TV One is giving viewers rare access to Min. Louis Farrakhan, one of America’s most recognized, controversial and misunderstood public figures, during a primetime interview on Sunday, May 9, from 9-11 PM ET. Cathy Hughes, host of TV One on One, sits down with Min. Farrakhan for a candid discussion about a broad range of issues, including the challenges facing President Barack Obama, the root cause of the crime that plagues inner cities and his belief in the preservation of black relationships.
In the years since Min. Farrakhan gave his last televised interview, the Nation of Islam leader has survived major surgery, been forced to confront his mortality and pondered his legacy while keeping a watchful eye on the circumstances impacting the African American community.
“Our television audience hasn’t heard from Min. Farrakhan in a long time,” said Cathy Hughes, the host of TV One on One with Cathy Hughes. “We wanted to touch base with him to discuss his impressions of the world today, the challenges facing our communities, politics, race and progress in the 15 years since the Million Man March.”
In the interview Hughes asks about demands for then candidate Barack Obama to publicly distance himself from Min. Farrakhan, he said he understood the pressures Obama faced. “I never endorsed him. I just spoke well of him,” Farrakhan said. ”When he denounced me, he was forced into that. For me, I saw the bigger picture. I told all those that are with me, ‘Don’t you say one negative thing about what he said or what he did. Just be quiet.’ And do you know … when that young man was elected, black people came to me and thanked me, because I never allowed anything to pull me out into that which would hurt that brother. The bigger picture at that moment was Barack Obama, not Louis Farrakhan.”
Hughes mentions that some have cited President Obama’s election as evidence of a post-racial America, despite the persistence of racial oppression. “America, you’ve killed your last black leader,” Farrakhan said. “Now, I said even before he was elected that [blacks] would make a mistake if [they viewed] brother Barack as the black president fighting for black causes,” Farrakhan said. “That man has to fight for the common good of the American people and in that, [blacks] have to find how do we move.”
During the wide ranging interview, Hughes asks Min. Farrakhan the impact of HIV/AIDS on blacks, specifically black women. “With this sexual revolution, we’re spreading our own death through our need for pleasure and our disrespect of ourselves and our women,” Farrakhan said.” When [black men] go to prison, they check you coming in. They know you don’t have it. But nobody checks you coming out. And … they take these young men and turn them while they’re in prison having sex with one another. Then they come home, their girlfriends are waiting for them. So they have sex with their girlfriends or their several girlfriends, but they’re passing the virus that they may have gotten in prison.”
Hughes shifts the interview to the topic of black men who marry outside of their race and asked how black women should interpret their behavior. “There has always been this desire in black men to have white women,” said Min. Farrakhan. “As a student of the Hon. Elijah Mohammad, I’ve always said that I love to see the black man with the black woman and the black woman with the black man. But love transcends ethnicity, race, color, culture. The question has to be is it really love, or have these opposites who have desired each other, lusted for each other and claimed that lust is love? … But in the end, everybody finds a way to come back home.”
(Source: TV One)
