Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher. I am your host, Ramses job.
Is Ramsey's Jah. I am q Ward. You are listening to Civic Cipher.
You know what's crazy?
No, I don't know what's crazy.
Allow me to tell you stereotypes. Stereotypes are kind of wild, yeah, and that's what we're going to talk about today. One of the things that comes up quite a bit in our conversations with people has to do with their upbringing being surrounded by stereotypes with respect to black people. So today's show, we're going to be dealing with a lot of stereotypes. We're going to talk about an incident in Ohio of a couple that was shopping while black man
had the police called on them. And that's a very traumatic experience for a lot of black people at different points in our lives, and but it's it's kind of a shared trauma and and for folks that may not have access to it. We're gonna give you some insight.
Wild black as a suffix is really yeah.
Sure. We're also gonna spend some time talking about protesting wild black, that that wild black suffix often enough, Uh kind of makes it feel, you know, as reported by the news or just kind of in conversation, it makes it feel a little bit more sinister, a little bit more criminal, feel sinister, right, because it's been designed to and that's in that way, sure, sure so, uh. And we're also gonna use our way black history fact to talk about some the basis of a lot of these
stereotypes as well. So a lot in store for you today, and hopefully this will be an educational episode for a lot of folks who've been wondering where the basis of all this stuff comes from. So we're definitely gonna get into that. But first and foremost, we are going to be celebrating a tad bit of EBNY excellence. Today's Abny Excellence is brought to you by Major Threads for the finest in men'swear. Checkmajor Threads dot com. And we have a video that we're going to play.
Hi.
I'm Dane Benton actor, Thank you and proud CMU alum. Earlier tonight, CMU and the Tony Awards presented the twenty twenty three Excellence and Theater Education Award. And while I am certain that the current Grand Wizard. I'm sorry, excuse me, governor of my home state of Florida, will.
Be exchanging sure, Betty will be changing the name of this following town immediately.
We were honored to present this award to the truly incredible and life changing Jason zembic Young and.
Okay, So, in short, that wonderful display of courage or calling out what we believe to be racist behavior and divisive leadership on the part of Ron DeSantis. Calling that out was Broadway star Denay Benton, who's known for her roles in Hamilton and Into the Woods. Of course, she compared DeSantis to Ku Klux Klan leader as she acknowledged Florida teacher Jason's Zimbac Young as the winner of this
year's Excellence and Theater Education Award. And that amount of courage and of course on that type of stage is a beaming example of ebony excellence if I've ever seen it, So I salute you. So now let's talk about shopping. So, you know, off the top of your head, can you think of any stories from your life where shopping was a particularly traumatic experience that you believe the trauma was based solely on your or the additional trauma was based on you being black.
For some of our listeners, I don't want to insult them by making this some singular occurrence that stood out in my head from the one time it happened.
Like of course, all the time, all the time.
There's a movie when I was younger that was written, directed, and produced I believe by Eddie Murphy called Boomerang, and I remember there was a massive uproar in Hollywood and in the media because there was a movie about executives, like advertising executives and in the in the fashion and like fragrances and you know, in that in that whole world, and none of the main characters are white, and people were like really insulted and angered by it when that
had been the case and then reverse for all of history, and no one had anything to say. And there is a scene in that film where these very very wealthy cosmetic marketing and advertisers, they're executives, are shopping at a men's clothing store and the salesperson immediately reminds them that there's no layaway and that they don't keep cash in the store. These three gentlemen have on suits. It's very, very clear that they are well to do if you
will again, you know, marketing executives. But this salesperson saw three black men. It didn't care. It didn't care or it didn't matter that they had money or how they were dressed or how they spoke. They were black, so they had to be there to either steal something or they clearly could not afford anything that was there. So whenever they would grab something that they liked, he would
make it known to them how expensive it was. That is, twelve hundred dollars or you know, whatever the price was, to kind of discourage them from even looking, and then reminded them we don't have layo. And when one of them simply suggested that they were okay, before he walked away and left them alone, made sure that they knew we don't keep cashing the store. Yeah, I think that speaks to that's sort of like art.
