Speaker 1: Keep on riding with it, says, 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 your host, Rams' job.
Speaker 2: He is Rams' job. I am Q Ward. You are
Speaker 2: tuned into Civic Cipher. Indeed, you still are, and we
Speaker 2: appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Today we are having a wonderful conversation. I'm doing a
Speaker 1: little bit more listening, but to be fair, Chris and
Speaker 1: I got to talk twice, so Q it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's you two have your conversation. But we're having a
Speaker 1: fantastic conversation with Christopher Taller, pH d. Make sure I
Speaker 1: have that associate professor in the Department of Political Science
Speaker 1: at California State University, Sacramento, director of the Black Voter Project,
Speaker 1: and the editor in chief of the Journal of Race,
Speaker 1: Ethnicity and Politics. And we are talking about the data
Speaker 1: of black voters. And I know the election is over,
Speaker 1: but there's still a lot that we can learn and
Speaker 1: are learning right now from black voters. And of course
Speaker 1: doctor Taller is helping us sift through his data. But
Speaker 1: before we go any further, it's time to be aba,
Speaker 1: become a better ally Baba and today's Baba comes from
Speaker 1: the Black Information Network. This ain't Amazon, It's the Black Nile.
Speaker 1: A black woman has created an app called the Black Nile,
Speaker 1: a black version of Amazon where consumers can shop from
Speaker 1: black owned businesses and services on one platform. As major
Speaker 1: companies and retailers including Amazon, Target, Walmart, and more are
Speaker 1: rolling back their diversity, equity and inclusion policies and initiatives,
Speaker 1: customers are looking for ways to support small and black
Speaker 1: owned businesses. I'm going to add this and to boycott
Speaker 1: those people that turn their back on us, all right,
Speaker 1: let me continue, UI and web designer Dacia Petrie I
Speaker 1: believe I'm saying that right used her background in technology
Speaker 1: to create the Blacknile to fulfill the need and make
Speaker 1: it even easier for shoppers to buy black owned The
Speaker 1: app currently features three thousand black owned businesses across over
Speaker 1: forty categories, including skincare, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, luxury where, handbag, weddings,
Speaker 1: home and kitchen goods, baby and kids, plus size clothing,
Speaker 1: and more.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: I saw somebody in the comments saying that they're looking
Speaker 1: for a black Amazon sista. I'm a Jo John. When
Speaker 1: I say this, This ain't Amazon. Is black Nile unquote,
Speaker 1: Petrie said. Petrie integrated Google Maps into the app, allowing
Speaker 1: users to easily locate nearby businesses and retrieve directions. Shoppers
Speaker 1: can also leave reviews on the app after visiting or
Speaker 1: experiencing their selected business or service.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: I created this with the intention to make shopping with
Speaker 1: black owned businesses as easy as possible, Petri said. He
Speaker 1: was on to say, I am a UI designer and
Speaker 1: web designer, and I noticed that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of black owned directories, but many of them aren't as
Speaker 1: user friendly or optimized for our mobile devices. I saw
Speaker 1: someone in the comments saying that they were looking for
Speaker 1: something that's a little bit more techy and something a
Speaker 1: little bit more user friendly. And this is perfect end quote.
Speaker 1: So again, check them out. It's black Nile, all right.
Speaker 1: So well, you know, the two of you obviously been
Speaker 1: talking about drawing some meaningful conclusions from the data, really
Speaker 1: and setting the record straight, because that obviously is very important.
Speaker 1: As we kind of get our bearings as a people.
Speaker 1: As we get our bearings, many of us vote Democrats,
Speaker 1: so as we get our bearings relative to that party,
Speaker 1: and I feel like we might have stopped you a
Speaker 1: little short there, So any last words there you want
Speaker 1: to pick up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we were talking about sort of building solidarity and
Speaker 3: the lack of solidarity between parts of the black community,
Speaker 3: and I had noticed in the data that there were
Speaker 3: some differences, especially between sort of younger Black Americans and
Speaker 3: older generations. And I think it again, it comes back
Speaker 3: to this connection to history, connection to generational struggle, especially
Speaker 3: the Civil Rights movement, where younger people now, right, people
Speaker 3: who have grandparents or maybe great grandparents that lived during
Speaker 3: the Civil Rights era might not be previewed to some
Speaker 3: of the conversations that we were and our parents were
Speaker 3: growing up, where we were hearing direct stories from relatives
Speaker 3: who live through it, if not our parents, right, And
Speaker 3: so building that connection is a bit different because now
Speaker 3: people are hearing these stories second third hand, if at all.
