, is, the notion that all these people are standing here saying, if they indict him, they were already going to riot.

BALDWIN: No matter if there was an indictment or not?

BARKLEY: No question. They - because your mind does not go from, let me sit here and listen and let me go and just start burning up police cars and tearing down buildings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Indictment, no indictment, Charles Barkley says people would have gone crazy no matter what. Hear more of what he had to say after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

And we're back with more of my interview with NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley. You have already seen some of the headlines about his stance on the shooting of Michael Brown, the way the grand jury decided. But Charles Barkley also sounds off on online activism, about race bating and his critics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We're a society, we're on Twitter, where we just have the attention span for 140 characters.

BARKLEY: Yes.

BALDWIN: Not everyone, but a lot of people.

BARKLEY: Yes.

BALDWIN: We read the headlines, we don't read the second paragraph. A lot of people had their minds made up on this story long before they heard and read the facts and the testimony.

BARKLEY: Yes.

BALDWIN: I know a no to the core, it upsets a lot of people, but do you think that's part of the problem?

BARKLEY: Oh, it's definitely part of the problem. One of the reasons I will never ever do any social media, you've got too many people out there who are just not good people who have an opinion on everything and they have a hidden agenda. That's why - and I don't feel the need to talk to those people at all.

Listen, I didn't make any comment on Ferguson until I read the grand jury testimony. And something obviously went wrong. You know, I feel bad for the young kids, mom and dad. But all we got to go on, we - and the thing that bothers me the most, Brooke, is, the notion that all these people are standing here saying, if they indict him, they were already going to riot.

BALDWIN: No matter if there was an indictment or not?

BARKLEY: No question. They - because your mind does not go from -- let me sit her and listen to let me go and just start burning up police cars and tearing down buildings. That's - that just doesn't happen. That's like - that's not a normal mentality. Nobody says seriously (ph) and there's nobody can tell me any different, the notion that these people are sitting here, let me listen to the cops. If they indict --

BALDWIN: They would have all gone home. That's what you're saying, there's no way.

BARKLEY: Yes - no, you think that?

BALDWIN: No, I'm saying you're saying there's no way they would have gone home.

BARKLEY: I'm saying that, are you thinking that? They were already ready to be evil. Because they -- I just don't think in your heart you can say, if they indict this cop, everything is good. Until you go, let's turn - let's burn down these buildings and set these police cars on fire. That's just a bad mentality.

BALDWIN: Let me take it a step farther.

BARKLEY: Sure. BALDWIN: What if there had been a lot of these people, Michael Brown's family, a lot of supporters, a lot of - a lot of people saying, let the -- they wish there had been due process. They wish that the evidence had been presented in a trial fashion. And then had this officer been acquitted -

BARKLEY: Yes.

BALDWIN: Just as he was not indicted but the whole process happened -

BARKLEY: Yes. Sure.

BALDWIN: Do you think we would be seeing exactly what we're seeing today or no?

BARKLEY: Well, I don't know the answer to that question. I don't like dealing in hypothetical. Listen, the process did play out. Just because you don't get the results you wanted, that doesn't give you the right to destroy people's property. I mean it did play out. I mean it didn't play out the way they wanted it to. That should be your question. It's just a really unfortunate situation.

And there are so many bad characters who are involved now. We lost -- it's hard to get back to the point, the narrative. You know, we need to be cops - we need to be friends with the cops. They're the last line of defense. And like I say, I'm bothered that all these race baiters, white and back, race baiters, white and black, are muddying the water. And this -- like I say, I want to make clear, the notion that cops are out there killing black men, I just think that's ridiculous. And let me tell you something, I'm not worried about what people think about me. I do - I've always known, as a black man, any time you disagree with black people, you're an Uncle Tom or a sellout. Every black man knows that.

BALDWIN: People called you an Uncle Tom because of those comments you made on the radio in Philadelphia.

BARKLEY: Well, I've known that for 51 years. Any time you disagree with black people, you're an Uncle Tom or a sellout. That's the way it works. That's why I've always said, we'll never be successful as a people because we don't respect each other. They can't just disagree with me. They got to call me names.

