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, Rams' job.
Speaker 2: He is Ramsy's jah. I am q Ward. You are
Speaker 2: tuned into Civic Cipher well Mogain, and we appreciate you
Speaker 2: tuning in. We've got some stuff in store for you so.
Speaker 1: That you can know what we know, navigate the things
Speaker 1: that are headed our way, and understand how to make
Speaker 1: your live and the lives of those around you. Better
Speaker 1: stick around because we are going to be talking about
Speaker 1: the dismantling of DEI. For longtime listeners of the show,
Speaker 1: you're aware that DEI is something that we have been
Speaker 1: fans of. We've been supportive of companies doing their best
Speaker 1: to adopt DEI initiatives to make their workplaces workforces more diverse, which,
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, leads to more profits and more success,
Speaker 1: more equity, and more inclusion. And with this new election, obviously,
Speaker 1: companies are adjusting their posture, which leads us to believe
Speaker 1: that a lot of what they were doing was performative
Speaker 1: and that's very sad. But you need to know about it.
Speaker 1: We're going to cite Walmart because they were kind of
Speaker 1: one of the first big ones to shut the door
Speaker 1: on including black people in the conversations of promotion and
Speaker 1: you know, giving black folks an equitable and inclusive experience
Speaker 1: inside of the company. But they're not the only ones.
Speaker 1: There's other ones as well. And second part of the show,
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about some Republican hypocrisies that
Speaker 1: we have been encountering, and we will be talking about
Speaker 1: the pardoning of Hunter Biden and the ignoring of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's distancing himself from Project twenty twenty five and hypocrisy therein.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, it's time to discuss any excellence,
Speaker 1: shall we? I think you shall, all right.
Speaker 2: Today's ABNY Excellence is sponsored by Actively Black. There is
Speaker 2: greatness in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. This
Speaker 2: story comes from BI in Massachusetts. Rep Ayana Presley warned
Speaker 2: House Republicans to keep doctor Martin Luther King Junior's name
Speaker 2: out of their mouths admit their efforts to dismantle DEI.
Speaker 2: During Wednesday's House Oversight Committee hearing. Presley condemned Republicans for
Speaker 2: backing the dismantl DEI Act, a new bill seeking to
Speaker 2: weaken diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within the government. Presley
Speaker 2: called out the anti DEI supporters for twisting King's words
Speaker 2: to advance their agenda, and she said in the quote,
Speaker 2: I'd also like to take a personal note of privilege
Speaker 2: to say, please keep doctor Martin Luther King Junior's name
Speaker 2: out of your mouths end quote, Presley said, per News.
Speaker 2: The dismantl DEI Act, which is set to eliminate DII
Speaker 2: offices in the federal government, in DEI requirements for federal
Speaker 2: contracts and grant applicants, and provide oversight to ensure tax
Speaker 2: dollars aren't being used to pay for DEI initiatives. Wow
Speaker 2: Man ultimately passed in the twenty three to seventeen vote.
Speaker 2: During the hearing, press they gave House Republicans and lesson
Speaker 2: on the country history of racism. Quote do you all
Speaker 2: know your history? Do you know American history?
Speaker 1: She asked.
Speaker 2: The original Constitution counted enslaved individuals as three fifths of
Speaker 2: a person. During World War II, the federal government forcibly
Speaker 2: relocated and incarcerated one hundred and ten thousand Japanese Americans.
Speaker 2: The FHA practiced redlining in the nineteen thirties and sixties
Speaker 2: to deny mortgages to black Americans, which is why we
Speaker 2: have a racial wealth gap today end quote. Pressley noted
Speaker 2: that King's family has called for politicians to stop wrongfully
Speaker 2: referencing the civil rights leader, your perversion of his words
Speaker 2: and his mission, when his children have asked you to
Speaker 2: stop invoking his name and perverting his work, when he
Speaker 2: has a proud and unapologetic black man fighting for equality
Speaker 2: for Black Americans and all marginalized people.
Speaker 1: She said, well, I think that that is a perfect
Speaker 1: segue to what it is do we have to talk
Speaker 1: about now. I thought, once upon a time, Q. That
Speaker 1: we were moving in a direction as a country that
Speaker 1: prioritized everyone having a fair shot at the American dream.
