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hey, i'm alicia keyes and you're watching "our world with black enterprise." stay tuned for my interview, next.

welcome back to "our world with black enterprise." for more than a decade, alicia keyes has entertained the world with her soulful voice. now she's taking on a new role as producer and composer of the new broadway play, "six lives." let's take a look. >> that wasn't much at all to do. >> jack and jill? >> jack and jill. >> my people weren't so as customed to jack and jill. ák a? >> no, ain't going to happen. >> thank you for having me. "stick fight" is a amazing. i dwru up in new york city, born and raised. and one of the things my mother did early is take me to the theater and it's something i fell in love with as a very young girl. it just takes you to a whole other place, a whole other world. it's magical. so here comes "stick fly" in my world. it's about an incredible black family on martha's vineyard and

how families unravel. their vulnerabilities and how things come out and secrets come out that happen in every family. how you deal with that and get past what's going on in each person's life and how to help each other. it's family and it's so powerful to me. so i fell in love with it. >> what is this, some sort of test? playing in the big league? >> that's ridiculous. is that what that is about? have you lost your mind? this is upper middle class. >> nothing was solid. >> you had an entree. >> entree, what? >> you're not just producing, you wrote the music for it as well? >> correct. it's really cool, it's a brand-new thing for me, totally, totally new and it's not a musical. "stick fly" is a transition, it takes you from one scene to the next, it evolves with the piece as you're growing with it. so it's a cool combination for

me to explore what i want to do through the music to bring the people through this piece. >> it's a whole different process i would imagine than normally doing what you do when you write? >> there's something about doing something for a first time that i have no constraints on my brain. it's like what can i do to make this the most incredible that i can make this. >> you also recently directed something for "lifetime" right? >> this particular story is how breast cancer affects five different women. >> you didn't think we were going to leave, did you? >> so it was a different director for each five story and that's why it was called "five." like the directing process, i totally fell in love with it. >> you've also in the midst of making all of this, building this empire and making great music and you've managed to fall in love and have a family. >> it's incredible. i feel so super-blessed and >& ihe oect of your y happy. life, you seem to have

blossomed. it's been ten years now, right? over the ten years you've gone from being the girl with the braids, who was comfortable but not fully blossomed yet. now you're a rock star, a philanthropist, you're everything. how did it all happen? >> i think it's natural with time. you get more -- comfortable with how i am as a woman. and i realize more, you know -- that doesn't work so much for me. i'm cool there. this really works well for me. or you know, it's a strange world to be just like thrust into, boom. i was 18, 19 and it's like boom, here you go, good luck. so -- so -- you know, i just over time, you know, fortunately, thank god with the right people around me, definitely heavily based in spirituality, just learning and growing like we all are. and then you figure it out a little bit better. i'm still figuring it out. each time it gets a little better. >> you have one of the probably

most famous songs in new york history. "empire state." did you see that coming? >> no, no. you know what, with music, i don't know, some people are like, they try to like, this is the hit. this is the that. i never, ever do that. i feel like that is instant jinx, don't even do it. with "empire" that was i think a shock to everybody. nobody expected that to just go so global. you know, it was one thing for it to be big in new york or the east coast. but the global like way that people just responded. >> i think that's a natural spot. >> i'm at yankees games, which i don't like to watch. i was at yankees games and they're playing that instead of frank sinatra. that's next-level stuff. >> we're proud. >> one of the things that people admire about you, is not just that you make great people and inspire people, but you roll up your sleeves and do work through your philanthropy and nonprofits. >> go do your part.

join me. >> thank you for caring, also and thank you for bringing it up. yes, that's a big deal in my life. we provide medicine for children and families who have aids and can't afford it. and we do orphan care and surrounding care as well. helping to train doctors and nurses and provide food and things like that and shelter, places that people can go clinics as well. it's definitely full service, and it's grown so much and we'll been able to serve 250,000 people so far. it really grounds me and it means a lot to me because it's not just, it's like real stuff. you know what i mean? it's powerful. but it just opens my eyes. we're also airing a documentary, which is the last time i went back. i brought five americans with me. who had never left america before and definitely never had gone to africa. and to see kind of everything that keep a child alive does. >> when you first started this,

did you think you would be here? >> no. >> be honest? >> i parade for it. you know what i mean? i wished for it, i dreamed about it, you know what i mean? but i didn't even know what "here" was, where is that? where could you possibly go. and each day is kind of like that for me. where else can you go. there's so many things to do. there's so many ways you can get better and learn more, you know what i mean? every day is like where can we possibly go? >> we're honored and happy to have you with us, thank you for spending sometime with us, alicia. >> you're welcome. >> stay right there, we'll be right back. coming up, has the concept of being black changed? >> when you talk about exclusive racism binds us, universally. but -- >> no, i did not say anything universally. ♪ ♪

