Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
Speaker 1: welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
Speaker 1: mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: ramses Job.
Speaker 2: He is Rams's Jaw. I am q Ward and you
Speaker 2: are tuned in a Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: Yes you are, and we have a very special show
Speaker 1: in store for you. June teenth is just around the corner,
Speaker 1: and so we're going to spend a decent amount of
Speaker 1: time talking about June teenth. So first up, this will
Speaker 1: be for the second part of the show, but we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss how to celebrate June teenth. Juneteenth is
Speaker 1: still a relatively new federal holiday, and we recognize that
Speaker 1: there are there can be some apprehension in engaging and
Speaker 1: in celebrating. But you know, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: if you celebrate single Demile, whatever you do, if you
Speaker 1: celebrate Saint Patrick's Dave, you celebrate you know, any number
Speaker 1: of holidays that are really based around a particular ethnicity
Speaker 1: or national origin or something like that that is outside
Speaker 1: of you know, America. Here you have learned how to
Speaker 1: celebrate that and you can do so without fear that
Speaker 1: you might offend someone or overstep or anything like that,
Speaker 1: whereas with June Team it's a little newer. So we're
Speaker 1: going to hopefully provide you a little bit of a
Speaker 1: framework to approach the holiday and you know, and enjoy
Speaker 1: yourself because it is a holiday for all of us.
Speaker 1: We're also going to be talking about June Team for
Speaker 1: our Way Black History factor, so you definitely want to
Speaker 1: stick around for that as well. And first up, we
Speaker 1: are going to be talking about political correctness and woke
Speaker 1: miss and how we went from PC to woke or
Speaker 1: the label went from PC to woke and the constant
Speaker 1: attacks from the right on how they reframe the language
Speaker 1: so that it can be attacked. But before we get there,
Speaker 1: we are going to, as always start things off with
Speaker 1: some ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall.
Speaker 2: Today's Ebony Excellence sponsored by Actively Black There is greatness
Speaker 2: in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. The story
Speaker 2: comes from the Grillo. Jalen Hurts etched his name in
Speaker 2: NFL history books, securing a record breaking five year, two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty five million dollar contract and becoming at
Speaker 2: the time, the highest paid player in the NFL. This
Speaker 2: landmark includes a whopping one hundred and seventy nine point
Speaker 2: three million dollars in guaranteed money and a no trade
Speaker 2: clause binding Hurts to the Philadelphia Eagles until twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Now the more important part of this story, more impressively even,
Speaker 2: is that a black woman, Nicole Lynn of Clutch Sports,
Speaker 2: negotiated the deal. So happy for my little brother at
Speaker 2: Jalen Hurts on becoming the highest paid player in NFL
Speaker 2: history end quote, Lynn said in an Instagram post, she said, quote,
Speaker 2: thank you for trusting me with something of this magnitude.
Speaker 2: I remember sitting in your old high school interviewing to
Speaker 2: be your agent. I am a dreamer, but I'm not
Speaker 2: sure I could have ever imagined this is where we'd land.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 2: The partnership between Hurts and his agent is nothing short
Speaker 2: of groundbreaking at just thirty four years old, and Colon
Speaker 2: is the only It's sorry, not only a prominent figure
Speaker 2: in the industry, but has made history in more ways
Speaker 2: than one. After starting her career as an NFL agent
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, she quickly made a name for herself
Speaker 2: as the first woman to join Players Rep, one of
Speaker 2: the league's top agencies at the time. Little did she
Speaker 2: know that. Years later, one Instagram DM would lead her
Speaker 2: to become the first woman of any ethnicity to represent
Speaker 2: a Super Bowl starting quarterback. This story happened last season,
Speaker 2: but I was with Nicole over the weekend, told her
Speaker 2: how proud of her we both were, and just told
Speaker 2: her to keep pushing forward on her legacy. Nicole, keep going.
