Speaker 1: Keep on riding with us as we continue to broadcast
Speaker 1: the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop
Speaker 1: Weekly Studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I am still
Speaker 1: your host, Ramsey's Ja.
Speaker 2: He is still your host, ramses Ja.
Speaker 3: I am q Ward and you are hopefully tuned in
Speaker 3: again to Civic Cipher.
Speaker 2: And we love that.
Speaker 1: Don't we stick around because we are hanging out with
Speaker 1: a couple of guests that we think highly of. We
Speaker 1: have DJ and Kaija on the phone. DJ's president of
Speaker 1: the Black Student Union at the University of Arizona and
Speaker 1: Kaija there's an activist working closely with the Department of
Speaker 1: African American Student Affairs. And we're having a conversation about,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the DEI rollbacks and the threats
Speaker 1: of you know, defunding these institutions if they continue to
Speaker 1: support marginalized communities. And we're also going to have a
Speaker 1: conversation as part of the show about the other side,
Speaker 1: what are some arguments against DEI that people think are
Speaker 1: valid and hopefully trying to address those concerns. But before
Speaker 1: we get there, it's time to Baba become a better
Speaker 1: ally Baba and today's Baba is we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about Grassroots Law dot org. I'm going to share a
Speaker 1: bit from their website. This is in their own words,
Speaker 1: so this is not my words. This is in their
Speaker 1: own words, directly from their website. How do we stop
Speaker 1: the devastating impacts of police violence and mass incarceration in America?
Speaker 1: This is our policy plan to do just that. It
Speaker 1: is a living document that can be improved upon. It
Speaker 1: was written with support and guidance from a dozen leading
Speaker 1: policy experts, activists, and impacted families. White supremacy, bigotry, greed,
Speaker 1: and corruption are at the center of police violence and
Speaker 1: mass incarceration. But these systems are complex, deeply entrenched, and
Speaker 1: took hundreds of years and millions of laws and policies
Speaker 1: to create. Dismantling them and replacing them with something imaginative
Speaker 1: and redemptive will be the work of our lives. But together,
Speaker 1: step by step, we can do this. Grassroots Law Project
Speaker 1: is a five oh one c four nonprofit organization that
Speaker 1: primarily focuses on education and advocacy related to criminal legal
Speaker 1: systems and people impacted by police violence and mass incarceration.
Speaker 1: Now there's a separate organization called Grassroots Law pack. This
Speaker 1: is a federal political committee. It primarily helps elect or
Speaker 1: endorse candidates through a variety of activities aimed at influencing
Speaker 1: the outcome of elections. And you can do you can
Speaker 1: learn more about these and also donate to both, and
Speaker 1: you can find them at.
Speaker 2: Grassroots Law dot org.
Speaker 1: And you know, right now, in between elections, this isn't
Speaker 1: you know, election season in this country. Now's the time
Speaker 1: when we get prepared for the next election, not two
Speaker 1: weeks out, not two months out now, and we're talking midterms,
Speaker 1: and we're talking, of course the federal election, which is
Speaker 1: some years away. But now's the time that you take
Speaker 1: these steps. So again, check out more at Grassroots Law
Speaker 1: dot org and you know, be prepared to share what
Speaker 1: you got. Let's get it together, all right, Okay, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with DEI?
Speaker 2: So here's what happened. Now.
Speaker 1: Q knows this, but I haven't run this by him
Speaker 1: because you know, this is we're going to go through
Speaker 1: this together. I came across something on the internet. I
Speaker 1: won't say which website, I won't, you know whatever, but
Speaker 1: I did come across something and I will credit the
Speaker 1: author of it that kind of illuminates the other side right,
Speaker 1: because around here we've famously seen the benefits of DEI,
Speaker 1: we can see them in practice, and we can see,
Speaker 1: at least in theory, where it aims to go in
Speaker 1: the future. Even if it's not yet perfect, it's not
Speaker 1: inconsistent with the aim of affirmative action, and it addresses
Speaker 1: many of the same issues, the same foundational issues that
Speaker 1: have resulted in you know, higher incarceration rates for black
Speaker 1: and brown communities and uh, you know, healthcare outcomes and
Speaker 1: housing discrimination, and you know, uh in unequal employment opportunities
Speaker 1: and and n n an Right, it's a long list.
Speaker 1: So I come across this in a format that we
Speaker 1: could use on the show that kind of explains at
Speaker 1: least one of the arguments against DEI, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to share that right now. So the author of this
Speaker 1: is Matthew Bates, and he writes, you know, why is
Speaker 1: di I so destructive? And then he goes on to
Speaker 1: say this, when it comes to the field of education,
Speaker 1: the E and the I parts of d I are
Speaker 1: the most destructive. The E stands for equity. That replaced
Speaker 1: equality as the mantra in education about ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. With equity, the focus was on equal treatment.
