And now watch move my mic back.
You're like that.
You can strike waters from headquarters behind him.
And so if you're just tuning into Civic Cipher, I'm your host, Ramsey's job.
He is job. I am Q ruler And thank you guys for tuning in with us today.
I appreciate it.
And we still that's more show if we just stick around for so dude, just that we are going to be talking about a report published in twenty two by the University of Michigan Law School Go.
Blue, Oh yeah, the motor right.
And this report is about race and wrongful convictions in the United States. And you probably already know where we're going with this, but.
Sadly, but search research was not necessary research at all.
But but some people need data and and we're going to do our best to go through at least some of it. We're also going to be talking about black codes, the Black codes for our way Black History fact and please google both of these, the black codes and the race and roll full convictions thing. But first and foremost, let's discuss B A B A how to become a
better ally. This is sponsored by Major Threads, so for the finest in athletic men'swear check out major Threads dot com and today's BABA is that we want you to visit stop aa pihete dot org For those that don't know, AAPI stands for Asian American and Pacific Islander Stop aap I hate dot org.
We've been dealing with a lot of stuff.
In our community and I got an email recently from you knowubscribe to on our civic side for email address and social media and stuff. We subscribe to.
Some of the civil rights efforts that are particularly focused on the Asian American and Pacific Islander community so that we can stand in solidarity and support them as best we can.
We recognize that they may not have the same level of show in the same space that we do, and so we try to share this with our brothers and sisters who may need this platform in this forum. And so I want to read something to you from them that they send over to us. It says, with your help, you the listener, Stop AAPI hate has been able to not only win concrete policy changes on behalf of our communities, but also grow our team to expand all areas of
our work at nationwide. With this growth comes bigger ambitions and we're excited to fill you in on what we have planned for this year. And some of the things that they're planning on is community safety initiatives, data and researching, this is education. Equity is a big thing for them,
community capacity, and of course civil rights. And so again, Stop aap I hate dot org is where you can make a donation and support our AAPI brothers and sisters who do the same as we do, and we're happy to share.
We have the time with them.
We have to create organizations to combat hate, crazy against massive groups of people that we love buy other massive groups of people.
Wow.
All right, so race and wrongful convictions in the US. Again, this is from Alert. This is from the University of Michigan Law School. You can check this out at law dot u mitch dot edu and get the.
The real.
Nuts and bolts of it. We're just going to kind of do a surface level overview because obviously this could use a full on academic level examination, which is not something that we have the ability to provide today given our time access.
Except it really doesn't need one.
Sure, But you know, you know the reason for this, and I'm glad you said that the reason for this is because so for some reason, these algorithms just got me. They got me figured out. They're always showing me stuff that happened to black people, mostly by white people in this country, and you know the sources and the histories and all this sort of stuff behind it. But you'd maybe you wouldn't be surprised to know, but a lot
of the presenters of these information are white folks. Their allies are people who are like, listen, man, listen, listen up, other white folks. These black people ain't just making this up. We did this, check it out, you know. And I love that because they use their voice to bring some attention to stuff that doesn't you know, it doesn't affect their lives. They're just helping out, you know what I'm saying.
They in fact, if they didn't do it, they probably be better off, just because the world was this country especially was designed to kind of center them their feelings, their finances, their futures, etc.
So they'd have to really have to do gymnastics sometimes to present information to people who are doing those same gymnastics to deny these things that are obviously true. And I think that's why they go so far out of their way, even though it doesn't, even though it doesn't have an impact on their daily lives. They're just decent,
empathetic human beings that see this obvious truth. So they have to use straightforward, black and white data to present to those who love to deny that all this stuff is even happening in the first place, even though it's happening in four k.
K ultra hd.
Well, this is this is part of the reason why these this data and these numbers are important. So I don't imagine that you listening to us do the show every week. I don't imagine that you are the sort of person who listens to tell yourself in your own mind that we're making this stuff up. You know, you're probably listening because I believe, on some level, you believe that you can become a better ally, a better supporter.
I make this show because I feel like I'm doing the most good with the gifts and the skills that I have, And I can promise you that if the tables were turned, I would do what it is that you are doing for your people, whoever those people might be. You know, I say it all the time on the show, I say it in real life.
I love you. I love.
I don't even know who you are, I can't even see you, but I do I believe that whoever our common creator is, that source of consciousness has sprung us both into existence, and we're traveling this path more or less together. And there's no reason for me to have an adversarial position, opinion, or posture or anything like that towards you. If I can support you, I can, and you know, I feel like that's the best way to be.
