Speaker 1: If you're just tuning in to civic Cipher, I am
Speaker 1: your host, Rams' Ja.
Speaker 2: He is Ramsey's Jah. I am Q Gordon. As he mentioned,
Speaker 2: you are tuned into civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, and keep writing with us as we continue
Speaker 1: to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from these
Speaker 1: hip hop weekly studios. Stick around because we have a
Speaker 1: lot more to talk about, including a rethink of the
Speaker 1: car sool system here in these United States of America,
Speaker 1: long overdue. It sounds like, yeah, yeah, and you know what,
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, I have known people who
Speaker 1: are somewhere on the spectrum going from prisons are absolutely
Speaker 1: necessary for the rehabilitation of criminal behavior, to abolish prisons outright.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until I had this rethink that we're
Speaker 1: going to get into a little bit later in the
Speaker 1: show that I started to really understand just how much
Speaker 1: our current way of thinking holds us back. So stay tuned.
Speaker 1: First and foremost, though, we are going to discuss BA
Speaker 1: BA becoming a Better ally ab BA. Today's BABA sponsored
Speaker 1: by Friends of the Movie. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: the free voter wallet from Fotmglobal dot com to support
Speaker 1: black businesses and allied businesses, as well as make an
Speaker 1: impact with your spending. Again, that's Fotmglobal dot Com and
Speaker 1: today's baba. This is an ally in the truest sense.
Speaker 1: This behavior is worthy of applause. This comes from NPR.
Speaker 1: Pink is joining the fight against book banning. Thank you Pink.
Speaker 1: In collaboration with PEN America and Florida Best Sorry, Florida Bookseller,
Speaker 1: Books and Books, the Grammy winning pop musician is giving
Speaker 1: away two thousand challenged books at our concerts in Miami
Speaker 1: and Sunrise, Florida. The books which have appeared in pen
Speaker 1: America's index of banned books include Beloved by Tony Morrison,
Speaker 1: Amanda Gorman's The Hill We Climb, Gross Who Code by
Speaker 1: Regma Sojani, and Todd Parr's The Family Book. It's confusing,
Speaker 1: it's infuriating, its censorship, Pink said in an Instagram video
Speaker 1: announcing her action. The video, which also featured PEN America's
Speaker 1: president Suzanne Nozel, has been linked to more than has
Speaker 1: been linked more than thirty three thousand times liked sorry,
Speaker 1: don't have my glasses on all right quote. Books have
Speaker 1: held a special joy for me from the time I
Speaker 1: was a child and That's why I am unwilling to
Speaker 1: stand by and watch while books are banned by schools,
Speaker 1: Pink said in a PEN statement about the giveaway. She
Speaker 1: goes on to say, it's especially hateful to see authorities
Speaker 1: take aim at books about race and racism against LGBTQ
Speaker 1: authors and those of color. We have made so many
Speaker 1: strides toward equality in this country, and no one should
Speaker 1: want to see this progress reversed. This is why I
Speaker 1: am supporting PEN America in its work and why I
Speaker 1: agree with them no more banned books. And we always
Speaker 1: do our best to applaud folks who are becoming better
Speaker 1: allies by using their platforms and really taking on uncomfortablet answers,
Speaker 1: and I'd imagine that's true with Pink. Okay, so we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the car s rules system, and
Speaker 1: this is one piece of the entire criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: We spent the first half of the show talking about police,
Speaker 1: law enforcement, law enforcement. Yeah, and you know, we we
Speaker 1: have problems there with police. We have problems with sentencing,
Speaker 1: and we have problems with how we think about the
Speaker 1: car rules system. And it's always interesting to do these
Speaker 1: readings that we do because we learn so much from
Speaker 1: these great thinkers who allow us to step outside of
Speaker 1: our own way of thinking, our own framework, mental framework,
Speaker 1: to re examine critically what holds our society. Yet, well,
Speaker 1: this happens because it's always happened that way, and it's
Speaker 1: too difficult to undo it. And these brilliant minds cause
Speaker 1: us to rethink even that position because the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is that these rethinks aren't tall orders. It
Speaker 1: doesn't require any people being any different, And in this instance,
Speaker 1: it was very easy for me. I've shared this on
Speaker 1: the show before and I'll share it again. I have
Speaker 1: an older brother who went to prison for a very
Speaker 1: very very long time. Not quite football numbers, but a
Speaker 1: long time.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It might have been somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe
Speaker 1: fifteen years. And you would think that my brother did
Speaker 1: something wild. And I mean, I suppose it depends on
Speaker 1: who you ask, but I don't think it was wild.