Speaker 1: Sorry with equality, the focus was on equal treatment. With equity,
Speaker 1: the focus is on equal outcomes. Ultimately you end up
Speaker 1: with pow like And then he is going to list
Speaker 1: these policies. Number one, grading for equity, which forces teachers
Speaker 1: to factor empathy into their formative assessment of students. So
Speaker 1: if there's one hundred question test and a student only
Speaker 1: gets fifty questions correct, but that student has challenges outside
Speaker 1: of school, like parents who live in poverty, the teacher
Speaker 1: is expected to give that student bonus points so their
Speaker 1: grade is more equitable to their peers who do not
Speaker 1: live in poverty. The next point he makes is fifty
Speaker 1: percent floor for grades, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: A student can turn in zero percent work and still
Speaker 1: get a fifty percent grade. The idea is that they
Speaker 1: won't dig themselves into such a hole that they can
Speaker 1: that they just give up. The next one says elimination
Speaker 1: of honors programs all right, because the demographics and those
Speaker 1: programs aren't reflective of the demographics of the.
Speaker 2: Community as a whole.
Speaker 1: The high flyers have their wings clipped, so they fly
Speaker 1: at the same level as everyone else. Sucks for the
Speaker 1: high flyers, though, The next one he says is lacks
Speaker 1: discipline policies, usually called something like restorative justice. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of a jab that he's taking, which result in
Speaker 1: an explosion of behavior problems with students, which is directly
Speaker 1: responsible for the current teacher shortage. There are more than
Speaker 1: enough certified teachers in this country, there just aren't enough
Speaker 1: who are willing to put up with the behavior problems
Speaker 1: in schools. Many school districts have no suspensions policies in
Speaker 1: place now for equity reasons.
Speaker 2: A lack of.
Speaker 1: Suspensions just means the troublemakers stay in the classroom more
Speaker 1: and then lowered standards for graduation, leading to inflated graduation rates.
Speaker 1: This in turn leads to students taking out loans for
Speaker 1: college under the false assumption that they're prepared for college.
Speaker 1: College has also had to increase their remedial course offerings
Speaker 1: for new students and also cheapens the value of high
Speaker 1: school diploma for everyone when literally any student can get one.
Speaker 1: This is how you end up with this, And he
Speaker 1: has a graph, and then he goes on to say
Speaker 1: the ipart of dei, which is inclusion, has been around
Speaker 1: in education since late seventies when people talk about the
Speaker 1: inclusion education, they're usually talking about putting students with special
Speaker 1: needs in regular classroom. This actually isn't a big deal
Speaker 1: as long as those students don't significant increase the teacher's
Speaker 1: workload or cause major disruptions but their classmates. All of
Speaker 1: that is usually possible if schools have the proper resources.
Speaker 2: Which they usually don't.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the main purposes of inclusion these
Speaker 1: days is to save the district money from hiring special
Speaker 1: education teachers. The actual result of inclusion in schools is
Speaker 1: usually more like students with major behavioral issues being allowed
Speaker 1: to disrupt their classmates. It's not just the students who
Speaker 1: cannot stop talking or wandering the room while the teacher
Speaker 1: is trying to teach. It's also the students who trash
Speaker 1: the classrooms. It is not uncommon now in many public
Speaker 1: schools for teachers to have aid tell all to the
Speaker 1: other students to leave the room because a student with
Speaker 1: behavioral problems is in crisis and trashing classroom. And then
Speaker 1: there's a photo of a trash classroom. All right, last
Speaker 1: little bit. Teachers being overwhelmed with unrealistic expectations for their
Speaker 1: students with special needs. Every student of special needs has
Speaker 1: something called an IEP plan or five or four plan,
Speaker 1: which is legally binding forms which say exactly what teachers
Speaker 1: are supposed to do for that one student. Have five
Speaker 1: students with special needs in your class of thirty students,
Speaker 1: good luck with the other twenty five students getting any
Speaker 1: of the teacher's attention.
Speaker 2: No one really cares about the D part.
Speaker 1: Of d I when it comes to education, except the
Speaker 1: politicians and others in positions of power who like pictures
Speaker 1: of diverse groups of students for their websites and social media.