I don't know how to be any different. So I appreciate everybody allowing me my truth and to be able to walk this walk. I appreciate all the programmers who air this show around the country and help me try to make a better, you know, country for all of us here. And one more little brick in that wall is providing this data. So again we're going to read some statistics from this study, Race and Wrongful Convictions in
the US twenty twenty two. The first one that I found that I thought was interesting is that, Okay, it goes like this. Black people are thirteen point six percent of the American population, but fifty three percent of the thirty two hundred exonerations listed in the National Registry of exonerations. Judging from exonerations, innocent black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes.
We see this racial.
Disparity in varying degrees for all major crime categories except white collar crime. Of course, right, I left that last part in there because I know you have something to say about it.
But yeah, the type of crimes that people that already have means commit, they're treated with so much grace and empathy. You know, they slap on the wrist if you will. And the nature of these people already having good lives mean they can't be bad people. They just made a mistake. The nature of you poor people, though, is criminal.
That's something that I learned from Brian Stevenson. Please look up Brian Stevenson's very easy name to remember. Brian Stephenson. He's a person that founded and runs the Equal Justice Initiative. They made a movie about him called Just Cause. It stars Michael B.
Jordan.
If you needed another reason to watch the movie anyway, Brian Stephenson says that we have a criminal justice system in this country that treats you better if you're rich and guilty. Then if you're poor and innocent.
Amen, So.
We will examine that a bit more here. And this is just statistic number one, So I want to reread this to you. Black people are thirteen point six percent of the American population with fifty three percent of the thirty two hundred exonerations listed in the National Registry of Exonerations. And then black people are seven times more likely than
white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes. I want to ask a question, please, what does that say about the notion in this country that you are innocent until proven guilty.
That by the nature of looking like you ramses that that isn't true, and that myself when I wrote that into law, we're not thinking of you even as a person, not as a man, but more like property, more like cattle. So these unalienable rights that all men were due, I wasn't talking about you. I actually did not consider you a full person at the time, so I never thought
these laws would apply to you. And since now you are considered a man, and since I did write these not having you in mind, I'll create this separate system that can show people what I meant to say.
I love that you said that can I take it a step further. Please, So what's this? You know those people.
When race comes up and they're like, ah, man, you know, man, I feel like we're just doing better than ever before, you know, obviously Obama was in office. I just I feel like everybody's the same, man. You know, everybody's the same. We're just we're in this together. Why can't we just all be just just let it go, man, and just you know everybody, you know, those people you know you listening,
you know to I know you know those people too, right. Unfortunately, Yes, And what we're looking at here again, this is the first statistic. What we're looking at here is the disconnect that those people have, the separate, detached reality that those people have. They really have fully bought into the fact that this is a fantasy land for everyone. Now, I will not say that in this country no opportunity exists for black people, because obviously there are individuals who are successful,
you know. But if we're taking communities and we're looking at community outcomes by the numbers, and then indeed we draw lines to the sources of the ailments of those communities, you know, we're talking about black codes. A little bit later in the show, So stick around for that. Black codes is definitely one of them. And that's a precursor that affected everything up into political disenfranchisement that still plagues
this country today. And that's something that affected redlining, which was the largest injustice in terms of wealth distribution in this country. And then you know, black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, black schools, white schools, et cetera. And then, of course, in two thousand and eight, this country because of the framework that was put in place by that redlining that
was done by the Federal Housing Administration. Legally, federal government said, don't give loans to these people in these communities and give it all to the white foes black people in black communities, but give it all to his white foe, allowing white people to buy homes and then transfer that wealth on, you know, and then black people of course did not get as much. Of course there were individuals that did, but as much, you know, in terms of communities. Obviously,
black communities are very poor relative to white communities. And then, of course in two thousand and eight, when you know the Wall Street bet on, you know, the subprime mortgages or whatever, and then that went belly up, and then I forget the statistic, but suffice it to say that more black people lost more wealth than white people did in two thousand and eight. And so there's this constant game of catchup. And it's not all about money. We
haven't talked about policing. We haven't talked about environmental racism. We haven't talked about the lot okay, we haven't talked about the unfair distribution of the GI bill, which I guess technically falls underneath money. We haven't talked about land theft. We haven't talked about any of those things yet. But those people that say, man, you know, it's all equal. Man, we're all the same, you know, they're ignoring the head start.