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that's both fast and non-drowsy. after allegra, i have it all. welcome back to "our world with black enterprise." what does it mean to be black? have issues of race and class or even the existence of a black president changed how we define it? we took that question to a panel of experts. joining me to have this discussion is dr. eddy glad, from princeton university and author of "in a shade of blue" practicing in a tix and the politics of black america and we also have from princeton university, dr. amani perry, author of "more beautiful and more terrible" the embrace and transcendens of racial inequality in the u.s. >> and terree, a correspondent for msnbc and author of the book "who's afred of post-blackness?"

>> what's it mean to be black in the 21st century. >> i hate to be put in the position of talking for black people. it puts everybody on their heels and makes them think i want to disagree with you. it means anything that you want it to mean. there's 40 million ways to be black. you can do anything, you can be anybody. there's a million different ways, 40 million ways to be black. >> amani let me ask you about that. what does that mean, there is are 40 million ways to be black. are there certain ways that bind black folk to the community? >> it's up in the air to the extent there are 40 million distinct experiences, right, and identities in the united states. but on the other hand, there are a number of constraints that tend to frame the experiences of black americans, still. there's persistent racial inequality in virtually every sector that you can imagine. on the other hand, we have

culture and traditions, right, that frame our identities as well. we aren't limited to those. but they exist. >> can you give me, what's a tradition that might connect black folk. >> that universally connect black folk? >> i don't think it has to be universal for it to be a cultural pattern. so for example, there are, we have traditions that are associated with our churches, we have traditions that are associated with holidays. there is music, obviously. dancing culture. literary traditions, there's so -- language is huge, right? we still have -- >> all of those things are breaking down. we saw it before, the cultural unity we used to have a james brown, marvin gaye. >> lots of people in the northeast don't eat black-eyed peas. the amount of people going to religion. the amount of people going to the traditional black church is depressed versus previous generations. all of these sort of ways to think of us as connected.

when you talk about the experience of racism binds us universally -- >> no i did not say anything universally. there's a difference between trends. let me respond to what you're saying. because there's a distinction between trends and cultural and cultural patterns. they're not universal. but certainly they remain cultural communities, that are dependant upo region and dependant upon ethnicity. there's contingencies there. there's diversity in the cultures of black america, but they do still exist. there's still black institutions that are in place, and functioning. the number of black people attending church may be lower. but it is not the case that they don't still exist, right? >> i think it's really important for us not to overstate generational shifts. of course there will be shifts in the way in which we understand how culture works, how people find their feet within kind of cultural spaces. how identities are formed.

but it doesn't follow from that, that the cultural markers that define a particular community, whether it be institutions like black churches, whether it be a certain musical form, whether it be a certain culinary practice. whether it be just simply a certain style, that the degree to which it is ascribed to by younger generations, vis-a-vis the older generation doesn't mean that it's suddenly not culture or it's been fragmented in such a way that it's no longer recognizable. just as people would say about james brown. there was some older folk who thought james brown sounded like nonsense. there was some older folks who thought my mother's hot pants was a sign of the degeneration of black culture in life. so there's always been a kind of debate intergenerational debate among black folk about what constitutes cultural confidence. >> we're more fragmented on the concept of what it means to be black than we ever have been.

in a lot of ways those discussions come from class debates and partly the explosion of the black middle class versus our parents and grandparents' generation is part of why we're here. that oftentimes, it's the working class who is saying you're not doing blackness the way that i'm used to seeing it. ergo i'm going to try to push you out of the community. >> one of the things i'm concerned about is that black middle class people have become deluded in to thinking that we're having a separate experience from the rest of black america. we have one-20th of the wealth of white americans, half of white americans from ten years ago. our outcomes relative, for our children, black middle class children underperform to a greater extent versus white middle class children and black poor children compared to white poor children. so we think that we're having a qualitatively different experience, but it really is largely cosmetic.

