Welcome to another episode of CIVI Czipher. I'm your host. Ramsey's job is Rams' job. He calls me q war most of the time.
You guys are tuned in too, Synic Cipher.
Welcome back, y'all. Stick around. A lot in store for you today, A lot to talk about. A lot of things have been up in the news, not the least of which is Gilbert or rather the comic strip creator for the Gilbert Comics and some of his comments that have resulted in him being dropped by newspapers across the country.
We're going to get into that and break that down and figure out the whys and potential sources, and of course do our best to educate you how to interact with folks who might feel as frustrated as he does and feel like, you know that is whatever, We'll tell you the whole story. Stick around for that. Also, we have to talk about Sea Pack Conservative Political Action conference that took place recently and these new candidates who will
be running for the GOP nomination. This is a space that we function in as well, and so it's our job to kind of brief you on what things may come. Some are familiar than some maybe you don't know too much about so all that, and of course we're going to be doing our way black history fact. This time we're going to be talking about something I didn't know about. I came across this piece of information and I'm happy
to share our way black history fact. A bomb that was set off deliberately in Philadelphia that killed eleven black folks, five of them were children. So there's a whole story there and that and so much more for you to stick around. But first and foremost, like we always do it, this time, let's uh check out some ebony excellence. How
does that sound to UQ? Shall we shall? So? This week's Ebony Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media, and we are going to be shouting out a lady another VideA I didn't know too much about named Charlane Vivian Stringer. What's her? What's she known by?
Professionally known as C Vivian string that's it?
Okay, She's an athlete, and Q kind of knows about athletes stuff. Anyway, She's an American former basketball coach and she holds one of the best coaching records in the history of women's basketball. She was the head coach of the Rutgers University women's basketball team from ninety five until her retirement in twenty twenty two. Stringer is the first coach in NCAA history to lead three different women's programs to the NCAA Final Four. Rutgers, how do I say that?
Rutgers Rutgers, that's it in two thousand and in two thousand and seven, the University of Iowa in nineteen ninety three, and Cheney State College which is now Cheney University of Pennsylvania in nineteen eighty two. She is the fifth winningest coach in women's basketball history, and she was honored as the Naismith College Coach of the Year for women's basketball at ninety three, and she's a member of the Women's
Basketball Hall of Fame. She was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in April two thousand and nine and was inducted in the September of that year. On February twenty sixth, twenty thirteen, Stringer won her nine hundredth game, becoming only the fourth coach in women's basketball history to
reach that mark. And she's about to have her seventy fifth birthday, and she is decidedly Ebny excellence, And from what I understand and how she came to our attention here is that she took a group of women from an HBCU to the championship very early in her career, when she wasn't even a coach. She just kind of volunteered for that program. So a lot of success stories
in her lifetime and were happy to celebrate her. So yeah, now, before we get into this serious question, did you ever really read the Dilbert comics.
I've never read the Delbert comics, but they are so excessively popular that I've seen them. You're familiar with them. I want to say millions of times, but that sounds like too many. I know, I'm being hyperbolic on purpose. I've seen them amount of part of.
Yeah, okay, I recognize that some of our listeners might not have grown up in a world where newspapers were popular. So Dilbert is a newspaper comic. It's basically like a one frame cartoon or four frame cartoon or whatever, where you look at this image and then the next one next to it, and so forth all the way through, and it tells you a story. And Dilbert was about a guy who worked in an office space and often had issues with office politics or office life or whatever.
And it was a comic, so it was meant to be funnier, you know, bring some attention about or something like that. It wasn't a political cartoon per se. It was just making light.
Of kind satirical though, right right, So.