Speaker 1: And there are people who would argue that a fair
Speaker 1: shot exists, but the data would argue that the results
Speaker 1: don't show that. And those people that argue that the
Speaker 1: fair shot exists look at the data and say, well,
Speaker 1: you're responsible for that. You need to stop listening to
Speaker 1: rap music, You need to keep dads in the homes,
Speaker 1: pull up your pants, cut your hair, all that, right,
Speaker 1: and the truth of the matter is that even if
Speaker 1: you wanted to have those conversations, there's root causes for
Speaker 1: each and every one of those things that you know,
Speaker 1: the opposition takes issue with Representative Presley mentioned, you know, redline,
Speaker 1: red line creating the racial wealth gap that we see
Speaker 1: in our country today, which informs schools and that leads
Speaker 1: to outcomes and education. Obviously healthcare because where you live
Speaker 1: and what part of town you live in, there's disproportionate
Speaker 1: health effects. People live longer, healthier lives. You know, poor
Speaker 1: people in poor communities don't over policing, and you're you're
Speaker 1: further relegated to the margins of society. You know, there's
Speaker 1: these these connections have been well established on they've shown
Speaker 1: many others. The point of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives was,
Speaker 1: I in my estimation, the biggest benefit of those was
Speaker 1: the equity part. Because a lot of people on the opposition, uh,
Speaker 1: they they think that the world is equal, and they've
Speaker 1: made that case that that not the world, but this
Speaker 1: country is equal. Equal justice under the law, equal protection,
Speaker 1: equality for all justices, blind, all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's equal, and it's about individual responsibilities. And the equitable
Speaker 1: part in THEI is the part that I think was
Speaker 1: the big push, because just because something is equal doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it is equitable, right, and these diversity, equity
Speaker 1: and inclusion initiatives were meant to offset the historic injustices
Speaker 1: that were enacted upon black communities by the government, by institutions,
Speaker 1: by the citizens of this country, so that there was
Speaker 1: there would end up being more access to the American
Speaker 1: dream for those communities that have historically been marginalized. And
Speaker 1: this is why the dismantling of these DEI initiatives is
Speaker 1: so disheartening, because you know, everyone on that side thinks
Speaker 1: that's simply a matter of hard work. And something that
Speaker 1: I say quite a bit, and we've said on the
Speaker 1: show before, is that you know a person like me,
Speaker 1: who for all intents and purposes, is a successful black man.
Speaker 1: I can look at my circumstances and say, okay, I
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen eighty two in Compton, California, in
Speaker 1: a drug infested neighborhood, and everything around me looked like
Speaker 1: the world I knew no better, And if I had
Speaker 1: stayed there long enough, I would have grown up and
Speaker 1: become a gangbanger. The same as everyone else, and I
Speaker 1: would have been really good at it until I died
Speaker 1: or went to prison, and that would have been my reality.
Speaker 1: And the only reason that that's not my reality is
Speaker 1: because I was lucky. So everyone on the opposition that says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you worked hard and that's why you're Oh,
Speaker 1: everybody works hard. Maybe not everybody, but people that work,
Speaker 1: they typically and at least in their minds, they work hard.
Speaker 1: You know, you could ask any random American going to
Speaker 1: work today, do you work hard? And most folks would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I work hard. Hard. Work in and of
Speaker 1: itself does not guarantee success. They could say, Rams, is
Speaker 1: your intelligent. There's a lot of intelligent people in the world,
Speaker 1: a lot of intelligent people that end up dead or
Speaker 1: in prison from the same place where I where I
Speaker 1: come from. On this show, at least, the assumption is
Speaker 1: that you know, talent and intelligence and those sorts of
Speaker 1: things are distributed equally among all races and tribes in humanity. Okay,
Speaker 1: And you know, I believe that I'm a reasonably intelligent person,
Speaker 1: but no more or less generally speaking than anyone else, right,
Speaker 1: So that in and of itself is not the deciding factor.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of dumb people that are very successful
Speaker 1: and a lot of smart people that are not right,
Speaker 1: and so you know, and on and on and on.
