♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> The phenomenal attorney Areva Martin next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we are committed to diversity and understand our responsibility in supporting and empowering diverse communities.

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American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

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♪ ♪ >> Areva Martin, welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you so much.

So happy to be here finally.

I've been trying to get here for a while, so super excited to be joining you.

>> Where are you originally from?

>> Well, you know, I grew up in St. Louis in a housing project.

So we called North St. Louis.

And I just knew intuitively that something was different about my neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods.

And if you know anything about St. Louis, it's one of the most segregated cities still today in this country.

And then I would leave my neighborhood, and I went to a high school across the divide, so where the Black community was divided from the white community.

And when I saw how the folks lived on the other side of town, homes that were bigger than a city block, I mean, just, you know, massive amounts of wealth, I didn't have the words for it, but I just knew that there was something not right about those disparities.

And that really encouraged me when I was in college to think about a career in the law.

And ended up in Los Angeles after I graduated from Harvard and started my career, started with a corporate law firm.

Worked there for about a year, knew I wasn't going to stay, and went out on my own after a year and started my own law practice.

And I have not worked for anyone since then other than me.

So all the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur.

>> So it's Martin & Martin?

>> Yes.

>> Tell us about your practice.

>> Civil rights practice and representing individuals involved in high-stakes litigation related to race discrimination, age discrimination, police brutality, excessive force, and now, in a very interesting case, around reparative justice.

So really looking at how to make communities whole that have suffered racial atrocities.

We hear a lot about Tulsa, Oklahoma, and, more recently, in California, Bruce's Beach, where the beachfront property was taken from a family in the '20s by eminent domain and the county and the city and state coming together to return that property to them.

>> So the family, after all those decades, wind up getting that land back.

>> Getting the land back and now leasing the land to the county of Los Angeles.

And in a couple of years, that lease will end, and they'll probably sell it to the county because the county is operating some kind of Lifeguard, Coast Guard, Fire Guard.

Some kind of facility for the county is on the property.

>> Restorative justice -- that's kind of a new term.

>> It is.

You know, a lot of people think of it as reparations.

I'd say they're somewhat synonymous, but restorative justice, to me, is different.

Restorative justice means that an injustice was done to someone.

And we have an obligation, not just morally but legally, to make them whole.

So these cases, we're looking at what was taken -- Bruce's Beach -- it was pretty straightforward.

It was beachfront property that was a lodge owned by Charles and Willa Bruce.

It was taken by eminent domain for pennies, for a lot less than what it was worth.

And so, restorative justice, in that case, was returning that land to that family, to descendants of Charles and Willa Bruce.

In the case I'm working on right now, there's hundreds of individuals in a community in Palm Springs, California, who had their land burned out by the city.

One of the reports written about it called it a government-engineered holocaust.

So there are stories like this all over that are starting to come to light.

We've known for a while about Tulsa.

We've known for a while about Clinton.

We've known for a while about a lot of these communities.

But we're going to learn in upcoming years about many more of these communities.

>> Well, you know, you are one of the most admired commentators on television.

See you on network television all the time.

From a legal perspective, do you see much more inclusion and diversity in the legal profession?

>> I wish I could say yes, but, sadly, the answer is no.

And I can give you a very real example.

I have two daughters who are at Columbia Law School.

They worked this summer at large law firms in New York City, very similar to the job I had when I was a law student at Harvard, my colleagues at Harvard.

The number of African-Americans at these firms today are less than or the same as they were when I was a first-year and second-year law student at Harvard.

In fact, my daughter Michael worked at a firm that had hired its first diversity and inclusion officer, the first in the 100-year history of the firm.

And still with that firm, they showed videotape orientation, my daughter said, that had pictures of all white lawyers and people.

And the few African-Americans that were there had to go to the, you know, management of the firm to say, "Um, maybe y'all should think about getting a new video.

That video is really outdated."

So, no, you know?

And it's really appalling to me that a profession that I love, where we should be doing better -- And these are liberal institutions.

This is Columbia, this is Harvard.

So we're talking about some of the most liberal -- allegedly liberal -- institutions in the nation.

