Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I'm host Ramsay's job.
Speaker 2: They called me q Ward and that just so happens
Speaker 2: to be my first initial in my last name. I
Speaker 2: don't want to confuse some about it. What's up, Joah,
Speaker 2: everything man? What's going on? Ah Man? I promised land this.
Speaker 1: Indeed, so welcome to Black History Month. Are this is
Speaker 1: our first Black History Month as a show, indeed, and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about it. The thing is, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about some of the things that aren't
Speaker 1: as widely known because you know, every year we hear about,
Speaker 1: you know, doctor King, and we hear about, you know,
Speaker 1: George Washington Carver making peanut butter, and you know, black
Speaker 1: people invented stoplights and cotton gins and all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. But there are some things that are part
Speaker 1: of the black African American call it legacy that aren't
Speaker 1: as well known. But you know, people should know about them,
Speaker 1: and people should be educated. You know. What happens is
Speaker 1: a lot of times folks will kind of throw their
Speaker 1: hands up when it comes to black folks. You know,
Speaker 1: black folks are you know, they need to pull themselves up,
Speaker 1: They need to figure out their own problems in their
Speaker 1: community and so forth. And I get it. And if
Speaker 1: you don't, if you don't have any deeper knowledge, that
Speaker 1: sounds sensible. It sounds like, yeah, of course that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But if you understand that, you know that those those
Speaker 1: still waters run deep, and you know how deep it gets,
Speaker 1: then perhaps you might find yourself being a bit more understanding,
Speaker 1: empathetic and passionate, supportive, et cetera. And so in that spirit,
Speaker 1: I would like to, you know, talk about some Black history.
Speaker 1: So I need to suggest to everyone that you know,
Speaker 1: just like any anyone's history, any group of people, it's
Speaker 1: not all pretty. Some of it is. It may be
Speaker 1: difficult to revisit on today's show, one person in particular,
Speaker 1: if we have enough time, we'll get to him. But
Speaker 1: you know, some of the his legacy as far as
Speaker 1: African Americans are concerned, is particularly troubling. But again I
Speaker 1: think that it helps to as matter of fact, you
Speaker 1: know what, we can talk about him now, you know,
Speaker 1: so we'll start there. One of the things that's happening
Speaker 1: in the world is that you know, everyone's getting vaccinated
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen. I just got my second vaccine, so
Speaker 1: I am living the COVID free lifestyle. I'm mask off
Speaker 1: COVID proofs as as future would suggest a mask off
Speaker 1: out here. Uh No, I'm just joking. I still wear
Speaker 1: my mask. But you know a lot of black folks
Speaker 1: have been particularly concerned about getting that vaccine because of
Speaker 1: a deep seated mistrust of the medical community and the
Speaker 1: government by black folks. And you know, I do want
Speaker 1: to talk about the Tuskegee experiments because you know, we
Speaker 1: spent some time talking about that, and we said that
Speaker 1: we peel back a few more layers when we had
Speaker 1: the time. But I mentioned in that episode that it
Speaker 1: actually goes back further than that. It goes back to
Speaker 1: the beginning of black people in this country being used
Speaker 1: as human guinea pigs. And so, you know, once upon
Speaker 1: a time, as we all know, you used to be
Speaker 1: able to buy people in this country. You could own
Speaker 1: them and they were your property.
Speaker 2: Could did you buy a specific group of people? Could
Speaker 2: you pick from any variety of people?
Speaker 1: Was it just no? You could actually you could pick
Speaker 1: from any variety of people, provided that they were black
Speaker 1: African people. Okay, yeah, so you know, Henry Ford, you
Speaker 1: can get any color as long as it's black. So
Speaker 1: I think he got that from from slavery perhaps so. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so today we're going to talk about or first rather,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about someone named James Marion Sims,
Speaker 1: doctor James Marion Sims. So he's credited as the father,
Speaker 1: the father of modern gynecology. He developed tools and surgical
Speaker 1: techniques related to women's reproductive health. In eighteen seventy six
Speaker 1: he was named president of the American Medical Association, and
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty he became president of the American Gynecological
Speaker 1: Gynecological Society. Make sure I get that right, an organization
Speaker 1: that he helped find found, so, you know, a man
Speaker 1: who certainly provided a basis for you know, research in
Speaker 1: women's studies. I think I have some some notes highlighted
Speaker 1: where it suggests that once upon a time it was
Speaker 1: not really ah in good taste to deal with women's
Speaker 1: reproductive organs. It just was something that the medical community
Speaker 1: didn't really take seriously, didn't really look into women's reproductive health.
Speaker 1: And this guy kind of champion that, you know, he
Speaker 1: just he peeped the weakness in the rap game and
Speaker 1: sold it, you know, or in the vagina game in
Speaker 1: this instance. So he the reason he was able to
Speaker 1: get so much off in terms of research and so
Speaker 1: much experimenting and studies and reports and things like that.
Speaker 1: Written is because his research was conducted on the bodies
Speaker 1: of enslaved Black Africans and he used them as medical
Speaker 1: test subjects. And one thing that I have noted that
Speaker 1: is still being brought up to this days, he experimented
Speaker 1: on them without anesthesia. There's a there's a passage I
Speaker 1: want to read in just a second, but that's something
Speaker 1: that still perpetuates this day. I remember reading something maybe
Speaker 1: a week ago, two weeks ago, something like that pertaining
Speaker 1: to this deep seated mistrust that black folks have with
Speaker 1: the medical community. And there was a doctor who was
Speaker 1: not black, but this doctor's you know, he was under
Speaker 1: the assumption that black people experienced pain at a lower
Speaker 1: rate than white folks. And I wish I had earmarked it,
Speaker 1: you know, but this, you know, and he was he
Speaker 1: was well meaning, and he was educated. Of course, so
Speaker 1: this guy's not out there doing the same things he
Speaker 1: once did. But you know that it just goes to
Speaker 1: show you how powerful myths can be, and how powerful
Speaker 1: prejudice it and racism can be. You know, even if
Speaker 1: you're not trying to cause harm to folks. You know,
Speaker 1: if you take these certain things to be true and
Speaker 1: you don't know any better and you don't have that perspective,
Speaker 1: then you perpetuate that those racist beliefs, even if you
Speaker 1: don't actively engage in hating people. Like if I don't
Speaker 1: believe that dogs feel pain, and I kick dogs, you know,
Speaker 1: or whatever it is I do to dogs and I
Speaker 1: don't think that they feel pain, you know, then you
Speaker 1: get you get what I'm saying there. But once you recognize, okay,
Speaker 1: these dogs feel pain, it might change the way you
Speaker 1: behave So of a terrible example, who wants to kick dogs?
