Speaker 1: You know, these online trolls and comments have been getting
Speaker 1: to me, and it's time we did something about it.
Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios, ID like to
Speaker 1: welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher.
Speaker 2: I am your host, Ramsey's job.
Speaker 3: He is Ram's job. I am his personal security. So
Speaker 3: if he's that fed up, then we got something to
Speaker 3: talk about.
Speaker 2: But you can call me.
Speaker 1: Que indeed, stick around. We have a lot to talk
Speaker 1: about today. The fact of the matter is that we
Speaker 1: have adopted a more aggressive social media strategy in recent
Speaker 1: months and been posting more frequently.
Speaker 2: You know, we're radio guys.
Speaker 1: We do radio, and so social media has just kind
Speaker 1: of always been something that's supplemented what we've done. Well,
Speaker 1: now we've had to kind of lean into it a
Speaker 1: bit more, and along with that comes trolls and people that,
Speaker 1: you know, try to pick on us. But the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who raised some talking points that are sort of
Speaker 1: age old talking points from the far right, if I'm
Speaker 1: being honest, and some of them are indeed white supremacist,
Speaker 1: and so what we're gonna do is hopefully have the
Speaker 1: conversations in the studio today so that you can hear
Speaker 1: our rebuttals and use them in your own travels, in
Speaker 1: your own journey as you encounter racism or anti black
Speaker 1: sentiment or anti anything sentiment, We're going to have the
Speaker 1: conversations that I believe will help you on your way.
Speaker 1: We've probably been more frustrated by it than we hope
Speaker 1: that you are, but because we get inundated with it.
Speaker 1: But the fact of the matter is that we recognize
Speaker 1: that it can be frustrating for anybody and everybody, and
Speaker 1: it's when these things come together that we can actually
Speaker 1: do something about it. So we're going to take the
Speaker 1: time to day to do that and foremost, like we
Speaker 1: always do it, this time, we are going to discuss
Speaker 1: some Ebony Excellence.
Speaker 2: Show.
Speaker 1: We show Today's Abney Excellence is sponsored by Major Threats
Speaker 1: for innovative fashionable sportswear. Check major Threats dot com. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read from NPR and this is a cool story.
Speaker 1: It's about a a man, a black man, who was
Speaker 1: a mechanic and later in life became a doctor. He
Speaker 1: realized his lifelong dream and I just thought it was
Speaker 1: really special. So he's our Ebony Excellence example today. Carl
Speaker 1: Alanbe's professional trajectory could be reduced to the plot of
Speaker 1: a feel good movie, skimming over the details. His story
Speaker 1: is of a once poor boy from the wrong side
Speaker 1: of Cleveland who went from fixing cars to fixing people,
Speaker 1: from mechanic to medical doctor, and technically all of that
Speaker 1: is correct. Alan b did go from owning an auto
Speaker 1: repair shop almost straight out of high school, recently starting
Speaker 1: his first job as an emergency room attending physician at
Speaker 1: Cleveland Clinics Hillcrest Hospital in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. But the
Speaker 1: more accurate truth is that in this case, alan Be's
Speaker 1: social and economic mobility, the kind that embodies the soul
Speaker 1: called American dream, was of the tortoise versus hair variety.
Speaker 1: It stretched out over decades. High school graduation came and
Speaker 1: went with little fanfear, though by then Allenbe was living
Speaker 1: on his own and had picked up a job as
Speaker 1: at an auto part store. It was there he learned
Speaker 1: about cars, and he would often pick up small repair
Speaker 1: jobs that he worked on at a shop across the street.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, he rented a portion of the space,
Speaker 1: but eventually he had enough business to buy the place.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen taking community college classes unearthed a desire
Speaker 1: he held since seeing Denzel Washington play a doctor. He
Speaker 1: eventually transferred into a program at Cleveland State University that
Speaker 1: guaranteed him a spot at Northeast Ohio Medical University, and
Speaker 1: he did well. Just I want to let you know,
Speaker 1: I'm reading pretty fast. So in between there he grew
Speaker 1: up and raised a family, all that.
