Don Lemon on Police Brutality: I Call Cops ‘Sir’ ‘Because I Want to Stay Alive’

CNN’s Don Lemon experienced live on-air Thursday evening what some people on Twitter have referred to as the “blackening.” Suggested Reading Oscars 2026: The Most Iconic Black Celeb Red Carpet Looks of All Time This Black Actress Sues Harvard Over Something Every Black Woman Can Relate To! Guess Who’s Actually Behind the Pro-MAGA Twitter Account…

CNN’s Don Lemon experienced live on-air Thursday evening what some people on Twitter have referred to as the “blackening.”

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Lemon’s guests included David Katz, a former Drug Enforcement Administration senior special agent; Charles Coleman, a civil rights attorney and contributor to The Root; and New York City’s Hot 97 radio host Peter Rosenberg.

During the segment, Lemon spoke about why black people should be calm when they encounter police.

“I’m an American; I shouldn’t have to do that,” Lemon said. “I shouldn’t have to be ‘Yes, sir’-ing anybody. I’m a grown you-know-what man.”

By “you-know-what man,” we all know he wanted to say “grown-ass man.”

“You don’t have to say ‘sir,’” Katz said.

“But I do it because I want to stay alive,” Lemon continued. “That’s why I do it. Now, my friends, my white counterparts, don’t do that. They speak to police officers in a way that I would never in a million years do, and that is the reality of it. I have to do that because I want to stay alive.”

Of course, Katz tried to rationalize why a black man in America has to make it a point to be polite. And he went all “me too” to Lemon’s statement and said he tells his kids the same thing.

A lot of people on social media cheered Lemon on and said he was finally showing his “blackness.”

https://twitter.com/MorganJerkins/status/751234700983803904
https://twitter.com/thewayoftheid/status/751233702445875200
https://twitter.com/msmarypryor/status/751232304635346944
https://twitter.com/axolROSE/status/751231602718412800
https://twitter.com/Meigan1913/status/751230983345623040

Sometimes it’s good to be on the right side of things. Way to go, Lemon!

Straight From The Root

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