Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
Speaker 1: welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
Speaker 1: mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Ramsey's job.
Speaker 2: He is Ramsy's job. I am q Ward. You are
Speaker 2: tuned in the Civic.
Speaker 1: Cipher, Yes you are, and we would like for you
Speaker 1: to stick around today because we are going to be
Speaker 1: talking to the one, the only doctor Ebram x KNDy. Now,
Speaker 1: for those who don't know, Doctor Ibram x Kindy is
Speaker 1: a National Book award winning author of sixteen books for
Speaker 1: adults and children, including ten New York Times bestsellers, five
Speaker 1: of which were Number one New York Times bestsellers, including
Speaker 1: How to Be Anti Racist. That's certainly a book that
Speaker 1: we've discussed on this show more than once. We've taken
Speaker 1: a lot of content from that book, that book to
Speaker 1: conceive of segments that we thought would be meaningful and useful.
Speaker 1: But there's there's more than that, of course, But for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, How to Be Anti Racist was
Speaker 1: described in the New York Times as the most courageous
Speaker 1: book to date on the problem of race in the
Speaker 1: Western mind. Add to that that doctor ibramax Kindi is
Speaker 1: a person who goes viral consistently online whose ideas about
Speaker 1: the state of this country are certainly a thought provoking
Speaker 1: and they lead to the sort of discussions that we
Speaker 1: feel are necessary on this show. And so for us
Speaker 1: to be able to have a conversation with him today,
Speaker 1: it means the world. So stick around for that. The
Speaker 1: first part of the show, we're going to be discussing,
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of the current state of the
Speaker 1: world and what we need to know. And for those
Speaker 1: of us who feel like we need to resist, we'll learn,
Speaker 1: you know, what that looks like nowadays. And for those
Speaker 1: that don't, well, at least know what we're up against.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, as always right now, it
Speaker 1: is time for us to start with some ebony excellence,
Speaker 1: shall we? I think that we shall. And today's ebny
Speaker 1: excellence comes from the sports. I will share a bit.
Speaker 1: Who is Young Mullah Ynom as video of black pilot
Speaker 1: goes viral on TikTok for his dreads and grills as
Speaker 1: he thanked God for the successful flight. Young Mullah Hynom,
Speaker 1: a black pilot, received criticism for wearing dreadlocks with grills
Speaker 1: on his teeth after releasing a video of himself with
Speaker 1: grills and dreadlocks after a successful flight. A black pilot
Speaker 1: name Young Mullah is receiving criticism and doubts about his
Speaker 1: abilities owing to his non conventional looks, which has stirred
Speaker 1: a debate between social media users. However, many have come
Speaker 1: to the black pilot's defense, citing his skill set which
Speaker 1: saw him become not only a pilot but a captain,
Speaker 1: which negates how he looks. Young Mullah is viral on TikTok,
Speaker 1: where he often posts videos about his work, and the
Speaker 1: reason why we thought it was important to shout him
Speaker 1: out is because in the age of attacks on DEI,
Speaker 1: in the age of attacks on affirmative action, in the
Speaker 1: age of really attacks on all things black from an
Speaker 1: oppressive political system, in many people's opinions, it is important
Speaker 1: that we celebrate our culture, our people, our accomplishments. And
Speaker 1: this is the platform that we've built to do just that.
Speaker 1: And when we came across the video, of course we
Speaker 1: saw a pilot the same as everyone else, who has
Speaker 1: a gorilla and wears his hair and locks. But you know,
Speaker 1: the comments section made it seem like he wasn't qualified
Speaker 1: to even be a co pilot, but he has enough
Speaker 1: stripes to actually be a pilot. And I think with
Speaker 1: a look like that, it suggests that he probably had
Speaker 1: to work even harder. And if we don't acknowledge that,
Speaker 1: no one else will. And so from where we sit,
Speaker 1: young Mulah, as you like to call yourself, keep going.
Speaker 1: I checked out a few more of your videos. You're
Speaker 1: an inspiration be yourself, and you know, keep flying and
Speaker 1: if you thank God at the end of your flights
Speaker 1: and keep doing that, and we'll keep checking out your videos.
Speaker 1: But certainly commendable and wish wishing you all the best.
Speaker 1: All right, doctor Ebram X, kindy welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: It is an honor we say that from time to time,
Speaker 1: but whatever is higher than that. That is how today feels.
Speaker 1: We've been just really excited in the studio looking forward
Speaker 1: to this conversation and we couldn't be more pleased that
Speaker 1: you would take a moment to come and just share
Speaker 1: your thoughts with us now for our audience that may
Speaker 1: not be intimately familiar with the work that you do
Speaker 1: and so forth, and of course we gave a brief introduction.