Speaker 2: Sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: He graduated Summa cum lade with a bachelor's in science
Speaker 1: by twenty fifteen, and he started medical school, and then
Speaker 1: he graduated from medical school at age forty seven, and
Speaker 1: now he is again at his residency at Cleveland Clinic
Speaker 1: ACRON at fifty one. So shout out to Carl Allen
Speaker 1: Beech any excellence if I ever heard of it.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're going to go through our social media and pick
Speaker 1: out some of the comments that deserver response. It deserve
Speaker 1: is a strong word, but that deserver response that you
Speaker 1: could benefit from hearing. Right, Some of these comments that
Speaker 1: we get are We get a lot of comments because
Speaker 1: of the hashtags we use, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: people are very angry people, right, And so we get
Speaker 1: a lot of trolls, a lot of people that are
Speaker 1: just spewing really hateful stuff and not really trying to
Speaker 1: understand or really espouse kind of the intent of what
Speaker 1: we're trying to say in our posts. But the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is that some of these talking points,
Speaker 1: they exist, and we know that they exist. They're like zombies.
Speaker 1: They'll never die and if we encounter them. The fact
Speaker 1: is that there's a good chance that you encounter them
Speaker 1: in your in your travels, in your own life.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: Let's start with a post that we put up recently.
Speaker 1: Q actually posted this where he was talking about lawsuits
Speaker 1: settlements and how police lawsuits are settled by the citizens, taxpayers,
Speaker 1: You and I. Right, So Q is making his point,
Speaker 1: and then the comments are.
Speaker 2: Pretty ugly.
Speaker 1: We're being honest. So let's grab one. So here's one
Speaker 1: says Wow, another pseudo science sorry, another pseudo sophisticated black
Speaker 1: guy with Obenian glasses with the same take about.
Speaker 2: The police.
Speaker 1: For this. I think that when people are trying to
Speaker 1: insult us and there's nothing else to their conversation, it shows.
Speaker 2: That they're ill equipped to engage. Right.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times, and these are lessons you
Speaker 1: would think I wouldn't already, but I'm learning this right now.
Speaker 3: It's an interesting point that you bring up, because it's
Speaker 3: not they don't counter what we're saying, right, They don't
Speaker 3: provide data that's contrary to what we're saying. They don't
Speaker 3: they don't even start an argument right with regard to
Speaker 3: what we're saying. A lot of the times they're just
Speaker 3: attacking how we look and pseudo sophisticated. Is interesting. I
Speaker 3: was presenting myself the way that I do every day
Speaker 3: out in the world. I wasn't attempting to appear or
Speaker 3: be sophisticated, just talking about how I feel and pointing
Speaker 3: out in truth that the citizens of the country and
Speaker 3: local municipality civil suits, the taxpayers money goes towards settling
Speaker 3: those lawsuits, absolutely not the pockets of those officers or
Speaker 3: their departments directly.
Speaker 2: It comes from the taxpayers.
Speaker 1: And I think that something that's just factual like that
Speaker 1: eliciting such a strong response from somebody, it shows that
Speaker 1: a lot of these people are dead set on just
Speaker 1: being angry. Okay, so bear that in mind. I want
Speaker 1: to switch gears here to another post. This post is
Speaker 1: about the Fearless Fund. Another post from Q. And the
Speaker 1: Fearless Fund is a fund and correct me if I'm wrong. Q.
Speaker 1: It's a fund that's designed to fund business ventures.
Speaker 2: By black women or minority women.
Speaker 1: Minority women.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: So immediately the affirmative action conversation comes into play, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of the comments reflect that anti affirmative
Speaker 1: So let's grab one of these comments here. Okay, affirmative
Speaker 1: action is racist. It was a good thing.
Speaker 2: It was abolished. Okay, I put thanks for sharing.
Speaker 1: Deciding to live your life as a victim will never
Speaker 1: allow anyone to rise above. This is another kind of
Speaker 1: zombie that will never die because they always think they
Speaker 1: were victims. Nothing should be granted or given based on race.