Speaker 1: My brother got a brand new Cadillac Escalade and my
Speaker 1: family's from California. I'm from California. California is a place
Speaker 1: where people will jack you for your car. Carjackings take
Speaker 1: place in California. So my brother decided to protect himself
Speaker 1: by owning a firearm. One day because he had this
Speaker 1: in his vehicle to protect himself. There was some people
Speaker 1: that were messing with his girlfriend now wife. They were
Speaker 1: being they were harassing her, and my brother was outnumbered.
Speaker 1: But he knew that, hey, if I get this gun
Speaker 1: fire in the air, might scare these guys off and
Speaker 1: then we can get out of here. It's exactly what
Speaker 1: he did. Now we thought everything was going to be okay.
Speaker 1: We his family because fortunately where he was, it was
Speaker 1: on video. It's clearly shooting in the air. Guys run away,
Speaker 1: they get out of there. Everything's fine. My brother went
Speaker 1: to jail prison for attempted murder fifteen years. They took
Speaker 1: my brother from me, and it's on video. He wasn't
Speaker 1: trying to murder anyone. Story checks out, you know, he's
Speaker 1: obviously his now wife was there. Tell our version of
Speaker 1: the story. And this is the car soule system in
Speaker 1: the United States of America. This is my brother. This
Speaker 1: is not like the homie. This is my father's son
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about. So when I came across this,
Speaker 1: which I want to shout out, we are pushblack on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Give them a once sober and give them a follow
Speaker 1: if you're into this type of content, I believe that
Speaker 1: this is really some profound content for thought experiments and
Speaker 1: rethinking just the world looks and feels to you if
Speaker 1: you're black, if you are not black. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just important that we share this information and we understand
Speaker 1: a little bit more about each other's walks. But this
Speaker 1: comes or this starts off three ways. Garceral logic limits
Speaker 1: our imaginations and restricts our futures. Okay, so I'll read
Speaker 1: a bit. Carcerol logic is the way of thinking that
Speaker 1: made prisons and policing or carceral systems possible. Because we've
Speaker 1: normalized those systems, we still use this logic even outside
Speaker 1: context of incarceration. Here's three examples. So this is a
Speaker 1: very easy thought experiment to follow. We're going to go
Speaker 1: through these examples one by one. Okay, Number one, are
Speaker 1: you innocent or are you guilty? Now you're just listening
Speaker 1: to me ask That sounds simple enough, right. Turns out, realistically,
Speaker 1: most real people and real conflicts are more complex than that. Carciologic, however,
Speaker 1: tells us there's a terrible few the guilty people who
Speaker 1: do the wrong things because they have something wrong with them,
Speaker 1: But that establishes a dangerous inaccurate binary, especially for marginalized people.
Speaker 1: And funnily enough, on this show, and I want you
Speaker 1: to jump in here, Q, because I know that this
Speaker 1: has been one of the things that you've been certainly
Speaker 1: even more passionate about than me. But for folks who
Speaker 1: have a traditional mindset, innocent, guilty, do the crime, do
Speaker 1: the time. That's sort of thinking that when it lacks humanity,
Speaker 1: when it lacks empathy, when it lacks context, overlooks people's circumstances.
Speaker 1: And if we agree that human beings deserve how about
Speaker 1: if there's a stray dog, it looks very thin, and
Speaker 1: it's outside of your house, and say you live on
Speaker 1: a house and the dog knocks over your trash can
Speaker 1: and takes some food and runs off, that would make sense, Okay,
Speaker 1: the dog is trying to survive. Indeed, if it was
Speaker 1: a dog, most people might actually say, Wow, that dog
Speaker 1: is hungry, Let me feed the dog. Okay. If that
Speaker 1: is a person, not a dog, and the person is black, people,
Speaker 1: funnily enough, treat that human being worse in many instances,
Speaker 1: because we've seen many videos of police kicking black men
Speaker 1: and They're like, Yo, what did I do? I was
Speaker 1: just walking down wooded what's going on? The police are kicking, no,
Speaker 1: stop resisting all that sort of stuff, and people are like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: clearly he did something. And then the thought experiment that
Speaker 1: we have often is excuse me, swap out that black
Speaker 1: man for a dog. Do you still feel the same way?
