Tavis Smiley
Tavis Smiley
Tavis Smileyis an American talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew up in Bunker Hill, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles. Smiley became a radio commentator in 1991, and starting in 1996, he hosted the talk show BET Talkon BET. After Smiley sold an exclusive interview of Sara Jane Olson to ABC...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRadio Host
Date of Birth13 September 1964
CityGulfport, MS
CountryUnited States of America
We give you the facts. I told you information is power -- knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts.
This country is going to implode, or put another way, it's going to get crushed under the weight of poverty. You can't have one percent of the people who own and control more wealth than the other 90 percent of the population.
We think of - there are too many wars, of course, in the world as we speak, but my read on this suggests to me that water is going to be the resource into the future that we're really - that countries, nations, are going to be fighting for control over.
I still think in this country, and this might surprise you, the one thing that George Bush said as president that I do agree with, I love that phrase, 'the soft bigotry of low expectations.
We give you the facts. I told you information is power - knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts.
I think that what started out as a European Union originally was probably a really wonderful and world-changing idea, the idea of a kind of cooperation and interdependence between countries. But the idea that individualization would work on common ground, not on conflict, not against each other, but to find how each benefitted from the other I thought was an incredibly hopeful and positive possibility.
That is still the case in this country for too many students, the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you don't expect them to learn, if you don't expect them to succeed - then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It was impressive for everyone to see that progress is being made.
When you work for something, you appreciate it more, ... So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?
This is an awesome sight. It speaks to the hunger that exists in our community ... the hunger to be heard, the hunger to be empowered.
Give that to me so I can get out of here.
He was an authentic American hero whose work will be respected and dissected for years to come. This media empire is still number one and still 100 percent black-owned.
I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child.
I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.