Speaker 1: I love that, all right. Woke, wokeness, wokeness. You know
Speaker 1: we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of this,
Speaker 1: but think about this for a second. In my lifetime,
Speaker 1: I remember being woke meaning being educated, being enlightened, being
Speaker 1: being aware, aware, right, informed, informed, That's a great way
Speaker 1: to say it. And there was a degree of being
Speaker 1: sort of like spiritually in tune as well. Right. In
Speaker 1: other words, woke went beyond just you know, being informed,
Speaker 1: being aware, that sort of thing, But it also implied
Speaker 1: a degree of forgive me, but spiritual connectedness, concern, empathy
Speaker 1: for each other. Right, So, wokeness or if you were woke,
Speaker 1: it meant that you were knew what was going on
Speaker 1: in the world, but you also had a predisposition toward
Speaker 1: making things better for yourself, your people, your community, you know,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So if that was what woke meant, and
Speaker 1: it never the meaning never changed. That would have been perfect.
Speaker 1: That's great. Right, Now we can go back a little
Speaker 1: bit further or discuss indeed the actual meaning of woke,
Speaker 1: which means to be what not asleep, to be awake awake, right,
Speaker 1: which for anyone having an intellectual conversation of philosophical debate,
Speaker 1: anyone who's engaging politically social you know, you need to
Speaker 1: be awake for that. Anyone who's aware of what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world, you need to be awake because
Speaker 1: the idea of being asleep kind of implies that you
Speaker 1: are unaware literally or figuratively. Sure, So, woke has always
Speaker 1: historically meant something positive, something good, something.
Speaker 2: Always had a positive connotation until it was hijacked.
Speaker 1: Right, And we're going to discuss something. This is not
Speaker 1: the first time a word has been hijacked or a
Speaker 1: concept has been represented to us. We branded under something
Speaker 1: that was more attackable. In other words, if wokeness means
Speaker 1: a general awareness and empathy, the term has been taken
Speaker 1: and rebranded. Right. So I'm going to tell a little
Speaker 1: bit of a story and then we're going to get
Speaker 1: into more of the nuts and bolts here please, So
Speaker 1: this is how we went from political correctness to wokeness
Speaker 1: and how both of those things ended up becoming bad things.
Speaker 1: And Q knows all this, so she's going to jump
Speaker 1: in a few times, but I'm going to do the
Speaker 1: reading here. And this came from Quora, of all places.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a kind of a forum where
Speaker 1: people kind of share ideas on the internet. So this
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily a scholarly source, but the information is accurate,
Speaker 1: absolutely accurate. I just love this one individual's interpretation of
Speaker 1: the events. Right. So this individual's name for if you
Speaker 1: wanted to go check it out. His name is Douglas Whiteside,
Speaker 1: and he's answering the question why do liberals love wokeness?
Speaker 1: So here's his response. So here's what happened. A couple
Speaker 1: of decades go. Some Republicans decided that being polite was
Speaker 1: interfering with their agenda. They needed to make Democrats sound
Speaker 1: like radicals, even though the Democrats were offering popular and
Speaker 1: reasonable policy proposals. So they needed a weigh to make
Speaker 1: politeness itself sound silly and delusional. Enter the phrase political correctness. Right.
Speaker 1: I want to stop here real quick, because political correctness
Speaker 1: and you mentioned this to me when political correctness first
Speaker 1: became a term that was used in popular culture. You know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned that it was not a bad thing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a scary thing. It wasn't used as an attack.
Speaker 1: Oh you're just being PC. No, it was like, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: we all need a degree of political correct It was
Speaker 1: an inclusive way of instructing society at large to be,
Speaker 1: as you said, polite. It was not deeper than that initially,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of the point. Even the term political
Speaker 1: correctness had to have some acceptance first before it could
Speaker 1: be rebranded and weaponized. They said, if they called it
Speaker 1: something ridiculous, they would have been viewed that way themselves.
Speaker 1: So they had to first construct this thing that they
Speaker 1: could then rebrand however they wanted. And that you start
Speaker 1: to see how unfortunately brilliant it is, because again, you
Speaker 1: can take a word like woke. There's no bad way
Speaker 1: to interpret the word woke. But now it's about how
Speaker 1: is that a bad thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we saw them do something similar with critical race theory.