Speaker 1: But you know, I use dogs because oftentimes on this show,
Speaker 1: we have to compare ourselves to dogs, because.
Speaker 2: Unfavorably at that.
Speaker 1: But a lot of times white folks will make a
Speaker 1: big deal if something bad has happened into an.
Speaker 2: We compare unfavorably to dogs, right sadly.
Speaker 1: So, yes, this is one story about black history in
Speaker 1: this country. A lot of the medical research that you
Speaker 1: get the benefit of having and the experience and so forth,
Speaker 1: the medicine that you enjoy, that research, a good amount
Speaker 1: of it was conducted on enslaved black folks. You know,
Speaker 1: this is before animal testing and before all the other
Speaker 1: sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So this is and this is around the time when
Speaker 1: you see medicine go from just kind of being something
Speaker 1: that you have to study for a year or two
Speaker 1: and then you can become a doctor to something where
Speaker 1: you have to like really really study and really know
Speaker 1: what the human body is capable of. Is because during slavery,
Speaker 1: you know, so much research was done, and in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds there were things like the Teskegee experiments,
Speaker 1: things like that that we know about, and many more
Speaker 1: things that my assumption is that we don't know about,
Speaker 1: we'll never know about, that were conducted on actual living
Speaker 1: human beings. And as history has taught us, at least
Speaker 1: in this country but largely around the world, the most
Speaker 1: disposable human beings often are melanated. And so this guy
Speaker 1: is just one of the people who is as I stated,
Speaker 1: he celebrated as the father of you know, gynecology and
Speaker 1: or modern gynecology. Like he invented a bunch of tools
Speaker 1: that help you to get in there and you know,
Speaker 1: get busy. In fact, I want to read one of
Speaker 1: these passages here. He started off with no specific gynecological training.
Speaker 1: Examining and treating female organs was widely considered offensive and unsavory.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, his entry in treating women changed when
Speaker 1: he was asked to help a patient who had fallen
Speaker 1: off a horse and was suffering from pelvic and back pain.
Speaker 1: To treat this woman's injury, Sims realized he needed to
Speaker 1: look directly into her vagina. He positioned her on all fours,
Speaker 1: leaning forward, and then used his fingers to help him
Speaker 1: see inside. This discovery helped him developed a precursor to
Speaker 1: the modern speculum. And then another example. This is in
Speaker 1: the public domain too, by the way, so you can
Speaker 1: look this up yourself. Brace yourself, all right. We know
Speaker 1: three of the names of the female fistula patients from
Speaker 1: Sims's own records, Lucy, Anarka, and Betsy. The first one
Speaker 1: he operated on was eighteen year old Lucy. These were
Speaker 1: slaves who eighteen year old Lucy, who had given birth
Speaker 1: a few months prior and hadn't been able to control
Speaker 1: her bladder since. During the procedure, patients were commonly naked
Speaker 1: and asked to perch on their knees and bend forward
Speaker 1: into their elbows, so their heads rested on their hands.
Speaker 1: Lucy endured an hour long surgery, screaming and crying out
Speaker 1: in pain as nearly a dozen other doctors watched. As
Speaker 1: Sims later wrote, Lucy's agony was extreme. She became extremely
Speaker 1: ill due to its controversial use of a sponge to
Speaker 1: drain the urine away from the bladder, which led to
Speaker 1: her which led her to contract blood poisoning. I thought
Speaker 1: she was going to die. It took Lucy two to
Speaker 1: three months to recover entirely from the effects of the operation. Again, slave,
Speaker 1: no choice in the matter and no anesthesia.
Speaker 2: The pain and screaming, I mean the screaming. Yeah, an
Speaker 2: agony didn't give them the impression that maybe she felt pain.
Speaker 1: Funny how it works, right, Wow? You know, we understand
Speaker 1: that there is a long history of people telling themselves
Speaker 1: a separate story that is not based on the reality
Speaker 1: of the world or the reality that they even see.
Speaker 1: It could happen right in front of them, but if
Speaker 1: they choose not to acknowledge it or see it, then
Speaker 1: it may as will not be true. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is how it goes. Fortunately, we have a show
Speaker 1: called Civic Cipher and we're able to talk about that,
Speaker 1: so I'll continue for a long time. Sin's fistular surgeries
Speaker 1: were not successful. After thirty operations on one woman, a
Speaker 1: seventeen year old enslaved woman named Anarka who was sorry,
Speaker 1: who had a very traumatic labor and delivery, he finally
Speaker 1: quote perfected his method after four years of experimentation. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: he began to practice on white women using anesthesia, which
Speaker 1: was new to the medical field at the time. And
Speaker 1: then I'll spare the rest of this, but he goes
Speaker 1: on to discuss how he experimented on enslaved children and
Speaker 1: so forth. So happy Black history monk.
Speaker 2: Happy. Interesting word choice.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's I think it's important that we
Speaker 1: discussed these things that we know about them. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's good things and there's troubling things, and all of
Speaker 1: it is history. All of it is there for public consumption,
Speaker 1: and we need to know where we come from so
Speaker 1: that history doesn't repeat itself, and it gives us an
Speaker 1: idea of what to push for as we move forward.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, these stories certainly help frame where
Speaker 1: we are, how we were treated, and give us a
Speaker 1: baseline to demand what we deserve. Some folks make casts
Speaker 1: for reparation. So you know, you got to and you
Speaker 1: got to bear in mind that there's more than just
Speaker 1: the impact that that might have on one or two
Speaker 1: or three people. You know, there are generational psychological traumas
Speaker 1: that are perpetuated for those who have read the Willie
Speaker 1: Lynch Letter, regardless of whether or not you believe it
Speaker 1: to be a first person account of what took place
Speaker 1: or a work of fiction. The the logic and the
Speaker 1: the reasoning is sound, and so those are the things
Speaker 1: that you know, these things can can bring to life.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, black history. Speaking of Black history, I
Speaker 1: do want to take a moment before we move on
Speaker 1: to give a shout out to somebody very very important
Speaker 1: to me who has I believe made Black history. It
Speaker 1: might be a you know, just a footnote or a small, little,
Speaker 1: you know, paragraph in Black history, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1: A very very very dear friend of mine recently was
Speaker 1: named the official DJ for the Phoenix Suns, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to take a moment to shout him out on
Speaker 1: the radio because that's a tremendous accomplishment. It's a Black accomplishment,
Speaker 1: and it's one more feather in our cap.