Imitating life because that was a movie, but that I think that illustrates how we have this as black people, this collective trauma. This is almost like a shared experience. I know that if I encounter someone I've never met before but grew up in the United States, was black, might have grown up in a different sety different state that they will understand the feeling of shopping while black.
I mean, like you said, art imitating life. That's why that scene was in the movie. Everybody black that saw that movie understood it was probably funny immediately.
Not funny because it's funny, but funny because the movie perhaps captured it so well and it was so relatable. Right, So in that way, now I want to share a story about when I was I believe it was my first year of high school. But first I want to discuss why we're talking about this. So, as I mentioned, there is a video that has gone viral and the
Black Information Network actually covered the story. So I'll read a bit about the story just to kind of bring you the listener up to speed on what kind of triggered this. Really, this whole show stereotypes, right, So I'll read a bit. Bed Bath and Beyond is facing online backlash after staff at an Ohio store called the police on a black couple and accused them of shoplifting because they had too many quote high ticket items in their cart.
Footage posted by Lamar Richards on June sixteenth shows him and his boyfriend confronting store employees at a location in Toledo while a police officer is present, and this is him talking quote, I'd like to understand why police were called. That's very simple. Why were the police called with the three black people thinking that we were shoplifting? He asked a female worker. He goes on to say, I paid six hundred dollars for my things, so obviously I didn't shoplift.
I want to understand why you thought I was shoplifting. And then the staff members says, if there's a big purchase item, there's usually a question. We just want to make sure. Richard said, okay, usually a question. I can understand that, but police being called, I can't understand that. So we obviously we saw this video and we recognize that feeling that Richards and his partner were having in
that moment. I believe there was a comment that he made that was very similar to the scene that you just described in Boomerang Q where he says to the Richard says to the employee at the bed bathroom beyond, he says to her, I paid for this with a debit card, not with a credit card, using money that I earned with my degree.
That was a statement earn from my job with the exactly, that's a bar That's a bar ain't it.
And you know for other people that I feel like, oh, you know, it's just a misunderstanding. Oh, these people exist, que I see your face.
I'm sure they do. The problem is you'd have to be able to provide me a counter example, that's what to present it to me as a misunderstanding. And I know you can't because it doesn't happen.
Right, But these people exist. And so for those people in your world, our listener, maybe you recognize that this is a thing, but maybe the people around you don't, and the people that you have conversations with and trying to help us tell our stories. So for the people that think that this is it might just be a misunderstanding, don't make a big deal out of it. Why are you filming, why are you recording? Clearly we're just protecting
our interest. We didn't know it was an honest mistake, that sort of stuff, right, Because people feel this way, Those people are not looking beyond the incident that is
in front of them. Those people are not realizing that, indeed, it is a lifetime of having that sort of monkey on your back in a manner of speaking, that nervousness when shopping through or walking through a store shopping you know, you know, the craziest thing, just a real quick example, The craziest thing for me is when I go into a store hoping to find something and I don't find what I'm wanting and I have to leave the store
empty handed. It plagues me constantly. The reason for that is because if I go into the store and I don't find what I want and I have to leave the store empty handed, I steal. At forty years old, have that constant companion that fear, that trauma that says they're going to think I came in here to steal.
Something really really sad and really infuriating. Truth to what you just said is, as soon as you said it, my stomach started hurting because you know exactly, I knew you're why without you having to even express it. And it's that way with going into a store not buying. It's that way when getting poor service and still getting
obligated to tip. You know, it is a you know that, like you said, that companion that's always with us where we have to make these decisions through this prism that is so incredibly unfair, so incredibly frustrating, but so incredibly ever present.
It's constant.
Yeah.
