Los Angeles Lakers Win NBA Championship; Filmmakers Explore History of Racism in "Driving While Black" Doc.
BERMAN: It took nearly a full calendar year with the Los Angeles Lakers celebrating their first championship in a decade. Carolyn Manno has more in the Bleacher Report. They did it.</s>CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: They did it, John. You know, most teams want to go to Disney World, the Lakers spent just about a hundred days there. I think they're ready to go ahead and head home but punctuating historic season with the franchise the 17th title. That ties the Boston Celtics for the most in league history. It's been quite a year, it was an emotional roller coaster and what else would you expect from LeBron James and the kind of performance we've grown to, you know, know him to be able to do. The Lakers rather than the Heat by third end game. James earning his fourth MVP title. You know, when he missed the playoffs in his first season with LA, some questions whether the aging star still the best player in the league, and after the game, James sent a message.</s>LEBRON JAMES, LOS ANGELES LAKERS FORWARD: We just want our respect. Rob want some respect. Coach Vogel want some respect. The organization want a respect. Laker nation want their respect, and I want my damn respect too.</s>MANNO: The victory coming nearly nine months after the tragic passing of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and seven others who were killed in that helicopter crash back in January. Fans chanting Kobe's names in the streets of LA late last night. And the NBA's bubble is a success story but coronavirus is plaguing the NFL right now. Positive tests from both the Titans and the Patriots creating a cascade effect there right now has forced the cancellations of eight NFL games. Those are rescheduled but things very much influx. The Cowboys Quarterback Dak Prescott undergoing successful surgery last night elsewhere in the league after suffering a gruesome ankle injury against the Giants. Prescott who has never missed a game in his five-year career is in the final year of his contract, he was hoping to sign a lucrative long-term deal in free agency. Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones calling the injury heartbreaking. And Rafael Nadal made history, Sunday, in Paris winning the French Open for the 13th time. Rafa now with 20 Grand Slam titles. tying him with Roger Federer for the</s>BERMAN: No. Look, I know there are a lot of Federer people, especially United States, but our Rafa guy. I mean, what he has done in the duration over which he's done it at the French Open, you know, it's not serving a volley. I mean, he's got to be so physically fit to do that. So hats off to him, well deserved. Carolyn, thanks so much. Alisyn?</s>CAMEROTA: OK, John, a new PBS documentary on race in America takes a closer look at the danger to black families while traveling. It's called, "Driving While Black". Here's a look.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What it means to be American is to take to the road.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mobility is essential to freedom.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Discover freedom.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The notion of driving while black reminds us that that's not available to all Americans.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To be able to move freely. We live in a country where it's never been</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are still so many dangers.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to engage history with the kind of brutal honesty.</s>CAMEROTA: We're joined now by Gretchen Sorin and Ric Burns, the co- directors of the film, "Driving While Black". It premieres tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Eastern on PBS. Great to have you both here. I've really been looking forward to talking to you about this. Gretchen, because -- both of you. Gretchen, because when I -- upon reading your research, it's the first time that it sort of the aperture opened for me and I realized how long the anxiety around driving while black has been going on in this country. You know, this may be a new term but the experience for black families is not new. And so just tell us what you've learned.</s>GRETCHEN SORIN, CO-DIRECTOR, "DRIVING WHILE BLACK" DOCUMENTARY: Alisyn, thank you so much. Well, we really, as we look at this topic, Ric and I decided that we really had to go back to the beginning when mobility was first restricted. And because this is a real -- this is really a story about mobility and how mobility for African-Americans was denied from the time the first black person stepped foot in the new world. And so we start with restrictions on mobility as enslaved people, and bring that all the way up to the up to the present where that mobility continues to be restricted.</s>CAMEROTA: And so Ric, is it, is it based on -- it is the -- all of the problems that we have seen play out in such vivid horror of, you know, blacks being pulled over? And then, you know, it resulting in a horrible, fatal deadly encounter with police. Is that -- does that stem in some sort of logical way from white people being uncomfortable, you know, hundreds of years ago with black mobility?