They're they're they're allowed to see the world as being uh, this sort of fantasy land, and they think that somehow black people are just like kind of woe as me. I was born black and therefore I can't do anything. And there's like, well, there's a little bit more to the story than that.
There's an economy to it, though, right, because well, part of that is a self denial. When you're a person that benefits from that system, there's a guilt that sets in if.
You accept lose. That's a good point.
So you don't want to accept it as true because then you think, well, that makes me a bad person from having benefited from this very corrupt system. So let's just act like it's not really that corrupt, man, Like, come on, man, it's the greatest show man on you on the radio, and I saw you on billboards. Man, It's it's not that tough for you, bro, you know what I mean. It's the scene of oneself and things that are corrupt that causes them to deny that they're corrupt.
That's why so many people and this is just my hypothesis. I this hasn't been proven true by any data or research, but I think that's why so many people that I know reach out to me to defend some despicable people that I speak out against on my social media because they have some things in common with that person. They're not reaching out to me to defend that person. They don't know them. They're reaching out to me to defend themselves. That's a great point, man, I kind of think and
behave like that, and I'm not that bad. Let me, let me reach out and defend and I use him as a proxy gameable qualities of this despicable person because the use the elected official as a proxy.
Correct, Right?
So, I think you know it's people seeing some of themselves in this system. That guilt that sets in makes them want to believe. Man, maybe it's maybe it's not that bad.
Well, thank you for listening today, Because it is that bad. It can be better and it is improving and it will be better. But we deal with the real on this show as we see it based on our lived experience. Let's move on. Okay, there's another statistic for you. For both murder and sexual assault, there are preliminary investigative issues that increase the number of innocent black suspects for murder, the homicide rate in the black community for rape, the
difficulty of cross racial eyewitness identification. For both crimes, misconduct, discrimination and racism amplify these initial racial discrepancies. For drug crimes, here we go. The preliminary sorting that increases the number of convictions of innocent black suspects is racial profiling. I think that's a mouthful right there. I want to read it again.
Please.
For drug crimes, the preliminary sorting that increases the number of convictions of innocent black suspects is racial profiling. In addition, the Registry lists seventeen group exonerations, including twenty nine hundred and seventy five additional wrongfully convicted defendants, many of whom were deliberately framed and convicted of fabricated drug crimes in large scale police scandals. The overwhelming majority are black. Now, these are stories that we cover on this show and
don't think is just in what I know. We did one in Mississippi. I know we did one in Louisiana where the police were framing black people that like it was flagrant they were doing out in the open.
It's kind of flagrant everywhere.
But it's also it's also California. It's everywhere.
Yeah, liberal places, you know, conservative places too, and of course you're going to find that in the South, but you know, it's kind of to be expected.
Unfortunately, I got.
Pulled over and searched for looking at an officer on King Day in Detroit, Michigan. We don't have to go to the Deep South. We don't have to go to the peak of Maga on Liver NOI and six miles in Detroit, Michigan. I was driving down the street. There was an officer. I looked at him. He saw me look at him. He got in his car. You turned, pulled me over, put my face on the hood of his car, and frixed me.
For nothing.
Didn't accuse me of anything, didn't tell me I was speeding nothing. Get out of the car, slam my hood on a hip, slid my face on the hood of his car, and searched me. Finished searching me, then searched my car, took my seats out, left them out, took all my things out, left them on the street, got back in his car and drove away. Told me to have a nice day, King Day two thousand and one.
Dang, Yeah, well, you know what, that's a story that I know that I and a lot of other people who look like me are familiar with. I remember, I got pulled out of my car for no reason. They were looking for someone else in a bright yellow Dodge Neon, I guess because they made a ton of those.
They didn't.
I had the car custom painted, but back when I was in college in the fast and furious days, that's why I had a doctor and it was yellow.
Anyway, I got to pull it out of my car. That's why you had a Dodge Neon. That's not why it was yellow. We can talk about that all the fast, fast and furious days every painting cars.
Yeah, it's not fast and furious now because you don't have a yellow you don't have.
A bright yellow, fast and furious car.
Anyway, real quick, I do want to give a shout out to w NUC ninety six point seven FM in Detroit, Michigan for carrying civic cipher and airing us twice a week motown. Indeed, all right, let's move on another statistic here. Innocent black people are about seven and a half times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people. That applies equally to those who are sentenced to death and those who are not.