Speaker 3: And we already know the push to get rid of
Speaker 3: black history, to remove these stories from the textbooks and
Speaker 3: from our education altogether, all in the sense of trying
Speaker 3: to destroy this solidarity that the black community has had
Speaker 3: for generations. Right since really the Civil Rights movement, in
Speaker 3: the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting
Speaker 3: Rights Act, there's been this sense that the Democrats are
Speaker 3: the party for civil rights, the party for the black community,
Speaker 3: and that seems to be waning a little bit. That's
Speaker 3: not to say that there's a lot more people, as
Speaker 3: we talked about, voting for Republicans, but there are fewer
Speaker 3: young black people that st only identify with Democrats or
Speaker 3: strongly have a liberal ideology, and that can become a
Speaker 3: threat to black solidarity in the future if the party
Speaker 3: politics do not take this into consideration and find a
Speaker 3: way to speak to these young people in ways that
Speaker 3: still brings them home and still connects them to their
Speaker 3: history and to the rest of their community.
Speaker 2: Doctor Tyler, we talked about the turnout and the election.
Speaker 2: I want you to use data to tell a more
Speaker 2: full story that you may give people some nuance. In
Speaker 2: some context, we said that the percentages were about the
Speaker 2: same as the prior election, but I thought I heard
Speaker 2: you mentioned that the numbers and the turnout may have
Speaker 2: been lower even though the percentages of voters was the same.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us a little bit more about what
Speaker 2: that means or what you think that means.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's some nuance here in this conversation. Right
Speaker 3: on the one hand, we're talking about who people voted for,
Speaker 3: which I like to call vote choice, and that was
Speaker 3: pretty much the same as twenty twenty and so we
Speaker 3: didn't see much shift in vote choice as far as
Speaker 3: how many black people voted for the Democratic candidate in
Speaker 3: this case, Harris or the Republican candidate Trump. Where we
Speaker 3: did see change is in the raw number of people
Speaker 3: that actually came out to vote, and there were significantly
Speaker 3: less Black people voting in twenty twenty four than in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty and for the first time in a long time,
Speaker 3: we actually had fewer people cast a ballot than the
Speaker 3: year before. Right every year since pretty much the Obama years,
Speaker 3: the number of Black people voting had gone up and
Speaker 3: up and up. This year it fell off. And in
Speaker 3: some states such as Georgia, we know that black voters
Speaker 3: are the only voter where turnout only group were turnout dropped,
Speaker 3: where every other group turnout rose. And what that does
Speaker 3: is that creates sort of this situation where the gap
Speaker 3: between the amount of black voters and other voters grows
Speaker 3: wider in a case like twenty twenty four, making it
Speaker 3: less likely that black voters can affect an election. And
Speaker 3: in a state like Georgia, where almost thirty percent of
Speaker 3: voters are black. It's very, very important that everyone gets
Speaker 3: out and vote so that they can have the same
Speaker 3: effect on the election in Georgia as they did in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty when Georgia went blue for Biden. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, with less voters actually turning out to vote,
Speaker 3: even though the same are more voted for the Democratic candidate,
Speaker 3: the state turned red because you had far more of
Speaker 3: other types of voters, predominantly white voters coming out to vote,
Speaker 3: shifting the ballots the other direction right, And we see
Speaker 3: this taking place across the country. We don't have raw
Speaker 3: turnout for every state yet. That typically comes from the
Speaker 3: Secretary of State's offices across the country, but in places
Speaker 3: like Georgia where we do have those numbers, it's very
Speaker 3: clear what's taking place, and that getting people out to
Speaker 3: vote was the issue this year, not trying to figure
Speaker 3: out who they were going to vote for.