Speaker 2: So congratulations to Q Ward, that's pretty dope. Congrats to
Speaker 2: that fella as well. No, man, seriously, pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's big.
Speaker 1: So next time you guys go to a Sun's game,
Speaker 1: you'll hear Q on the turntables doing this thing. So
Speaker 1: shout us automatic and automatic as well. All right, So
Speaker 1: moving on some more black history for you. You know, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned that we when we were initially talking about
Speaker 1: the vaccine rollout, we didn't get a chance to go
Speaker 1: into too much detail about the Tuskegee experiments, and so
Speaker 1: I wanted to take some time today to explain exactly
Speaker 1: what the Tuskegee experiments were, So allow me to read this.
Speaker 1: The Tuskegee Experiment began in nineteen thirty two at a
Speaker 1: time when there was no known treatment for syphlis, a
Speaker 1: content ages venarial disease. After being recruited by the promise
Speaker 1: of free medical care, six hundred African American men in
Speaker 1: Macon County, Alabama were enrolled in the project, which aimed
Speaker 1: to study the full progression of the disease. Participants were
Speaker 1: primarily sharecroppers, and many had never before visited a doctor.
Speaker 1: Doctors from the US Public Health Service were running the study.
Speaker 2: That US stands for United States.
Speaker 1: It was a government back study. Bill Clinton had to
Speaker 1: apologize for this many years later, of course, but yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, they recruited six hundred African American folks
Speaker 1: to study the effects of syphilis. The quick and dirty
Speaker 1: version of this is that these people were poor, limited
Speaker 1: means black, the most disposable in society. These people were
Speaker 1: deliberately intentionally infected with CISS and then given the treatment.
Speaker 1: And this is something that needs to be said, because
Speaker 1: this is the most important component of this equation is
Speaker 1: that they did not know that they were deliberately infected
Speaker 1: with syphilis, and one told them that was what was
Speaker 1: going to happen, is you know whatever, And this is
Speaker 1: why the government ultimately wasn't in.
Speaker 2: The pamphlet that they received when they signed up.
Speaker 1: So what originally what they were getting treated for was
Speaker 1: what they referred to as bad blood, right, and bad blood,
Speaker 1: you know, was just a catch all term, you know,
Speaker 1: anything that you know whatever. So if you got bad
Speaker 1: blood or you think you have bad blood, you know,
Speaker 1: come on down, we'll fix you up, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can be a part of a medical study. And
Speaker 1: then what they were doing was infecting them with syphilis
Speaker 1: so that they could treat the syphilis.
Speaker 2: Right, so.
Speaker 1: You can imagine how that sort of scarring on the
Speaker 1: But once this came out, once everyone knew about this,
Speaker 1: then everything started looking suspect.
Speaker 2: You know, the distrust is earned.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, it's not like you know.
Speaker 2: Random paranoia.
Speaker 1: Oh and then here's the crazy part. We're talking about history.
Speaker 1: But you know, as I mentioned, there is still a
Speaker 1: sizable disconnect between the medical community. Of course, we know
Speaker 1: that there's a disconnect between the government and black people,
Speaker 1: but the medical community and black people. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: there are doctors that are alive right now, practicing medicine
Speaker 1: right now who have some idea that Black people are
Speaker 1: fundamentally different in the way that we experience pain and
Speaker 1: the way that we respond to treatment, and the way
Speaker 1: that we articulate our pain.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You know, if I say my leg hurts, you know
Speaker 1: that it's not taking it seriously as often as someone
Speaker 1: who is white. You know, this happens a lot with women.
Speaker 1: This is why more women died during childbirth and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, and these are all very googleable, and as
Speaker 1: you know, Google does not cost money, so you know,
Speaker 1: obviously I can't talk about everything on the show. But
Speaker 1: just because this is black history doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: not taking place today. And just because this has happened
Speaker 1: in the past doesn't mean it is not still happening today.
Speaker 1: And so, as you said, Q, the distrust is very
Speaker 1: much earned. Now. Our challenges black people is to learn
Speaker 1: how to trust, learn how to love, you know, and
Speaker 1: so forth. Which is why it was so big on
Speaker 1: getting that COVID.
Speaker 2: Vaccine nineteen thirties people. Because I think people hear about
Speaker 2: the Tuskegee experiments and their mind is very long time ago.
Speaker 2: My grandmother was almost an adult when this happened. My
Speaker 2: grandmother is still alive, Like, I don't want this to
Speaker 2: feel like it's five generations ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the last person who was the last participant
Speaker 1: of the Tuskegee experiments passed away in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: Now bear in mind that syphilis that was deliberately injected
Speaker 1: into these human beings wiped most of them out, and
Speaker 1: then a lot of them died from other things, you know,
Speaker 1: related to the disease. But yeah, so okay, let me
Speaker 1: read on. So what does this say. The Associated Press
Speaker 1: broke the story in July nineteen seventy two, forcing the
Speaker 1: study to finally shut down. That means that the Tuskegee
Speaker 1: experiments went from nineteen thirty two to nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: So my mom was almost thirty when the experiment stopped.
Speaker 2: I just want to keep keep your guy, keep giving
Speaker 2: you guys some perspective on how recent this was. My mother,
Speaker 2: not grandmother, So your mother twenty eight years old when
Speaker 2: the Tuskegee experiments were finally shut down.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine this was like like incredible, Like
Speaker 1: this was like huge news, especially in the black community.
Speaker 1: So that distrust in the seventies when this came out.
Speaker 1: You know this, in the thirties, when they first started
Speaker 1: doing the experience, no one knew what was happening. In
Speaker 1: the seventies when everyone found out, which is again very
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, that's modern history. There's people who were alive
Speaker 1: that remember seeing that, Oh my god, they did what,
Speaker 1: you know. And there's some people who are as educated
Speaker 1: as we are that know how deep these roots go.
Speaker 1: And so their distrust is valid, you know, or valid
Speaker 1: is perhaps not the right word, but it's earned. Earned
Speaker 1: is a better word. Right now, Again, we can't distrust everything, you.
Speaker 2: Know, but which is a kind of disturbing and growing problem.
Speaker 2: We've went. We've gone from I don't really know to okay,
Speaker 2: no facts are real. Yeah, and okay I won't I won't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we can't.
