Tina Knowles, 66, reveals that she’s had the “painful” discussion with her grandson Julez, 16 — Solange Knowles‘ son and Beyoncé’s nephew — if he’s ever pulled over by cops. Solange and Beyonce’s mom shares the advice she’s given Julez on the Oct. 20 episode of OWN Spotlight: Black Women OWN The Conversation – Vote!, which airs at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT. Tina appears alongside fellow guests Yvette Nicole Brown, Valerie Jarrett, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, Valerie Jarrett and Nneka Ogwumike in this Oprah Winfrey Network special that will focus on matters related to voting and the Black community, but Tina takes the floor when the subject turned to cops.
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“I have a 15 year old grandson who is — you know, he has an opinion on everything,” Tina says in the sneak peek for Tuesday’s episode that HollywoodLife obtained, which you can watch above (the episode was filmed before Julez celebrated his 16th birthday with family on Oct. 18). However, Tina admits that she’s tried to “sort of squelch” her grandson’s opinion on how to deal with cops.
“Listen in those situations, you just have to be quiet and you have to be subservient and you have to keep your hands on the steering wheel,” Tina recalls telling her grandson, whom she says questioned her directions by asking “Why? Why?”
“It drives me crazy to have to have that conversation, because that’s not what he’s been taught,” Tina continues. “He’s been taught to ask questions and ask ‘Why?'” However, Tina believes that “in this instance you just have to — really just kind of squelch that independence and tell them to be subservient.” It hurts Tina to give such advice.
“It’s really painful for me,” Tina admits, who goes on to say that she and her husband Richard Lawson mentor 94 young people from the inner city and South Central Los Angeles who also “do not understand” and all have a “story about their fathers, or their uncles, or their cousins being incarcerated unfairly.” Tina also shares her opinion why more people than ever before are talking about police brutality in the wake of George Floyd’s murder this past June, which you can watch in the rest of the video clip above.
The special is airing two days after Julez (full name Daniel Julez J. Smith Jr.) rang in his 16th year at Beyoncé and JAY-Z’s $88 million mansion in Bel Air. “Beyonce and Jay wanted to do something special for Julez’s 16th birthday because of everything going on with the pandemic, so they invited the entire family over to their Bel Air home to celebrate the milestone occasion,” a source close to Beyoncé EXCLUSIVELY told HollywoodLife. You can learn more about the family gathering here, which Tina also attended!