Speaker 2: We spoke about solidarity. We also spoke about post election,
Speaker 2: post inauguration hopelessness, frustration and apathy leading up to the election, however,
Speaker 2: and this is where this kind of lack of solidarity
Speaker 2: rings very loud to me. With what we were obviously
Speaker 2: facing as a people, like the threats to our safety,
Speaker 2: our health, our access to information, resources, capital education, the
Speaker 2: erasure of our history, our access to opportunity once upon
Speaker 2: a time, And I think you hit the nail on
Speaker 2: the head our ancestors, our parents. I use my mother
Speaker 2: as an example because when she turned of age, it
Speaker 2: was not yet legal for black women to vote in
Speaker 2: this country. So this is not three hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: This is not my great great grandmother. This is my
Speaker 2: mother with what seemed like a very clear and obvious
Speaker 2: threat to us more than everyone else. How are people
Speaker 2: so comfortable not participating this time, like this idea that
Speaker 2: I'm just not going to vote this time, I'm just
Speaker 2: not going to participate. How do you think we got there?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a tricky situation, and for me studying not
Speaker 3: just black politics, but politics and social of predispositions. Over
Speaker 3: the years, the idea of racism has changed quite a bit,
Speaker 3: and the racism that our parents and our grandparents face
Speaker 3: there was a far more overt segregation that was outlawed
Speaker 3: in many ways by the Civil Rights Act. So since then,
Speaker 3: racism has become far more covert and harder to just
Speaker 3: point out the record, Right, there's absolutely still clear racism
Speaker 3: and bigotry out there, but the systems have become far
Speaker 3: more secretive in the way that they perpetuate racism, where
Speaker 3: now it's a about, Okay, did I get the job
Speaker 3: because I was black, or because my name sounded ethnic,
Speaker 3: or was it something else that happened in the job interview? Right?
Speaker 3: Did my house get evaluated differently when it came to
Speaker 3: the appraisal because of the artwork that I had in
Speaker 3: that might be African American? Or was it because of
Speaker 3: something actually having to do with the house. And these
Speaker 3: are the types of questions that we have to ask
Speaker 3: today when trying to figure out where racism and discrimination
Speaker 3: still lives in society, and so it makes it harder
Speaker 3: to point them out, and it takes a lot of
Speaker 3: time and a lot of effort, especially for people, as
Speaker 3: we said, these younger generations of black people who haven't
Speaker 3: grown up either experiencing segregation or a lot of direct
Speaker 3: over racism themselves, or haven't talked with elders who experienced this,
Speaker 3: and so they are sort of one step removed from
Speaker 3: our history of extreme overt segregation and racism, something that
Speaker 3: has dictated the way our institutions work in this country today.
Speaker 3: But it's much harder to see. You can't just point
Speaker 3: it out and say, oh that you can't go in
Speaker 3: there because you're black. Right, you can go in there,
Speaker 3: but you might get followed around by the security guard.
Speaker 3: And if you've never experienced that and you don't know
Speaker 3: what you're looking for, it might not be as obvious
Speaker 3: until it's too late, right, until you have that experience
Speaker 3: where you end up getting arrested, you end up spending
Speaker 3: some jail time. Right. And if you don't know the statistics, right,
Speaker 3: about one in three black men in their lives ends
Speaker 3: up incarcerated at some point, right, the highest rate in
Speaker 3: the country. Right. And the United States is already the highest,
Speaker 3: has the highest rate of incarceration in all world democracies.
Speaker 3: And so these are issues and problems that still persist,
Speaker 3: but they're far more difficult to sort of put your
Speaker 3: finger on it and say, there it is. That's the
Speaker 3: racism that I'm talking about. That's the institutional oppression that
Speaker 3: has always been there but still exists. And so when
Speaker 3: we see an election like the last one take place,
Speaker 3: and we have a lot of different messages being put
Speaker 3: out sometimes on social media, where you only get like
Speaker 3: a three second clip or a ten second sort of
Speaker 3: video saying a message, and then you get sixty of
Speaker 3: those videos in ten minutes, it can be that much
Speaker 3: more difficult to really decipher what's really going on, what
Speaker 3: people really stand for, and where you need to stand
Speaker 3: when it comes to choosing a political representative or a
Speaker 3: political party to get behind.
Speaker 2: There is no justice until there is justice for all.
Speaker 2: That echoed in my head throughout the election cycle as
Speaker 2: I watched those who oppose us other, all of these
Speaker 2: separate groups, all of these separate groups that would be attacked.