Speaker 1: We can't go from one extreme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know what, you won't derailist. But there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people that look like us, that come from
Speaker 2: where we come from, that are kind of preying on
Speaker 2: that distrust exactly and using it as a catchall for
Speaker 2: don't believe anything, nothing's real, everything is against you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's a tough place to operate from as well.
Speaker 2: Just just operating in full out bad faith is.
Speaker 3: Just not good.
Speaker 1: So let's see, one hundred and twenty eight participants died
Speaker 1: from syphilis, forty spouses had been diagnosed with it, and
Speaker 1: the disease had been passed to nineteen children at birth.
Speaker 1: People are still alive, some of them. As a result
Speaker 1: of the Tuskege experiment, many African Americans developed lingering, deep
Speaker 1: mistrust to public health officials and vaccines. During his apology,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, oh yeah, Bill Clinton, when he was president,
Speaker 1: he had to come and apologize.
Speaker 2: He didn't have to, Well, I want to make sure
Speaker 2: we say that.
Speaker 1: That's fair, that's fair, But he did, and that is
Speaker 1: an acknowledgment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he needed to, but didn't have to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that no one's ever
Speaker 1: going to apologize that's fair. But you know, he comes in,
Speaker 1: he apologized for it. And what that does is it
Speaker 1: makes people like us me and u Q who say
Speaker 1: these things out loud look less crazy and less angry
Speaker 1: and less radical to folks that aren't as studied. Usually
Speaker 1: they're white folks that feel like we should be very
Speaker 1: happy with what we've been given and our station in life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these are the sorts of people that would say
Speaker 1: to us, well, you weren't in the Tuskegee experiment, so
Speaker 1: what is the problem with that?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And and you know the e everything is wrong and
Speaker 1: the world only looks the way that it looks to them,
Speaker 1: you know, and if we don't see it their way,
Speaker 1: then we're somehow wrong. And so by Clinton apologizing for this,
Speaker 1: it allows us to live in a world where okay,
Speaker 1: we both have to agree on the facts. We both
Speaker 1: have to agree that this happened, and we have to
Speaker 1: deal with the implications of that, because if the government
Speaker 1: never even acknowledged it, much less apologize for it. Then
Speaker 1: we again, we sound like crazy people to those people.
Speaker 1: We sound like enemies to those people somehow, just by
Speaker 1: stating that the truth that the uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: first doctor we talked about, all his records are in
Speaker 1: the public domain. Now this guy's all that stuff, though.
Speaker 2: And it's important to point out as ignorant as some
Speaker 2: of these things may sound to us. We talked about
Speaker 2: on one of our shows, there's a it's either a
Speaker 2: burning or a hanging photograph, and their families present at
Speaker 2: this picnic, it's important to point out by the very
Speaker 2: nature of those people being there with their kids in
Speaker 2: essence having a good time, some of them sincerely didn't
Speaker 2: think anything was wrong with what they were doing. And
Speaker 2: as heinous as it is, it's different than now where
Speaker 2: people are fully aware that it's not okay, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. So it's as heinous and file as
Speaker 2: some of these things sound, especially the things you were
Speaker 2: saying with regard to the experiments on the young ladies.
Speaker 2: As he perfected his methods, there may have been people
Speaker 2: himself included, who seriously thought, even with the pain and
Speaker 2: agony and screaming and discomfort. That was very, very clear
Speaker 2: that black people did feel pain less. And there were
Speaker 2: a generation or generations plural of people who felt we
Speaker 2: were scientifically inferior and may have used, you know, what
Speaker 2: they thought was clear science and their religion, and they're
Speaker 2: just teaching from their parents, like we believe in Santa Claus,
Speaker 2: once upon a time, until we grow up and learn better.
Speaker 2: A lot of those things were taught and people believed
Speaker 2: them because that's what you believe, you know, the same
Speaker 2: with the religion that you practiced. It was taught to you.
Speaker 2: You weren't born with the consciousness to know about God
Speaker 2: and the role that he played in your life and
Speaker 2: how you viewed your religion, be a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic,
Speaker 2: whatever the case. So a lot of these things were
Speaker 2: in doctrine to people from childhood at a time where
Speaker 2: everyone felt that way. Just like thirty years ago, the
Speaker 2: way that people spoke about our brothers in the LGBTQ
Speaker 2: community was a lot different than it is today. And
Speaker 2: I'm not talking one hundred years ago. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: when I was a teenager, yea twenty years ago, thirty
Speaker 2: years ago, ten years ago. Views are continually changing, people
Speaker 2: becoming more informed, more educated. I don't like to use
Speaker 2: the word tolerant, like I'll tolerate you if you're different
Speaker 2: from me. Just sounds awful, But that's the kind of
Speaker 2: word that they use. People are becoming more accepting, I
Speaker 2: think is a better word, tolerant of people who practice
Speaker 2: a different religion, a different lifestyle, come from a different background,
Speaker 2: and look different than we do. I think it's important
Speaker 2: that as a whole we evolve. And I think that's
Speaker 2: why this is kind of me speaking to some things
Speaker 2: that I've said on the show prior. Why I get
Speaker 2: so upset at people who still choose hate and divisiveness
Speaker 2: and you know, racism, because those things aren't charged to
Speaker 2: ignorance anymore. You don't not know better anymore. You're just
Speaker 2: choosing that. And that's why I'm so you know, I
Speaker 2: say on the show all the time, Rams is the
Speaker 2: heart and the consciousness of the show, because sometimes I'm mad,
Speaker 2: and it's just because you know, people choosing evil over good,
Speaker 2: to put it simple, kind of digs at me, man,
Speaker 2: because once upon a time, even though it was terrible,
Speaker 2: people really didn't know any better, right, and those doctors
Speaker 2: were developed to maintain a superiority in a supremacy. So
Speaker 2: even the roots of that doctrine were bad. But the
Speaker 2: children of those people were taught something that they thought
Speaker 2: was fact. And now we know better, and we're still
Speaker 2: teaching that same stuff and not we but people are
Speaker 2: still teaching those same things, and you know that's disturbing.
Speaker 2: That's what upsets me the most.