I mean think about that. The notion that me and you had a disagreement and I just started calling you names. And I could say, hey, Brooke, we just disagree. But, unfortunately, in the black community, any time you disagree with somebody that's black, you're an Uncle Tom or a sellout. Every black guy knows that. Pretty much -- I'm pretty sure every black woman knows that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Stay with me. Much more from Charles Barkley, including his words for President Obama. Should the president go to Ferguson? How does he feel about civil rights leaders? Certain civil rights leaders who show up at a lot of these high profile cases. But first, we want to talk about this. My Twitter is blowing up and

I'm grateful for all of you for reaching out and opining. We also have these three people standing by. This panel to discuss what we have heard so far, their thoughts. We'll get candid, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You've been watching my interview with Charles Barkley, the former NBA player, slamming Ferguson looters, those who he say were breaking the law, setting fire to businesses and cars, looting them, calling them scumbags for stealing the narrative surrounding the shooting death of Michael Brown. His heart, as he pointed out multiple times in our interview, goes out to the family.

But he has a lot of thoughts. So let's talk about some of what we've heard thus far. Here with me now, cultural critic and writer Michaela Angela Davis, editor in chief with globalgrind.com (ph) Michael Skolnik. He's also the political director for Russell Simmons. And from St. Louis, Kevin Jackson. He is executive director of The Black Sphere, LLC and president of the Black Conservative Coalition.

So thank you to all of you for joining me.

Just to start touching on some of what Charles was saying to me, I think one of the points he kept trying to drive home over and over, and first to you, Michaela, is that a lot of people just had made up their mind, based upon initial notions of what they thought had happened in Ferguson that day in August, and people jumped to the conclusion, didn't wait until the grand jury decided, didn't read the testimony, didn't look at the forensics and the autopsy, as Charles said he has, and he agrees with the grand jury decision. Do you think that much of our society is guilty for not looking at the picture in totality?

MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, CULTURAL CRITIC/WRITER: Well, I think - I mean Ferguson is a very specific experience, right, and I think Charles was all over the place on a lot of the issues. But what's frustrating sometimes is we have these very simplistic, kind of reflections on really complicated experiences. This is a community that has been isolated and occupied and in a kind of state of tension and terror for a long time. And so when you have events like this, this is a reaction to generations of tensions, right? And also that, you know, MLK said that riot was the language of the unheard. So what you're seeing is not out of a vacuum that people just blow up and they're irrational and they're only, you know, responding to pieces of information. They're responding to generations of oppression. That's what we're seeing. And when we don't look at it in its complexity, we really fall short of really getting to the core of how we can start to heal.

BALDWIN: Kevin, I'm hearing - you're shaking your head with listening to Michaela. What are you thinking?

KEVIN JACKSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE BLACK SPHERE, LLC: Total academic nonsense. It is a simple answer. It was a total miscarriage of justice on behalf of Darren Wilson. Nobody is talking about him. We talk about all the issues that are plaguing black society that go back generations. None of this goes back generations. These are things that are happening today. The only part of this is that it's been happening for a few decades and we've ignored it.

And Charles Barkley couldn't be more spot on and he's going to get called names, I get called names, because we want to really solve problems in the black community. But you get people like Michaela who talk about this stuff as if it's some esoteric issue. It is happening today because we are not - we don't have good fathers raising these kids, we have latchkey kids being raised by - many times by single mothers or a completely despaired - familiar patterns and we look at the cops to blame. The cops are not coming to black neighborhoods looking to shoot people like Michael Brown. And Charles Barkley could not be more - I mean he nailed it.

BALDWIN: Michael, I want to hear from you. Did you want to respond to that? I - either of you.

DAVIS: Please do, Michael.

BALDWIN: Either of you.

DAVIS: All over the place.

MICHAEL SKOLNIK, POLITICAL DIRECTOR FOR RUSSELL SIMMONS: They let that young man sit on the pavement for four and a half hours. Young people showed up that first night, Mr. Barkley, in peaceful protest and they showed up with dogs. The next night with MRAPs (ph) and big guns.

