Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cicher. I am your
Speaker 1: host Ramsey's job, Yes he is, and they call me
Speaker 1: q Ward stick around, got a great show lined up
Speaker 1: for you today. We're gonna share some some things you
Speaker 1: might not know about if you are not a black person.
Speaker 1: Growing up black may seem like a foreign concept to you,
Speaker 1: and that's okay because again, that's not your reality. But
Speaker 1: there are some things that happen that shape our reality
Speaker 1: as adults that we feel like if we share them,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll find a way to relate to each other
Speaker 1: a little bit more easily, more readily. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a moment today to make sure that we discuss
Speaker 1: how some experiences have can and do shape the lives
Speaker 1: of people who are born black in this country, and
Speaker 1: maybe even some ideas on how you can address those
Speaker 1: ask about those experiences, and hopefully we can create a
Speaker 1: little bit more empty as we relate to each other. Also,
Speaker 1: we're going to tell a story about how Civic Cipher
Speaker 1: came to be while someone reached out to us and
Speaker 1: was like, you know, kind of asking how we came
Speaker 1: up with the idea for the show, and we haven't
Speaker 1: told this story in this space, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to take some time to let you know the origins
Speaker 1: of this show, why we think it's important, and what
Speaker 1: we hope the show will accomplish. In long form, we
Speaker 1: kind of give bits and pieces here and there, but
Speaker 1: today we're going to lay it out in full detail
Speaker 1: for you so that you will have it all. And
Speaker 1: then of course our way Black History Fact, we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about the Urban League. You may be
Speaker 1: familiar with the NAACP, but today we're going to celebrate
Speaker 1: the Urban League. But first and foremost, we are going
Speaker 1: to discuss some Ebony excellence. How does that sound cute?
Speaker 1: This sounds very exciting? Shall we we show? So today's
Speaker 1: Ebny Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media and
Speaker 1: we got a little tidbit from JP Morgan Wealth Management.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, black women are the fastest growing
Speaker 1: demographic of entrepreneurs in the US, with nearly two point
Speaker 1: seven million businesses nationwide, So shout out to black women
Speaker 1: one time. The number of businesses owned by black women
Speaker 1: grew fifty percent from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen, representing
Speaker 1: the highest growth rate of any female demographic. Black females
Speaker 1: accounted for forty two percent of all women who operated
Speaker 1: a new business during that time and represented thirty six
Speaker 1: percent of all black employers, and they're not letting up.
Speaker 1: In the US, seventeen percent of black women are in
Speaker 1: the process of starting a new business, compared to ten
Speaker 1: percent of white women and fifteen percent of white men.
Speaker 1: Motives for creating a new business include producing a source
Speaker 1: of income or following a dream. So we always want
Speaker 1: to make sure that we're showing our support black women.
Speaker 1: And you know, as a side note and a personal experience,
Speaker 1: I have a sister. You know, this is the closest
Speaker 1: lens that I have outside of our producer Maggie, Miss
Speaker 1: Maggie aka Maggie, knowing she knew her perspective. My own
Speaker 1: little sister once worked for a doctor. And you know,
Speaker 1: my sister is an actual smart person, like on paper,
Speaker 1: a brilliant mind, like for real. And I remember the
Speaker 1: way that this doctor mistreated my sister and devalued her
Speaker 1: ideas and so forth, And so my sister now works
Speaker 1: for herself because of that. So I could definitely see
Speaker 1: this reality taking shape for black women across the country.
Speaker 1: Traditionally that undervalues them. So shout out to black women
Speaker 1: one more time for our ebony excellence, and that is
Speaker 1: a great segue into what we're talking about today. It
Speaker 1: just kind of felt important and timely based on some
Speaker 1: conversations we're having this week, Q and myself and Maggie
Speaker 1: about what it means to be, you know, a black man,
Speaker 1: black person in this country and some of our traumas
Speaker 1: and insecurities and things that have helped shaped us as
Speaker 1: adults that started in our childhood. And so you know,
Speaker 1: there's some crazy things that you know, if you're not black,
Speaker 1: you might not be aware of these things that are
Speaker 1: specific to black people, or that are specific to me
Speaker 1: an individual, but only could happen to me as a
Speaker 1: result of me being black, as a result of me,
Speaker 1: as you'll find out, not having straight hair. And I
Speaker 1: think that it's worth sticking around for. So I want
Speaker 1: to tell a quick story to help set the stage.