This is how we came to know Gilbert as a part of you know, popular culture. But I would never go as far as to say that Gilbert spoke to my reality. You know, by the time I got old enough to start trying to read newspapers every day for content, you know, phones were out and you could just look at a phone and I so I didn't really come across Dilbert for the sake of enjoying it. I just
was generally familiar with it. But the illustrator and the creator of this comic had some some interesting things to say recently. We're going to get into that in just a moment. And what he said, there are some people out there that that defended it because taking it faced value, you might not know exactly what he was trying to
say or what he was trying to get at. And the world is full of ignoratuses and people who insist on being the victim and who insist on seeing other people who demand equality as playing the victim right, And we have a classic example of that here, And that's why we wanted to talk about this today because we know that this might be making the rounds in your world, or maybe it already has, and without context, a person might look at what he's saying and say, well I
could see that, or well maybe there's a point. And we're here to educate you and to paint the picture.
Right. They got to be doing some stretching.
Sure, sure we know that, but you and I both know that. But you know, people who don't live this life life and you know, read what we read, know what we know, have the experience we have, they might that it might not be as far of a stretch for them, because again, accepting certain things at face value, that's all you know. There's no context, there's no nuance, there's nothing else to it, and so we're happy to share with you. So let me read a bit. This
comes from NPR dot org. I like saying the names of our sources, so you know kind of where we're picking from. And if you need a different type of balance be our guests, but we're letting you know our starting point, so i'll read. The fallout was sparked by a YouTube livestream posted February twenty second where Adams, who is the guy who creates the Dilbert comic, referenced a Rasmussen poll that found only a slim majority of black Americans agreed with the statement it's okay to be white.
Adams went on to accuse black Americans of being quote a hate group and advise white people to quote get away away from them. Okay, but cartoonists say Adams has a long history of spewing problematic views and the past, Adams has inaccurately described people who are not vaccinated against COVID as the real winners of the pandemic. He also questioned the accuracy of the Holocaust death toll. Another of Adams claims is that he had lost most multiple job
opportunities for being white. All right, so let's stop here for a quick tick. Okay. Now, his other idea political ideas about the vaccine, about you know, the way the world is working, or whatever, kind of paints a picture of maybe who he is probably seems like a solitary dude maybe gets his information from one source, maybe to the lesser right leaning of the two, would probably be Fox News, and has insisted has determined rather that the
world is against him or his kind in particular. You know, there's there's a lot of folks out there who straight white Christian men are like, yo, we're under attack, right, They feel that way, and whether or not we believe it's founded, we have to acknowledge that that is true. And on this show we've always done this that we acknowledge that is true. You feel that way, and we acknowledge that you are our brothers, no matter what, you are our brothers, right.
And I'm acknowledging that you're Tripp and Trip. Of course you're Trip, and that's that goes without saying. But you know, we can't dismiss people. We wouldn't want that happening to us. We can't do that to anyone else. And we have to acknowledge, Okay, this is your reality and approach it accordingly.
Right, So let me go through this again, at least the first part again for folks that don't know better to take it at face value, him saying that this rass musen pole found only a slim majority, again majority. Most black people, according to the ras musen Pole, feel or rather agree with the statement it's okay to be white. Then he looks at well, the rest of the black
people almost half disagree with that. This is his determination based on that one little bit of information, and then he goes on to say the black people are hey group. White people need to get away from him. Okay, So if those are the facts, you can say, well, shoot, if he feels that way and that pole is accurate and blah blah blah, then he's off the deep end.
But I see how he could reach that conclusion. Whether or not you agree with this or not in question, you could see how a person could go from reading this one pole to that conclusion, or at least I could see him going crazy based off of that. The thing is, I know better, So I'm going to help you to know better as well. I'll start first off, ras musen poll very very right leaning pole, very rightly. They're known for that. Right, a slim majority is still
a majority. But remember there's when when people do polling, there's you know, do you agree with this statement? Do you disagree with this statement? And often enough there is uh, don't know enough about the statement to respond or have no response or you know, offer no, you know whatever. So in his determination that nearly have black people disagree with this, it doesn't account for the people who refuse to respond, you know, et cetera. Another thing that we don't.