Speaker 2: There you go, right, let's change the entire meaning of that,
Speaker 2: make it mean something else, make it negative and pejorative,
Speaker 2: and then attack it. It is a masterful thing that
Speaker 2: they quote. They, for those who are listening and not watching,
Speaker 2: have done throughout history very effectively, sadly, very effective to
Speaker 2: all of our detriments. Because for those that know, those
Speaker 2: that actually are woke, we're aware that critical race theory.
Speaker 1: In their definition, those on the far right, in their
Speaker 1: definition and their estimation is simply American history. But they
Speaker 1: could not They can't attack American or attack Americ American history.
Speaker 1: So they had to rebrand a section of American history,
Speaker 1: which is ours rebranded and under the umbrella race theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and critical race theory is a collegiate level pursuit that
Speaker 1: connects systemic elements to outcomes for marginalized people. Right, it's
Speaker 1: not in your schools, not in your public so no,
Speaker 1: none of that sort of stuff. This is a class
Speaker 1: that you have to sign up for in college and
Speaker 1: they took like and if you don't know this, it
Speaker 1: shows how far they went with the rebrand. See I
Speaker 1: know this, doctor Westernberg is our teacher up hear being cute,
Speaker 1: So we knew this, but so many people don't know this.
Speaker 1: And the craziest part about it is that the specific
Speaker 1: group of people that don't know this on the right
Speaker 1: don't care because you could educate the know. Some know
Speaker 1: and don't don't care, right, but you could educate those
Speaker 1: that don't.
Speaker 2: They've taken advantage of those that don't know and doctrinated them,
Speaker 2: and in the way that some would protect and pursue
Speaker 2: their religious ideology. You can't tell them that it's wrong.
Speaker 2: And then again, there are those, like you said, who
Speaker 2: simply don't care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, rather dig in than be enlightened or awaken.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's read a little bit more from
Speaker 1: Douglas Whiteside's response. Again, why do liberals love wokeness? So
Speaker 1: continuing on now, he says, obviously, since nearly all of
Speaker 1: us were raised to be polite and respect politeness, it
Speaker 1: isn't possible to attack politeness itself. But if you can
Speaker 1: relabel it first, then it's much easier to attack. So
Speaker 1: being polite to others became political correctness, and political correctness
Speaker 1: became a bad thing. Now the same thing is happening
Speaker 1: to empathy. It's very very important data here. Basic human
Speaker 1: empathy is a good thing. Like politeness, empathy helps us
Speaker 1: survive as a society, but it also leads to governmental
Speaker 1: policies to help disadvantaged people. Obviously, this is something Republicans
Speaker 1: cannot appide. But how can they attack basic human empathy. Well,
Speaker 1: the same way they attacked politeness, relabel it, so empathy
Speaker 1: is now called wokeness and that can be attacked. So again,
Speaker 1: they took something that already existed, right, something that wasn't
Speaker 1: widely used in terms of its uh, its role, its
Speaker 1: place in the in our lexicon. Right, Wokeness was something
Speaker 1: that was shared. It was like kind of arcane knowledge.
Speaker 1: Not everyone wasn't walking around talking about yeah, woke or
Speaker 1: are you know we're woke? You know, people weren't saying that.
Speaker 1: That was just a few people that would talk like that,
Speaker 1: you know, people that wear unks, people that are well
Speaker 1: educated that understand, people that were very engaged politically those people,
Speaker 1: but you know, the masses would not walk around saying
Speaker 1: woke or wokeness or anything like that. It wasn't popularized.
Speaker 1: So this was this really tiny sliver of the population
Speaker 1: using that term in the same way that a very
Speaker 1: tiny sliver of the population was using critical race theory.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you mentioned that, because, again, a very
Speaker 1: tiny sliver of the population actually goes to college and
Speaker 1: gets to the point in college where they even have
Speaker 1: access to enroll in a class that teaches critical race theory.
Speaker 1: But because that term existed, Republicans as often as you know,
Speaker 1: at one hundred percent of the time, let me be honest,
Speaker 1: can find this term and then discuss this term as
Speaker 1: though everyone is using it, as though everyone is taking
Speaker 1: critical race theory class.