Speaker 1: So you know, I was born in Compton, California. I
Speaker 1: lived there the first part of my life. That of course,
Speaker 1: very much shaped how I viewed and still view the world.
Speaker 1: So a quick story there. When I was younger, it
Speaker 1: was a lot of violence there. Of course, it was
Speaker 1: in the eighties, so there was a lot of drugs
Speaker 1: and that sort of stuff. I had a friend. I
Speaker 1: had two friends, Keith and David. Keith ended up dying,
Speaker 1: remember weird kids, little kids. Keith ended up getting shot
Speaker 1: and he died in front of his house in the street.
Speaker 1: I remember that, and I remember everybody screaming, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of a sad day. But I didn't really
Speaker 1: get to process that, and I remember thinking, dang, I
Speaker 1: hope I make it to twenty. Now, most people when
Speaker 1: they're that young, they hope that they make it to eighteen,
Speaker 1: or they anticipate turning eighteen because then they'll be in
Speaker 1: a grown up, or twenty one because then they can
Speaker 1: be a real grown up, or twenty five because they
Speaker 1: can rent a car, or whatever whatever age it is.
Speaker 1: But I thought twenty was the magic number because where
Speaker 1: I lived, whenever people talked about death or these crazy
Speaker 1: things happen, they would always be like, oh, such and
Speaker 1: such he was only thirteen or seventeen or fifteen, and
Speaker 1: the teen part stood out, and that meant that it
Speaker 1: was a tragedy. So, because I knew how numbers worked,
Speaker 1: I thought twenty was the magic number, and if I
Speaker 1: could just make it to twenty, then I will have
Speaker 1: made it. That's crazy, and so that very much shaped
Speaker 1: my life. You know, I was in college when I
Speaker 1: turned twenty, and twenty was when I let my hair
Speaker 1: started to grow. I felt that I was going to
Speaker 1: be myself, and every other day beyond that was a bonus. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, I moved out of Compton when I was
Speaker 1: very young, and I knew that life was not just okay,
Speaker 1: you're born to die, you know, but that number stuck
Speaker 1: with me, that in mine. When I first came to Arizona,
Speaker 1: I had a friend. His name was Kevin. For those
Speaker 1: that are really into hip hop culture that watch a
Speaker 1: lot of interviews, you may know the name Bootleg keV. Well.
Speaker 1: I met Kevin when he was three years old and
Speaker 1: I was seven, and so we grew up together. The
Speaker 1: reason he's super into hip hop is because of me.
Speaker 1: And you know, I love Kevin. I always did love Kevin.
Speaker 1: And Kevin was very fortunate. His parents had money and
Speaker 1: they believed that you can buy more than one Christmas
Speaker 1: present for your kid at Christmas, and so Kevin would
Speaker 1: get all these Christmas presents.
Speaker 2: Every year for his for his birthday and Easter holidays,
Speaker 2: like all this stuff. So Kevin had mad toys, right,
Speaker 2: there's a growing up that's fun, you know. And every
Speaker 2: time I'd go and hang out with Kevin at his house,
Speaker 2: I'd bring my video games and later I'd bring my
Speaker 2: CD books and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: But keV had toys. He was a few years younger
Speaker 1: than me, so he was still on that well after
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of years of knowing each other
Speaker 1: and playing with each other. Kevin's toys would always go
Speaker 1: missing me just because he had too many of them.