JACKSON: Here we go.

SKOLNIK: Yes, here I go, sir. Yes, here I go.

BALDWIN: And all those young people, what about - what about - what about the looters, though?

SKOLNIK: So the response -

BALDWIN: Let me just push back on you a little bit.

SKOLNIK: Yes.

BALDWIN: Because I hear you.

SKOLNIK: Yes.

BALDWIN: And we even heard Michael Brown's family say, yes, protest, but protest peacefully and a lot of people did. But then you had the people with nefarious intentions. And Charles Barkley called them scumbags and caught a lot of flak for that. Would you agree that they're (INAUDIBLE) off?

SKOLNIK: They're - we would never - we would never ever condone looting or arson. None of that.

BALDWIN: Right. SKOLNIK: That goes without saying. But thousands of young people, not just in Ferguson, around the country, have exercised -- we are protectors of the Constitution -- have exercised their First Amendment right to peacefully protest. Thousands of them. That night, when folks were burning down some of those stores on West Florissant, there were young people trying to stop them. Folks on my staff were there trying to stop them. So this notion, this narrative that you try to paint of protesters, American citizens, exercising their constitutional right to peacefully assemble and protest is wrong.

JACKSON: Oh, brother. I'm not painting - I'm not painting any narrative.

DAVIS: Well, it's not - (INAUDIBLE) that we can't - we can't avoid -

BALDWIN: Hang on, hang on, Kevin.

Go ahead, Michaela.

DAVIS: We can't avoid history. And that's what's so frustrating about these simplistic kind of it's right or wrong and this is one thing that happened when you don't take in totality what has happened to that community. There was this -- a young man, who's 20 years old now, they said he had been harassed by police in Ferguson since he was six years old. So this is -- these are compounded issues. So, again, it gets very frustrating when you start bringing black mothers and all of these distractions when we're talking about what happened in Ferguson. You know, we have to keep bringing it back to what we're talking about and --

SKOLNIK: Well -

BALDWIN: I don't think this is - I don't think this is simple at all, by the way.

DAVIS: Not at all.

BALDWIN: This is not an easy - and that's why we're still obviously having such a tough time with it.

JACKSON: Well, the -

SKOLNIK: Michael Brown - Michael Brown had a mother and father. Trayvon Martin had a mother and father. Jordan Davis (ph) had a mother and father. Let us not have distractions. It's single mothers or it's their fault.

DAVIS: Exactly.

SKOLNIK: They had parents who were there.

BALDWIN: Kevin, respond to that.

JACKSON: The distractions - the distractions are when you start talking about the way it was handled. If you want to say, hey, listen, things were mishandled, he should -- his body shouldn't have laid there, things like that, those can be valid points. But the thing that led to Michael Brown's death is -- are Michael Brown's actions. And all of the reactions that have come since then, you can try to separate the good from bad, do it all you want. The fact of the matter is, it's the bad that's being highlighted. And it's the bad because as a town that is 70 percent black that is an amazing little town is being depicted as the south side of Chicago and it's very much not like that.

And the idea that it's the cops' fault, that somehow he did something wrong when a man only did his job and his job was to stop a thug and everybody wants to make it something different, that's when you start getting into the minutia. Look, it is simple. When - and you can talk about the Constitution and all these other things that the other gentleman is talking about, but it's very simple as to what happened in this town, it's very simple with the reaction. There are many black folks all over America and a lot of Americans who are embarrassed that a town would be depicted like this over an issue like this and we want to complicate it by bringing in cop elements and race elements that don't need to be brought in.

BALDWIN: OK. OK. I want you all to respond to that, but I also want to hear a little bit more of what Charles said and then we'll marinate on that in just a moment.

Michaela, Kevin and Michael, so stay with me. I want to talk a little bit more about this, including Charles Barkley's comments on race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARKLEY: We, as black people, we got a lot of crooks. We can't just wait until something like this happen. We have to look at ourself in the mirror. There's a reason they racially profile us at times. Sometimes it's wrong, but sometimes it's right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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