>> Given the demographic changes, the browning of America, you would think that, correspondingly, you would see the browning of the legal profession, the browning of the healthcare profession, the browning of economics and business ownership.

So far, that hasn't happened.

>> In fact, we're seeing somewhat of a regression.

You look at the medical profession in particular.

I work a lot with doctors in Los Angeles, and that is a profession that is starving for Black and brown students to get into medical school -- Charles Drew University, one of the four -- one of the four Black medical schools in the country.

I gave the commencement speech at the graduation in 2019 and sat on the stage with the dean and the administration, and we just quietly talked about how difficult it is to get Black students into medical school.

So we're not seeing the advancement or the expansion.

In many ways, we're seeing the contraction.

>> So we still need more Black lawyers, more Black doctors, more Black engineers, more Black schoolteachers.

>> Yes.

Business owners, right?

>> So one of the things I wanted to ask you -- Are we welcoming particularly Black women in decision-making positions?

It was a fight to get a sister on the Supreme Court.

Tell us what you've seen as a Black woman leader yourself.

>> Yeah, Dr. Chavis, progress but not enough.

Clearly, we've made progress.

We got the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court.

It took, you know, hundreds of years for us to get here.

So I don't want to minimize the importance of her accomplishment.

I don't want to minimize the importance of Kamala Harris being the first African-American female vice president of this country.

And there are so many examples like that.

But at the same time that we can celebrate those women, we also have to continue to acknowledge that, on the macro, Black women still earn less than white women.

Black women still earn less than white men.

Black women are still woefully underrepresented in C-suites across this country.

I did a study of the number of women in C-suites, in Fortune 500 companies.

At the time -- I did this a couple of years ago -- there are about 30 out of the 500 CEOs at Fortune 500 companies.

Two were Black women.

And when you look at the fact that Black women -- >> Two out of 500?

>> Two of the 30 women.

It was only 30 women, period.

Two were Black.

And when you look at the fact that Black women have the highest -- We are the most educated demographic in this country.

We obtain more education -- master's degrees, advanced degrees -- than any other demographic.

And there should be a direct parallel between our educational attainment and our success in corporate America.

And that's not happening.

So, you know, we told our young women in the '60s, and the '70s, "Go to school, go to school, get your education, get your education," that was going to be a ticket to these higher-paying jobs, these jobs with greater responsibility, and we have seen it is not.

There's still something happening in the workplace, some barriers that still prevent Black women from achieving the highest levels of success and the highest positions in these companies and in organizations across this country.

So there is a lot of work to be done.

When you look at, again, Black women every -- pretty much every measure, whether it's health, whether it's economics, whether it's housing, Black women have the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, if you are a Black woman.

>> That's a serious problem.

>> Oh, my God.

If you are a Black woman, having a baby in this country is almost like a death sentence.

It's more dangerous for a Black woman to have a baby in America than it is to have a baby in a third-world country.

That -- How is it that, in the United States, with all of the healthcare advancements that we've had, all of the technology, that Black women are still experiencing such high death rates in something that should be as simple as giving birth?

But yet, we have those.

If you're in Mississippi, you're in the South, some of those southern states, the rates are just outrageous.

>> Absolutely.

I'm glad you're bringing attention to that, because the mortality rate of Black women, maternal health is a serious problem that we need to pay attention.

That's a good segue.

You're not only a super lawyer, you're a super mom.

Tell us about your work with special needs.

>> I am a mother.

I have three kids.

My youngest son, Marty, he's on the autism spectrum.

And when Marty was diagnosed with autism, like so many parents across this country, I was devastated.

My husband and I were really at a loss in terms of what to do to provide him with care, would get medical attention for him.

We were concerned about his education, what would happen in terms of school.

And it took me a long time, really, to come to grips with the diagnosis.

At the time, autism was portrayed in the media as a white Jewish condition, a condition that impacted affluent Jewish families.

Those would be the stories that were often told in the media.

It was hard to find other Black families who were openly talking about their kids being on the spectrum.

A lot of shame associated with it, in the same way that we treat mental health in the Black community.

A lot of stigma.

And it took a while, but with a lot of prayer and a lot of just support from close friends and family and my pastors in Los Angeles, I moved from this place I call of anguish to a place of advocacy.

