Speaking at the H.I.S. BET Town Hall Meeting at Morehouse College in Atlanta on September 19, Disturbing tha Peace co-founder Chaka Zulu brought up the need for Black men to communicate with one another to strengthen the community as a whole.

“I think there’s a real desire for men to talk with men, amongst each other,” Chaka said. “We sharpen each other by having that [debate]. We’re not arguing with each other or bringing each other down, but getting to a level of understanding about the different issues that we have, the different passions that we have and how we can support each other. We really want to talk to each other, talk our pain and then talk our progress.”

As for why he feels the H.I.S. BET panel is critical in fostering that discussion, he said, “[This conversation] is important because it’s needed. I can’t put it any simpler than that. We’ve made a lot of progress in our lives, our careers and our families, but we still have a lot of issues that we need to address. We need to get on the same page about a lot of things, and we need to focus and to act.”
On stage during the panel discussion, Chaka recalled the most important lesson he learned in his youth. “My mother programmed me to have pride in who I was and what I was, no matter what other people said,” he recounted. 
(Photo: Bennett Raglin/BET/Getty Images for BET)