Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Civic Cipher. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Ramse's Jack, and I go.
Speaker 2: Buy the name q Ward most of the time.
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, UH back up in you Onemo again. Feeling
Speaker 1: real good this week Black History Month. A lot of
Speaker 1: good things going on in the world of Civic Cipher
Speaker 1: and Qboard and Ramse's Jah and it's all because of you,
Speaker 1: our listeners supporting us. If you don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, we don't need to brag about it on air,
Speaker 1: check the social media, but it's suffice to say the
Speaker 1: show is growing and we're reaching more people, and it's
Speaker 1: because of your support. So thank you for for y'all.
Speaker 1: It's because of y'all.
Speaker 2: Because of y'all.
Speaker 1: Blame bline.
Speaker 2: That's all I got to say.
Speaker 1: I say, you know Q and I, Q and I
Speaker 1: we have a lot of inside jokes, but that's because
Speaker 1: we spend so much time together. But the source that
Speaker 1: we pull from more often than not is a stand
Speaker 1: up special by Jamie Fox called I Might Need Security.
Speaker 1: If you listen to the show every week, please watch
Speaker 1: Jamie Fox I Might Need Security, because then you'll get
Speaker 1: a lot of the inside jokes. But we don't we don't.
Speaker 3: We don't dwell on them because we have a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff to get. He did not pay us for
Speaker 3: that endorsement, but it's hilarious. Yeah, it's it's it's good
Speaker 3: for your spirit anyway. Be sure to stick around because
Speaker 3: we do have a lot to cover.
Speaker 1: Today. We're gonna do something we don't really do very often,
Speaker 1: and that's really plug in to one person, one stream
Speaker 1: of consciousness, one school of thought that we really feel
Speaker 1: is timely and pertinent and necessary and enlightening, at least
Speaker 1: for me. I'm sure that you would agree that there's
Speaker 1: some things that even Cube learns. And he goes by
Speaker 1: the name of Dan Price, it's not even from our world.
Speaker 1: He's from the business world. But we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: discuss a lot of interesting points that he makes, and
Speaker 1: we're also going to focus for our way Black History
Speaker 1: fact on Sidney Poitier. We didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: discuss him until today, so we're going to definitely late Yeah,
Speaker 1: the late great, Yes, indeed. But first, like we always
Speaker 1: do it, this time, it's time for some ebony excellence.
Speaker 1: How does that sound? Cute? Sounds fantastic.
Speaker 2: I love that we start the show with Ebney Excellence
Speaker 2: because a lot of times our.
Speaker 1: Topics are weighty.
Speaker 2: They take a lot of a lot from us, sometimes
Speaker 2: emotionally and to kind of start and we kind of
Speaker 2: start and on a high note the way black sometimes
Speaker 2: has some weight as well. Yeah, but it's historic precedents
Speaker 2: and importance I think, you know, gives it a little
Speaker 2: bit of lift as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just shows kind of where we've come from.
Speaker 1: But I digress. So today we're talking about a young
Speaker 1: man named Archie Green who is the founder of Peel
Speaker 1: Dim Layers Back p d LB that is a Cleveland,
Speaker 1: Ohio nonprofit designed to help Blackmail youth with their mental health.
Speaker 1: He was a diagnosed with depression and he uses his
Speaker 1: platform as a hip hop artist to share stories about trauma, depression, anxiety, relationships,
Speaker 1: and fatherhood through music. He launched his nonprofit in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and a program called Cope Dealers Initiative for high
Speaker 1: school counselors and teachers identify juniors and seniors who have
Speaker 1: had behavior and anxiety challenges and could benefit from a
Speaker 1: program focused on their mental health. And His position is
Speaker 1: that African Americans often face barriers when accessing quality mental
Speaker 1: health treatment because of racism and limited access to culturally
Speaker 1: competent mental health professionals. And that is according to Mental
Speaker 1: Health America. You can find out more about him at
Speaker 1: PDLB dot org. Once again, his name is Archie Green
Speaker 1: and the company is called Peel Dim Layers Back. And
Speaker 1: the reason I wanted to hit on this briefly is because,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this, we have seen recently a
Speaker 1: lot of black men and women end their lives prematurely
Speaker 1: and deliberately, and historically that's not been a thing that
Speaker 1: we've had to as a community, we've really had to
Speaker 1: deal with, and more and more as time progresses, we're
Speaker 1: seeing it happen more often, and so eventually we'll have
Speaker 1: the time to talk about it. But for now, if
Speaker 1: you want to, you know, support or even know a
Speaker 1: little bit more about this initiative. Again, it's PDLB dot org.