Speaker 2: And as if they have some innate understanding of the
Speaker 2: term in the way that they use it.
Speaker 1: But they don't, because to them, it means American history.
Speaker 1: To them, it doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, good catch, But they want it
Speaker 1: to encompass American history so that they can attack the
Speaker 1: specific part of American history that includes us from being
Speaker 1: taught to younger students in the classroom. Right, So we
Speaker 1: lose the term because they've been successful at rebranding it.
Speaker 1: I want to add something else here, Okay, the American flag.
Speaker 1: The American flag. Funnily enough, the same woman who was
Speaker 1: our teacher, doctor Camilla Westernberg. I went with her to
Speaker 1: meet with Jesse Jackson. Isn't that cool? And at that meeting,
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't the only person, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of people there. They had these flags, these little
Speaker 1: tiny flags that they would give out. And lately the
Speaker 1: past four years, maybe eight year, past twenty years, well,
Speaker 1: let me let me, let me, let me delineate a
Speaker 1: specific amount of time. So since let's call it twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, right when Donald Trump was campaigning for the presidency,
Speaker 1: my relationship with the American flag has changed. There are
Speaker 1: still moments when I will watch movies, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'll see, you know, the soldiers at the end mount
Speaker 1: the flag and feel that sense of pride, or I'll
Speaker 1: watch the astronauts plant the flag and I'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we did it, you know. But if I'm
Speaker 1: being honest, my relationship with the flag has changed because
Speaker 1: there's a whole entire new facet that has been introduced
Speaker 1: since the Trump presidency, which is, as we've discussed on
Speaker 1: the show many times, a very angry, right leaning group
Speaker 1: of people using the flag almost to intimidate people who
Speaker 1: are not white, almost to say that we're in America
Speaker 1: their country, not we're in America full stop. And then
Speaker 1: we've seen the flag in places where the flag normally
Speaker 1: doesn't go, like if you go to a post office, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a federal agency. The flag should be there. You
Speaker 1: go to a public school, yeah, fly the flag. That's
Speaker 1: a government building. Right. But when you go to like
Speaker 1: an outing in the park and you see some some group,
Speaker 1: a group that's you know, they're using a you know,
Speaker 1: one of the picnic tables and they just have a
Speaker 1: flag there or on the bed of the pickup truck
Speaker 1: next to you in traffic. Sure, that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: where it's like, I mean, I know where we are, right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, my relationship with the flag has changed. My
Speaker 1: point is that when I went with doctor Westernberg to
Speaker 1: meet with Jesse Jackson and they were handing out these
Speaker 1: little flags, she said, no, Ramses, you take one of
Speaker 1: those flags and you wave that flag. That flag belongs
Speaker 1: to all of us. Don't let them take the flag
Speaker 1: from us. We fought for that flag too. And you
Speaker 1: know how she talks. I mean you in all people
Speaker 1: now she talks so and what do you say to
Speaker 1: her other than yes, ma'am right. For those that don't know,
Speaker 1: doctor Westernberg is an old black woman. She would get
Speaker 1: mad at me for me. She would get mad at
Speaker 1: me for describing her that way. She is wisdom in flesh. Yes,
Speaker 1: there you go, That's how I describe her. But you know,
Speaker 1: for us, we you know there, if I close my
Speaker 1: eyes and imagine God, it may as well have doctor
Speaker 1: Westernbrook's face on it. Right, that's the closest that we
Speaker 1: get to God on this earth. Is something we always say.
Speaker 1: So she was saying, don't let them take the flag.
Speaker 1: And I think that on some level she knew how
Speaker 1: they tend to take these things and rework the angles
Speaker 1: around them and use them against us. Right, And so
Speaker 1: at present there is a flag in front of my
Speaker 1: house that is waving, and there are neighbors around here
Speaker 1: who have the flags waving in front of their house too,
Speaker 1: I suspect for different reasons. My job is to reclaim it,
Speaker 1: just like I'm trying to reclaim woke. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to reclaim p These aren't bad things, all right,
Speaker 1: So let's continue. So empathy is now called wokeness. When
Speaker 1: a Democrat calls for measures to help protect minority citizens
Speaker 1: from police violence, it isn't because of empathy a good thing.