Nearly have of the black people that were polled and responded, that could be seventeen people. There you go, I'm not saying that's so, but just.
Again, and where where were those people from? Yeah, you know, exactly are they from the South? Where they where they've had really rough time with you know, racial relations and so forth. But here's the thing that is I think the most important thing for everyone to.
Know about.
When you ask the statement it's okay. When you ask people if it's if it's okay to be white, that's very similar to asking like, okay, do you agree with the statement? Let me ask you a question, Q. Do you agree with the statement black power? It's an honest question. You can say no if you don't, But do you agree with the statement black power? Someone said black power would be like yeah, men, it's fine, yes, okay. Cool. Now, if somebody came and said white power. How would that
make you feel? Is it a different single word answer?
Because because that statement is very, very problematic, That's all I needed.
That's all I needed. That was a perfect answer. Okay, so watch this. The reason why black power is different from white power is because white power is rooted in the oppression of black people. The statement and black power is meant to galvanize and energize and fortify and movement an idea of black people pursuing equality, pursuing fairness, pursuing you know, representation, et cetera. Right, so, the spirit behind the statement is very different. Even though you just change
black to white in the black power white power. I want to take it a step further, if I may. I am a part of a group. I've said this on the show before. I'm a part of a group on and Reddit, and this group is the opposition. You know. We do a show here where we do our best to have conversations Black conversations, and oftentimes we share this stage with our AAPI brothers and sisters, our Hispanic brothers and sisters, our Native brothers and sisters, our lgbt q
I A plus brothers and sisters. We've even had officers chime in on the show here, and we find spouses and we find exactly I remember that, Yeah, And we find that those systems that the officers subscribe to are very problematic. Right, but we do recognize that brotherhood is central and fellowship and love is central to our mission here on this show. Right, However, I need to know what people who don't subscribe to that philosophy are saying
and doing and how they feel. So rather than just subscribe to a bunch of like pro Hispanic, pro black, you know, lgbt Q, I A positive you know, you know, next Shark for my AAPI, brothers and sisters, you know, all those things where I get my information, I also subscribe to people who would be very much opposed to even the fellowship that we try to create, the environment that we try to create on the show. And one such subscription that I have is through Reddit, and it's
called It's Okay to Be White. I've been a member as long as I've been on this show. When do we make this show? In September of twenty twenty, right, ever since then, I've been on in that group and that subreddit, just a fly on the walls reading all these things that these very very conservative, often you know,
very masculine energy behind a lot of the posts. What they feel, why they feel like the world is crumbling around them, why they feel they're under attack being replaced, why black people are all criminals and ugly and whatever whatever it is that they think that's worth posting that day, it's all there. And in my estimation, it is a bonafide racist group. It is a group where racist people can go and celebrate and share their racist ideas with
each other and have a sense of community. Right And because they're doing it out in front of people, and because they don't use the N word, because it's moderated, you know, or I don't know that Reddit allows that language or whatever. But because they don't do that, they can tell themselves that they're not racist. They're just dealing with the real right. But what in effect is that it is very very extremely mean spirited. It is not
rooted in fellowship and growth and togetherness and building. In fact, it's rooted in the opposite. You can't tell me otherwise because I've been a member for years. Okay, now the name of that group once again, it's okay to be white. Now we talked about the spirit of a statement. Okay, white power versus black power. I got another one for Q. You're gonna love this one. Our listeners are gonna love this one, especially the ones that know black lives matter. What does that mean?
It is an affirmation of oppressed, marginalized groups right to simply exist important to point out, not even to pursue happiness, not even to thrive, not even to live a full life, just to exist because the world around them is constantly trying to drive home the idea that those lives are without worth and that they're meaningless, and that their pain and their loss of life means nothing to the greater community around them.
Masterful, masterful, Now you know what's coming next, right, White lives matter?