Speaker 1: If you're the only kid in a wheelchair at your
Speaker 1: public school, congrats, you're going to find your way into
Speaker 1: a lot of the district's pictures. Okay, so sorry that
Speaker 1: took a while. But you know, for people that are
Speaker 1: on that side, of course, uh, they get exactly what
Speaker 1: they want to serve as cover for how they how
Speaker 1: they really feel, in our opinion, they really feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: we don't want I mean, look at look at it,
Speaker 1: you know, look at the once once white folks get
Speaker 1: enough money, generally speaking, and put their kids into private schools.
Speaker 1: Right now, you could argue that these private schools are
Speaker 1: well and not just white wild all people do this.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people do this. But you
Speaker 1: could argue that the education is better there, right, but
Speaker 1: you ultimately end up with a less diverse group of
Speaker 1: people because resources, fiscal resources often kind of follow that
Speaker 1: racial line in this country. So when it comes to DEIH,
Speaker 1: when you associate black students with criminality, behavior problems, this, that,
Speaker 1: and the third. And you have seen what happens with
Speaker 1: successful people, how they kind of remove their their students
Speaker 1: from the equation and they're around peers that look like
Speaker 1: them and come from the same you know, pool that
Speaker 1: they come from. DEI is sort of a threat to
Speaker 1: you there, even if it's just a matter of look,
Speaker 1: I live in a neighborhood where there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of black people, and to have a more diverse population
Speaker 1: invites more of the criminal elements or the unfavorable elements.
Speaker 1: Right now, I do want to make a point before
Speaker 1: I let you go, que because I know I see you,
Speaker 1: I see you wanting to get in. I do want
Speaker 1: to say that this response to DEI is primarily about education.
Speaker 2: It's actually it's only about education.
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with what DEI, in my
Speaker 1: estimation was intended to remedy, which is bringing some insight
Speaker 1: and creating some opportunities for those in the in.
Speaker 2: The in the workforce. Right.
Speaker 1: So to kind of take DEI and say DEI is
Speaker 1: wrong because it is imperfect in this one setting feels
Speaker 1: like a weird argument, because you know that's de I
Speaker 1: was not for school. Schools are based on the population,
Speaker 1: so forth, and so on, right, affirmative action, You could
Speaker 1: argue it so forth and so on, But he's talking
Speaker 1: about DEI here. The other part of this that I
Speaker 1: want to say before you go is that as far
Speaker 1: as you know, when it comes to these these outcomes, right,
Speaker 1: he says that d I has been around for ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen years, and my estimation, d I has been
Speaker 1: around considerably less than that. It's been around for about five. Right,
Speaker 1: d I has to have time to grow, time to
Speaker 1: make mistakes, time to perfective, if indeed, that is what
Speaker 1: we're going for.
Speaker 2: And what I look.
Speaker 1: At is the intention here, and he said it himself,
Speaker 1: The intention here is to shape outcomes.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The intention is not to clip wings or all this
Speaker 1: other stuff that I believe to be no nonsense. So
Speaker 1: we could break all that down. I'm I'll let you
Speaker 1: go first, Q, because I could talk this whole thing up.
Speaker 1: But if you have an idea and you're rolling it
Speaker 1: out on a country wide level and you have mistakes,
Speaker 1: the mistakes might be visible very early on, but you
Speaker 1: don't abandon it. You stay true to the mission, and
Speaker 1: you refine it along the way. The Black people didn't
Speaker 1: automatically get into the position that we're in because somebody
Speaker 1: said something and then five years later we were just
Speaker 1: like that in perpetuity. No, this has been refined and readdressed,
Speaker 1: and legislated and refined again over hundreds of years, right,
Speaker 1: And so I would imagine that it would take some
Speaker 1: refining to get all the kinks worked out. So I'll
Speaker 1: let you go before I break this guy down any further.
Speaker 2: Go ahead, you.
Speaker 3: He does a really interesting thing here. I enjoy it
Speaker 3: when I notice it because it makes me laugh, But
Speaker 3: then I remember that most people don't notice it, and
Speaker 3: then I get very upset. I'm sure that crimes happen
Speaker 3: in this country at the same time that the wind
Speaker 3: is blowing, but a report doesn't come out the next
Speaker 3: day that says wind blowing causes crime. Yep, And there
Speaker 3: is an intentional correlation of information here that it just
Speaker 3: spits back at an audience that wants to receive it
Speaker 3: that way. Yes, blaming DEI for these outcomes that have
Speaker 3: nothing to do with it. The biggest problem that we
Speaker 3: have collectively right now is that we've watched the other
Speaker 3: side co op DEI and turn it into a bad word,
Speaker 3: and when they use it the way that they intend,
Speaker 3: we end up making an argument against their intended version
Speaker 3: of the word instead.
Speaker 2: Of what it was created for. Yes, exactly, I e.