Yeah, So let me give you an example once upon a time. This is my mind. You have a ton of examples, but this one was very scary for me, very very scary for me. First, let me give you a little bit of background. If you're new to this show, you may not know this. My father was a minister. I don't say that because I believe it's necessarily virtuous. I say that because I understood quite well the difference between right and wrong according to the majority of the
principles that we share as human beings. It speaks to a type of upbringing moral code. Yeah, trying to come across as virtuous. Yes, okay, thank you. So I knew better than this. Still, In addition, I recognized that the consequences or doing anything outside of what is expected of you while being black are more severe than the consequences of doing something outside of what it is expected of you while being white. In other words, if I, a black person, wants to drink beer as an underage teenager
in high school, the consequences would be far worse for me. Potentially, if the police showed up, then they might be for you know, my friends who were not as melanated, and on and on the consequence for everything. Beer is kind of a low hanging example, but you can imagine.
I mean, but it's good to use a slightly benign example, thank you, to point out the contrast. Right, you show up to a party where the teenagers don't look like us, and it's a slap on the wrist and almost very literally, you know, hey, don't do this again, we'll tell your parents kind of thing. Yeah, we're going to jail. Chargers are being pressed, lawyers.
Have to be involved parents.
Hopefully that's all that happened. Hopefully this does not escalate into something far more sinister for no reason at all, except because of the way that you live.
Sure, sure, and it's important that so a lot of people that don't live in this skin or have the black experience in the United States of America. And by that I don't mean by proximity, I mean by actually waking up inside of a black body with melanin, but you're body producing melanin that turns it brown, beautiful brown color. That experience, living that life, you cannot know the reality. And so for people who might say, listen, you're just
imagining these things. It's the world is a fairer place than you think. We elected a black president. You know, people think this right, You cannot make that judgment only having lived the part of the experience that afford you the privilege to even fix your mouth to say that, I'll continue as a team. I went to the mall after school, which is what we did once upon a time.
We didn't all have cell phones and whatever. You know, we actually had to hang out with each other, and that was our our friend group and our followers, et cetera, right, and a place to do. This place to be social was at the mall. Right, went to the mall one day and went into it might have been a It was a drug store, like a Walgreens or something. And I walked into the store through the outside door. In other words, I was using this store to gain access
to the mall. It had two entrances, one from the mall side and one from outside, so I'm coming in from the outside. Walked into the store just fine. But mind you, I just got out of school, so I had my backpack on. I'm walking through the store. Remember I'm not buying anything. I'm just going into the mall, and when I get to the front of the store, the alarm thing beeps and and you know, I've been through some really tense moments in my life. I've I've
had to come to terms with my own mortality. I have not been that scared maybe four or five times ever. Because when that alarm beaped, those people got to manhandling me, and they were yelling and screaming, and I didn't know what was going on because of course I didn't steal anything. I mean, just to give you the endisery, I didn't steal anything, but the way that they approached me as though I was already convicted of the capital murder, you know what I mean, like they had they wrestled me.
You know, I'm not a I'm physically not a big person. I was much smaller when I was in school. I was a child steal. I might have been fourteen in ninth grade. You know, they were, you know, and these these are men, you know, the mall security, that sort of person. I don't remember if it was police or not, but it might have been because there were so many people there, and they they pushed me over the counter. After they took my backpack and they had my hands
behind my back and they were just holding me. I didn't get handcuffed or anything, but they were holding me there and it was so aggressive. And then my friends that I was with they were powerless because remember their children too, so they're standing on the other side and they're thinking the worst. They're like, oh my god, Rams got caught stealing. And the start, how did he steal me?
We just walked through the store. So the end of that story is they started going through my backpack because obviously they were checking my person to see if I had anything, and then go through my backpack and then they take out They first looked at my background. There's nothing in my backpack except homework and like pencils and stuff. So they're putting everything. They put the backpack through the beeping machine or whatever to see if you the shoplifting gait.
I guess, and then my backpack beep. I remember that. And then they started taking my backpack everything out of its the big zipper and then the little tiny zipper, and they're putting everything through to try to figure out what was beeping the thing. Then they took out there used to be these notebook holders, and they were like kind of like trapper keepers sort of things. Basically would hold all your homework and your notes and everything from
your different classes. They took out my trapper keeper thing and they held that through.