Speaker 1: These folks will make these arguments all day that it's
Speaker 1: about the individual, not about the circumstances. And I feel
Speaker 1: like I am the product of circumstances. And you know,
Speaker 1: I would even meet you in the middle. It's a
Speaker 1: combination of me being who I am and circumstances. I
Speaker 1: meet you there in the middle, okay. But what I
Speaker 1: won't let you do is simply say that it's just
Speaker 1: ramses you are the reason that you qualify as a
Speaker 1: quote unquote successful black man. I will not allow that,
Speaker 1: because I know that I was lucky, right. And equity
Speaker 1: finds the people who could be qualified and brings them
Speaker 1: to the conversation. That's what equity does. Equity finds the
Speaker 1: people who can take advantage of these opportunities where the
Speaker 1: opportunity would not even make its way to them because
Speaker 1: of circumstances, because of other limitations, because of a societal framework,
Speaker 1: because of historic injustices. It's the equity that I've always
Speaker 1: loved about DEI Initiatives and the companies that did more
Speaker 1: than simply put a black square on Instagram. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the companies that said, Hey, we're finally listening black folks.
Speaker 1: We got something for you. We see what's happening to
Speaker 1: your communities. Understand the historical context of how you got there.
Speaker 1: You guys aren't not just born evil, criminal, born to
Speaker 1: die sickly stupid. You're not born that way. You are
Speaker 1: born the same as any other people. And there are
Speaker 1: circumstances that lead to the outcomes we're seeing in the data.
Speaker 1: And we this company X, let me company Y, are
Speaker 1: going to put together a program so that while we
Speaker 1: carry out our business operations, we will be mindful, respectful,
Speaker 1: and cognizant of the fact that there have been some
Speaker 1: historic injustices perpetuated on your communities, and we are going
Speaker 1: to do our best to offset those as much as
Speaker 1: we can. And if that means hiring black women, then
Speaker 1: we will do our best to make that a priority.
Speaker 1: In addition to hiring the best talent. If we're going to,
Speaker 1: you know, bring in marketing people to where we can
Speaker 1: reach these communities without offending them, that not only helps
Speaker 1: our bottom line, but it also keeps us from offending
Speaker 1: people that we don't intend to offend, you know, or
Speaker 1: misrepresenting ourselves in front of people that we don't intend
Speaker 1: to misrepresent ourselves in front of right, and on and
Speaker 1: on and everything all seemed well and good, and to
Speaker 1: be fair, there were some people back then that were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is performative. This was performative. And I hate being
Speaker 1: at this point having to say that all the people
Speaker 1: that called out a lot of this DEI stuff is
Speaker 1: being performative were right because of the story I'm about
Speaker 1: to read, and then I'll let you jump in because
Speaker 1: I know this is something we both wanted to talk about.
Speaker 1: But this comes from the Black Information Network. Walmart is
Speaker 1: reportedly rolling back its diversity, equity and inclusion policies nationwide.
Speaker 1: On November twenty fifth, Conservative activists whoever broke the news
Speaker 1: on Walmart's massive shift on DEI quote massive news. Walmart
Speaker 1: is ending their woke policies. I can now exclusively tell
Speaker 1: you what's changing and how it happened, this person wrote
Speaker 1: on Twitter. This person goes on to say, last week
Speaker 1: I told execs at Walmart that I was doing a
Speaker 1: story on wokeness there. Instead, we had a productive conversation
Speaker 1: to find solutions, according to The Gentleman Who the Conservative Gentleman,
Speaker 1: Walmart will no longer use the term DEI or LATINX.
Speaker 1: The company is reportedly discontinuing training through the Racial Equity
Speaker 1: Institute and terminating its Racial Equity Center, a special five
Speaker 1: year initiative established in twenty twenty. Walmart is also reevaluating
Speaker 1: its policies to ensure the company isn't providing preferential treatment
Speaker 1: or benefits to suppliers based on diversity. Wow. That means
Speaker 1: those suppliers just simply get overlooked again this person, okay.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, Walmart said it sourced more than thirteen
Speaker 1: point one billion dollars in goods and services from diverse
Speaker 1: suppliers in the wake of George Floyd's murder, which sparked
Speaker 1: protess test against police brutality and racial injustice. So that
Speaker 1: thirteen point one billion dollars that went to let's be honest,
Speaker 1: perhaps mostly white women because they are the biggest, biggest
Speaker 1: beneficiaries of minority centered initiatives. That all goes away now
Speaker 1: and we need to know this now. I know that
Speaker 1: we had a conversation you and I about this when
Speaker 1: we were thinking of doing the segment, So take us
Speaker 1: into your mind.
