welcome to this edition of "our world with black enterprise." i'm mark lamont hill. this week, on the road with talented songwriter ne-yo, and an epidemic with deadly consequences. that's what's going on in "our world" right now. captions made possible by the u.s. department of education and central city productions, inc. r&b sensation ne-yo is riding the wave of his fourth successful album. in this all-access interview, he

shares why he's mixing things up and what's in his future that fans will love. welcome. congratulations are in order. not too long ago you had a little baby girl. right? >> yeah, yeah. child, madeleine grace. she's probably asleep, but, yeah, i'm a proud papa. >> another birth of sorts, a new album. >> yes. >> tell me about it. >> based off a short story i wrote of the same name. and the story beckons the question, if you had to choose between love versus money, power, and fame, which way would the scales tip for you as a person? ♪ >> did you see yourself ending up here when you started off? >> you know what, i knew that i was going to do music.

i didn't know in what way. i didn't know whether it would be writing for people or doing something myself. i just knew from age 9 that it was going to be music. i've always been annoyingly optimistic person, even in the situation where no food in the house or whatever the case may be, i don't know how i'm going to pay this bill, whatever the case may be, i always fell like it's temporary. because once the music thing happens, everything is going to be all right. sure enough, it worked. >> that's a beautiful thing. what got you into this? >> my mom. just -- my mom is my hero. still to this day she's my absolute hero. anything that she was into i was into. her love for music just kind of, you know, poured over to me. i remember my mom gave me michael jackson's "off the wall" and stevie wonder. she said study these two and the way they use their instrument to get more comfortable with your own. so sure enough, that's where it

came from. >> it sounds like michael jackson was played a lot in your house. >> oh, yeah. >> judging by your music, your whole aesthetic. it seems michael jackson had a big influence. >> yeah. >> how important has michael jackson been to your career? >> i can almost say that there would be no ne-yo if not for michael jackson. you know, michael jackson kind of set the blueprint for what it is to be, you know, a serious artist. ♪ >> and towards the latter part of michael jackson's life, you had the opportunity to work with him and write for him. >> yeah. we were in the process of -- i was submitting songs to michael. i got a chance to meet him, which was surreal. >> i have to ask you, because that's the biggest question. what's it like to meet michael jackson? >> his first words to me was, do you know what your favorite song of mine was? time just kind of stopped and i, like, stepped outside of myself and said michael jackson has a

favorite song of mine. i'm, like, what is it? he told me it was "go on girl" off my second album. ♪ >> he sang a piece of it. >> oh, my god. >> and i would have fainted. were i less of a man, i might have fainted. >> michael jackson. michael jackson, muhammad ali, there's a few people you can faint and as a man be good. >> i was, like, you sound good singing that. what? what did you just say? it was one of those things. >> when you write songs, one of the most amazing things about you as a songwriter is you don't just put ne-yo voice and ne-yo feelings into somebody else's mouth. when i hear you writing for rihanna and beyonce, you know, and i hear songs, you know, how

do you make that happen? how do you make that from shifting from writing to to writing for somebody else? >> to be completely honest, i really don't know. like people ask me how do i write for women so well. >> yeah. that's what i'm saying to you. >> i really don't, to be honest with you. like any song that i've ever written for a woman, i basically have taken feelings that i felt before as a man and just reversed it. >> some of that stuff isn't just you thinking like a woman. some of that stuff a woman has told you before, right? >> oh, yeah. >> that ain't you thinking -- that's somebody saying -- >> actually, "take a bow" is a story about something that happened to me personally. >> really. >> "take a bow," it was a song about a relationship that one of my aunts went through. out to my mother, my grandmother, my sister and about five aunts. i was there for every new boyfriend, every ex-boyfriend, oh, girl, i think i love him, i

can't stand him, every broken window and slashed tire, i was there. taking it all in. >> outside of all this music stuff and the family stuff, you also are committed to changing the world in a different way. you have a nonprofit. >> compound foundation. definitely a personal passion of mine. just bringing awareness to child welfare, you know what i mean? the forgotten children as people call them, the kids in the welfare system, foster home, foster care, group homes, things of that nature. >> you aef've done movies, albums, writing songs. what's next? >> more willing, more. i feel like where entertainment is at right now from movies to music, we're in a stupid standstill kind of thing, you know, where it's like there's no -- there's no intelligent entertainment out there. i just feel like entertainment as a whole is in a place where nobody's really trying, you know so, in five years hopefully i'll be part of, you know -- part of