The uh, trapper keeper thing because that is from a generation. Yeah you may not know, most of us know what a trapper keeper. I'm watching his face as he's trying to describe it. It's a folder. They'd be like saying, you know, a Coca cola thing, Like, no, just a coke. Yeah, trapper keeper. Yeah, that's what I had. Anyway, So they held it through the machine in it or the gate thing, and they beat. So then they zipped it open and trapper keeper and kept everything safe.
So they zipped it.
It's basically like a like a folder or a briefcase, but for kids.
Right opened it up. I opened it up and it still had that tag that causes the gates to beat in it. Now you could look visibly look at it and see that it was worn, it was well used. I had it for maybe I had it all that year, but I suspect because I didn't grow up with a lot of money. If the stuff still was working let it ride. I probably had it for a few years, but that little sticker that causes the alarm to people
still in the older. And so when I initially purchased it because I did put well, my mom purchased it for me to go to school. It had it in there and they never took it off right, So that, at fourteen years old, confirmed exactly what it was that I thought might happen if I was suspected of shoplifting. Call the authorities. It's a four alarm fire. Let's get everybody down here. There's a criminal, you know, and they don't come to the table with Hey, this might be
a misunderstanding like they do. Because I've seen this happen at affluent department stores, because I shop in places like Built.
In Benefited, the doubt for everyone else is triggering.
Yeah, excuse me, ma'am. We must have forgotten to take something off of one of your items. Can we check that out and make sure that you're okay? Even if that person is suspected of stealing.
You spare them the humiliation person is stealing, Yeah, you spare them with humiliation, and in my case, they were hurting me.
I'll never forget that like, I was that afraid I have in that moment, I somehow disappointed my mother, my family, my friends, my community. You know, I always tried to do the right thing. I always tried to be a good person. I'm not going to say that I've always been perfect. I've had to learn what it means to be a man. Yeah, that's called growing up. We're perfect.
It's not even a word that I can use for anything I've ever done throughout my entire existence. Somebody called me perfect before it made me cringe.
Yeah that's fair. Yeah, we are learning. But listen, what's this? I think this this, this example and your example also shows how the point I'm trying to make, which is I had to learn despite having a strong moral code and an upbringing kind of knowing more or less what was right for mom, I had to learn what it meant to be a good man. I had to learn. And oftentimes we don't have the grace as black men to be able to learn, to make a mistake and
learn from it. We're held to a standard of adults when we're children and treated like adults.
That's because two things are true. One is that that criminal element is baked in if you look like that. So the reason why you're not giving any grace is because you're not making a mistake. You're being a criminals. That's what you are, That's who you are. So you're doing what it's in your nature to be that, right, you know what I mean. And we're assumed to also always be poor. You know. I thought of an example why you were telling your story, just to make this
as quick as I possibly can. When I was shopping for my car, yes, the car that I have now, and I remember I was asking all these questions and the guy said to me in these words, so I ended up, of course, not buying a car from him. You're asking all these questions, sir, can you even afford this car?
You know?
And I was like wow. Now, of course I didn't work suit to the car dealership, but to be petty, I did screenshot my account balance at the time, and it's just so happened that this was this way. I don't want anybody to read into this. I had enough money in my account that day to buy the car cash. So a nice car, the sales you, a very nice car. The sales manager at that dealership got a screenshot of
my account balance. I did not have that kind of money for real, but that day the account balance was popping and I got to send that screenshot to that sales manager. As you can imagine, he was very upset and did a lot to try to win my business back, but it was too late, because I knew the only reason this person assumed I couldn't afford this car was because I looked like Q.
I think Q is a good looking man. I appreciate you, brother, Yes, sir. Likewise, listen up, we got a lot more here. We're going to take a pause for the cause.
While we're black man, that's sure.
Stereotypes, man, they really do have a real world impact. We're going to talk more about it in just a second.