How about that you're going to die.
And you're seven and a half times more likely to be convicted of murder.
Innocent.
If you're innocent, you're seven and a half times more likely to be convicted of murder than white people.
So if you're.
Two times more, I mean for their one is your two, right, yep, So that would be one hundred percent more if you're seven times more, Yes, it's about almost four hundred percent more likely. I want to say it in a statistic that will make people's jaws drop. You're about four hundred percent. Yeah, it's a lot more likely. Seven sounds like a small number. It's not seven times all right. This is the other
half of that. In addition, black people who are convicted of murder are about eighty percent more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers.
Now here's the thing. Another point that Brian Stevenson makes is that you know, in this country, uh, historically, this country has been unkind to black people. That is a given. Nobody, even people that don't love CRT or indeed American history, have to see that, right, They don't know this country has been that.
No, no, no, no, it's but the idea that those people have to be delusional people exist.
We're talking about people who are sensible and subscribe to at least the common narrative of the country, whether or not it's taught in school.
That we used to have Remember that, adults, you know, but remember that when there were reasonable adults who agreed about the common history of our country. Fair enough, we no longer live in those times. That's what it remind you of that. We so so here we are this on our show. We are no longer in those times. We don't agree about what's true anymore. You're not wrong, you're not wrong.
So how about this for those of us who still do recognize that there is a history in this country that was built on the back of the African slave that was not considered human, as you so eloquently stated. Fast forward, Now we have a system that is disproportionately executing innocent black men. And Brian Stevenson made a comparison, what if we lived in the nation state in the world where the nation state of Germany was disproportionately executing
human beings who were Jewish? What would you do? Would that be unconscionable to you? And yet there is a stunning silence when we quote the statistic to you. Does it bother you that innocent black men are being executed at eighty at what does it say? Eighty percent more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers? Think about that. If it doesn't upset you, why not, I'll move on
the convictions that led to murder exonerations. With black defendants, we're almost fifty percent more likely to include misconduct by police officers than those with white defendants. In addition, on average, black murder exgneries spend three years longer in prison before release than white murder ex hogneries. In other words, the police are twice as likely to or sorry, fifty percent more likely to interfere to make you look more guilty, and you'll be in prison longer before you get out
as being exonerated. Those police officers are more likely to break the law, break the law. That's what makes you look guilty.
There you go.
I want to put this so kindly.
Yeah, all right, now, innocent black people are almost eight times more likely than white people to be falsely convicted of rape. A prisoner serving time for sexual assault is more than three times more likely to be innocent if he is black than if he is white. And then, finally, assaults on white women by black men are a small minority of all sexual assaults in the United States, but nearly half of all sexual assaults with I witnessed misidentifications
that lead to exoneration. So there's the cold hard facts, despite what you may have thought growing up. And now it's time for the way black history fact.
So we can spend some time with this one, but I'm gonna do some reading first, all right.
Today's way black History fact is sponsored by the Black Information Network Daily podcast. You can find that at iHeart dot com or bei news dot com. And this comes from history dot com.
Talking about Black Codes. So I'll start.
Black codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War through the Union victory. Sorry, though the Union victory had given some four million enslaved people their freedom, the question of freed black people's status in the post war South was still very much unresolved. Under Black Codes, many states required black people to sign yearly labor contracts.
If they refused, they.
Risked being arrested, fined, and forced into unpaid labor.
How about that?
So, for those that don't know, slavery didn't disappear, it became the penitentiary in short, and that is a verifiable thing that you can do the research yourself, but I will continue to read here. Outrage over Black Codes helped undermine support for President Andrew Johnson and the Republican Party.
At the time.
In April eighteen sixty five, as the Civil War drew to a close, Lincoln shocked many by proposing limited suffrage for African Americans in the South. He was assassinated days later, however, and his successor, Andrew Johnson, would be the one to preside over the beginning of reconstruction. Johnson, a former senator from Tennessee, a man who had remained loyal to the Union during the war, was a firm supporter of states rights.
That means the racist folks.