what changes that. >> i have no doubt that you'll be successful at everything you undertake because you have been so far. >> thank you, sir. >> you're passionate and can go as far as you want to. >> appreciate it. >> thank you so much for spending time with us. >> not a problem. back to bullying. that's our "on the record" discussion. >> kids ant parents don't understand the power that they yield -- they wield when they get onto the net and start talking about other people. dad, where does breakfast come from? mom...? umm...in a far away land there is... the kingdom of breakfast. every morning giants go on a long journey and make a delivery to some breakfast wizards. they use magic wands to turn everything hot & tasty... and before you know it, you've got a hot and delicious breakfast. so -- where did i come from?... [ male announcer ] the simple joy of a real breakfast. ♪ waç

a reported 25% of american students are bullied at least once a day. what are schools, parents, and the community doing to stop this crisis? joining me to discuss this, assistant secretary of education for civil rights who represents president obama's new campaign to stop bullying, psychologist jeff gardere, contributor to healthguru.com and will mena stone, who lost her teenage son to suicide. thank you all for joining me. russell, i want to talk with you. you know, this conversation about bullying is being, you know, distributed throughout the media right now. what exactly is bullying? when people talk about bullying, what are they talking about? >> well, there's no federal definition of bullying. it's state specific. but when bullying rises to the level of harassment, when students can not enjoy going to school, when they are hampered from learning, there is a really

serious problem. >> and what are some of the signs that we have of bullying, and how do we know if our child is being bullied? >> remarkably what we find out sometimes and quite often, actually, a lot of our children don't talk about the bullying. they feel ashamed. so we do have to look for some of the subtle signs. and one of the biggest signs, of course, is if all of a sudden they lose interest in going to school. and of course the most obvious sign is if they're being physically bullied that they will have marks, then that's a real indication that something very insidious is going on on the school grounds. and that's where we see a lot of the bullying taking place. >> tell me about this initiative that president obama has regarding bullying. what exactly is it and what's the goal of it? >> it's interagency. it's spans the federal government. and the u.s. department of education, we commit millions of dollars, $410 million, to safe schools in an attempt to try to help educators deal with this problem. we've also recently released guidance out of the office for civil rights reminding educators in schools and school districts,

colleges and universities across the country that when bullying rises to the level of a harassing environment, the school itself, adults become responsible or the school could risk losing federal funds. too many educators and adults in the country shrug it off as if it's a rite of passage. the unspeakable tragedies over the past several months, what miss stone has been through with what happened to her son, tells us that this myth that it's a rite of passage, we need to flip that. we all have a challenge in this country to cure this crisis. >> and that's why it's so important, marc, that the schools step in because statistics have shown when schools do programs, do assemblies, we see that the incidents of bullying actually go down because it is about educating and letting them know that you're right that, yes, we do see it as a rite of passage but it is the wrong behavior to prove one's manhood or womanhood in a school setting.

>> so many people, you know, think of bullying in a kind of abstract sense. you know, they hear the stories but they don't have a face or a name to it. you know, one of the things that you've experienced in your own life was your son who was bullied. what exactly happened, and what was that like? >> well, what happened in his case, joshua was his name, joshua jordan stone, he was 15 years old, and it had been going on for some time, even throughout elementary school, and he just couldn't take any more. there was physical abuse in the school, in the hallways, in the classroom. there was name-calling. there was calling the home, our home at night at odd hours. there was just an array of different things. >> and you made attempts to deal with this. right? i mean, you talked to the school. >> yes. i talked --

>> what kind of response did you get? >> well, administrators said that they would take care of it, that they would talk with his social worker, for instance, who had knowledge of the situation. but they never interreacted. and therefore, the system failed us. >> i mean, this story, which obviously is sad and unnecessary, seems to be a common occurrence and seems to be something that we hear more about, that the system failed. i mean, what do we do to stop the system from failing? what can the system do to deal with this? >> well, we certainly have a lot to learn. the president is utterly committed to this. >> we've got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal rite of passage, that's some inevitable part of growing up. it's not. we have an obligation to ensure that schools are safe for all of our kids. >> we are -- the white house will be hosting a conference

early next year so that we can learn the tools, the best practices so that we can help educators and parents and communities deal with this problem. certainly it's about professional development so that educators and administrators can spot bullying and harassment when they see it, prevent it and do something about it. it's also about enforcing the civil rights laws so that they understand that this perceived rite of passage is actually illegal according to our federal civil rights laws and education. it's about transforming communities so that students become more tolerant of one another and themselves, and it's about ensuring that our schools are safe havens for learning. kids can't learn if they don't feel safe. >> isn't that the key, though? it has to be prophylactic. you don't wait for it to happen and then have to react because sometimes the systems do fail. that happens. but you have to get in there and educate kids about tolerance, about love, about acceptance, and if they feel that they must say something to another student or that they have some beef to work out, that there should be