Speaker 1: It's because that Democrat is all woke a bad thing.
Speaker 1: It isn't simply liberals loving wokeness. It's that liberals are
Speaker 1: generally liberal because they have basic human empathy. Now, this
Speaker 1: is this other person's words, not mine. Republicans hate basic
Speaker 1: human empathy because it will eventually lead to the uber
Speaker 1: wealthy having to pay their fair share of taxes to
Speaker 1: help the less fortunate. Republicans cannot stand even the thought
Speaker 1: of that happening. That's probably an oversimplification, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to be unfair to Republicans. I wish you guys
Speaker 1: could see my face. You know that we have to
Speaker 1: have good faith debates, even though this is what this
Speaker 1: is who we are.
Speaker 2: We have to have good faith debates in the absence
Speaker 2: of good faith on the other side of the debate.
Speaker 1: That is a very differ sessions. I know to be
Speaker 1: in it all the time. But listen, that's why we
Speaker 1: keep you around. You're the enforcer man. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to share something else that I think illustrates this point perfectly,
Speaker 1: and illustrates a lot of Q's points perfectly. This is
Speaker 1: from Fox thirteen news dot com if you want to
Speaker 1: check it out. I'm just pulling a paragraph from the
Speaker 1: article talking about Ronda Santis, the person who's known for
Speaker 1: attacking wokeness right in the state of Florida. So Ronda
Speaker 1: stantis the governor's general Council, Ryan Newman said in a
Speaker 1: in general, and he's trying to define wokeness because he
Speaker 1: was asked what wokeness means. So this is the governor's council, okay,
Speaker 1: Ryan Newman, He says, in general, it means quote, the
Speaker 1: belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the
Speaker 1: need to address them in quote. He added that DeSantis
Speaker 1: doesn't believe there are systemic injustices in the country reports
Speaker 1: Florida politics.
Speaker 2: So so again, is very difficult to have good faith debate.
Speaker 2: You're not wrong on the other side is not You're
Speaker 2: not wrong with faith, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1: The only the only reason why I do that, though,
Speaker 1: is because I recognize that we funnily enough, you know this,
Speaker 1: We have a lot of people who listen to our
Speaker 1: show who are those deeply conservative people, right, and for
Speaker 1: us to remind them, well, not to remind them, they know,
Speaker 1: but for us to condemn them further, I don't think
Speaker 1: that that really creates the pathway to having the types
Speaker 1: of conversations that even those people who are listening to
Speaker 1: try to pick us apart might be willing to have
Speaker 1: at some point in the future. So it's a strategy.
Speaker 1: I'm not delusional. And for all of you who are
Speaker 1: listening to to me, yeah, I mean, there's my hand,
Speaker 1: but we love you and we'll get there one way
Speaker 1: or another.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you believe that. I think optimism is necessary
Speaker 2: because I don't possess it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well that's why there's two of us. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're the enforcer man, You're you're the You're you
Speaker 1: take care of me, you protect me man, so you
Speaker 1: allow me to be what all butterflies and rainbow as
Speaker 1: you describe it. So anyway, I just thought it was
Speaker 1: really interesting that in those discussions, and you know behind
Speaker 1: those doors, you know, when you ask those people what
Speaker 1: does wokeness mean, that they can give an answer that's
Speaker 1: so encompassing like this, as you mentioned, they know exactly
Speaker 1: what they're talking about.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that's so terrifying about what's happening with
Speaker 2: our courts. Our courts are the last place where you
Speaker 2: have to mean what you say, where you have to
Speaker 2: back up what you're you have to back up what
Speaker 2: you're saying. You have to give facts, You have to
Speaker 2: give evidence to support what you're saying, and now seeing
Speaker 2: our leaders and politicians allow for even that place to
Speaker 2: be corrupted by money is a very very scary place
Speaker 2: for not just us but all Americans.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like we'll get there.