Speaker 1: That's racism. Okay, Let's let's take this comment for a second.
Speaker 1: Nothing should be granted or given based on race in
Speaker 1: a vacuum, all things being equal, That's absolutely true. When
Speaker 1: you take out of when you take history out of
Speaker 1: the equation, when you take the effects and legacy of
Speaker 1: the government sanctioned discrimination that we have as a people
Speaker 1: have experienced in this country out of the equation, then yes,
Speaker 1: a comment like that is one hundred percent valid. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is that we have started
Speaker 1: well behind the starting point, and we are compared to
Speaker 1: sort of the standard, if you will, the white standard.
Speaker 1: Will call it the white standard, the standard that white
Speaker 1: people have. So why are why are black people making
Speaker 1: this much money when white people are making this much money?
Speaker 1: Why are black outcomes this when white people's outcomes are
Speaker 1: this right, So this is this white people are the
Speaker 1: standard that we're compared to. Right, And without the context
Speaker 1: of how we ended up there, you can make a
Speaker 1: statement like, oh, yeah, affirmative action is racist because you
Speaker 1: know you're you're that there's that's almost like delusion. It
Speaker 1: doesn't account for the reality of the situation that affirmative
Speaker 1: action was intended to accelerate the healing and the recovery
Speaker 1: of black people and not meant to give black people
Speaker 1: an advantage over white people. That's not a real thing.
Speaker 1: That's that's also not what it did. Absolutely not, affirmative
Speaker 1: action at no point gave black people an advantage over
Speaker 1: anyone else. It just allowed black people to be considered
Speaker 1: for opportunities where they normally would not have.
Speaker 2: Even been considered.
Speaker 3: They didn't get to take cuts or jump in front
Speaker 3: of people. It just got someone to look at their
Speaker 3: application to.
Speaker 1: It's so funny how that works, because again, a lot
Speaker 1: of these a lot of these people, they don't know that,
Speaker 1: and they they end up kind of coming ei their
Speaker 1: face with these really strange and hurtful responses, and it's
Speaker 1: almost like they feel like they have them all high grounds,
Speaker 1: so they're not trying to learn anything whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And in most of those cases, even that high ground
Speaker 3: is born from pseudo education, if you will. They're parroting
Speaker 3: or borrowing talking points that they saw on a meme
Speaker 3: or that they heard on a talk show, or that
Speaker 3: they saw scrolling the timeline before they got to our video.
Speaker 3: It affirmed how they felt, and they just said it louder,
Speaker 3: as if it was an original thought, as if they'd
Speaker 3: studied or done some research at all. And they get
Speaker 3: to adopt that aggressive position from a position and of
Speaker 3: you know, having the moral high ground, or or feeling
Speaker 3: that they are actually the ones being oppressed, or you know,
Speaker 3: I've heard them say things like reverse racism, when not
Speaker 3: only do the outcomes and the data show that there's
Speaker 3: no such thing. We've never had the advantage or been
Speaker 3: able to disadvantage another group of people because they were.
Speaker 2: A certain racewise.
Speaker 3: So it just it's it's it's it's always been really
Speaker 3: interesting that they say things like play the victim. Right,
Speaker 3: if you're if you're bothering no one and somebody walks
Speaker 3: up to you and assaults you, expressing that you were hurt,
Speaker 3: it's not you playing the victim.
Speaker 1: Nor is leaning into it. Well, how about let me
Speaker 1: not say it this way? When you use it to
Speaker 1: explain your current standing, that is not playing the victim either.
Speaker 1: It's context.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I think that's the dividing line for people that
Speaker 1: kind of feel that way. If I can, if I
Speaker 1: can make a connection between what happened and where I'm
Speaker 1: standing right now, that's not playing the victim.
Speaker 2: That's again just telling telling my story.
Speaker 1: And if I continue to let it limit me, then
Speaker 1: perhaps that's playing the victim. But I've never seen that
Speaker 1: reality for black people. I've seen black people be as
Speaker 1: resilient as any human being I've ever seen, you know,
Speaker 1: and in the face of a country that hates the
Speaker 1: black people have been here since slavery. That means we've
Speaker 1: went through Jim Crow, we went through Black Codes, we
Speaker 1: went through all those lynchings, all those massacres.
