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This week on At Our Table, I sat down with Roland Martin, one of the most clear-eyed truth-tellers in Black political media. Our conversation was classic Roland: direct, personal, and unafraid to say the part out loud that too many people whisper.
We covered a lot of ground. Media. Money. Power. Persuasion. And the hard truth about why campaigns keep repeating the same mistakes and then act surprised by the results.
Early on, Roland put words to something I’ve seen for years:
“So many, for so long, political campaigns and corporations have tried to get us to believe that a crumb is a meal.”
That mindset shows up everywhere—from how Black-owned media is funded, to how Black voters are engaged, to who actually gets to shape strategy. As Roland said bluntly:
“Folks want us to essentially be political sharecroppers… work the fields, till the soil, pick the crops, but then don’t reap the harvest.”
This isn’t just about respect. It’s about results. When we talked about money, Roland didn’t sugarcoat it:
“$350 billion is spent annually on general market advertising. Black-owned media gets 0.5 to 1% of that. And then folks wonder why we can’t build real scale.”
But what really hit home for me was his point about persuasion. Campaigns still assume turnout is enough, even as the Black electorate has changed in real, material ways:
“All of a sudden, you’re now seeing African Americans who were making $50,000, $65,000, $75,000 coming out of college, and we weren’t talking about tax brackets, stocks, bonds, investments.”
That gap matters—especially in elections decided by margins. As Roland reminded us, control of Congress can come down to just a few thousand votes. And yet too many campaigns still treat Black voters as a given instead of a constituency that deserves real engagement, early and often.
We also talked about the collapse of local news and the rise of misinformation as well as why investing in Black-owned media should be part of Democratic infrastructure. Roland made it clear: without facts and trusted messengers, people can’t make informed choices.
Margins don’t respond to assumptions. They respond to strategy. And strategy starts with who you listen to, who you pay, and who you trust to tell the story.
Pull up a chair and join us.
—Jaime
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