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