Speaker 1: And then most people are like, of course not. And
Speaker 1: so this is where I want you to dear been
Speaker 1: guilty or innocent. If I'm poor, I come from impoverished
Speaker 1: circumstances and I need to eat, or I need to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to get some money together so
Speaker 1: that I can pay for where I live or whatever,
Speaker 1: does that make me a bad person or does that
Speaker 1: make me a poor person? And I get that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of nuance here, but it's a good question
Speaker 1: to ask, because I could show you bad people who
Speaker 1: are wealthy people and then they do bad things to
Speaker 1: gain more wealth. But it's very hard for me with
Speaker 1: proper contact to look at poor people and feel that
Speaker 1: they should be held to the same standard, or indeed
Speaker 1: a worse or a more harsh standard than people who
Speaker 1: are just greedy for the sake of being greedy. All right,
Speaker 1: go ahead.
Speaker 2: Nuance it's one of my favorite words. And this spoke
Speaker 2: about the idea of us having a cutro logic, even
Speaker 2: outside the idea of incarceration.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Two, you know examples that I want to point out.
Speaker 2: The first and most obvious is in the way that
Speaker 2: you just described. Right, in this capitalist society, there has
Speaker 2: to be a good guy and a bad guy, and
Speaker 2: a lot of that is in order to upheil uphold
Speaker 2: I'm sorry the society.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The interjection of nuance and context and complexity makes it
Speaker 2: far too difficult to enforce this law and this system
Speaker 2: the way that we want to right. Bad people do
Speaker 2: bad things, sending to jail. It's way easier than asking
Speaker 2: all the questions why and what circumstances led to etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 2: Then far more simple examples like relationships, Right, a romantic
Speaker 2: relationship comes to an end, someone there had to be
Speaker 2: the bad guy. There is no space for nuances and
Speaker 2: decisions being made for reasons outside of that person's just bad.
Speaker 1: I know that story. That's why I brought it. We
Speaker 1: all do it.
Speaker 2: I got to be painted as the bad guy in
Speaker 2: a very very public way. Once upon a time to
Speaker 2: hundreds and thousands of strangers who got to then have
Speaker 2: a full, fleshed out opinion of me with very very
Speaker 2: little little data, very very little context, with very very
Speaker 2: little in the way of complexity and nuance. Right, this
Speaker 2: pretty person said I was bad, so I must be.
Speaker 2: It was easy to view me and other people male
Speaker 2: and female, on the wake of a relationship gone south,
Speaker 2: a romantic relationship.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Probably our most flimsy relationship are those of romance and passion.
Speaker 2: When they fall apart and go south, someone has to
Speaker 2: be the bad guy, and there has to be a
Speaker 2: punishment assigned to the bad person. It's never that straight. Look,
Speaker 2: that's not fair. Sometimes it is. There is a such
Speaker 2: thing as bad people like we don't want to pretend
Speaker 2: to let's not pretend, right, But in often cases, bad
Speaker 2: as a label that gets placed on somebody because of
Speaker 2: a decision made because of circumstance. And we'd rather not
Speaker 2: have those complex conversations about circumstances because it makes upholding
Speaker 2: a specific system and making very black and white linear.
Speaker 2: You know, in some cases bad logic decisions hard to
Speaker 2: make if you interject these complexities and nuance and context
Speaker 2: and color.
Speaker 1: What we'd rather it just be black and white, you know.
Speaker 1: And and there's something funny here too, specifically because I've
Speaker 1: said this on a recent episode two that a bar
Speaker 1: from Tupac it's not I wonder if Heaven got a ghetto.