Okay, So remember the last question he asked and the last statement that he said, No, they don't, No, they don't. All that stuff you just said no, And then that's all. That's the only reason that phrase even exists, you know, the last phrase you asked about and the answer you gave no.
That's the only reason that no, white lives matter is no period.
All that stuff you just said no.
So the point here is that oftentimes these statements are rooted in the oppression, the subjugation, the silencing, the disenfranchisement of marginalized people, in this case black people. So if you were to pull black people similarly and say is white power a concept you can get behind, you might get similar results to this ras museen pole. You know, if you pulled black people and ask them, do white lives matter? In principle? The language absolutely? Is it okay
to be white? The language absolutely, But the spirit behind the statement is something very different. Of course, it's okay to be white. Of course, white lives matter. Like it's the weirdest thing that sometimes we have to say that to remind people like, yeah, we love human beings, you know, we just don't like the spirit behind these things, these statements that rise up in opposition to the group that really needs the affirmations. It's not even thinly veiled racism.
It is out loud, in front, in the middle of the street racism. And you know, far be it from me to call something that when it's not, but that's what it is. But when it is there, it is, call it. What else am I supposed to say? There has never been a need to even ask a question, is it okay to be white to black people, as though black people have some control over that that the nature of the question is silly. But what they do is they divorce the spirit of the statement from into the language.
Right, They divorce the spirit of that intention.
And that's what happened with this guy that does the Dilbert thing because the media that has fed that to him, in this case Rasmussen has not provided proper context.
Intentionally, there you go.
And because of their right leaning nature, they're sowing additional division. It may as well say, like I said, it may as well say do you agree with the statement white power? Because most folks are going to be like, no, do we want white people to be empowered as human beings? Sure,
we want all human beings to be empowered. But that statement, that particular phrase doesn't mean what you're trying to pass it off as ras musen and you know that and then mist and then this guy is particularly susceptible to it because the world around him has told him that he's losing as a result of very natural changes, human changes, evolution of you know, population, culture, etc. You know, I looked up the definition of conservative and some of the synonyms.
One of them said stick in the mud, and I was like wow. I was like, whoa, And that's not mean. You can look it up yourself. Stick in the mud like I have. I don't want anything to change. Well, the only constant is change, sir, allow me to continue reading. After receiving widespread pushback for his offensive rant, Adams described himself as getting canceled, but cartoonists argued that he is simply being held accountable for his remarks. Quote by Adams
saying he's been canceled. It's him not only owning up to his responsibility for the things he has said and the effect they have on other people, said Ward Sutton, who has contributed illustrations to The New York Times, in New Yorker and Rolling Stone. He goes on, he's trying to turn himself in to a victim when he himself
has been a perpetrator of hate. Sudden added, he said newspapers are not obligated to run Dilbert, and they have the editorial right to cut ties with Adams if they no longer want him as a voice in their paper. All right, now, this next little piece comes from Yahoo. Quote it's almost entirely white people that canceled me. It might be entirely because they're the one that owned the publishing companies and the newspapers, he told News Nations Chris
Cuomo in an interview. He goes on to say Black America is actually completely fine, both conservative and liberal, if they see the context, he added, citing people who contacted him about the fiasco. In the wake of his controversial video. Adams has stood by what he said and even received support from people who are frustrated by what they call cancel culture, including billionaire Elon Musk.
Of course, so the guy who increased the use of the N word by like five thousand of you got support from him.
You see what I'm saying. So you're starting to see these people who are very powerful, these people with voices, these people who are influential, they have platforms, and they
really feel this way. And you, our listener, need to know the context in case you don't have it, because we feel like you might end up in places where you can actually start to have important conversations and start to shift the narrative at the dinner tables with your family around Thanksgiving dinner, and you know, on road trips with your friends from college that might maybe they grew up a little different, you know, so understanding nuanced context,
you know, and the opposite side of a conversation I think fills in some really meaningful gaps. We're going to come back after a quick tick, but we're going to talk more about Elon Musk and of course cities, folks,