00:00Why did y'all make me go after Carrie? Like that wasn't... She came up here with a little kitten
00:10heels. You know what I'm saying? All right. It's okay. Like Carrie, you know, you almost have to
00:19sit here and take a breath. All this blackness, all this black woman-ness in the room, all this
00:24power, all this beauty, all this excellence, all in this room. And so there's a part of me right now
00:31that's living outside of myself. Like, is this really happening to me? Is this really the moment
00:36that I thought I would be in? I can tell you it is very much not. I grew up reading Essence,
00:44looking at all these beautiful black faces of different black women, seeing myself, but yet
00:49not really seeing myself, learning about myself, but didn't realize I was learning about myself.
00:54through this legacy brand that has been a staple in our homes, in our lives, in our existence.
01:00So to receive this honor from Essence in particular is very special. This is not the life I ever imagined
01:07for myself. I thought I'd be doing good if I ever made $50,000 a year. I thought that was making it.
01:14It's like, I'm gonna be rich on that 50 grand. Y'all can kill me nothing. I grew up in Detroit,
01:22and as I like to say, the real hood, not the rap hood. 313, we in the building. What up, though?
01:28My parents are recovering drug addicts. I grew up, I could identify a food stamp from here.
01:36Yes, I can. Y'all got them EBT cards and we have all that. We had a paper that you had to take in the store,
01:43right? Looked like Monopoly fake money, okay? That's where I come from.
01:49A working-class family, paycheck to paycheck everywhere, so Kara's talking about the vision
01:58and the dream you have to have for yourself, and I always knew it was something better. I just didn't
02:01know what that better looked like until I found journalism, until I found sports in particular.
02:07Back in the day, you know, I used to do a little something. I had an arm, I had a couple wheels,
02:13so I was the neighborhood tomboy. I used to do like backflips off garages on the mattresses. Y'all
02:19know about that life. Y'all know about that life. Y'all know about playing football, your homie get
02:26knocked out by somebody opening their car or, you know. So I was a neighborhood tomboy, and I love sports.
02:34I love the competition. I love the stories. I love the fact that a lot of things didn't matter when
02:40you competed. You know, your circumstances at home, how you grew up, none of that stuff mattered.
02:45That's what sports was. I also recognized very early that sports is a unifier. We do a lot of
02:51things separate in this country. We don't worship together. We eat with the same people. We don't go
02:56outside our communities. But you could make ten dollars an hour, or you could be a billionaire,
03:02and y'all both could love the Lakers. Right? Y'all both could love the Rams. Y'all both could love
03:08the Pistons, the Lions. We ain't gonna talk about them, but you could still love them. Right? The
03:14whole point is that sports was always meant to be a unifier, and often it was ahead of its
03:20time. Jackie Robinson integrated baseball in 1947. That's a full 20 years before the
03:26idea of desegregation was a law in this country. So this is what sports has done, the power and the
03:32impact. You know about a raised fist in the 68 Olympics with John Carlos and Tommy Smith. You know
03:38about Althea Gibson, Serena Williams, many of the black women you see here. Unifiers, but disruptors at
03:45the same time. Which is certainly what I'm about. Let me correct a few things quickly about Carrie's
03:54recollection of our friendship and how it started. It is true, she ignored me for months. I was like,
04:03I don't know if I want to fool with this heifer, but I'm gonna do it. I was like, the ancestors that
04:08Harriet and Sojourner and me were speaking and saying, this black woman has to be your friend because she
04:15she's right. We were pitted against each other, not by our own doing, but just by the scuttlebutt in
04:20the business. And a lot of us fall for that. A lot of us believe that there can only be one. And not
04:26only that, you wind up hating people you don't even know. You wind up disliking women just coming into a
04:33room for what? They want us to have that mentality that we have to all fight over these crumbs.
04:39It's a whole pie. Why we fighting over crumbs? For what? We all guaranteed a slice. It's that that slice might look
04:47differently than you thought. Or it might look exactly like you thought. And you eating doesn't
04:52mean somebody else is starving. It's not zero sum. And so that was the way I looked at Carrie. A black
04:59woman, daily TV show, ESPN, most dynamic commentary show on the network. How is that not a win for me?