Speaker 1: It's probably the song will come to me. But he says,
Speaker 1: instead of a war on poverty, they got a war
Speaker 1: on drugs, so the police can bother me. And I
Speaker 1: think that that really shows that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: That's just the way. Thank you, thank you. I don't
Speaker 1: know I'm a DJ. I don't know how I forgot
Speaker 1: that one. You're a DJ, though, thank you for remembering
Speaker 1: profile messages. But I know it came from the same
Speaker 1: album or same time brain, you know. But anyway, that statement,
Speaker 1: I think kind of really encompasses the way that the
Speaker 1: government or the powers that be, or the societal framework
Speaker 1: under which we live is just comfortab with things being
Speaker 1: the way that they are. It overwhelmingly upholds people who
Speaker 1: have privileged that could be wealth, that could be their
Speaker 1: racial composition, that could be opportunities, that could be, you know,
Speaker 1: where their dad went to school or who their mom
Speaker 1: knew or whatever, and it disproportionately negatively affects people like us,
Speaker 1: especially if when you're looking at a carceral system that
Speaker 1: disproportionately sentences black people to sorry sentences, black people to
Speaker 1: disproportionately long sentences. I think that's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: You start to realize that the data shows that it's
Speaker 1: a much tougher go for us based on this binary
Speaker 1: system where there's no room for nuance. And this this
Speaker 1: is true. I've been I've been to court before and
Speaker 1: they have, you know, a judge. You'd be like, I
Speaker 1: got a ticket once, How about this, I got a
Speaker 1: ticket once. Judge is like, well, the ticket was for
Speaker 1: like tag. I had a paper tag. I bought a
Speaker 1: new car, right, and the paper tag expired. But the
Speaker 1: dealership was supposed to send me the new tag. You know,
Speaker 1: that's what you paid for when you get the car,
Speaker 1: and the dealership never sent it to me. So I'm driving,
Speaker 1: get pulled over, I get a ticket, right, and then
Speaker 1: I go to court for this ticket, and I was
Speaker 1: trying to let them know, hey, I've done everything that
Speaker 1: I could possibly do. This is not my crime. This
Speaker 1: is indeed the crime of the dealership because had I
Speaker 1: received everything, it would have been there I still have
Speaker 1: to go to work. This is my only car. I
Speaker 1: bought it. You know, this is what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: There's all the nuance for you. The judge wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to hear a nuance. The judge was like, were you
Speaker 1: driving with a expired paper tag? Yes? Or no? And
Speaker 1: under those circumstances, I have to say yes. And I
Speaker 1: don't have any money if I at the time, I
Speaker 1: was going to school and I had to pay for
Speaker 1: my own school, you know what I mean, So certainly
Speaker 1: didn't have money to fight a ticket. And now you
Speaker 1: see how it goes. So anyway, the point here is
Speaker 1: that nuance helps where currently we have a binary system.
Speaker 1: Let's go to step two. Defining punishment is complex too.
Speaker 1: You might consider blocking someone's number, punching someone, or killing
Speaker 1: someone who hurt you. Hurt also exists on a spectrum.
Speaker 1: In other words, there are mandatory minimums, there are three
Speaker 1: strikes laws. There are things like this, where how about
Speaker 1: three strikes? Brian Stevenson, who we're a big fan of
Speaker 1: on this show. He is the founder of the Equal
Speaker 1: Justice Initiative. Please look him up to He's a very
Speaker 1: profound speaker in a brilliant mind. Brian Stevenson said on
Speaker 1: a Ted Talk Once upon a Time. He says, you know,
Speaker 1: the three strikes laws in California have people who've lived
Speaker 1: rough lives. Just how no one wakes up in the
Speaker 1: morning's like, oh my gosh, you can't wait to do crime.
Speaker 1: People are like, I need to get the opportunity wherever
Speaker 1: I can. Some people, I'll interject again, some people people exist. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But the people that we know that end up in
Speaker 1: these stories that we end up coming across lots of
Speaker 1: these stories, that's not the It's hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: way like that because Rams just pointed out earlier and
Speaker 1: in our covers today that there are people who are
Speaker 1: well off that still wake up. That's exactly what he
Speaker 1: thank you for. Thank you for making sure that I'm
Speaker 1: all the way right. But what you have is people
Speaker 1: that have lived rough lives that you know, maybe they're
Speaker 1: they see a bicycle, they think there, that's the bike
Speaker 1: that was taken from them, so they take it back
Speaker 1: and now they have to go to prison forever. Right.