Speaker 1: You want to hear something funny that once upon a
Speaker 1: time I was lived in some apartments and I was
Speaker 1: I used to get baby sat by this lady named Betty,
Speaker 1: Betty van Winkle. She's passed away now. Now Betty was
Speaker 1: a million years old when I met her. I was
Speaker 1: probably like ten something like that, and I have two
Speaker 1: little sisters and a little brother. At the time, my
Speaker 1: youngest sister was still baby mode, you know, probably in
Speaker 1: diaper still. And I remember Betty telling me something like,
Speaker 1: you know, well, black people they do have a you know,
Speaker 1: there is an older that black people have. Ooh, you know,
Speaker 1: so you just have to make sure that you scrub
Speaker 1: extra hard, you know, and you wear perfume and lotion
Speaker 1: and everything. So we Betty, Now, Betty, now I was
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, and no one. I had never
Speaker 1: heard this before. So Bettie telling me this was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I older, you know, a slight older,
Speaker 1: there's whatever. However she said it, I'm like, huh, you know,
Speaker 1: well now I'm very aware, you know, because you know,
Speaker 1: around ten is when you start partner. You start understanding like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's there's girls. There's even if I'm not in the
Speaker 1: girls all the way, because I didn't get into girls
Speaker 1: until I was middle school, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But I don't want to get teased, right, so, you know,
Speaker 1: little kids are mean. So it gave me a little
Speaker 1: bit of a complex. You know, to this day, I
Speaker 1: have much cologne. I have like seventeen deodorants. You know.
Speaker 1: My bathroom is a mess, a clean mess, but you know,
Speaker 1: got a lot of variety in there. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: Betty told me this, and I assumed that it was.
Speaker 2: True because she.
Speaker 1: Loved us. I do believe that she did. You know,
Speaker 1: she learned something from somebody who lived in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: you know, when she was a little girl, because her
Speaker 1: parents had based on her age alone, you know. And
Speaker 1: I knew Betty in the nineties, and Betty was I
Speaker 1: don't know, seventy when I met her or something like that.
Speaker 1: So the thing is, it wasn't until I was twenty four,
Speaker 1: twenty three. I'm thirty eight now, So what until I was,
Speaker 1: you know, early to mid twenties when I recognized that
Speaker 1: Africans taught Europeans how to bathe. You know, you remember
Speaker 1: there was a lot of plagues and stuff, and those
Speaker 1: things were being you know, perpetuated throughout Europe, and you know,
Speaker 1: the hygiene practices of northern Africans became particularly useful to
Speaker 1: those Europeans in preventing the spread of all the different
Speaker 1: plagues that was claiming the lives of them and their
Speaker 1: loved ones and their family right. And so the teachings
Speaker 1: of these Africans, it's funny when you when you see that,
Speaker 1: it's like, wait a minute, hold on, this is the
Speaker 1: opposite of what I was told, you know, And and
Speaker 1: flip this. Once upon a time in this country, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone bathed. I might have been like once a week,
Speaker 1: and I all use the same bathwater, you know, and
Speaker 1: all this and and you have to bear in mind
Speaker 1: that a lot of these ideas, in my assumption, my estimation,
Speaker 1: come from well, if you have people who are poor,
Speaker 1: who have two pairs of clothes, their Sunday best and
Speaker 1: their work clothes, you know, and they might not even
Speaker 1: have shoes. You know, you can't even consider them poor
Speaker 1: because their property. Dogs and cats aren't poor or rich
Speaker 1: their property right, so these people are not. They're not
Speaker 1: subject to those considerations. So you have slaves that you
Speaker 1: know that rarely, if ever, get de bathed. They're always
Speaker 1: around each other, and they're in squalor. It's their life,
Speaker 1: you know, they live next to the hogs and the hogkins.
Speaker 1: If there's a reputation that develops that, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't smell that great. You know, by the time it
Speaker 1: gets to you know, a ten year old ramses being
Speaker 1: passed from generation and generation that black people have a
Speaker 1: slight over to them. By the time it gets to me,
Speaker 1: it's gone through. You know, we've kind of evolved past that,
Speaker 1: but the rumor stays, and that's the power of a rumor. Again.
Speaker 1: So just a quick story that I'm glad I got
Speaker 1: to share. You know, I've got a few of those,
Speaker 1: But table's day for that one. All right, Black history,
Speaker 1: moving on, Uh, you know, the youngest person ever executed
Speaker 1: in the United States of America was black.
Speaker 2: I did not know that. But nothing about that fact
Speaker 2: surprises me.
Speaker 1: When you hear a cool story, shoot, it's not cool.
Speaker 1: George Steney Junior h he was sentenced to death at
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. They electrocuted him and they put the
Speaker 1: little thing on his head and shocked him. There's actually
Speaker 1: a photograph of him that exists, if you wanted to
Speaker 1: look it up.
Speaker 2: Definitely, don't want to look it up.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not He's not dead, you know. In
Speaker 1: the picture. It's just he's crying, you know, and he's
Speaker 1: got the thing on his head. They snapped a photograph
Speaker 1: of him, and but it's you know, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's this been this call, you know, say their name,
Speaker 1: say his name, say her name, you know, in recent
Speaker 1: years and months, and I think that it's important for allies.
Speaker 1: We've been through enough trauma, so we don't have to
Speaker 1: continue to stare at these you know. But I think
Speaker 1: that seeing the face of a child weeping, especially after
Speaker 1: you hear this story, well make it real for some
Speaker 1: folks who might again just be casual listeners of the show,
Speaker 1: or they're just happened to catch us on a Saturday
Speaker 1: or Sunday, whenever you're listening. You know, my words will
Speaker 1: only go so far. But for you to make this,
Speaker 1: you know, really commit to this. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to be a better person, trying to be a
Speaker 1: better brother or sister to your African American brothers and sisters,
Speaker 1: you know this is one way to do it. Look
Speaker 1: in the face of this child as he weeps in
Speaker 1: the final moments of his life. He was a real person.
Speaker 1: He was born, he had a heartbeat, He was endowed
Speaker 1: with consciousness, He had a future, He had dreams and goals,
Speaker 1: things that scared him. Probably had a favorite food. He
Speaker 1: made people laugh, he cried everything.
Speaker 2: Just like you and me.
Speaker 1: And they executed him. They snuffed his life out at
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. During his trial, even on the day
Speaker 1: of his execution, he always carried a Bible in his hand,
Speaker 1: claiming to be innocent. For what that's worth, he was
Speaker 1: accused of killing two white girls, eleven year old Betty
Speaker 1: and Mary, aged seven. The bodies were found near the
Speaker 1: house where the teenager resided with his parents. At that time.