Speaker 2: And I bring up the other ring because it gave
Speaker 2: people an opportunity to say, Okay, that thing that they
Speaker 2: plan to do doesn't affect me, so I don't think
Speaker 2: it's that big of a deal. And as we see
Speaker 2: people the clean version is messing around and finding out,
Speaker 2: they are realizing that these policies and these agendas that
Speaker 2: seek to oppress anyone can very quickly oppress everyone. Ramses
Speaker 2: and I have a video of the show online that's
Speaker 2: circulating that's, you know, somewhere close to ten million views,
Speaker 2: where we discuss having biracial children Hispanic LATINX biracial children
Speaker 2: who could very well be affected by ice raids and
Speaker 2: talks of deportation, and how their friends, teachers, you know,
Speaker 2: their parents, and classmates look at them at school has
Speaker 2: been different since this device of rhetoric has become the
Speaker 2: norm when we're talking about DEI or deportations or anti
Speaker 2: LGBTQ initiatives. It always startled me that even any Black
Speaker 2: people could kind of step back and remove themselves from
Speaker 2: fighting to defend other marginalized communities, something that I thought
Speaker 2: would have been something that brought us together more than
Speaker 2: separated us. From your purview, What has that looked like
Speaker 2: post election, as we're seeing people realize, oh, that thing
Speaker 2: that I thought would only affect other people is now
Speaker 2: knocking on my front door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's somewhat difficult to watch. I think that there's
Speaker 3: definitely people, even people within the black community, who are
Speaker 3: realizing how real this. Things got so quickly, right, and
Speaker 3: it wasn't like Trump's first term where there was some
Speaker 3: stumbling around and it took a couple of years for
Speaker 3: things to get off the ground. Right. There was this plan,
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five that was put into action, very
Speaker 3: cool quickly. I will say this, though, there are and
Speaker 3: always have been a segment of the Black community that
Speaker 3: is just conservative. Right. These are people who are Republicans
Speaker 3: who are going to vote Republican no matter what, many
Speaker 3: of whom write don the MAGA hat with pride. They're
Speaker 3: not being affected by these changes, right. They're looking at
Speaker 3: what's going on and they're satisfying this is something that
Speaker 3: they really wanted to see happen. They understood these consequences.
Speaker 3: And so there's always going to be certain Black people
Speaker 3: who side with the oppressor, if you will, and who
Speaker 3: are willing to give up sort of this solidarity or
Speaker 3: this idea of what's best for their community, for these
Speaker 3: individual Republican notions of what's going to help them get ahead, right,
Speaker 3: and what's going to benefit them in their personal lives
Speaker 3: and those beliefs. But there's absolutely this sentiment right that, oh,
Speaker 3: things are happening really quickly. My worry though, is that
Speaker 3: there's far more Black people who are like, yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 3: and you know that we're now in the find out
Speaker 3: phase and we're just going to watch everybody find out,
Speaker 3: and we're just going to sit back and people are
Speaker 3: going to have to deal with this, and to me,
Speaker 3: I understand that sentiment, I really do, but it's a
Speaker 3: very dangerous sentiment to place ourselves in because we as
Speaker 3: black people then lose our political voice. And if voting
Speaker 3: becomes more difficult, if there are elections in the future
Speaker 3: where our vote could change things and doesn't, it's going
Speaker 3: to make it that much harder for us to assert
Speaker 3: ourselves and re enter the political sphere in a way
Speaker 3: where we can really make a difference and continue to
Speaker 3: have the impact on elections that we have had, say
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty in local and state elections in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four and going forward. And so that's really the
Speaker 3: worry for me, right is that black people are going
Speaker 3: to take a step back and everyone's going to be
Speaker 3: thinking everyone else is going to pick up the slack,
Speaker 3: but it's not going to be enough. And then when
Speaker 3: it comes time for elections to be had in people
Speaker 3: to decisions to be made, black people are going to suffer,
Speaker 3: right because we're going to have to deal with the
Speaker 3: consequences of political actions.
Speaker 2: Recently, the President signed an executive order that is going
Speaker 2: to or that seeks to overhaul elections comprehensively, and of
Speaker 2: course unilaterally with I think close to fifty seven percent
Speaker 2: of Black people electing to vote in person and I
Speaker 2: think thirty one percent on election day. As they seek
Speaker 2: to make voting more difficult in general, how is that
Speaker 2: going to impact Black voters that want to show up
Speaker 2: and that have not turned a blind eye and who
Speaker 2: will not sit out. I think they know where they
Speaker 2: want to focus to make voting more difficult. What is
Speaker 2: that going to look like for us moving forward?