Speaker 1: And there was this gripping fear that I'd experienced every
Speaker 1: time Kevin's one of Kevin's toys went missing. And instead
Speaker 1: of me thinking, Okay, he's a child who lost his toy,
Speaker 1: it's in the couch, it's in the back of the car,
Speaker 1: something like that, I was so worried that his mom
Speaker 1: was going to think I stole it, because I understood
Speaker 1: at that young age that there was a stereotype and
Speaker 1: a stigma of being black that meant that people assumed
Speaker 1: that black people steal, right. And of course I never
Speaker 1: stole anything, but I would always be so I would
Speaker 1: I would rush to help him find the toy, and
Speaker 1: I would pray that I wasn't the one who found it,
Speaker 1: because if I'm the one who found it, then they
Speaker 1: could conclude that I hit it in that location, right.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until years later, I'm talking my early
Speaker 1: thirties when I finally told Kevin's mom about that. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I used to hate when keV lost
Speaker 1: his toys, and I told her the story I just
Speaker 1: told you.
Speaker 3: Probably broke her heart.
Speaker 1: Broke her heart. She cried. Her and her husband kept
Speaker 1: dad Charlie. They were like, Yo, how could you ever
Speaker 1: think that we would ever think that you would do that?
Speaker 1: And I'm like I anyway, that's one story. We got
Speaker 1: a few to get off. It sucks that that was
Speaker 1: a thing for you, though.
Speaker 3: It really was because at that age you had to
Speaker 3: understand that you lived in the world that mostly did
Speaker 3: view black people that way and just had to hope
Speaker 3: that this family was different. It had to be really
Speaker 3: like trapped by that fear. Yeah, man, it sucks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But so you from a different place. Yeah, I'm from
Speaker 3: a city they call Motown, the motor city. If you
Speaker 3: will talk about Detroit, Michigan, that's right, at one point,
Speaker 3: the world's motor capital. Maybe still at one point the
Speaker 3: world's murder capital, a very very unproud but true statistic.
Speaker 3: And in the eighties when I grew up, the early nineties,
Speaker 3: when I was in Detroit, the black population exceeded eighty percent.
Speaker 3: And if you can imagine being somewhere where the black
Speaker 3: population is eighty percent, you can spend your entire life
Speaker 3: never seeing anyone that isn't black.
Speaker 1: So that was my truth.
Speaker 3: A very very interesting thing about our relationship, or our
Speaker 3: people's relationship with law enforcement is that not only was
Speaker 3: everybody in my city black, but my mother's brother and
Speaker 3: my father's brother Detroit police officers. From my entire childhood,
Speaker 3: one a detective on an inspector, so respected like career
Speaker 3: long police officers. And then my uncle, Harold, married a
Speaker 3: Detroit police officer, so we were really kind of ingrained.
Speaker 3: So seeing law enforcement was very normal for me, and
Speaker 3: because everyone was black, it wasn't until I was an
Speaker 3: adult that I had some of those oh this is
Speaker 3: different experiences with law enforcement. But being a child in Detroit,
Speaker 3: especially growing up not wealthy, a lot of things that
Speaker 3: are true about growing up a black child in this
Speaker 3: country never dawned upon me until once again I grew up.
Speaker 3: All of my neighbors were in the same financial situation
Speaker 3: as my mom, all of my classmates, so not only
Speaker 3: were we all black, but we were all poor. So
Speaker 3: it wasn't like people were stunting on you. And now
Speaker 3: as I started to grow up, I would notice that
Speaker 3: my friends who had both parents at home, they had
Speaker 3: more things than I did, right, name brand shoes and clothes.
Speaker 3: But just the way that my world got to be
Speaker 3: shaped around black people was actually really cool. But there
Speaker 3: was a duality. My uncle, my mother's brother, by the
Speaker 3: nature of being an inspector in the Detroit Police Department
Speaker 3: and then marrying a Detroit police officer to parents with
Speaker 3: what was considered good jobs, they did well, so I
Speaker 3: did sometimes get to see how the other side lived. Right,
Speaker 3: You would go to spend a night over there, and
Speaker 3: you would want that night to turn into a week
Speaker 3: or a month or a Mom, can I just stay
Speaker 3: here because they have a swimming pool and a pantry.