Speaker 1: So a big shout out to Archie Green. That is
Speaker 1: some ebony excellence for you now in Ohio as well. Yes,
Speaker 1: one time if you don't mind, Okay, So Dan Price,
Speaker 1: Dan Price, I'll be honest. Dan Price is he's a
Speaker 1: new person in my world. He's very active on Twitter.
Speaker 1: He's just a and he's a businessman, but I'll try
Speaker 1: to paint a profile for you. Now this isn't about
Speaker 1: him per se, but some of the points that he
Speaker 1: makes because this stream of consciousness is when I came
Speaker 1: across that, I shared it with Q. You remember when
Speaker 1: I sent it to our group chat, and there was
Speaker 1: so much content there that we early on made it
Speaker 1: a point to block out a show to really talk
Speaker 1: about some of these things, just to discuss them, to
Speaker 1: share them. And you know, maybe you're on Twitter and
Speaker 1: you've seen this, maybe not, but we're going to try
Speaker 1: to make it breathe a little bit more so a
Speaker 1: little bit about this person and who he is and
Speaker 1: how he came to be. So, he started a company
Speaker 1: called Gravity Payments about six years ago and he made news.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about this, but he made the news
Speaker 1: for raising his company's minimum wage to seventy thousand a year.
Speaker 1: Fox News called him a socialist whose employees would be
Speaker 1: on breadlines, and since then his revenue has tripled. The
Speaker 1: business is a Harvard Business School case study, and the
Speaker 1: employers had a ten times boom in homes bought. So
Speaker 1: and on his Twitter profile he says that he's a
Speaker 1: CEO just trying to stand up for the underdog. Again.
Speaker 1: His handle is at Dan Price Seattle. I employee to
Speaker 1: follow him and plug in because there's a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: not just the stuff we're talking about today, and he
Speaker 1: just seems like a good human being who money and
Speaker 1: success has not corrupted And it's amazing to see because
Speaker 1: so often we see folks, the more money they get,
Speaker 1: the more conservative at least fiscally, you know, they become.
Speaker 1: And this guy seems to be a kind hearted person
Speaker 1: who really does share and really does try to build
Speaker 1: people who have a tougher go at things in this country.
Speaker 1: Real quick, before we go on earlier our Ebony Excellence segment,
Speaker 1: I pulled that content from the Atlanta Black Star if
Speaker 1: you wanted to check out more on that. Again, this
Speaker 1: current segment, we're talking about Dan Price. I just pulled
Speaker 1: it from his Twitter, so we're going to talk about it.
Speaker 1: So the first thing that he shared, the first slide
Speaker 1: in this stream of conscience, and I shouldn't even call
Speaker 1: it that, but we're here now, so we're gonna roll
Speaker 1: with it. The first slide that came across my way
Speaker 1: that Q and I discussed was him writing as follows,
Speaker 1: and he's white, by the way, all right, He says,
Speaker 1: compared to white people, black owned homes are devalued by
Speaker 1: twenty three percent. Black owned homes, property taxes are thirteen
Speaker 1: percent higher. Bank fees are two times higher for black people.
Speaker 1: Black people with no criminal record earned ten thousand less
Speaker 1: than white people with the criminal record. That's just the beginning,
Speaker 1: dot dot dot. So we're going to go through each
Speaker 1: one of these slides one by one, but that first
Speaker 1: one is crazy, right. But the craziest part about it
Speaker 1: is we've talked about these some at length. But all
Speaker 1: of these things that we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 1: and one recent one that comes to mind is the
Speaker 1: couple I believe they were in northern California who got
Speaker 1: an appraisal on their house and then they went through
Speaker 1: and they had like some friends stand if I remember correctly, effectually,
Speaker 1: this is what they did. They got some friends to
Speaker 1: stand in while while the appraiser came. A new appraiser came,
Speaker 1: they changed all the pictures in their house. So they
Speaker 1: took all their family pictures down and they put like
Speaker 1: white pictures on the wall. And then the new appraiser
Speaker 1: gave them an extra half a million dollars in equity
Speaker 1: on the property, right, So what Dan Price says here,
Speaker 1: like out the gates, compared to white people, black owned
Speaker 1: homes are devalued by twenty three percent, which jives with
Speaker 1: a story a case study that we made on the
Speaker 1: show Go Ahead.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to to housing prices, twenty three
Speaker 2: percent is a massive amount. Like the number of twenty
Speaker 2: three percent when you're comparing it to one hundred doesn't
Speaker 2: sound like a lot. But if you have a half
Speaker 2: a million dollar home, I'm talking about a hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars difference in price.