Speaker 2: Microsoft's Ford, Toyota, Harley Davison are named here. I am
Speaker 2: certain that that's not the entire list.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's a long list.
Speaker 2: And the very interesting thing about people saying that a
Speaker 2: lot of these DEI initiatives were performative is that I'd
Speaker 2: argue at the time and to this day, that that
Speaker 2: didn't matter. They still spent the thirteen billion dollars and
Speaker 2: if that meant some women, be they white, got some
Speaker 2: money that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten, then it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter that it was performative.
Speaker 1: The action still happened.
Speaker 2: And that's been my pushback to everything that everyone says
Speaker 2: is performative. Once upon a time, Ramses and I started
Speaker 2: a nonprofit called the Change Society I Know where You're going,
Speaker 2: and in conjunction with Living through Giving, based out of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, my really really good friend AJ and hashtag
Speaker 2: lunch Bag, we collectively all over the world fed somewhere
Speaker 2: in the range of two million people. People accused us
Speaker 2: of being performative because we used social media to grow
Speaker 2: that initiative. That does not change that two million people
Speaker 2: were fed. So I don't care about it being performative,
Speaker 2: just like I didn't care about people being performatively polite
Speaker 2: to me and my children when we walk down the street.
Speaker 1: Before they started.
Speaker 2: Chanting build that wall, and before people were so emboldened
Speaker 2: to be racist jerks out loud, a lot of racist
Speaker 2: people because they didn't want to be shamed or fired
Speaker 2: from their jobs, pretended to be decent people. And the
Speaker 2: fact that they were pretending does not matter to me
Speaker 2: and people that I care about, because that pretending meant
Speaker 2: they had to treat us with respect, performative or not.
Speaker 2: They had to be polite, performative or not. They had
Speaker 2: to try not to get fired, performative or not. And
Speaker 2: what we will face with these rollbacks and these and
Speaker 2: the dismantling of DEI affirmative action and just civil politeness
Speaker 2: and decency as a whole, is we're going to have
Speaker 2: a more aggressive, more violent, more dangerous country to live
Speaker 2: in because respecting, providing opportunity for, and looking out for
Speaker 2: your fellow man is no longer a requirement. So since
Speaker 2: it's not required, people will show you just how not
Speaker 2: decent they are.
Speaker 1: I think you have a little bit more to say
Speaker 1: here because I was in Los Angeles with you, and
Speaker 1: in order to get there, you had to stop somewhere
Speaker 1: and you had an encounter with a person. Tell me
Speaker 1: that story.
Speaker 2: So en route to Los Angeles. You know, post election,
Speaker 2: I have not done a lot of outsiding me and
Speaker 2: outside ain't really been interacting much. You know, you know
Speaker 2: how I feel about outside and outside of it. Outside
Speaker 2: is family to me, you know what I mean? You
Speaker 2: know I wouldn't forget about you outside. I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: hang out on the radio. But I haven't been outside.
Speaker 2: I haven't been outsiding. I've been discouraged, man, I've been
Speaker 2: let down, heartbroken, disappointed, disappointed. I mean I could go
Speaker 2: on and quiet and just kind of to myself, just
Speaker 2: trying to recover from learning that I live in a
Speaker 2: place that's still what it was one hundred years ago,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. That's that's that's worse than
Speaker 2: it was back then because people know better now and
Speaker 2: they chose it.
Speaker 1: People elected this, And.
Speaker 2: Because I hadn't been outsiding, I dismissed myself from why
Speaker 2: I was so sad. The reason I was so sad
Speaker 2: is because I realized the country I have to live
Speaker 2: in and raise my children, and it's going to be
Speaker 2: a less comfortable place to live. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a less joyous place to live. It's going to be
Speaker 2: a less equitable, less successful, more angry, more scary, more disrespectful,
Speaker 2: less polite place. And it doesn't matter how many maga
Speaker 2: hats I see online, it doesn't matter how many I
Speaker 2: see on TV. When I encounter these people in real life,
Speaker 2: it always catches me off guard. I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't. I'm talking about in a way that's
Speaker 2: almost paralyzing. I'm like, Wow, these mean, evil people actually
Speaker 2: exist in the real world. And I encountered this really,
Speaker 2: really mean, rude maga woman at a rest stop, and
Speaker 2: the interaction was short. I was pumping gas. I walked
Speaker 2: into the rest stop to use the restroom, and as
Speaker 2: human beings do, we were both walking and eventually going
Speaker 2: to get to a spot on Earth that we both
Speaker 2: reached at the same time. And I stopped, as a
Speaker 2: normal person to be polite and let her walk by.