</s>RIC BURNS, CO-DIRECTOR, "DRIVING WHILE BLACK" DOCUMENTARY: I think it does. I think that is exactly the right. I couldn't -- I think that puts it really, really clearly that it's not as if there hasn't been -- haven't been tremendous steps forward in 400 years in terms of mobility that African-Americans have seized for themselves in this country. But that sense of the suspicion that white people have, in general, not all white people about black mobility, and the desire to restrain it, and to hold it and to keep black people in place has been around for a long time. And so, we look at the, you know, news yesterday, more tomorrow sadly, and see some traffic incident that takes place</s>CAMEROTA: And in fact, Gretchen, you talk about that, how it was freedom -- how black families, the relationship with the automobile, how that -- was this liberating point of pride for them but then it gets so complicated.</s>SORIN: Well, it was so much better to be able to take your own automobile than to have to depend on transportation that was controlled by others. So if you took a train, you would be in the Jim Crow car. If you took a bus, you had to sit in the back. And often this was accompanied by racial epithets as well. So it was it was humiliating for African-Americans to take public transit. So when they were able to get cars, they got cars in very large numbers, and they love their cars, because you had the freedom to go where you wanted when you wanted. But you also have this private, quiet space that took you out of the humiliation of public transportation.</s>CAMEROTA: Ric, you know, in June, we had on an author named Tim White (ph) who has written, you know, a lot about white privilege. And he has -- he said that for his white friends, that he does this mental exercise for them. If they don't believe that there is a difference, you know, in driving down the road, if you're black or white, he asks them to think about all the times that they've been pulled over and what the outcome has been. And that is just so valuable -- that is such a useful exercise to think about how often I, for one, have been pulled over and it was always my fault, by the way, and I rarely get a ticket. And when you think about that, it just kind of, you know, blows your mind at what the different experiences. And so in producing this, in directing this, do you find that you have to still tackle the judgments and feelings of white people who may not think that there is such a phenomenon as driving while black?</s>BURNS: I think that's really the case, Alisyn, and I think that, you know, people say what is structural racism. What is systemic racism? Systemic racism is when even before anybody does anything to anybody else, the fear is in your mind that something negative is going to happen. And that's something that white people just don't have when they get behind the wheel. You know, my father never told me the rules of the road in the sense that if I got pulled over, I had to keep my hands very, very still in where they could be seen. And that the job was for me as</s>CAMEROTA: Gretchen, we only have about 30 seconds left. What do you want people to take away when they watch this?</s>SORIN: You know, the power -- the people in power have always been -- it's been important for them to hold on to the status quo. What I would like people to do this to me, this film is a call to action. It says we can join together and we can make things better in this country.</s>CAMEROTA: Gretchen Sorin and Ric Burns, thank you so much. Great to talk to you. And "Driving While Black" premieres tomorrow night at 9 p.m. Eastern on PBS. Thanks so much for being here.</s>SORIN: Thank you.</s>CAMEROTA: NEW DAY continues right now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump is heading back to the campaign trail.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people have been with him said he's fine, he's peppy, he will go on ahead.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's foolish for him to do it. It's going to be hard for him and it might give him a big setback.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't really know whether he is still infectious.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Lawmakers are kicking off those crucial hearings for Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court. The first opportunity Democrats have to grill this nominee and make the case Republicans need to slow her nomination down.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: this proceeding is literally unprecedented because so many members of the Senate are afflicted with COVID. Whether they will be able to show up is uncertain.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.</s>CAMEROTA: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. And President Trump is returning to the campaign trail today. He plans to hold rallies despite the risk to public health. The president got out of the hospital one week ago after being treated for coronavirus. He claims he has now tested totally negative but the White House still has not provided any proof of that. So with just 22 days to go until the election, the president will hold four rallies over the next four days in Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and North Carolina. Joe Biden will head to Ohio today where early voting is already underway. Meanwhile, we are seeing an alarming increase in coronavirus cases nationwide. The U.S. is now averaging just around 50,000 cases a day. OK, that's the highest number in two months. Thirty-one states across the country are seeing a surge in cases, six states seeing record hospitalization.</s>BERMAN: I hope people are paying attention.