And I was able to stand up an organization to really address the issues of autism, developmental disabilities for people of color and primarily people in low-income, underserved, under-resourced communities, because what I learned on my own journey was that there was such disparities, there was such a difference in the diagnostic process for kids of color.

>> But you've been a mother now, you've become a mother now for all these other children who have special needs, who sometimes are overlooked by society in general.

>> Absolutely.

Kids with special needs, for many years, have been marginalized.

People, you know, had this -- There was a myth about them that they couldn't learn, that their life really had no value.

You think about work shelters.

If you had someone that was disabled in your family in the '60s, the '70s, even more recently, they send them to these day centers where they pack boxes, they do these menial tasks and, oftentimes, not even making minimum wages -- warehouses.

You go to a lot of centers, they just had people with disabilities literally sitting in front of TVs, sitting in front of computer screens.

And what I came to learn, with respect to my own son and so many other kids, is that individuals with disabilities have tremendous potential, have tremendous worth.

They learn differently.

And it's not their problem.

It's our problem as a society to learn how to teach them, how to educate them, and how to incorporate them into our society.

So the work that I do through the nonprofit that I started, Special Needs Network, is doing just that, is raising awareness, educating people, advocating at the state and federal level for legislation for more resources, and putting boots on the ground in poor, underserved communities, creating opportunities for jobs, creating opportunities for educational opportunities for kids and young adults with autism and other disabilities.

>> How can people get in touch with the Special Needs Network to get information for their own families?

>> You can go to our website.

We have a website -- Special Needs Network L.A. And in addition to there being resources on that website, we also have a lot of virtual workshops and classes and seminars and town halls that we offer.

So you don't have to live in Los Angeles, you don't have to be in California.

You can take advantage of the programs.

Particularly during COVID, we were forced to go online with so many of our programs, so we were providing advocacy workshops and town halls to parents across this country, even those outside the country.

So we've continued to make a lot of our programing available virtually so that we can reach many more families outside of the California area.

>> One of the things that COVID exposed to Black America was all these preexisting health conditions in our community.

What do we do about these social determinants of the health of our community?

>> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because you're right.

COVID exposed.

That's why we saw Black people being disproportionately impacted by COVID -- more dying, more contracting, and more having, you know, complications related to COVID, having to be hospitalized and stay for longer periods of time.

It's a combination.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to these problems, because they all boil down to systemic racism.

When you look at the healthcare system, you talk to doctors about, why is it that Black women are dying in childbirth when white women are thriving?

And a lot of it has to do with barriers and systemic racism in the healthcare system, how doctors are taught in medical school.

For many years, there weren't even illustrations in medical books of Black people.

So everything that doctors learn were based on the average person, and that average person was typically an average white man.

So a doctor goes into a hospital, they have not had an experience with a person of color, and maybe they heard the myth that Black women don't experience pain in the same way that other people do, that we have some, you know, almost Herculean strength when it comes to pain, we're, you know, impenetrable when it comes to pain.

So when I say -- Like, Serena Williams, we know went through this experience, that she was having some complications.

The doctor dismisses them.

You know, they don't hear us.

And so, they walk out the room.

They don't check on you.

And then you have an aneurysm or you have some other medical complication that then could lead to death.

So we've got to be willing to talk about the root of the problem.

And I think we spend a lot of time in this country putting Band-Aids on the symptoms rather than getting to the root.

And we started this conversation after George Floyd was murdered, remember?

Everybody was talking about dismantling systemic racism.

Companies were pouring millions and millions of dollars into social justice organizations, issuing press releases, hiring diversity specialists to come into their organizations to talk about systemic racism.

That lasted, mm, three months, six months.

You talk to any of those diversity trainers, they'll tell you by January of 2021, you could start to see the change.

Those conference rooms that were full with senior-level executives, now there were mid-level people, entry-level people.

I had one trainer tell me that one of the companies that she was working for called her into the office and said, "We want to just talk with you about how you're doing your training."

And what he told her was that using the word "white" -- "white" -- was making the participants uncomfortable.

Could she talk about this subject and not use the word "white"?