Speaker 3: I don't even get into a pantry when you're a
Speaker 3: young black kid and you've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: Like that was what would be a special occasion. Grocery
Speaker 3: store trip for me was just every like Tuesday for
Speaker 3: you know, for their house, extra foodator like, lots of it,
Speaker 3: all the snacks, you know, anything you could possibly want.
Speaker 3: I remember the first time my heart fluttered was because
Speaker 3: I saw Tina Turner. So imagine being very much a
Speaker 3: child and thinking that the most glorious thing you've ever
Speaker 3: seen is Tina Turner. Right, So that's what growing up
Speaker 3: surrounded by black people does to you, subconsciously, right that
Speaker 3: Tina Turner and all her glory. It couldn't get me
Speaker 3: better than that. I'm proud of that to this day.
Speaker 3: My first crush and my whole life was Tina Turner.
Speaker 3: And you know, they later made a movie about her.
Speaker 3: I bought the first tickets, probably pregnant, like, I stood
Speaker 3: in line to see What's Love Got to Do? And
Speaker 3: I learned a lot about her life and career that
Speaker 3: I didn't know, and that was a little jarring. But
Speaker 3: once again, this is me going to see my childhood
Speaker 3: crushes movie simultaneously. However, and forgive me for saying your
Speaker 3: name if you ever hear this, because I have not
Speaker 3: seen her since I was maybe six years old. But
Speaker 3: Mary Kay Mary Kay was my cousin, Leslie and Natalie's
Speaker 3: friend and Mary Kay was white. She was the second
Speaker 3: person that I had a crush on, and mostly because
Speaker 3: if there's a such thing as not seeing color four
Speaker 3: year old kids playing in the swimming pool. This wasn't
Speaker 3: a romantic crush because we were four. But I thought
Speaker 3: she was pretty and she wasn't my cousin, and that
Speaker 3: was kind of all that mattered, right that she was white.
Speaker 3: It's something I think about today that absolutely didn't matter
Speaker 3: when I was four and five years old playing in
Speaker 3: my uncle's swimming pool with her, And it clearly didn't
Speaker 3: matter to her either, because when other family members would
Speaker 3: come over and she was there, her interactions with them
Speaker 3: were just as warm and just as friendly. And clearly
Speaker 3: her parents had to think it was okay because every
Speaker 3: summer or every holiday that we were at Uncle Harold's
Speaker 3: in the pool, she was there too. So just a
Speaker 3: really really interesting dynamic. And I'll touch more on how
Speaker 3: that shifted a little later on in the show. But
Speaker 3: growing up in an all black city, because eighty two
Speaker 3: percent of a city being black, that city's.
Speaker 1: Black, real black, right. I had a couple.
Speaker 3: Teachers that weren't but even most of my teachers, most
Speaker 3: of the adults and children that I saw from preschool
Speaker 3: to graduation, we're black. It was a bit of a
Speaker 3: utopia and kind of a really really dope experience to
Speaker 3: grow up in. However, going to college forever changed the
Speaker 3: entire scope of how I saw being black in this country.
Speaker 1: So I want to I want you to tell that story.
Speaker 1: Let me get this one off real quick. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: from California. We're all mixed up over there. Then I
Speaker 1: moved to Arizona, even more mixed up, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, or even less mixed opposite. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot of black folks in Arizona in Phoenix. But another
Speaker 1: thing that happened to me growing up is, you know,
Speaker 1: I get that you listen to us on radio, so
Speaker 1: you probably haven't seen how we look. But I have
Speaker 1: hair on my head. It's a big old afro. I've
Speaker 1: had it for always, and you know it's my hair
Speaker 1: just grows that way. It's just what it does. So
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of it, and I don't cut it
Speaker 1: because it's like it's my way of kind of proclaiming
Speaker 1: who I am, who I was meant to be. Nature's
Speaker 1: expressing herself through my hair. God is expressing God's Self
Speaker 1: through my hand and every other part of me. And
Speaker 1: you not taking anything away from anybody. But you know
Speaker 1: I've always had not always, but for a huge chunk
Speaker 1: of my life, I've had long hair and kept it
Speaker 1: that way. And when I got a little older, I
Speaker 1: remember somebody. So you know how like you'll go to
Speaker 1: a friend's house, you know, a lady friend, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're a lady yourself listening to us, and you let
Speaker 1: comb your hair in the shower, comb through condition or whatever,
Speaker 1: and you pull the hair off of the comb and
Speaker 1: you set it on the wall of the shower or
Speaker 1: whatever so that you can clean it up later. Right,
Speaker 1: So the hair is kind of like stringy, straight looking hairs,
Speaker 1: kind of a little soapy, and it just sits in
Speaker 1: the corner. Anyone else who sees that sees hair, this
Speaker 1: hair is from a long haired individual that is in
Speaker 1: the corner of the shower. Well, my hair is just
Speaker 1: as long. It just doesn't hang to my shoulders because
Speaker 1: it's grows in circles, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 1: just kind of stays where it's at. It just keeps
Speaker 1: growing in circles, which coils, if you will coils. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is how you get the cool looking afro situation.