Speaker 3: Someone called Jackie Robinson a DEI higher a few weeks ago,
Speaker 3: and we got really upset and argued that he wasn't.
Speaker 3: And I got really upset because he absolutely was. There
Speaker 3: was no place for black baseball players at the time,
Speaker 3: so DEI Initiatives had to create an opportunity for him.
Speaker 3: And then we saw, oh, he's better than everybody else.
Speaker 3: But DEI the way that it was intended, absolutely created
Speaker 3: an opportunity where it didn't exist for Jackie Robinson. But
Speaker 3: because they've co opted DEI and made it a bad word,
Speaker 3: we think because they want to frame it as anti meritocracy,
Speaker 3: and we're like, well, Jackie deserved a chance and was better,
Speaker 3: so he wasn't a dei higher and then we end
Speaker 3: up having an argument against their meaning of something that
Speaker 3: they took from us, like they keep doing. So it
Speaker 3: was really interesting listening to that, Like I chuckled right,
Speaker 3: and I'd love to have been sitting across the table
Speaker 3: waiting for the young man to finish explaining to me
Speaker 3: all these things that he just correlated with no actual causation.
Speaker 3: And you just when it's in that form, you don't
Speaker 3: get to rebuttal you don't get to respond. You have
Speaker 3: to receive all of his findings.
Speaker 2: At once, and then with.
Speaker 3: The period at the end, and then he turns his
Speaker 3: paper in and he runs away, and the audience that
Speaker 3: wants to feel how he feels I have everything that
Speaker 3: they need, and then we q ward ramses Jah, Kaija
Speaker 3: and DJ have to just listen to it. And then
Speaker 3: we can't get our lick back because he's gone and
Speaker 3: his side of the room stood up and gave it
Speaker 3: a round of applause. So it's quite silly we don't
Speaker 3: have enough show to respond to that.
Speaker 1: Well, you're not wrong, because the actual breakdown, like they
Speaker 1: do list little bit of stuff and it creates so
Speaker 1: much work for us, right, and it's intellectually dishonest.
Speaker 3: Intellectually dishones Thank you, you make a mistake there that
Speaker 3: was on purpose.
Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely. But here's the thing I got call it
Speaker 1: five minutes. I'm gonna do my best to give some
Speaker 1: context to some of the things that this person says,
Speaker 1: so that at least you know that there's valid explanations
Speaker 1: for all of this. First off, as I mentioned, what
Speaker 1: we're dealing with is trying to reshape outcomes. So DEI
Speaker 1: is de initiatives, affirmative action initiatives. That is simply one
Speaker 1: thing that can be done to bring everyone where they
Speaker 1: should be. Okay, there are other forms of restorative justice
Speaker 1: that in theory would work in concert with DEI initiatives
Speaker 1: that would bring about the systemic changes that we want,
Speaker 1: you know, long term systemic changes. And with that in mind,
Speaker 1: it takes a long time. Doesn't take five years. It
Speaker 1: takes a long time. Things need to be refined and
Speaker 1: we have to be committed as a society to the outcomes.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And DEI is kind of like a brand inch. It
Speaker 1: is not the root. You know, if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about the root of the problem, we can talk
Speaker 1: about redlining. If you want to talk about the root
Speaker 1: of the problem. We can talk about, you know, the
Speaker 1: legacy of Jim Crow. We can talk about the unfair
Speaker 1: dissemination of the GI Bill. We can talk about really
Speaker 1: wealth inequality in this country and how black people have
Speaker 1: been robbed and denied they're just due. Even starting at zero,
Speaker 1: I'm not even talking forty acres in starting at zero
Speaker 1: and pulling ourselves up as a people from our bootstraps.
Speaker 1: The amount of times we were going to do a
Speaker 1: way black history back about Freedman's Bank and how they
Speaker 1: were robbed by you know, white people. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: We could talk about any number.
Speaker 1: Of we could talk about Black Wall Street or any
Speaker 1: copycat version of that around the country, where black wealth
Speaker 1: has been created and then through legal or illegal means,
Speaker 1: it has just been denied from them. And then we
Speaker 1: can talk about how it was the government and the
Speaker 1: people both working to make this happen repeatedly. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned redlining, that is a huge one, right, and so
Speaker 1: when you look at that, and then you look at
Speaker 1: the way that this country looks at black people, black
Speaker 1: children versus white children. We've had this conversation on the
Speaker 1: show before Q where if a black child misbehaves, his
Speaker 1: behavior is considered criminal and he needs punishment. If a
Speaker 1: white child misbehaves, then that child needs medication and to
Speaker 1: go to a doctor. And you know, there's a different
Speaker 1: view of it, right, And so what this individual doing
Speaker 1: here writing this letter, Matthew Bates, he's kind of adopting
Speaker 1: that mentality where he because I can read through the lines,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. We don't want these students
Speaker 1: in the class disrupting the classroom. Okay, okay, fair enough, right,
Speaker 1: But when we talk about, okay, let's work on outcomes.