Speaker 2: That there of course, were some black people here pre slavery.
Speaker 1: Sure, and let me flip this, a lot of black
Speaker 1: people were victims.
Speaker 2: How about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of black we're actual victims. They're not
Speaker 1: alive anymore. And you know, all of these things that
Speaker 1: are passed down, like wealth, opportunities and how those things
Speaker 1: shape life today, it's just something that that black people
Speaker 1: don't have. So again, to compare black people to white people.
Speaker 1: When a lot of these things have passed down, a
Speaker 1: lot of anti black sentiments still affects black people in
Speaker 1: different parts of the country. You cannot divorce the history
Speaker 1: from our current reality because the history has created our
Speaker 1: current reality. And so again, there's no victimhood here. It's
Speaker 1: just factual. And I could again that's what we do
Speaker 1: on the shows. We outline actly where things are connected
Speaker 1: and what we can do to kind of help shape
Speaker 1: the future for ourselves. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: touch on another post that we have here. I put
Speaker 1: a post up and this is a white gentleman. He's
Speaker 1: on a on a podcast. It's just a video that
Speaker 1: I put up, and he says, what are the most
Speaker 1: what are the five most dangerous US cities? According to
Speaker 1: Forbes and the guy says, well, let me start with Chicago,
Speaker 1: and then the host says, Chicago's not even the top fifteen.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So again, this this video is meant to show that
Speaker 1: depending on where you get your news, you might be
Speaker 1: misinformed the.
Speaker 2: Most.
Speaker 1: The five most dangerous cities are I believe number one
Speaker 1: is Saint Louis, number two is Mobile, Alabama, Number three
Speaker 1: is Birmingham, Alabama, number four is Baltimore, Maryland, and number
Speaker 1: five is Memphis, Tennessee. Right, Chicago's not even there. But
Speaker 1: Chicago is a common talking point for far right conservatives
Speaker 1: who try to say, well, you don't really value black
Speaker 1: life because look at Chicago.
Speaker 3: Chicago is the token black on black crime, right right
Speaker 3: city whenever they try to make that point, and I've
Speaker 3: heard a lot of black people use Chicago to back
Speaker 3: that position on that argument. Right, I'm not going out
Speaker 3: to march when the police kill us, because that's our
Speaker 3: lives have more value than that. You guys don't say
Speaker 3: anything when the black kid kills the black kid in Chicago.
Speaker 1: It's Chicago's the city, they say, every time, every time,
Speaker 1: and again. It just goes to show how narratives get
Speaker 1: chronicled and how depending on where you get your news,
Speaker 1: you can be given a falsehood that becomes your reality.
Speaker 1: And there's people in the comments here that will not
Speaker 1: let go of Chicago at all. Right, they still like
Speaker 1: it's just like their brain is fixated on Chicago. But
Speaker 1: again for the people who really feel like, hey, you
Speaker 1: shouldn't protest the police if you don't protest what's going
Speaker 1: on in Chicago. Right for those people that say that,
Speaker 1: I say, if a black person kills a black person
Speaker 1: in Chicago, there is at least the chance that there
Speaker 1: will be justice and there will be consequence.
Speaker 3: Let me do you one better. But when a black
Speaker 3: person kills a black person in Chicago and the police
Speaker 3: know who that person is, they go to jail.
Speaker 2: One of the time they get found.
