00:00You also have a foundation and you're very involved in the lives of young black men and
00:07you're very open and honest about that.
00:10What are you teaching your children about growing up and making the right life decisions
00:16and how does that overlap with your foundation work?
00:18Well I do have a foundation, Phaedra Foundation, and you know I created my foundation so that
00:24hopefully I can empower families, students, other women and help to rebuild communities
00:31because you know our communities are at risk and so as now a newly single mother of two
00:38African-American boys my biggest program was Save Our Sons and that was really targeted towards
00:44meeting the needs of young men who found themselves without a great mentor who are finding
00:50themselves in a position where they are not sure of how to progress as a student, as a professional
00:58and so if you watch the show this year you saw that I had the opportunity to take the ladies,
01:04some of the ladies to the Million Man March and some of the footage that you didn't see was a
01:08very powerful conversation with the Honorable Louis Farrakhan that lasted for several hours and
01:14you know we didn't get to show that on our show but he has been a great mentor to me and a great
01:21support system for me and my boys but I think what we have to be cognizant of as African-American mothers
01:29is that our sons have a different plight from the majority and I have to be very realistic with them
01:35because we see it every day that our children can walk out of any place and be wrongly accused not
01:43because of something that they're doing but basically because of the color of their skin
01:47or their appearance so I want to be very honest with my sons because you know they are not you know
01:53this crosses socioeconomic ground right you know it hits every neighborhood and we see that they're
01:59extremely bright I'm this extremely bright and very intelligent and what are those conversations
02:05like at home do they have questions or difficult questions that you try to at this point no because
02:10they're two and five so we're just finishing potty training the two-year-old and my five-year-old
02:14congratulations I know it's quite the undertaking but um and my five-year-old he's a kindergartener but
02:21you know what I always want him to be you know very smart as far as how he deals with people and to
02:27recognize that you know he lives a very blessed life and that some people don't have clean water like
02:34the people that I'm obviously fighting for in Flint some people don't have access to the things that he has
02:39access to so I want to teach my children to be very humble but be very grateful at the same time
02:45but recognize that the struggle for people of color is very real
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