Speaker 1: All members of the jury were white. Of course, The
Speaker 1: trial lasted only two hours, and the sentence.
Speaker 2: Wait, a double murdered trial lasted two hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want me read it again. That's what it said. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know why though, right, I think you know what,
Speaker 1: But this is really what's gone fry your brain.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: The trial lasted only two hours. The sentence was dictated
Speaker 1: ten minutes later. It was quick to extinguish his life.
Speaker 2: They'd already made their minds up when they saw who
Speaker 2: the charges were brought against. They'd already made their mind up. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he did it, and we're going to punish him the
Speaker 2: worst way we know how.
Speaker 1: All right, so.
Speaker 2: We know he did it, even though there might not
Speaker 2: be any evidence, we know he did it.
Speaker 1: Oh, this this gets way worse. George Stenny Jr. Again,
Speaker 1: I want you to remember that. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you're just tuning in the civic sich ferromy host Rams' joh.
Speaker 2: And this is Quentin, but they call me q Ward.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, And we are celebrating black history, some parts
Speaker 1: you may not know about. Right now, we're talking about
Speaker 1: George Stenny Junior, the youngest human being to be executed
Speaker 1: in the United States. The boy's parents were threatened and
Speaker 1: prevented from being present in the courtroom and subsequently expelled
Speaker 1: from that city. Before the execution, George spent eighty one
Speaker 1: days in prison without being able to see his parents.
Speaker 1: He was held in solitary eighty miles from the city.
Speaker 1: He was heard alone, without the presence of his parents
Speaker 1: or a lawyer. In other words, they found two dead people.
Speaker 1: They found someone who lived close enough that was black.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard the expression, man, I was just
Speaker 1: black and nearby, as he's literally a victim of that.
Speaker 1: For those of you who've never heard that expression, that's
Speaker 1: a common expression for black folks to just be black
Speaker 1: and nearby, And it means exactly what you think it means.
Speaker 1: It's just like I just got hemmed up on some nonsense.
Speaker 1: I have none to do with it. I was just
Speaker 1: the closest, easiest target for the people who were looking
Speaker 1: for a close, easy target, and I was black enough
Speaker 1: to fit that description. So here we are.
Speaker 2: The fit the description part is important, right, because we
Speaker 2: weren't just looking for any target.
Speaker 1: And that's part of you know, we talk about how
Speaker 1: somehow our skin makes us appear criminal to police and
Speaker 1: to you know, a lot of folks. This is kind
Speaker 1: of you know, what he was up against he was
Speaker 1: black and nearby, all right, And again, I want to reiterate,
Speaker 1: he never got a chance to talk to a lawyer,
Speaker 1: never got a chance to talk to his parents. Their
Speaker 1: kid went out to play.
Speaker 2: One day and then they convicted and sentenced in less
Speaker 2: than three hours.
Speaker 1: So he was electrocuted with five three and eighty volts
Speaker 1: in his head. Seventy years later, his innocence was finally
Speaker 1: proven to a judge in South Carolina. The boy was innocent.
Speaker 1: Someone set him up, set it up to blame him
Speaker 1: for the crime. And you can read all the rest
Speaker 1: of that if you want. He again George Stinny Junior
Speaker 1: s T I N N E Y on Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna look that up because I love to
Speaker 2: to learn about how his I was proven.
Speaker 1: You're gonna you're gonna see his face. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: was actually something that the government acknowledged. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know that's obviously that comes from a dark time in
Speaker 1: the country. But you know it's not so dark because
Speaker 1: Trayvon was twenty twelve, you know, George Floyd was was
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty. Brehanna Taylor was twenty twenty. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: forget the kid's name, but he lived in Colorado and
Speaker 1: he had I think he had like autism or something.
Speaker 1: He was walking home. He had a hoodie on or baby,
Speaker 1: I forget his name. He deserves for me to say
Speaker 1: his name. But that's the one that troubles me the most.
Speaker 1: That he was I think he was walking home.
Speaker 2: I want to say, an artistic kid as well.
Speaker 1: Right, he used to work with the cats, I want
Speaker 1: to say. And he would like play his trumpet at
Speaker 1: or was it a trumpet? I'm not sure. In any event,
Speaker 1: I I'm looking for him, I can't find him.
Speaker 2: Oh, here he goes right here.
Speaker 1: Elijah McClean. He deserved for me to say his name,
Speaker 1: Elijah McLain. That's the one that really bothered me because
Speaker 1: as he was dying, as as the police snuffed his
Speaker 1: life out, he was still trying to say positive things
Speaker 1: to them. If you ever read the transcripts, it'll break
Speaker 1: your heart. He was trying to say, I love you,
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this to me? I'm sorry? What
Speaker 1: did I do wrong? You know, and you know that
Speaker 1: type of mind, it's very difficult to grasp traumatic things
Speaker 1: in the way that you know, you and I can
Speaker 1: can process them. And so he really didn't know what
Speaker 1: was happening to him and couldn't understand it, and then
Speaker 1: he was not alive anymore. And to my understanding, no
Speaker 1: one has been held accountable for that. So shout out
Speaker 1: to Colorado for that one. All right, some more black history.
Speaker 2: Okay, trying to be trying to be you know, as
Speaker 2: talk to me. We're fathers, man, and it's not that,
Speaker 2: not that, not that being fathers makes us more susceptible
Speaker 2: to those feelings because I always, uh, you know, you
Speaker 2: hear about something being done wrong to a woman and
Speaker 2: you're hear somebody say I got daughters, because if that
Speaker 2: gives them the more ground to feel. But our fears
Speaker 2: are different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think we're more empathetic, especially with regards
Speaker 3: to the example that I use, because we all have mothers,
Speaker 3: nothing else, so we can all relate to the idea
Speaker 3: of love from and to a woman. But our fears
Speaker 3: are different when when you're a parent and when you're
Speaker 3: a father to a black boy. And these stories are
Speaker 3: not history, they're today, right. We learn about slavery in
Speaker 3: school as part of our very very dark, difficult.
Speaker 2: And traumatic past.
Speaker 1: It's history.
Speaker 2: Things we're talking about right now. They aren't history. They're
Speaker 2: still normal today. They're not one off, They're not these
Speaker 2: rare things that happen every now and then. And you
Speaker 2: know how you know proud I am, and you know
Speaker 2: if you follow me on social media, you'll see my kids,
Speaker 2: you know, and the comments that I get about my
Speaker 2: kid they always make me feel incredible. I just wonder,
Speaker 2: at what point, for my son specifically, people see him
Speaker 2: different than beautiful and oh my god, he's so cute.