Speaker 1: That's massive.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, we talk about wealth because in many,
Speaker 1: in fact the majority of instances, there is a direct
Speaker 1: correlation between the amount of wealth might throw folks off.
Speaker 1: So how about we say income or money? You know,
Speaker 1: the amount of money and opportunities pitfalls. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a correlation there, and oftentimes in this country, money follows
Speaker 1: the color line. And so you know, we make a
Speaker 1: we make a point on this show to really discuss
Speaker 1: how we treat each other, certainly how black folks are
Speaker 1: treated by non bye by white folks. But you know,
Speaker 1: we we're all here together. You know, we do have
Speaker 1: to make points sometimes when black people are wrong and
Speaker 1: saying racist things, we have to we have to stand
Speaker 1: up against that the same as we would against anyone.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, you know, there's systemic institutions
Speaker 1: in place and we and they are relics of white supremacy,
Speaker 1: not even really relics, because there are still active contributors
Speaker 1: to these systems, and not all of them come from
Speaker 1: the Republican Party, if I'm honest. But you know, the
Speaker 1: point is that we have to have these conversations about
Speaker 1: how we treat each other. But there is also something
Speaker 1: to say about capitalism. We have this conversation all the time. Now,
Speaker 1: whether or not you're a fan of capitalism or you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: is beside the point. Certain things are just a natural
Speaker 1: byproduct of capitalism. There are byproducts of socialism, there's byproducts
Speaker 1: of communism, right, so we just talk about those, and
Speaker 1: to be fair, we do beat up on capitalism quite
Speaker 1: a bit. I don't think either of us are huge
Speaker 1: fans of it, but in the same way, we're not
Speaker 1: huge fans of a lot of things. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of what we were born into. But I think a.
Speaker 2: Reason that we have such tilted views, and the audience
Speaker 2: can't see me tilting my hand downward.
Speaker 1: It's such tilted views.
Speaker 2: With regard to capitalism, is that some of the byproducts
Speaker 2: actually requirements. Yeah, Like there's some byproducts of socialism that
Speaker 2: requires for everyone to kind of lift everyone else, which
Speaker 2: is not that awful a byproduct when you say it
Speaker 2: out loud the way I there's a way you can
Speaker 2: frame that different and make it seem like, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, there are people intentionally doing nothing to
Speaker 2: weigh us.
Speaker 1: All down kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But there's some requirements of capitalism that it's it's more
Speaker 2: required than a byproduct. Capitalism can exist unless part of
Speaker 2: the population has nothing. That's that's a requirement, not a byoproduct.
Speaker 1: I'll make a point for you. One of the things
Speaker 1: that blew my mind is that in order for capitalism
Speaker 1: to function optimally, there has to be some unemployment to
Speaker 1: keep wages low. That means that everyone doesn't get a job.
Speaker 1: Some people need to be unemployed so that wages will
Speaker 1: stay low. And if the if a system is framed
Speaker 1: around that that concept, let's keep wages low and some
Speaker 1: people will have to go without a job. If you
Speaker 1: have an economic system framed around that. I believe that
Speaker 1: morally we've we've started on the wrong foot. With that said,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm a bigger fan of anything else.
Speaker 1: I'm just you know, we have to work with the
Speaker 1: system that we're given, and so we will. All right,
Speaker 1: I'll move on the next slide. This again, Dan Price,
Speaker 1: Seattle at Dan Price, Seattle if you want to check
Speaker 1: this out for yourself on Twitter. Black college grads have
Speaker 1: fifty percent less wealth than white high school dropouts.
Speaker 2: Say that again, please.
Speaker 1: Black college grads have fifty percent less wealth than white
Speaker 1: high school dropouts. Now this is an average. You know,
Speaker 1: this is you know, I'm a college grad and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of white dropouts. Don't apologize, sir. Read
Speaker 1: those you know, a spoolful sugar, a little bit of honey.
Speaker 2: Read those pisticks as they are written, now cologized. Do
Speaker 2: not try to frame it and give it some type
Speaker 2: of lighter moral compass. Read that as it's written, because
Speaker 2: it's staggering.
Speaker 1: Listen, listen, it's your show. Q. Yes, sir, black college
Speaker 1: grads have fifty percent less wealth than white high school dropouts.