Firm supporter of states rights and believed the federal government had no say in issues such as voting requirements at the state level. All right, So let's get to the passage of the Black Codes, all right. Even as a former sorry, even as former enslaved people fought to assert their independence and gain economic autonomy. During the earliest years of reconstruction, white land owners acted to control the labor force through a system similar to the one that existed
that had existed during slavery. To that end, in late eighteen sixty five, Mississippi and South Carolina enacted the first Black Codes. Mississippi's law required black people to have written evidence of employment for the coming year. Each January they left before the end of the contract, they would be forced to forfeit earlier wages and were subject to arrest.
All right.
So what that means is that if you did not have a job with a contract, then you were subject to arrest.
Right.
So that meant that you could be underpaid, because obviously stage rights, you could be cheated, you could be overworked and not paid at all or whatever. And it was just a way of getting that labor force back really cheap or for free, okay, all right. In South Carolina, a law prohibited black people from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax of ten dollars to one hundred dollars. Remember there's a
lot of money back in the day. This provision hit free black people already living in Charleston and former slave artisans especially hard. In both states, black people were giving heavy were given heavy penalties for vagrancy, including force plantation labor in some air in some cases, so that meant that you can't have a job other than being a farmer or a servant, right, meaning that you have to take those wages. You cannot rise to do better for
yourself or indeed for your especially for your community. If you did, you were subject to a heavy tax for working as something other than a servant or a pharmer. And if you did not have a job, as in Mississippi, you were giving given heavy penalties for vagrancy, including forced labor. So that is what we like to cause, slavery, all right, limits on black freedom.
Okay, here we go.
Under Johnson's reconstruction policies, nearly all the Southern states would enact their own own Black Codes in eighteen sixty five and eighteen sixty six. While the codes granted certain freedoms to African Americans, including the right to buy and own property, marry, make contracts, and testify in court only in cases involving people of their own race, meaning that if white people beat you up, raped you, stole from you whatever, you
cannot testify against them. Let's see, their primary purpose was to restrict black people's labor and activity. Some states limited the type of property that black people could own, while virtually all the former Confederate states passed strict vagrancy in labor contract laws as well as so called anti enticement measures designed to punish anyone who offered higher wages to
a black laborer already under contract. Black people who broke labor contracts were subject to arrest, beating, and forced labor and apprenticeship laws forced many miners little kid miners, either orphans or those whose parents were deemed unable to support them by a judge, which happened way more frequently than you know, so that the state could possess the bodies of black children and force them into labor, as well
into unpaid labor for white planters. Passed by a political system in which black people effectively had no voice, the Black Codes were enforced by all white police and state militia forces, often made up of Confederate veterans of the Civil War across the South, all right, and the impact of the Black Codes, all right. The restrictive nature of the Codes and widespread black resistance to their enforcement enraged many in the North, who argued that the codes violated
the fundamental principles of free labor ideology. After passing the Civil Rights Act over Johnson's veto, Republicans in Congress effectively took control of reconstruction. Their Reconstruction Act of eighteen sixty seven required Southern States to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, with which granted equal protection under the Constitution, to form enslaved people, and enact several male suffrage sorry enact universal male suffrage. I got marbles in my mouth today before they could
rejoin the Union. By eighteen seventy seven, when the last Federal soldiers left the South and reconstruction drew to a close, black people had seen little improvement in their economic and social status, and the vigorous efforts of white supremacist forces throughout the region had undone the political gains they had made. Discrimination would continue in the America. In America, and with the rise of Jim Crow, laws that would inspire the Civil rights movement to come let's be honest nearly one
hundred years later. So basically, black people were rounded up, arrested and put into prisons later penitentiaries, and then that labor was leased to farmers, so police had an incentive to round up black bodies so that the state could make money off of them by leasing the farmers at low rages wages. Also during this time, this is when
the birth of the klu Klux Klan took place. To protect the chastity of white women, but also let's be honest to protect financial interest of white male landowners and that ladies and gentlemen, in short, is the black codes. So with that said, I'd like to thank you all for listening again to this episode of Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Rams's job.
He is Rams' job.
I am your mentally and emotionally exhausted.
Friend.
You got it, And thank you guys for tuning in the Civic sigh for a game. We appreciate you.
Yeah, yeah, let's see what do we do?
Listen, hit the website Civiccipher dot com, submit any topics that you want us to cover, You submit any questions you want us to answer, and you can tap in with us and follow us on our journey. Our social media is at Civic Cipher c iv s c C I, P h e R. Don't forget. You can download this in any previous episodes of the show and get caught up, and of course you can make a donation. Those donations do help and we appreciate it, and you're growing because of your support.
And until next week, y'all, peace.
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