>> I'm glad you mentioned the term people feeling uncomfortable.

If we feel uncomfortable about the truth, then what is it that makes you comfortable?

>> The lie right now, we know, is making a lot of people comfortable, the lie about not just the election of 2020, not just the lie about what happened on January 6th, not just the lie about the Trump presidency, but even the lie about how Black folks got to America.

Because in addition to banning books, there are states that want to change how slavery is taught in this country.

They want to abolish the use of the word "slave."

They want to rewrite America's history in a way that, again, doesn't make white people feel uncomfortable.

And we have to resist that.

So you ask us -- you ask me, what can we do?

What we have to do, those of us that have a platform, those of us that have a voice, we have to stay in this fight.

We have to remain committed, as uncomfortable as it is.

And as many people that choose not to have this conversation, we have to be the ones that continue to beat this drum day in and day out, even when it's unpopular to do so.

So that six months, if you want to talk about systemic racism, you want to recommend a book.

Black bookstores said they couldn't meet the demand.

Every Black author they had, the books were flying off the bookshelf.

A bookstore in Los Angeles told me he was shipping hundreds, not ten, but hundreds of books to white families all over this country.

Book clubs were reading books by Toni Morrison and other Black authors.

That changed.

But that doesn't mean that those of us, like you and me who have this platform, that we change.

We have to continue to push this issue, because it is uncomfortable talking about race.

And you hate to be the person in a room that's always saying, "But wait a minute.

We really need to talk about race."

And if you're a woman, you got to be raising both those hands, "Wait a minute.

We got to talk about gender.

We got to talk about race."

>> Civil rights and women's rights intersect.

>> Absolutely.

>> And the people who deny civil rights are the same people who deny women's rights.

Tell us how you feel about the Supreme Court decision on women's reproductive rights.

>> Oh, I think it was one of the worst decisions ever by this court, by a illegitimate court, illegitimate because two of those seats should not have -- Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett are seats that should not have been filled by a Republican president.

It's a decision that is out of step with the American people.

Overwhelmingly, Americans support women having the right to make decisions about their reproductive health.

Hands down, every poll that's done.

There's no poll that has yielded any result other than, "This is not a decision to be made by a court that is composed of predominantly white men, conservative white men."

So it was one of the worst decisions ever.

And it undermines, in many ways, the legitimacy of the court when you read the opinion, the strained legal logic and analysis used by the justice who wrote that opinion.

And as we saw in the concurring opinion of Justice Thomas, it opens the door for other rights which we have enjoyed in this country for decades to also be dismantled, abolished -- the right to gay marriage, same-sex marriages, the right for consenting adults to decide if they want to use contraception.

And, you know, he didn't talk about it explicitly, but in that bundle of rights would also be the rights to being married to a person of a different race, interracial marriages.

So all of those rights are under attack with this court.

And Clarence Thomas basically invited conservative groups to file lawsuits, basically said, "Go out there, enact the most restrictive laws that you can in these Republican states, challenge those laws, and bring me some lawsuits that can make their way to the Supreme Court so that we can abolish more of the rights that we enjoy in this country."

>> Exactly.

Do you think you'll see a woman president of the United States in your lifetime?

>> I do.

I do.

And I think once Barack Obama, you know, broke through, he created an opportunity for a Kamala Harris.

He created the opportunity for a Ketanji Brown Jackson.

So I think it's just -- We could be an election away.

We could be one election away.

We may be two or three elections away.

But I think we are going to see it, and, you know, it may not be my good friend Kamala Harris, but she's opening the door for that to happen in a way that Barack Obama opened the door for her to be in the position that she's in.

>> Attorney Areva Martin, thank you for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, Dr. Chavis.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, please visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, we are committed to diversity and understand our responsibility in supporting and empowering diverse communities.

Diversity and inclusion is integral to the way we work.

Supporting the financial health of our diverse customers and employees is one of the many ways we remain invested in inclusion for all today, tomorrow, and in the future.

American Petroleum Institute -- through the core elements of API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry in the U.S. and around the world.

You can learn more at api.org/apiEnergyExcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to empowering people to choose how they live as they age.

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