Speaker 3: Please hear that caveat If the police know who did it,
Speaker 3: like if they have them on videotape, and then they
Speaker 3: arrest them, that person is charged and in almost every
Speaker 3: case convicted and then sentenced in a way that makes
Speaker 3: sense of you having killed someone. The problem is when
Speaker 3: said black person is murdered by law enforcement, and even
Speaker 3: when it's on camera and we know who did it,
Speaker 3: sometimes no charges are even brought because there's a justification
Speaker 3: for it, qualified immunity, feared for their life, etc. And
Speaker 3: even when caught and on tape and convicted, they are
Speaker 3: sentenced in a way that doesn't really match the crime
Speaker 3: they're being convicted of. Those are the differences that we
Speaker 3: try to highlight. Of course, there's value in the life
Speaker 3: no matter who took it, but there's also accountability when
Speaker 3: that person, specifically in these cases, is caught on camera
Speaker 3: and is not a member of law enforcement. Accountability is
Speaker 3: what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 3: We're not trying to say that it never happens otherwise,
Speaker 3: just that when it happens otherwise and someone is caught, charged, convicted,
Speaker 3: they are sentenced in a way that makes sense for
Speaker 3: having ended someone's life. That is typically not the case
Speaker 3: when it comes to law enforcement.
Speaker 2: All right, So.
Speaker 1: You remember, for those that listened to the show, you
Speaker 1: remember we did a piece where there was an officer
Speaker 1: was laughing at the death of a woman who was
Speaker 1: killed while crossing the street when another police officer was
Speaker 1: speeding to respond to a call the accidentally hit her
Speaker 1: right So the subsequent officer was recalling arriving on the
Speaker 1: scene to investigate the initial officer that hit the woman
Speaker 1: and he was recorded on his bodycam video kind of
Speaker 1: laughing at her and saying that they should cut a
Speaker 1: check for eleven thousand dollars and you know.
Speaker 2: She was low value, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So we talked about that, and we took a clip
Speaker 1: from this show and we put it on our social
Speaker 1: media as a teaser, like, here's what to look forward to.
Speaker 1: So funnily enough, here's a comment forty seven black people
Speaker 1: shot over a weekend in Chicago. Where's this same energy?
Speaker 1: So they're comparing us talking about a police officer laughing
Speaker 1: at a victim and expressing how little worth she has. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're comparing that to the people shot in Chicago. Again,
Speaker 1: there's no connection there whatsoever. But this comment says, forty
Speaker 1: seven people shot over a weekend in Chicago, where's the
Speaker 1: same energy? Why is it when one white race soldier
Speaker 1: does something, there's outrage, but you'll see it happening in
Speaker 1: your community or other communities, and its crickets.
Speaker 2: Okay, So.
Speaker 1: Let me help people out with this one, because this
Speaker 1: one is kind of a weird one and I think
Speaker 1: that will will probably be very harm So.
Speaker 2: There is a degree of.
Speaker 1: Individual responsibility that factors into every single human being's life, right,
Speaker 1: It's absolutely true. Some people are born with gifts, some
Speaker 1: people are born with talents, some people are born with
Speaker 1: attributes and skills or an aptitude toward a certain thing,
Speaker 1: and other people are not.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This is just kind of the way things go, and
Speaker 1: it is up to the individual to do whatever they're
Speaker 1: going to do with those gifts and skills. We don't
Speaker 1: talk about individual responsibility on this show because we deal
Speaker 1: with data, right, and data shows that there are certain
Speaker 1: groups of people doing better than other groups of people. Now,
Speaker 1: we operate under the premise that all human beings in
Speaker 1: all groups have equal capacity to be borne, brilliant, talented, etc.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what color you are. If you can sing,
Speaker 1: you can sing, it doesn't matter you know whatever. We
Speaker 1: talk about brilliant black minds. We talk about brilliant black
Speaker 1: everything on this show because we exist well. When you
Speaker 1: look at the data, it tends to favor one group
Speaker 1: of people over pretty much everyone else, almost always, and
Speaker 1: so for us, we try to deal with the systemic
Speaker 1: issues that we believe are resulting in those outcomes. This
Speaker 1: is what many people who have come before us try
Speaker 1: to do. We are in no way removing individual responsibilities.
Speaker 1: No one who's ever said that once this thing happens,
Speaker 1: all black people are going to be fine. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: still individual responsibility goes into every single human story on
Speaker 1: this planet, and we are dealing with the systemic issues
Speaker 1: so that more of us can break through and we're
Speaker 1: not subjugated and relegated to the margins of society.