we are having the same kind of experience of being, of experiencing inequality vis-a-vis our white counterparts with similar levels of education as the rest of our community. >> i'm glad you said that. because i think a lot of working class people think that we are having a substantively different experience and we think that we're better than them or we're going off in a different world. and we are not. and you're -- >> we are -- but we often behave in that way. >> let me -- >> think about things like jack and jill. think about the tradition of things like certain sororities and fraternities. think of about the way that middle class white people segregated themselves. >> or the pew research several years ago in which middle class black people talked about we have two different communities. that black people couldn't be identified in one group any longer. >> we have to take a break, stay with us, we'll be right back. how might i invoke james

baldwin's act of piety. my task is to raise debate. that's not about blackness, that's about being committed to people who are caught.

whoo! [truck playing music] mom, can we get some ice cream? please, mom, please? no, we're having dinner soon. [music playing] you don't have to be perfect to be a perfect parent. hold up! there are thousands of children in foster care who will take you just as you are. welcome back to "our world with black enterprise." we're here with an expert panel and we're discussing the issue of what does it mean to be black

in the 21st century. before we broke, teree had made a point about blackness being something that's far more difficult to get our arms around now. and that he argued that to some extent, the only thing we have in common is the common experience of racism is that what binds us. what do you say? >> i want to make two points. one is that we to be very careful with certain kinds of utterances in ordinary speech, right? oftentimes when we say that's not black. when they say black people don't skydive, that's more about white people than black people. >> what do you mean? >> teree, what i mean is that black people going to the movies. when they see a white person going to the house, and all of a sudden -- black people don't go into the house. >> that's not narrow view of blackness, that's more a commentary about white people and their willingness to risk and all this other stuff, right? that's one thing. and there's a way in which blackness can also be a proxy for certain kinds of class conversations as well.

so what we have to do is unpack these claims. i want to say this about blackness as a way of registering a certain set of values. a certain set of obligations that follow from my identification with the freedom struggle and that freedom struggle orients me to the world in a particular sort of way that i've chosen to embrace. when we look at the long-term trends of black america, 35% of our children are in poverty. we think about the rates of obesity. when we think about rates of incarceration. when we think about what's happening in education. when we think about over 40%, i think it's like 42% now of teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19, are unemployed, it's been hovering near 50%. prior to that we have a generation of young people who are not being socialized into work. when you look at the long-term trends, how might those values that i identify with orient me to these babies? in other words, how might i invoke james baldwin's act of piety. my task is to raise the babies.

what does that mean? that's not about blackness. that's not about narrowing who you are. that's not about -- shall we say, clipping my individualistic wings. that's about being committed to people who are caught in hell. who are catching hell and how does that evidence itself in how i orient myself to the world. it seems to me when we get to that discussion, we're standing in the best of black tradition. >> final thought, 20 years from now if we're talking about race, how will the notion of blackness be imagined then? let me start with you, teree? >> i would probably say i have no idea because there's a sort of dynamic change in the way that america is dealing with race. i am certain that we will still be talking about race. that race is not going anywhere any time soon and i really wish we could destroy the world "post-racial" because it just clouds the discussion about race for anybody in the discussion who thinks well race doesn't matter any more. we're in a post racial america. that's ridiculous.

>> amani, do you think we'll be having this conversation in 20 years? >> we'll dentally be having this conversation. we're going to be trying to rebuild stability in our communities, what little we had, that's been lost as a function of the economic crisis. and we're also going to be trying to figure out how do we create terms for identifying who, who is, who is within a community that cares about the world being of our community. because we can no longer simply depend upon the color of someone's skin as a judge, as a basis for assessing what that is. so there are going to be new terms that we develop for thinking about membership. >> eddie, what do you say? >> that i think it's, it's, we're going to be paying the price for what we see. occurring or taking place right now. so the conversation is going to be intense. it may be volatile. i think race will return, as the repressed in our public conversation and very powerful ways. and part of what, part of what

we need to be doing and part of the work you're doing with your show and teree is doing with the work that he's doing and professor perry is doing with the work she's doing, is to create the space is we can emphasize process, so we can aform a democratic and deliberative space for black people without burden. to debate the issues that confront them. and if we can educate a generation in that mode, then when the problems show up 20 years from now, we'll be ready to handle them. >> you've all modelled the idea of democratic dialogue and engagement in the best way. thank you so much for being here. stay right there, we'll be right back. get whatever you want, baby. let's just share a 20 piece. [ internal ] 20 mcnuggets, for only $4.99? she's beautiful smart and sensible. [ male announcer ] mcdonald's extra value menu. the simple joy of having more to love. ♪

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that wraps it up for us here at "our world with black enterprise." don't forget to visit our website at blackenterprise.com/facebook, follow me on twitte twitter @marklamonthill. thanks so much, see you next week.