Speaker 1: Do us a favor and tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about yourself, maybe a little bit about your upbringing, your background,
Speaker 1: what led you to today's conversation, Just to kind of
Speaker 1: bring folks up to speed so they know who we're
Speaker 1: talking to today.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: So I'm a professor an author. I write books on
Speaker 3: the history of racism and even what it means to
Speaker 3: be anti racist, which is to say what it means
Speaker 3: to challenge racism. And I was born and raised in Queens,
Speaker 3: New York, went to fam You at FAMU, I started
Speaker 3: thinking about wanting to write as a journalist on racism.
Speaker 3: When to get my masters in Black studies because I
Speaker 3: didn't believe that since I was black, I was automatically
Speaker 3: an expert on black people. And then when I was there,
Speaker 3: I really saw the life of the professor and saw
Speaker 3: that I felt like I'd have more freedom, so to speak,
Speaker 3: to really think through and write in research, you know,
Speaker 3: really for the liberation of black people. So I decided
Speaker 3: to become a professor. And here I am.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 4: I think it goes without saying that you've been critical
Speaker 4: of the current administration in your opinion. I know this
Speaker 4: will be hard to narrow down, but what are the
Speaker 4: three biggest threats to Black Americans under this Trump administration.
Speaker 2: So I think I think the first, in no order
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 3: This effort at eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion, because the
Speaker 3: real sort of desire behind that is to resegregate this
Speaker 3: country and to eliminate our presence, particularly in places that
Speaker 3: are coveted and in places of power. I would say, secondly,
Speaker 3: the efforts at really the mass deportation of immigrants. So
Speaker 3: African Americans. The overwhelming percentage of African Americans are descendants
Speaker 3: of enslaved Africans, and we're likely here even before most
Speaker 3: the white Americans got here, but they still conceive of
Speaker 3: us as aliens, as illegal, as not truly Americans. And
Speaker 3: so I actually, I know a lot of black folks
Speaker 3: aren't worried about that because they know they're born in
Speaker 3: this country, their grandparents were born in this country. But
Speaker 3: I am because you know, once because simultaneously they're trying
Speaker 3: to do away with even birthright citizenship right. So to me,
Speaker 3: there's a connection there. And then the third thing, you know,
Speaker 3: I would also say, is this willingness to weaponize the
Speaker 3: the FBI and policing potentially at levels we haven't seen
Speaker 3: since the sixties, and and you know, as many as
Speaker 3: many people know.
Speaker 2: The civil rights movement and the Black power movement.
Speaker 3: Certainly there were internal strife, but there were so many
Speaker 3: organizations and leaders who were targeted by the FBI and
Speaker 3: policing forces really imploding or exploding, you know, our movements.
Speaker 3: And and and I see something similar happening now in which,
Speaker 3: you know, over the next few years, we're going to
Speaker 3: see leaders and organizations.
Speaker 2: Being undermined.
Speaker 3: And and and and and and really being destroyed, and
Speaker 3: and it's going to be made to seem as if
Speaker 3: they are the problem, that they did something wrong, and
Speaker 3: we won't necessarily know the hands of spies and FBI
Speaker 3: agents behind that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's another component here too that I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of us who were trying to motivate people
Speaker 1: to vote during the last election, a lot of us
Speaker 1: that were concerned about Project twenty twenty five. There's an
Speaker 1: additional element with this administration that a lot of us
Speaker 1: did not even conceive of, and that is Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: And you know, for all intents and purposes, Twitter and
Speaker 1: by extension, you know, other social media platforms, but Twitter
Speaker 1: in particular is.
Speaker 2: Sort of a.
Speaker 1: Community watering hole. It's almost like something that there's a
Speaker 1: public discourse element there. It serves the community, and yet
Speaker 1: it's held by a private citizen right and so it's
Speaker 1: not subjected to FCC laws in the same that like
Speaker 1: radio stations were and so forth. And they don't have
Speaker 1: to give back to the community in the way that
Speaker 1: television stations radio stations do per the FCC guidelines. And
Speaker 1: so it provides a benefit to the community, and the
Speaker 1: community by and large uses and consumes it, but it's
Speaker 1: subjected to the whims of a private individual. And with
Speaker 1: the emergence of Elon Musk sort of functioning almost like
Speaker 1: an elected representative, though he is not talk to us
Speaker 1: a bit about what threat, if any, is associated with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk in particular, and of course, you know, to
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent or a lesser degree folks like Facebook,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg and other folks like him, and what we
Speaker 1: can do about that that threat.
Speaker 3: So Elon Musk comes from a family of people who.
Speaker 2: Not only literally went to.
