The way Iyanla Vanzant sees it, the Black Lives Matter movement is in need of an intervention and the self-help guru believes she knows just where to start.
“We’ve got to stop talking about it and really start doing the work about it,” Vanzant said recently while promoting the upcoming third season of Iyanla: Fix My Life, which premieres on OWN Saturday Sept. 19. “What is the ask? Black lives matter, therefore we ask …?” she continued.
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“What are we saying? What does that mean? Taking the moment and making it a movement requires some level of action and, unfortunately, some level of leadership, which is a problem for us.”
Vanzant has already shot the episodes for season three, which include Olympic figure skater Debi Thomas’ fall from grace and closeted gay pastors– but said she might tackle #BlackLivesMatter in season four. If she does, she will challenge young people who use the hashtag to do something beyond their social media accounts.
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“This generation isn’t willing to do what they did in Montgomery and Selma,” she said. “There was leadership. Is this generation willing to move beyond their creature comforts and their insta-communication to be consistent and committed to what is required to have the ask answered?
“With the Montgomery bus boycott, there was an ask: We’re not sitting in the back of the bus anymore.”
Iyanla: Fix My Life has been on OWN for three years and through it all, Vanzant said she is proud of the milestones she’s made with guests and is driven to help others come what may.
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“I never second guess myself because I’m not committed to the outcome. I can’t want more for them than they want for themselves,” Vanzant said, adding a slight caveat about a 2013 installment where a famous rapper flipped out and left the show before Vanzant could help him.
“I failed one guest,” she said. “I failed DMX because I was guided and directed by the Holy Spirit to do something and I didn’t do it. And I don’t know had I done it, how the show would’ve turned out.
“But that was my failure and I have never done that again. What the Holy Spirit tells me to do, I do much to the horrification of my producers.”
Iyanla: Fix My Life returns for a third season Saturday Sept. 19 at 9 p.m. ET on OWN.