05:08Because if they see her, that means some executive is gonna see me. So I felt like it was my duty and
05:17responsibility to just rope her up whether she liked it or not. And a beautiful friendship was born. The other
05:27thing and the part that I love about this iteration in my career that I never expected, I never expected
05:34to be an entrepreneur. Journalists don't like math. Hay County, why did this, I don't like doing any of
05:39that. I'm a creative. I like to think a dope shit to do. That's all I want to do. I don't care about
05:44the math. But the math is important, not necessarily the money. It's about the room. So we talk all the time
05:51about getting our foot in the door, getting your foot in the room. I'm going in the room. I'm shaking
05:59the whole room. I'm kicking people out the room. I'm disrupting the room. Like, we can't just be
06:03about getting in. When we get in, we have to do something with this. Because I'm in Spotify, a lot
06:09of people have asked me about Joe Rogan. I don't care about Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan is not in my world. You
06:12know what I care about? This network for black women podcasters I'm building with Spotify. That's what I care
06:18about. I care about being able to run a network that is black woman led because we know there's
06:25a lot of black products. And this is why Essence is such a beautiful, it's just such a beautiful
06:31part of our community because it's for black women and actually run by black women and black people.
06:36We see so many products that purport to be for us. You go into that C-suite and everybody in there is
06:41white and you're like, what happened? Not on my watch. It's not happening. So everything about the
06:47Unbothered Network is run by black women, me, my head of content. Every person on there is a black
06:54woman. The people we want to amplify, only black women. The people we want to partner with, only black
07:00women. I'm trying to get you paid. I got money. I'm trying to get you paid. That's my whole goal,
07:06right? And so I need for us to not only stop this fake competition and performative stuff,
07:12I need us also, when we have these opportunities, to really use them to seize what is rightfully ours.
07:23You weren't given anything. You earned everything there. And to understand that part of your mission,
07:32I know we talk about ownership, that just means owning who you are and owning your talent in whatever
07:38way that looks like. That doesn't mean you have to create a brick and mortar. It means that when
07:43you are a part of a production, fight for that executive producer credit, because you're doing
07:49that anyway. Fight for all those things that give you ownership and power within the dynamic. And that's
07:55all I'm trying to do. Lastly, I would say about my sister Carrie and our, what we're building,
08:03are trying to build that CNN plus, which as she said, support, even if it's 1099. No, I'm just kidding,
08:11it's not. I don't know. I don't know what it is. And I don't have no hookups. So if y'all ask me,
08:17I don't have no free promotional. It ain't a word you can say to get like a dollar off. I don't know what
08:22that is. But what I will say is this, is that we talk all the time about how content doesn't represent
08:31us. It doesn't speak to our issues. It doesn't speak to, and not just heavy stuff, but our humor,
08:39what we love out of life. You're getting the opportunities to do that, not just with this
08:44show, but with a lot of black shows. So support them, because that's the only way they're going
08:49to say in existence. I will not relinquish this microphone without a few personal thank yous.
08:57I'm thankful to my husband. He's right here in the green. With the buffs on, because you know Detroit,
09:06that's how we do. I thank him for not just being a wonderfully supportive partner, but really
09:14bringing out the best in me. Because when you make the decision to get married, it's about
09:20you obviously becoming a part of a unit. And sometimes as black women, that's hard,
09:24because we're used to doing everything by ourselves. We're used to assuming all the responsibility,
09:30making a way out of no way. And so partnership was actually difficult because I had to learn to
09:37lean. And that's what we all have to do as women, learn to lean, learn to open, learn to be vulnerable.
09:43And he helped me do that in a way that I didn't even think was possible. So I love you,
09:50babe, and thank you for that. And also she's not in the room, but my mother, you know,
09:56we all got a black mama. Thank you for helping me learn how to mix a drink at eight, but we ain't
10:02gonna talk about that. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Y'all jokes. Hypothetically.
10:08Put more crown in there. I'm eight. That's okay. No, but I thank her because so many black women in our
10:16family, mothers, grandmas, aunties, they went through a lot and they were just taught to push
10:23through it. And the scars, the pain from that, we absorb. There is generational trauma is real.
10:31And so seeing what she went through, that's why things like Donald Trump trying to get me fired,
10:37don't bother me because I saw a woman on her knuckles rise up. And so I thank her for her resilience,
10:45her strength. And I thank her for helping me understand who I am. So hi, mom. Thank you,
10:55Essence. Thank you all for her attendant. This means so much to black women who are in sports.
11:01I know you sometimes don't see us or think that we're there, but we're there. And more importantly,
11:06we deserve a space. You know, you know how much I love you. And when I see somebody like her or for
11:15that matter, any of you succeeding, I'm just at home. Just my heart is swelling because that's why
11:20I got into this. And, you know, when I was in Orlando, I was the only black female sports columnist
11:25at the Orlando Sentinel in North America, not America, North America, the only one. I don't want to be that.
11:32That's embarrassing. I want it to be all of us in this room. So thank you, Essence,
11:37for highlighting this very important part of our culture and for recognizing that black women,
11:42we out here. And also shout out to the legends. Wouldn't be here without a Jane Kennedy,
11:46a Robin Roberts, a Claire Smith, a Pam Oliver standing on your shoulders. So thank you all.
Comments