Speaker 3: South Africa because of apartheid, but then became major defenders
Speaker 3: and champions of apartheid. That's that's that's Elon Musk's family
Speaker 3: people who literally they're not they were you know, his
Speaker 3: his grandfather was in Canada and was like, Yo, look
Speaker 3: at that white supremacy. They're doing that really well over
Speaker 3: in South Africa. Moved to South Africa with Elon Musk's
Speaker 3: mother and and became a major defender. So that's that's
Speaker 3: Elon Musk. So for any black person to think that
Speaker 3: Elon Musk or even Twitter is in any way is
Speaker 3: anything but an engine of white supremacy, you only need
Speaker 3: to look at Elon Musk's own port of personal history
Speaker 3: and what these leaders are seeking to do today. It
Speaker 3: just reminds me of you know, one of the most
Speaker 3: classic books in African American history, which was written by
Speaker 3: Carter G. Woodson called The mis Education of the Negro,
Speaker 3: and that book and Cartigie talked about the ways in
Speaker 3: which our schools systematically miseducate us, systematically create our own
Speaker 3: ignorance so that we can ultimately not confront racism and
Speaker 3: white supremacy.
Speaker 2: But what these social.
Speaker 3: Media companies are doing, namely Twitter, is they got that
Speaker 3: down to a science, Like they're able to micro target people,
Speaker 3: so you know, through their algorithms, they're able to figure
Speaker 3: out each of our weakest spots and or those areas,
Speaker 3: those groups of people we really don't like, or those
Speaker 3: reasons why we think there's a problem with black people,
Speaker 3: and constantly feed us that information, force feed us that
Speaker 3: poison so that we continue to maintain you know, that
Speaker 3: the problem is black people, and we don't even know
Speaker 3: that it's happening to us, that they're poisoning our minds,
Speaker 3: that they're force feeding us, that they're micro targeting us
Speaker 3: where we're weak, But that's precisely what they're doing.
Speaker 4: You know, we've noticed a lot of corporations voluntarily rolling
Speaker 4: back or completely getting rid of DEI initiatives, and historically
Speaker 4: one way to fight back was through boycott. I think
Speaker 4: as of last year, or maybe even as recent as
Speaker 4: the beginning of this year, the total buying power of
Speaker 4: the black consumer is estimated around two trillion dollars. That
Speaker 4: is a more impactful weapon of leverage than I think
Speaker 4: even black people realize. Recently, Al Sharpton has called for
Speaker 4: black people to boycott. You know, these these companies who
Speaker 4: have made trillions of dollars off of our support. Do
Speaker 4: you think that's a good idea? Do you think there
Speaker 4: are there is something better that we can do. I'd
Speaker 4: love to hear where you stand there.
Speaker 3: So I actually do think it's a good idea, and
Speaker 3: and and it's not and it's a good idea that
Speaker 3: that's based in history. So of course, two of the
Speaker 3: most pivotal moments of the civil rights movement we're boycotts.
Speaker 3: Of course, there's the Montgomery bus boycott, and I don't
Speaker 3: think we have fully been taught that the reason why
Speaker 3: Montgomery the city essentially capitulated, was because black people were
Speaker 3: the primary ones who were taking the buses right, and
Speaker 3: so through boycotting those buses, we literally bankrupted the system.
Speaker 3: The second one, which we don't know as much about,
Speaker 3: is I'm sure people are familiar with those images from
Speaker 3: Birmingham where those young people are being shot with water hoses,
Speaker 3: and so that was in nineteen sixty three where young
Speaker 3: people were sort of marching in Birmingham. What was also
Speaker 3: happening is they specifically decided to do that demonstration on
Speaker 3: Easter weekend. And the reason why they did it on
Speaker 3: Easter weekend is because Easter weekend was a huge buying
Speaker 3: day in Birmingham, in downtown Birmingham, so they organically created
Speaker 3: a boycott of Birmingham's store, which then compelled the owners
Speaker 3: of those stores to feel like, Okay, we can't have
Speaker 3: too much more this right, we need to come and
Speaker 3: negotiate an end to Jim Crow segregation. And so boycotts
Speaker 3: historically have been incredibly effective, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm just.
Speaker 3: Giving those two examples in you know, in Alabama, and
Speaker 3: I think they can be effective now. Now it's gonna
Speaker 3: take time, right and it's gonna take organizing, but I
Speaker 3: do think it can be effective.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to rewind just a bit
Speaker 1: because you said something earlier, and I think that we
Speaker 1: can make that live a little bit more for our
Speaker 1: audience today. So let's let's say that we have some
Speaker 1: listeners who maybe they're not directly connected with immigrants, immigrant communities.
Speaker 1: They it doesn't feel real to them. Let's say that
Speaker 1: they've listened to the the debates during the campaign season
Speaker 1: and they've listened to this. I'd say what they're going
Speaker 1: to say that, I'd say what they're going to say.