Speaker 2: Is it when I get his first haircut?
Speaker 1: Is it when.
Speaker 2: When somebody braids his first corn row? Like?
Speaker 1: What at what point does he go from?
Speaker 2: When does he go from oh my god to oh
Speaker 2: my god? And I'd be naive to think it's not
Speaker 2: going to happen to him. He is beautiful, that is
Speaker 2: my baby boy. But I'm my mom's baby boy. And
Speaker 2: I'm forty years old, thank God, still here. But have
Speaker 2: I had moments where I didn't think I'd come out
Speaker 2: the other side of it okay, and I would get
Speaker 2: home and be able to tell this story. Yes, a
Speaker 2: couple times in the last two hundred days, one time
Speaker 2: in the last thirty days. I don't know. It's becoming
Speaker 2: more and more difficult to not be affected by Even
Speaker 2: when we talk to each other about show topics, we're
Speaker 2: searching for the light you want to come on one
Speaker 2: day and just talk and laugh and smile. But I
Speaker 2: often find myself feeling guilty for being the person that's
Speaker 2: shining the flashlight on the stuff that we shine it
Speaker 2: into because people would argue they're fatigue with hearing it.
Speaker 2: I know what you mean. I'm so sorry, y'all, and
Speaker 2: we have to do it. It's very, very difficult to
Speaker 2: abuse someone. I won't even say a child, but say
Speaker 2: you're abusing someone their whole life, and you tell them
Speaker 2: to stop complaining about it, stop bring why do you
Speaker 2: keep bringing it up? Because you keep doing it. And
Speaker 2: there are people that are exhausted that hearing us talk
Speaker 2: about the way the world is viewed through our eyes.
Speaker 2: They're tired of feeling guilty about it, and they're tired
Speaker 2: of hearing us talk about it. And last week when
Speaker 2: Camille went on Bill Maher show on HBO, talked about
Speaker 2: how privileged he is, so there's no white privilege and
Speaker 2: systemic racism doesn't exist. And you know, Bill Maher, someone
Speaker 2: who I viewed as an ally for a decade, easy
Speaker 2: sat and agreed with him because they're both just tired
Speaker 2: of race being interjected into anything. As if we're the
Speaker 2: ones doing it, you don't say, hey, look at me
Speaker 2: different because I'm please. And they know so many black
Speaker 2: people that are tired of being felt sorry for and
Speaker 2: are tired of hearing about it. Okay, So the black
Speaker 2: people that you know feel that way, and you know
Speaker 2: that for sure you're speaking for all of them, or
Speaker 2: are you speaking to the one who like Camille, who
Speaker 2: like Jason Woodlock, who like Candice Owens, want to be
Speaker 2: comfortable around the colleagues that help them put money in
Speaker 2: their bank accounts, and they want to show gratitude for
Speaker 2: the positions that they've in, the places that they've ascended
Speaker 2: to in their lives. These are educated, accomplished, successful black people.
Speaker 1: I want to say something while we're on that topic.
Speaker 1: For those examples that you name, there are so many
Speaker 1: more accomplished, wealthy, successful, whatever black people who acknowledge the
Speaker 1: reality of the situation, and they are very much the exception.
Speaker 1: They you know, they managed to navigate these waters a
Speaker 1: little differently and things worked out a little bit better
Speaker 1: for them. But it's it was a fluke or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, I I rams this recognized that for me
Speaker 1: to even be on the radio, like it's just an
Speaker 1: alignment of the moon and the stars and the planets.
Speaker 1: This was never a realistic thing for me in my
Speaker 1: lifetime to be able to use radio in a city
Speaker 1: as big as you know, the one that I'm from,
Speaker 1: which is Phoenix, and make a living off of it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's just it's so I thought that I was going
Speaker 1: to just get a job the same as anyone else.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there are many more people who
Speaker 1: will acknowledge that, you know, so I just I think
Speaker 1: it's there are some people who are going to go
Speaker 1: against the grain, of course, and some people just prefer
Speaker 1: to be antagonist. But you know, for the most part,
Speaker 1: everyone kind of agrees that you get a tougher go.
Speaker 1: If you're a woman and you get a tougher go.
Speaker 1: If you're gay, you get a tougher go. If you're
Speaker 1: black or brown, you get a tougher go. If you
Speaker 1: are handicapped, if you get a tougher go. If you're Muslim,
Speaker 1: you get a tougher go. If you're you know, any
Speaker 1: of these sorts of things.
Speaker 2: Try being all of the above.
Speaker 1: There you go, so I know some gay black women.
Speaker 2: Who imagine gay black Muslim woman.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, those are the people that honestly, those
Speaker 1: are the people that really get out there and make
Speaker 1: the world change.
Speaker 2: Superhero.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But yeah, so again I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that I, oh another thing while run the subject.
Speaker 1: I'm not prepared to talk about this at length, but
Speaker 1: I do want to mention Emmitt Till briefly. A lot
Speaker 1: of folks might know the story of Emmitt Till, but
Speaker 1: it's not too dissimilar from George Stanny Junior. And in brief,
Speaker 1: you know, he was he was a little bit lighter
Speaker 1: skinned black child. He was fourteen. He went from Chicago
Speaker 1: down to I can't remember what state it was, but
Speaker 1: some midwestern southern state and whistled like kind of like
Speaker 1: a what's that whistle you do? Fox?
Speaker 2: Whistle?
Speaker 1: Fox whistled at a white woman as she was leaving
Speaker 1: a grocery store. And so he did the little whistle
Speaker 1: and then he says bye baby to the to the lady,
Speaker 1: and then you know, lady keeps walking or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then some folks came snatched him out of his bed.
Speaker 2: Beat him up.
Speaker 1: I think there's that's they dragged him behind a car,
Speaker 1: dumped his body in the river, anchored his body to something,
Speaker 1: and threw him in the river. I'm not mistaken. And
Speaker 1: the reason we know his name is because his mom,
Speaker 1: as g as she was, had an open casket funeral
Speaker 1: for him, and then so everyone, all the press was
Speaker 1: able to come and take pictures of his body. His
Speaker 1: body was all beat up and bruised, and it had
Speaker 1: been in water and so forth, and so it was
Speaker 1: just it was very scary to see a human being
Speaker 1: in that shape, and it kind of painted the picture
Speaker 1: of what he had gone through in his last moments
Speaker 1: of his life by going by baby to a white woman.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, you know the woman in the court,
Speaker 1: you know when they found the guys that did it,
Speaker 1: who never went to jail for that. But the woman
Speaker 1: lied in her testimony, and she admitted that she lied
Speaker 1: in her testimony on her deathbed. So she lived with
Speaker 1: that liar whole life, and then she died, I want
Speaker 1: to say, in the eighties.