Speaker 1: And then I'll just leave that there. This again from
Speaker 1: a white man who is successful with a successful business
Speaker 1: and obviously a huge Twitter following and online presence. The
Speaker 1: next point in this slide, the ten counties most audited
Speaker 1: by the IRS are seventy nine percent people of color.
Speaker 1: The black white homeowner gap is bigger now than it
Speaker 1: was in the year nineteen hundred and finally, for this
Speaker 1: slide in the pandemic, black owned businesses close used at
Speaker 1: twice the rate, so further illuminating that you know, there
Speaker 1: are really two different Americas. I think that you know,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why you had such a reaction to
Speaker 1: the black college fads having fifty percent less wealth than
Speaker 1: white high school dropouts, not just because again the point
Speaker 1: makes itself that opportunities follow the money, right, and what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is a cycle. We're you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: we can We can go to the government and appeal
Speaker 1: to the government and say, hey, we want to drink
Speaker 1: out of the same water fountain, and hey, we'd like
Speaker 1: to use the same bathroom. We'd like a little bit
Speaker 1: of dignity, we'd like to be able to go to
Speaker 1: the same schools, we'd like access, you know, in that way,
Speaker 1: But not enough can be said about money, not just
Speaker 1: money to pay for opportunities, but money to live healthy,
Speaker 1: productive lives, money to have the mental freedom and fortitude
Speaker 1: to take advantage to even conceive in the first place,
Speaker 1: of opportunities. For those of you listening to our voices
Speaker 1: tonight or today, whenever you're listening, it might be easy
Speaker 1: to imagine, might not be, but we will be the
Speaker 1: ones to tell you, Q is from Detroit, not the
Speaker 1: good side of town. Let him know where you're from. Q.
Speaker 2: I am from a small town in Michigan. It goes
Speaker 2: by the name of Detroit. Some people even call it
Speaker 2: Motown or the motor city, and.
Speaker 1: Tell them about that street, what's that number?
Speaker 2: And I grew up on a very very prominent road
Speaker 2: affectionately known as seven mile.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you don't know about seven I'll do a
Speaker 1: little bit of homework find out, and then I will
Speaker 1: add to that that I was born in a place
Speaker 1: called Compton, California, a place that in most instances needs
Speaker 1: no introduction. And what I want to suggest by saying
Speaker 1: this is that there's a great deal of hopelessness in
Speaker 1: those communities, and there is a sense of this is
Speaker 1: the whole world, or otherwise this is the world that
Speaker 1: I'm allowed to experience. To think of something that exists
Speaker 1: on TV in your own life, is it may as
Speaker 1: well be thinking of like like the same way you
Speaker 1: would think of a cartoon. You know, cartoon characters run
Speaker 1: faster or jump higher. They you know, they have the
Speaker 1: same hair every day. Whatever it is you think, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's cool to see it. You're aware
Speaker 1: that it is something that you could imagine, but it's
Speaker 1: not real. So these numbers, these sobering numbers, they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily sobering for people that live this life. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to our voices and you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you didn't know these things. This is the reality of
Speaker 1: the situation. It certainly jives with everything that we know
Speaker 1: to be true. All right, So I'll move on to
Speaker 1: the next slide. Here, all black Americans combined have half
Speaker 1: of the wealth of the nation's richest four hundred people.
Speaker 1: I'll say it one more time, All black Americans combined.
Speaker 1: That's jay Z, Beyonce. That's everybody that you ever met
Speaker 1: in school, their parents, their grandparents, you know, warmer time
Speaker 1: q oprah oprah, Yeah, all of them.
Speaker 4: All they very black people. You can think of them too,
Speaker 4: but not just them. You know the people you've never met,
Speaker 4: people that you see at the bus stop, people you
Speaker 4: see at the grocery store, people you see at Walmart.
Speaker 4: People might be driving in traffic next to you, if
Speaker 4: you're driving while you're listening to us, if you see
Speaker 4: a black person, add their wealth in as well.
Speaker 1: Every single black person in this country combined, they have
Speaker 1: half the wealth of the nation's richest four hundred people.
Speaker 1: Not the same wealth, half the wealth.
Speaker 2: Just to give you some further context, there are about
Speaker 2: forty two million black people in America. All of them
Speaker 2: put together, including the richest black people that you've ever
Speaker 2: heard of, make up half the wealth of the nation's
Speaker 2: richest four hundred.
Speaker 1: Now, you said forty two million black people million, and
Speaker 1: then there was half the wealth four hundred a four hundred.