Speaker 1: I think it's cool. And the thing is if I
Speaker 1: comb my hair, which I do and I always have to,
Speaker 1: you know, I have to do the same thing, right.
Speaker 1: So I remember one time I went to camp I
Speaker 1: might have been in the eighth grade, ninth grade something
Speaker 1: like that, you know, comb my hair like normal, and
Speaker 1: then I like took the hair from the comb. This
Speaker 1: wasn't in the shower, but I took the hair from
Speaker 1: the comb and I threw it into the trash, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And I just left it in
Speaker 1: like a waste basket inside of the cabin where we're
Speaker 1: a camping. And one of the people that came into
Speaker 1: the cabin, this person wasn't like being mean or being
Speaker 1: racist or anything like that. That's not what this story
Speaker 1: is about. This person was unfamiliar with hair not attached
Speaker 1: to my head. Right, So when they see this clump
Speaker 1: of hair that looks like a little tiny after that
Speaker 1: you can fit in a palm in your hand, looks
Speaker 1: at it and said something like it looks oh my god,
Speaker 1: look at this. It looks like like a bug created
Speaker 1: a nest or something like something like. Really that they
Speaker 1: weren't trying to say anything about me me, right, But
Speaker 1: the way that I heard it was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: and you know everyone else was clowning, was like, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever they were saying, I don't know. And then over
Speaker 1: time I heard things like, you know, when you have
Speaker 1: like thick black hair in the shower, when you come
Speaker 1: across that, a lot of people think that it's body hair.
Speaker 1: We'll say, well, my hair is all thick and black,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And it's cray right. So
Speaker 1: this thing kind of grew in me, this fear of
Speaker 1: leaving my hair anywhere, especially in the shower, because I
Speaker 1: didn't want anybody else to find my hair that came
Speaker 1: from my head. I have to comb my hair and
Speaker 1: take care of the same as everybody, but I became
Speaker 1: so embarrassed about having to take care in my hair
Speaker 1: because it sheds. It's just what human beings do. All
Speaker 1: of our hair sheds. It's it's a natural thing. But
Speaker 1: leaving it in the shower became like kind of traumatic
Speaker 1: for me, so much so to wear as as recently
Speaker 1: as we'll call it, two thousand and maybe seventeen, maybe
Speaker 1: sixteen seventeen, I was in Vegas, at a Hilton. I
Speaker 1: was there under like a diamond account right djaying for
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve, and I found myself in the shower
Speaker 1: cleaning up my hair because I didn't want the housekeepers
Speaker 1: to come in after seeing me in that room to
Speaker 1: think that I had somehow violated or disrespected the bathroom
Speaker 1: and for them to be grossed out by my hair
Speaker 1: on my head. So it's something that stayed with me
Speaker 1: well into adulthood and again growing up and getting those
Speaker 1: traumas of just not being white, just being different. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that Hispanic people and you know, everybody has
Speaker 1: their own versions of these stories. But I think that
Speaker 1: by us talking about it, we can kind of relate
Speaker 1: to each other. Now, you went away to college. Tell
Speaker 1: me more about this, Kip, Well, before going away to college.