Speaker 2: And it happened in Mississippi, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: That's where he went. Yeah, but yeah, so another story.
Speaker 1: But the reason I wanted to bring up em Mattila
Speaker 1: is because he's a little bit lighter skinned, and you
Speaker 1: know the amount of melanin. You know, there is a
Speaker 1: correlation overall. But blackness is kind of like the scarlet letter.
Speaker 1: It just applies to everyone with you know, any detectable
Speaker 1: African roots, and somehow it's counted against us in our
Speaker 1: time in this country when it comes to a lot
Speaker 1: of things, including life and death. But I do want
Speaker 1: to get some more stuff out of the way. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to get through these a little bit quicker.
Speaker 1: So Memorial Day, I'm gonna talk about that. One. Memorial
Speaker 1: Day was started by African Americans honoring fallen Union soldiers.
Speaker 1: It's a little tidbit a lot of folks don't know about.
Speaker 1: So there's that one.
Speaker 2: I'll shout out to all of our unions. You know this,
Speaker 2: the magical marketing of capitalism has made people view unions right,
Speaker 2: the organization of labor for the labors, to protect the laborers,
Speaker 2: to do what's best by the laborers, as the bad guys. Yeah,
Speaker 2: even laborers view it that. Oh man, sorry, well.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you said it before. The greatest
Speaker 1: trick the devil ever.
Speaker 2: Pooled, convincing the world he didn't exist, and I.
Speaker 1: Think that that's a great stand in for capitalism, you know.
Speaker 1: But another thing I wanted to get off was that
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty was originally created and gifted to
Speaker 1: the United States to celebrate the freed slaves, not immigrants.
Speaker 1: I think that's very important. Wow, have you been to
Speaker 1: the Statue of Liberty? Q? I have.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, I used to go every week for a couple
Speaker 2: of months as you and I were traveling the world
Speaker 2: on cruise ships. One of mine and route from Bermuda
Speaker 2: to New York docked at the Statue of Liberty every trip.
Speaker 1: Nice I went to the Statue of Liberty too, and
Speaker 1: all the history there, all the little signs that you
Speaker 1: can read and everything, all the people that give you
Speaker 1: the walking tours and all that stuff they talk about,
Speaker 1: all the immigrants that passed through there, talk about everything,
Speaker 1: you know, except the Statue of Liberty was originally created
Speaker 1: and originally gifted to the United States to celebrate and
Speaker 1: to commemorate the freeing of the slaves, the emancimate Emancipation Proclamation.
Speaker 1: And you know, this erasure, this whitewashing of history is
Speaker 1: something that is not lost on me. And because I
Speaker 1: have a platform and I'm able to share these things,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that I should share it, you know,
Speaker 1: and it should not be lost on you, you know,
Speaker 1: listening to my voice, because this is who we are,
Speaker 1: and that's just as much Black history as doctor King.
Speaker 1: You know that the intention behind that woman standing with
Speaker 1: that torch, holding that book, you know, is two commemorate
Speaker 1: the freeing of slavery, to suggest that America had made
Speaker 1: a transition from the old version of herself to the
Speaker 1: modern version of herself. And the fact that that was
Speaker 1: co opted to suggest that every other immigrant was now
Speaker 1: welcome in America, it flies in the face of that.
Speaker 1: And I think that we need to know that, we
Speaker 1: need to understand that the intent behind it. We also
Speaker 1: need to know that that's another thing that was taken
Speaker 1: away from us. You know, we're here now, we lived here,
Speaker 1: we lived here for hundreds of years, and that we're Americans.
Speaker 1: Our children have been born, their children have been born.
Speaker 1: So everybody here now is Americans. Right, this is at
Speaker 1: the end of slavery. Everyone here is Americans. There's no
Speaker 1: direct connection with Africas. Now we can go back to
Speaker 1: our ancestry, and we didn't know our own African names
Speaker 1: we can speak the language. All this stuff was stripped
Speaker 1: from us and we had no connection. You know. So
Speaker 1: we're Americans now, for better or worse, and there's this
Speaker 1: gift given to us by France that is then taken
Speaker 1: from us as well, and so there's not even a
Speaker 1: thing to look to that says, Okay, well this is
Speaker 1: to commemorate that. I think we're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: a part two. We definitely need to talk about them.
Speaker 2: We can do three or four parts.
Speaker 1: We got enough a month, Yeah, that's true, but we
Speaker 1: definitely need to talk about the panthers. I want to
Speaker 1: make sure we talk about the black panthers in the
Speaker 1: free breakfast program. And we need to talk about crack,
Speaker 1: how crack cocaine made its way into poor black neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: If only they had treated it like a pandemic like
Speaker 2: they're doing this opioid crisis. A lot of less incarcerated
Speaker 2: and dead brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, but you know, when we get into that,
Speaker 1: we'll understand why that never happened that way. But again,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of black history here. And another thing
Speaker 1: that we're going to do at some point this month
Speaker 1: is I want to make sure that we have a
Speaker 1: guest up to talk about some of the bills that
Speaker 1: are on the books, at least in Phoenix where a
Speaker 1: good amount of folks listen to the show, so that
Speaker 1: we can discuss some of the things that people are
Speaker 1: trying to do and take away from Phoenicians in response
Speaker 1: to Joe Biden getting elected president and Trump not getting
Speaker 1: his second term.
Speaker 2: Dealing with some of that stuff in Georgia as well, Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's basically more attempts to disenfranchise.
Speaker 2: Voters so make it more and more difficult and in some
Speaker 2: cases impossible for us to show up and vote. Right
Speaker 2: right there, we exercise are right.
Speaker 1: So that's what we're here for. So we'll definitely have
Speaker 1: some guests up be able to talk about all that
Speaker 1: and more. But I think that's going to do it
Speaker 1: for us on this episode of Civic Cipher. Once again,
Speaker 1: thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, ramses Jah.
Speaker 1: They call me q Ward And if you had any
Speaker 1: questions any topics for the show, you can hit us
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