proper conflict resolution instead of harassing or cyber bullying, which is so powerful and has destroyed so many lives. >> i'm glad you bring up this point of cyber bullying, as well, because in the 21st century, it seems bullying has taken on a whole range of forms from intimidation to cyber bullying. the internet becomes another space for bullying. how do we pay attention to those? how do we keep track of all these new forms of bullying? it seems harder and harder to keep track of it all. >> well, the law needs to catch up with the technology. social media, technology has outpaced. no one could have expected what could happen when what starts off as a rumor gets sent around the world. >> and that's a great point because psychologically we haven't caught up. it is a culture shock. kids and parents don't understand the power that they yield, the power they wield when

they get onto the net and start talking about other people. >> wilhelmena, one of the issues that he was navigating around in school was sexual identity. he was beginning to question and other students identified that and that was part of the harassment, correct? >> that's correct. >> do you think the response would have been different if your son had been identified as a traditional straight male? >> i think so. i think so. as a matter of fact, i was encouraging josh to cut his hair, and it was not easy for him. one of the things i regret was let him be the person that he is, and that should be good enough. >> that's right. and you did the positive thing. and this is what we need to do as parents because we know that there is a statistic that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning children are four times more likely to commit suicide versus heterosexual children, and that's without the harassment. so when you throw the harassment in, those children are at risk, and the thing that we need to do

is to be there for them every step of the way, for all of our children, for gay, lesbian, bisexual children and so on. i think sometimes there is a prejudice, they say, oh, well, the kid's gay, let the community deal with it. >> particularly around issues of civil rights. >> that's right. >> even as an african-american community, we often think about civil rights only as black people. >> right. >> but even if we're talking about black people, some black people are gay, some are lesbians, transgender, if they're being harassed not on the basis of race but on the basis of their gender or their sexual identity, it should -- >> it's more complicated than that. we don't hold jurisdiction over the case of sexual orientation. >> they're not considered protected. >> not in the same way that race is. >> if your child is being harassed for sexual identity, you can't file a civil rights -- >> well, yes, you can, because as in the case of wilhelmena's tragedy and so many across the country, students aren't bullied or harassed because they are

gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, they're bullied because they're not adhering to traditional gender roles. therein lies a very important distinction according to civil rights laws that said when they are harassed, because they aren't conforming to what we see as male behavior or traditional female behavior and it rises to the level of a hostile environment, it very may well violate the civil rights laws. >> that's important insight. the parents know not only is this a deep problem but there are concrete solutions and steps they can take to make all of this better. we'll be right back with some final thoughts. >> calling a spade a spade. >> hmm. >> saying that it's wrong and having the adults and community members come around to stop it.

not everyone who gets meningitis...dies. the infection spread so fast. (overlapping voices) preteens a teens should get vaccined against meningoccaningis, a rare but serious disse. healthials aren'thonly voices rommendinit he ouratvoicesofningig for a day when even vehicles quit smoking. we're fighting for clear skies over every city. the american lung association isn't just fighting for air. we're fighting for all the things that make it worth breathing. join us in the fight at fightingforair.org.

try cortizone 10 intensive healing. the strongest itch relief medicine now has three vitamins and seven moisturizers. feel the heal. back with our panelists. the topic is bullying. you've had a chance to talk to other parents going through what you went through, give them some advice, a way to get involved

with this issue of bullying. >> first of all, fight for their children and their safety. a school should be a safe haven for our children. secondly, talk to administrators, the pta. we've all got to get involved. it's not something that's just going to pass by us. it escalates and the worst possibility, the worst scenario is bullying turns into suicide which the new term is bullycide. >> i used to teach high school. whenever i would call a parent, they would say, not my child. what about the kids that are bullies, what do we do about that? >> we need to spot bullying, confront it. we all have a responsibility to ensure bullies aren't empowered. we don't feed that anger that

breeds violence or in the case a tragic suicide. calling a spayde a spade, havin community members step in. >> what is that bullying about? yes, it can be your child. we found out that kids who are bullying later on become bullies themselves. so it's interchangeable. but there's an emotional component there especially for the child who bullies. we need to find out what's happening at home that our child is now expressing these aggressive behaviors. is it depression, anxiety, are there other things going on where the child may be smoking or precocious sexually. it's more of an emotional issue and has to be addressed. >> certainly finding the root cause is important but we can't endorse it. we have to punish it and discipline it paragra.

>> thank you for your time. we'll be right back.

assistant secretary, mr. jeff gardere, miss stone, thank you for being here. don't forget to visit us at "our world with black enterprise." i'm marc lamont. check me out on twitter. thank you for watching "our check me out on twitter. thank you for watching "our world with black enterprise." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com look for the healing seal. gold bond medicated lotion. stop itching. start healing. get selsun blue for itchy dry scalp. strong itch-fighters target scalp itch while 5 moisturizers leave hair healthy. selsun blue.