Speaker 1: You mentioned that immigration is one of the things that
Speaker 1: you know, people should be concerned about. Let's connect that
Speaker 1: if we can a little bit more to outcomes in
Speaker 1: this individual who's listening to their lives. If they don't
Speaker 1: themselves know someone who's an immigrant, how does this current
Speaker 1: let's call it attack on immigrants, how does this affect
Speaker 1: those listeners' lives?
Speaker 2: So let me just speak first rhetorically.
Speaker 5: Okay, the President of the United States has described black
Speaker 5: nations in the same way he's described black communities the
Speaker 5: same He's used the same language.
Speaker 3: So black nations and black communities are incredibly dangerous to
Speaker 3: the point in which we're all living in hell. So
Speaker 3: the way he's framed black people abroad and black people
Speaker 3: at home is pretty much the same. Then that same
Speaker 3: president has not only advocated for border walls so that
Speaker 3: black people and brown people won't be able to come
Speaker 3: in the United States, he's also advocated for border walls
Speaker 3: around white suburban communities.
Speaker 2: Like he is literally argued.
Speaker 3: Uh and and and and eliminated policies that allowed us
Speaker 3: to gain better access to affordable housing and others, you know,
Speaker 3: in predominantly white community. Uh, in predominantly white community. So
Speaker 3: it's interconnected in that sense, But I think in a
Speaker 3: larger sense to me, from the standpoint of racist white Americans,
Speaker 3: they see people of color in the same from the
Speaker 3: same vantage point, whether we are a citizen or whether
Speaker 3: we're an immigrant, and their advocacy of policies and programs
Speaker 3: that refuse to give us as African Americans equal access
Speaker 3: to opportunities and resources dovetails their refusal to provide immigrants
Speaker 3: with access to opportunities and resource It's all connected, but
Speaker 3: they also recognized that the people who are struggling the
Speaker 3: most are also going to need more resources. So there's
Speaker 3: a reason why they pretty adeptly decided that they were
Speaker 3: going to take immigrants in Texas, in Arizona, in Florida
Speaker 3: and send them on planes and buses to Chicago, to Detroit,
Speaker 3: to New York City. They didn't do that by happenstance.
Speaker 3: They did that because they wanted us, as African Americans,
Speaker 3: to feel as if immigrants were taking resources that were ours,
Speaker 3: so that we could be just as upset as white Americans.
Speaker 3: So I'm saying that to say they tricked us, and frankly,
Speaker 3: there's enough resources for everyone and opportunities for everyone, but
Speaker 3: they've led us to believe that there's this sort of
Speaker 3: zero sum that we as African Americans we have to
Speaker 3: sort of protect ourselves because you know, if we start
Speaker 3: advocating for immigrants, then they're going to take our resources. No,
Speaker 3: what actually happens is we're empowering people who are going
Speaker 3: to take our resources.
Speaker 2: That's what actually happens.
Speaker 1: You know, I want to add to that, because the
Speaker 1: truth is is that we live in a border state,
Speaker 1: so we were able to see a lot of the
Speaker 1: fear mongering, a lot of the weaponization of the plight
Speaker 1: of immigrants, a lot of villainization and demonizing of immigrant communities.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to pretend like there's not an
Speaker 1: issue with immigration in this country. All countries deal with
Speaker 1: that on some level or another, and you know the process,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it evolves according to the country's sensibilities and
Speaker 1: needs and so forth. But you know what I remember
Speaker 1: is that there was supposed to be a border bill
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be sent to the president, and
Speaker 1: Donald Trump stepped in intentionally and said, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: Republicans don't approve that or don't vote for that border bill,
Speaker 1: even though it was a bipartisan bill, And he instructed
Speaker 1: Republicans not to move forward with that so that he
Speaker 1: could run on run his campaign on Joe Biden having
Speaker 1: a weak border. And so because we covered that in
Speaker 1: the news and then subsequent quickly saw him campaign on
Speaker 1: it again. Us living in a border state, we saw
Speaker 1: the impact that that has on real people and not
Speaker 1: just migrants. You know, we live in a place where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of this used to be Mexico where
Speaker 1: we live. So there are Mexican people who, you know,
Speaker 1: for all intents and purposes, go back generations on this land,
Speaker 1: long before this land was ever even a part of
Speaker 1: the United States, who live in fear now because they
Speaker 1: can be profiled and with the broad police powers that
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump was suggesting he would give to police.
Speaker 1: It's reminiscent of SB ten seventy, which is something that
Speaker 1: in Arizona, you know, we had to deal with, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's just really a sad state for
Speaker 1: us to be in. But you know, conversations like this
Speaker 1: certainly help us get to the bottom of it.