Speaker 1: So let me add something right here. I know this
Speaker 1: is not me trying to sugarcoat anything. I know that
Speaker 1: you can make a lot of draw a lot of
Speaker 1: conclusions based on how rich the rich are and how
Speaker 1: regular the rest of us are. But when you're talking
Speaker 1: about this many people in these type of circumstances, it
Speaker 1: certainly does help frame the importance of wealth and how
Speaker 1: it is unevenly distributed, so much so that a lot
Speaker 1: of the issues, at least a lot of the issues
Speaker 1: that have kind of run rampant, you can see like, well,
Speaker 1: the resources aren't available to fix them because the resources
Speaker 1: are with these handful of people over there, Right, I
Speaker 1: think that might be another strike against capitalism, But I'll
Speaker 1: move on. The rest of this third slide here says
Speaker 1: the average inheritance for white families is three times that
Speaker 1: of black families. And then the last point of this
Speaker 1: slide says, relatedly, black families have one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars less wealth than white families, a bigger
Speaker 1: gap than before civil rights. So since the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: the gap has widened between white families and black families
Speaker 1: in terms of wealth. All right, I'll move on. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about school. College is not an equalizer. I think
Speaker 1: we established that in the second slide. College is not
Speaker 1: an equalizer. Black college grads have twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: more student debt than white grads. I don't even know
Speaker 1: how that's possible. Actually, you know what, I still own
Speaker 1: student loans, So let me I guess I can see
Speaker 1: how it's possible. But you know, black college grads have
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand more student debt than white grads. White
Speaker 1: millennials with a degree have ten times higher net worth
Speaker 1: than black grads. And twenty years after graduating, the median
Speaker 1: white grad owes five percent of their student loan balance
Speaker 1: and black grads, oh, ninety five percent. That's after twenty years.
Speaker 1: So that means that white graduates are paying down dare
Speaker 1: I say, able to pay down their student loans to
Speaker 1: five percent after twenty years, and black folks are still
Speaker 1: wrestling with basically the entirety of it ninety after graduating,
Speaker 1: twenty years after graduating. And I don't know if this person,
Speaker 1: Dan Price, the CEO of the company, the person who
Speaker 1: listed these which, by the way, all of his sources
Speaker 1: are there as well. I don't know if he's a
Speaker 1: college grad or not, but he seems very passionate about this,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't he seems unafraid to share these statistics,
Speaker 1: and I think that we need more of that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to be afraid of here. If we identify
Speaker 1: the problem, we can work on it. We're all in
Speaker 1: this together. Might take at least all right, I'll move on.
Speaker 1: The electoral college's lopsidedness gives the medium black voter sixteen
Speaker 1: percent less power than the typical white voter. Now, I
Speaker 1: remember seeing something like this on Netflix. They did a
Speaker 1: special on the election. This was sometime last year when
Speaker 1: like maybe October ish or whatever. It's still there. I
Speaker 1: don't remember the name of it, but they talked about
Speaker 1: the vote, the weight of a vote of a white
Speaker 1: conservative vote, male vote in Wisconsin compared to like a
Speaker 1: black vote in Los Angeles, and that white vote in
Speaker 1: terms of the actual impact is so much more significant.
Speaker 1: And it's just because of the electoral college. So it's
Speaker 1: effectively effectively is telling us that it punishes black folks.
Speaker 1: It's it disenfranchises you know, black, black and brown people
Speaker 1: and other marginalized people and favors you know, white men.
Speaker 1: In terms of the outcomes, black workers get unemployment benefits
Speaker 1: at half the rate of white workers. And since the
Speaker 1: Civil Wars a slash slavery ended, black families went from
Speaker 1: having point five percent of all wealth to one point
Speaker 1: five percent. So that is some gain. But remember they
Speaker 1: went from that was after slavery ended, so they've we've
Speaker 1: gained one point since the Civil War, when effectively black
Speaker 1: folks had nothing. So we still have nothing. We have
Speaker 1: relatively speaking, still nothing, and we make a huge amount
Speaker 1: of the population. And then I'll make this last point.
Speaker 1: Black people are four times more likely than white people
Speaker 1: to be arrested for marijuana, and black sons of families
Speaker 1: in the richest one percent are arrested at the same
Speaker 1: rate as white sons of families in the poorest third.
Speaker 1: And finally, black students are two and a half times
Speaker 1: more likely than white students to be arrested at school.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately have to move on. Stick around your radios.
Speaker 1: We're coming back with more civic cipher right after this