Speaker 2: And the disgust that she made sure I received from
Speaker 2: the look that she gave me was just so like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I forgot y'all, I forgot y'all up, and y'all outside
Speaker 2: and y'all ready to just bring this unwarranted hate to
Speaker 2: anyone you encounter. And the funny thing is the Trump effect.
Speaker 2: But she doesn't know that I didn't vote for him.
Speaker 2: And this is important to my quote unquote brothers and sisters,
Speaker 2: brown or black that voted for that man. She does
Speaker 2: not know I didn't vote for him. She does know
Speaker 2: that I'm black. Oh, and that was enough to get
Speaker 2: what I got from her. That was enough to get
Speaker 2: that vitro, that disrespect, that anger, that contentiousness, that was
Speaker 2: It was enough just me being black.
Speaker 1: I don't have on no.
Speaker 2: Political paraphernalia, no bumper stickers, no yard signs, no T shirts,
Speaker 2: no hats, no nothing. All that took for me was
Speaker 2: to not be the person or a part of the
Speaker 2: group that they're all writing for. They're not writing for you,
Speaker 2: black or brown person.
Speaker 1: And if you even if you don't consider yourself a
Speaker 1: MAGA person, just a Republican and you had to vote
Speaker 1: for Donald.
Speaker 2: Trump, nonsense, don't say that.
Speaker 1: But there are people who think that about themselves, so
Speaker 1: they don't them that grace I have to hear, don't
Speaker 1: watch because some people they mentally distance themselves from that.
Speaker 1: And we have to talk to them too. So even
Speaker 1: if you think that you're not that, you still voted
Speaker 1: for that, and we have to live in the aftermath
Speaker 1: the Trump effect. Right, So I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Tell you to say, while my voice can be heard, RAMS,
Speaker 2: this is giving you that benefit of the doubt, Q
Speaker 2: is not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, and you should not give them because but
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure we're reaching everybody who
Speaker 1: might listen. Now, I want to add to this. The
Speaker 1: first time Donald Trump got elected, I was in North Dakota, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: South Dakota, and as you do in South Dakota, there's
Speaker 1: really not a lot else to do. I went to
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore and I had almost verbatim the same exact
Speaker 1: experience that you had, excepted was with a man. He
Speaker 1: was with everybody there. It's South Dakota, so you can
Speaker 1: imagine everybody. That's Trump's country, right, And I'm out there
Speaker 1: with my afro and I'm like, yeah, it's Mount Rushmore.
Speaker 1: Ain't nothing else to take a picture. I was taking
Speaker 1: pictures around the country. I was, you know, traveling, doing whatever,
Speaker 1: and nothing else to take a picture of in front
Speaker 1: of in South Dakota except that there's nothing this known.
Speaker 1: So I went and got a flick, and you have
Speaker 1: to work your way up to the front and then
Speaker 1: work your way back. And when it was my turn,
Speaker 1: I kind of got a little bit of a like
Speaker 1: a shoulder push from a guy who was he was
Speaker 1: staying with a couple of guys. But I turned and
Speaker 1: I looked at him, and I saw that at Trump stuff,
Speaker 1: and I realized, oh, man, so Q is not the
Speaker 1: only person. I'm not the only person. This is what
Speaker 1: we have to feel, even if it's not as pronounced
Speaker 1: as these stories you're hearing right now. This is what
Speaker 1: we have to feel. And this is what DEI was
Speaker 1: traded in for. So when black people are kind of
Speaker 1: carrying the weight of this election a little heavier than
Speaker 1: you might be a customed or then you might imagine
Speaker 1: as appropriate, that's the reason why this is tough for us.
Speaker 1: It's the Trump effect.