Speaker 1: So again, rethinking punishment is another part of this, and
Speaker 1: I want to make sure we get this. This last
Speaker 1: one here is number three. Punishment in this context, along
Speaker 1: with surveillance and violating human rights, is more so an
Speaker 1: abusive power. Yes, prisons, but also actions like parents beating children.
Speaker 1: State enforced carco logic leaves us little room to question
Speaker 1: punishments or approach individual harms as part of a collective,
Speaker 1: like eliminating the actual causes of systemic sexual or racial violence.
Speaker 1: We're expected to trade our agency for how the state
Speaker 1: response to our conflicts, leaving many violent survivors dissatisfied or
Speaker 1: criminalized themselves. Carcologic is ingrained in our world, but it's
Speaker 1: still a system of opinions. We can choose to believe
Speaker 1: something else. We can imagine and create more empowering logics
Speaker 1: and a safer world. Now, I don't want to leave
Speaker 1: us right there, so I'm going to share some good news,
Speaker 1: which is rare on this show. But I came across
Speaker 1: the statistic, and funnily enough, it was Ben Crump that
Speaker 1: first posted it, and then I went and researched it
Speaker 1: to make sure that it was true. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, the imprisonment rates for black women are in decline.
Speaker 1: They've declined seventy percent from two thousand to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: She's going. And then for black males rates declined forty
Speaker 1: eight percent during the same time frame, and obviously this
Speaker 1: is a major step forward. Still disproportionately affects us. We
Speaker 1: still get the disproportionate sentences, but over the you know,
Speaker 1: two decade plus, you know time frame, you can see
Speaker 1: that you know, either we are you know, figuring a
Speaker 1: way to avoid this or something is working. I would
Speaker 1: I think that I probably should do some more research
Speaker 1: into what might be causing these these rates. But this
Speaker 1: is very special. The truth of the matter is that
Speaker 1: one in five black mails born in two thousand and
Speaker 1: one it is likely to experience imprisonment in their lifetimes.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a lot, and it is. But that's
Speaker 1: down from one in three black males born when we
Speaker 1: were born, born in nineteen eighty one. And you're free
Speaker 1: to verify this. Go to Entensingproject dot org and check
Speaker 1: that out. But yeah, as it turns out, incarceration rates
Speaker 1: for black people are dropping, and I'd imagine that's why
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years there's been this big
Speaker 1: push to make us at for the stakeholders of the
Speaker 1: prisons in their country to try to keep them filled
Speaker 1: and they've renegotiated their deals with different cities and criminal
Speaker 1: justice you know, uh departments and so forth. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: rethinking that system in its entirety is something that we
Speaker 1: want you to do. Obviously, if you're an elected official,
Speaker 1: shoot put that on your platform. But if you're just
Speaker 1: a person who is like us, and.
Speaker 2: We imagine not just with regards to incarceration in prison,
Speaker 2: but like this, like the reading says, with our relationships
Speaker 2: with our children everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely that that binary is very dangerous and it
Speaker 1: and it causes us to miss out on really the
Speaker 1: bulk of what it is we're supposed to learn from
Speaker 1: our stories. So with that in mind, I guess we'll
Speaker 1: leave that one right there. I'd like to thank you
Speaker 1: all once again for tuning into this installment of Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: I have been your host Ramsy's.
Speaker 2: Ja He has been Ramsey's jaw. I still am you know,
Speaker 2: I like that word, and you know, engage with us
Speaker 2: civic cipher dot com and civic Cipher at Civic Cipher
Speaker 2: on all social media you know, like love, share, comment, subscribe,
Speaker 2: follow all of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and we want to give a big shout
Speaker 1: out to the Black Information Network If you're listening to
Speaker 1: us on a bi in station, we appreciate you. Want
Speaker 1: to let you know that you welcome to Cipher. Indeed,
Speaker 1: let you know that you can get the full show
Speaker 1: at civic cipher dot com in case you missed any
Speaker 1: part of it. And as Q mentioned, please tap in
Speaker 1: with us on social media at Civic Cipher on all platforms.
Speaker 1: We need that support because we attract a lot of trolls.
Speaker 1: And until next week, y'all, peace, peace,