Speaker 2: They're doing or they're attempting at least to do their part.
Speaker 1: The schools are right, the schools are attempting to do
Speaker 1: their part based on this example. But if the schools
Speaker 1: are underfunded because of the legacy of redlining and the
Speaker 1: legacy of this country, let's just call it what it is,
Speaker 1: then there are underfunded schools with less resources, where the
Speaker 1: students don't perform as well, where they are understaffed, where
Speaker 1: behavioral problems go undiagnosed.
Speaker 2: Where where where where? Right?
Speaker 1: And then and these are valid, These are things that
Speaker 1: actually happen. They start young the same way they do
Speaker 1: with all human beings, but this group doesn't have the
Speaker 1: resources that that group does.
Speaker 2: And when you.
Speaker 1: Compare this group to that group only based on the outcomes,
Speaker 1: then you're gonna look at this group like, Okay, they're criminal,
Speaker 1: they just blah blah blah. I don't want them in
Speaker 1: the classroom with these other students because we're going to
Speaker 1: clip their wings and we're gonna do this. And so
Speaker 1: the mentality shift is again it's well, I won't even
Speaker 1: want to call it a mentality shift. The argument is
Speaker 1: intellectually dishonest, and it's based on I don't like to
Speaker 1: use the word when I know people are going to
Speaker 1: react to it in a way that is that is
Speaker 1: like dismissive. But it's racist, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And they and a lot of times racist people don't
Speaker 1: know that that's what they're being because they would they
Speaker 1: think to themself like I would never do that. Like
Speaker 1: this guy himself says at the end of this writing,
Speaker 1: he says, no one cares about the d part of
Speaker 1: DEI like, nobody cares about the diversity. Diversity is fine, right,
Speaker 1: That's what he's effectually saying here. But for some people,
Speaker 1: they don't realize how ingrained the racism is, how ingrained
Speaker 1: the thinking is.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 1: Think that this is the sort of thing that requires,
Speaker 1: you know, for people that don't know around the country
Speaker 1: listening to this conversation with MEANQ. For people that don't know,
Speaker 1: I implore you to take a look at both sides
Speaker 1: of this conversation, because you know, with UH, with DJ
Speaker 1: and Kaiji on the line, I'm sorry that we didn't
Speaker 1: really get to lean into any more questions here, but
Speaker 1: there are real students who are impacted by this line
Speaker 1: of thinking, and they support this line of thinking when
Speaker 1: it comes up elsewhere in policy or wherever else, and
Speaker 1: then real students are affected by it. And these are
Speaker 1: students that have resources right now and they're under attack.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Before we before we get to the next part, do
Speaker 1: us a favor, YouTube drop, any social media, any website,
Speaker 1: anything like that that people can do to UH to
Speaker 1: support you, DJ, you first, and we got like ten seconds,
Speaker 1: so just real quick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So there's two organizations that I want to plug.
Speaker 4: It's the you of A ASA page. It's aa S
Speaker 4: a underscore u of A, and the Black Student Union.
Speaker 4: You have a underscore Black Student Union are lower case
Speaker 4: one one word.
Speaker 5: I would say going through those look going through those
Speaker 5: Instagram tags as well to support our w g R,
Speaker 5: c APASA NASA. Those are other cultural centers on this
Speaker 5: campus are we infected as well as like our African studies,
Speaker 5: but you can find all of them through Africas.
Speaker 1: Okay, fantastic and we're gonna leave it right here, So
Speaker 1: thank you for tuning into this episode of Civic Cipher.
Speaker 2: Please, you know, help us out.
Speaker 1: You know we can't do everything on this show, so
Speaker 1: we've given you the resources check it out. You can,
Speaker 1: of course, if you missed any part of the show,
Speaker 1: hit the website Civiccipher dot com download this in any
Speaker 1: previous episode just to get what you've missed. We're all
Speaker 1: in this together and we're doing our part as broadcasters.
Speaker 1: You can find me on all social media at Ramsey's job.
Speaker 1: I am q Ward on all social media as well,
Speaker 1: and of course you can find us on all platforms
Speaker 1: as Civic Cipher just like the name of the show,
Speaker 1: and hopefully lock in with us and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you soon.
Speaker 2: All right, Peace,