Speaker 3: Again? I think this is a difficult question because elections
Speaker 3: right now, with the way our country is polarized, are
Speaker 3: really wanted the margins, and it can be that fifty
Speaker 3: hundred thousand votes that make a difference. Right the state
Speaker 3: of Wisconsin was decided by less than thirty thousand votes
Speaker 3: this past election cycle, and so it flipped back to
Speaker 3: read by such a thin margin, where these questions about okay,
Speaker 3: is having some sort of ID valid ID necessary to
Speaker 3: vote that prove citizenship going to change things? And what
Speaker 3: it's going to do is it's going to affect things
Speaker 3: at the margins, and you're going to have active voters,
Speaker 3: people who vote and are engaged in politics, figure out
Speaker 3: how to get this ID, figure out how to vote right,
Speaker 3: they're going to find the resources to do it. But
Speaker 3: there's going to be those people on the margins who
Speaker 3: maybe don't vote all the time, or young people who
Speaker 3: are thinking about voting but maybe are undecided or are
Speaker 3: going to be affected by this type of legislation, and
Speaker 3: it's going to cause them not to vote. Right there,
Speaker 3: that extra step of finding the right ID or figuring
Speaker 3: out how to get proof of citizenship or figuring out
Speaker 3: where to go to get extra documentation just to register
Speaker 3: to vote. Right if this law ends up being upheld,
Speaker 3: which we'll see what happens, because states typically have the
Speaker 3: final say when it comes to voting, especially since the
Speaker 3: gutting of the Voting Rights Act in twenty thirteen. But
Speaker 3: if Trump's executive order ends up being upheld anyway in
Speaker 3: the courts before twenty twenty six or twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 3: it's going to affect things at the margins, and it's
Speaker 3: going to make it even harder for Democrats or anyone
Speaker 3: else trying to mobilize black voters to get those people
Speaker 3: at the margins off their couch into the polls. And
Speaker 3: that's always been the debate behind voter ID laws, Right, well,
Speaker 3: is it going is it really a barrier to certain people?
Speaker 3: And yes, it is right. There's always going to be
Speaker 3: disproportionate disadvantages in communities such as the black community, where
Speaker 3: there are less resources, there's less information, there's less political
Speaker 3: knowledge because of the historical alienation and removal from politics
Speaker 3: that the community is faced for generations.
Speaker 2: They look to make voting more difficult, and they look
Speaker 2: to make voting inconvenient for the direct purpose that you
Speaker 2: just stated, to impact our community in difficult ways, doctor Tyler,
Speaker 2: to say, we appreciate you, man, it's just not really
Speaker 2: saying enough. I want to say thank you. I know
Speaker 2: my brother wants to say thank you. Oh yeah, though
Speaker 2: he's already spoken to you. But honored to have this
Speaker 2: conversation with you, and hoping that we can continue these
Speaker 2: conversations because we need it and so do our and
Speaker 2: so does our community. Sure.
Speaker 1: Sure, And again to be able to sit here, you know,
Speaker 1: for those I'll speak for us in this kind of
Speaker 1: journalistic space, a conversation with you is like a reset,
Speaker 1: you know. And today I actually got to be a
Speaker 1: bona fide journalist because they did less hosting and more producing,
Speaker 1: you know, and just to listen to that conversation. It
Speaker 1: imbues the energy around here with the kind of motivation
Speaker 1: that we need, you know, for those of us looking
Speaker 1: for a glimmer of hope. You know, it's kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, all hope is not lost. The narratives that
Speaker 1: had been successfully chronicled by those on the right now
Speaker 1: you know, there's a little there on shaky ground, and
Speaker 1: some were entirely unfounded. Altogether. There's still work to do,
Speaker 1: of course, but again, a conversation like this certainly does
Speaker 1: help at least those of us that are in this space,
Speaker 1: and we have to continue having these conversations. So with that,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that I thank you on
Speaker 1: behalf of all of us here at Civic Cipher before
Speaker 1: we let you go do his favorite shout out any
Speaker 1: sort of social media websites, anything like that where people
Speaker 1: can go get more information value.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. Again. You
Speaker 3: could find all of the research and results posted on
Speaker 3: Black Voter Project dot com as well as the Black
Speaker 3: Insightsresearch dot com websites, and you can find me on
Speaker 3: Twitter formerly Twitter x and blue Sky these days at
Speaker 3: Black b l K Prof Prof CCT. And again, I
Speaker 3: just want to say thank you, And just just to
Speaker 3: highlight once more, this election was a punch in the
Speaker 3: gut to the black community, you know, seeing the potential
Speaker 3: for a first black female president sort of go up
Speaker 3: in flames. But this is nothing new, right, Tough times
Speaker 3: are nothing new for black people in America. And as
Speaker 3: we've learned, history can tell us sometimes the biggest steps
Speaker 3: forward come from the darkest times. And so I'm really
Speaker 3: hoping that, you know, we see immense change come from
Speaker 3: this dark era, change that not only brings hope to
Speaker 3: the Black community, but changes the country for good as well.
Speaker 1: With that in mind, we will leave it right there
Speaker 1: and until next week, y'all.
Speaker 2: Peace,