Speaker 3: You have to understand that said something earlier, and I
Speaker 3: said it so fast you may not have caught it.
Speaker 3: Almost everybody was black, Okay, I had teachers my whole
Speaker 3: life that weren't. But you have to understand with my
Speaker 3: life and the way that I view non black people
Speaker 3: in America was very much shaped by my childhood. But
Speaker 3: think about it. The city eighty two percent black, But
Speaker 3: you can drive right from the most southern part of
Speaker 3: Detroit to out of Detroit is I'm sure you guys
Speaker 3: have seen the movie eight Mile. That distance is eight
Speaker 3: miles literally from the southernmost part of Detroit. So as
Speaker 3: far inward as you can go south to north of
Speaker 3: the city, out into the north suburbs, eight miles and
Speaker 3: you're out of the city. All of these teachers could
Speaker 3: have worked in the suburbs and not had to move,
Speaker 3: like literally across the street. Go across the street, across
Speaker 3: eight mile. You're not in Detroit anymore. The property value increases,
Speaker 3: your salary increases, the crime rate drops, like all of
Speaker 3: this was true. So these teachers that were not black
Speaker 3: that chose to work in inner city Detroit public schools
Speaker 3: schools had a really really genuine affection and place in
Speaker 3: their heart for teaching and developing black children.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So even when I come across like teachers in the
Speaker 3: news now that just kind of don't care as much,
Speaker 3: like it's a job for them. But for my teachers,
Speaker 3: it wasn't just a job. These people were editions of
Speaker 3: your family, like ancillary parents. If you will, miss Pillars,
Speaker 3: Miss Howitt's, Miss moy All, very very different ethnic backgrounds, right,
Speaker 3: Ms Marath, mister Torgensen, all very very different ethnic backgrounds, right,
Speaker 3: Some Asians, some white, but white. You know, you have German,
Speaker 3: you have Russian, Miss Lev, mister Kara Maris. All of
Speaker 3: these people who looked nothing like us, who really really
Speaker 3: gave a damn about helping us become better people and
Speaker 3: really poured into that development, prepared me to get shocked by.
Speaker 1: The world, is what they did.
Speaker 3: Wow, because they loved and put their arms around I
Speaker 3: remember Miss Moy's husband gave me my first set of
Speaker 3: comic books that got stolen out of my locker, and
Speaker 3: I cried for a week because I was really big
Speaker 3: into comic books as a child. But you have to understand,
Speaker 3: they set me up for the most massive culture shock
Speaker 3: in my life because every white person I ever met
Speaker 3: loved me like out loud and intentionally. And I get
Speaker 3: to college, and I'm gonna tell this part of the
Speaker 3: story really fast. I get to college. I want a
Speaker 3: full scholarship to play football. So I just graduated from
Speaker 3: high school full scholarship. I'm about to play college football.
Speaker 3: I'm on the emotional high. I am in the parking
Speaker 3: lot waiting for the shuttle to take me to my
Speaker 3: dorm for the first time. So this is day one.
Speaker 3: I have not seen my dorm yet. It picks me
Speaker 3: up in the parking lot. I get on, I sit down.
Speaker 3: I got on the shuttle first, and the only way
Speaker 3: I would have noticed this is if I got on
Speaker 3: the shuttle first. Four white young ladies got on the
Speaker 3: shuttle after me. Three of them made it their business
Speaker 3: to not only sit as far away from me as possible,
Speaker 3: but to make fun of the one who had to
Speaker 3: take the only remaining seat by the time they got on,
Speaker 3: which was next to me, and from the parking lot
Speaker 3: to our dorm rooms, they just made fun of her,
Speaker 3: and she was not only hurt but embarrassed, And I
Speaker 3: remember reaching out and touching her and her not being startled,
Speaker 3: which was comforting. And she looked at me like embarrassed
Speaker 3: for her friends, and I just told her, you don't
Speaker 3: have to apologize for them. I'm cool. But it was
Speaker 3: the first time I realized that things were different, and
Speaker 3: it was the first time of many times that I
Speaker 3: would be reminded of so