062423 The Stereotypes that Harm us All (Part 2)

rams If you don't like it here, leave that. That's that's that's unacceptable, because that would be me failing you, my non black brothers and sisters. You deserve better than what you've been own. We're also going to discuss some the roots of some stereotypes in our way black history facts to stick around for that as well. But right about now, let's take a break and let's talk about becoming a better ally ba Ba. So today's Baba Baba is sponsored by Unknown Union, the fashion how situated at

the intersection of meaning, innovation, and culture. More info checkout Unknown Union dot com. I'm going to be reading from Essence magazine. A skate park, A skate park sorry in California, has been named in honor of Tyree Nichols, a black motorist who was killed in January and what prosecutors said was a fatal beating by police in Tennessee during a traffic stop. Obviously, we talked about Tyree Nichols, and still

talk about Tyree Nichols. I'll keep reading. Nichols, who was an avid skateboarder, spent much of his time as a youth at the park on the outskirts of Sacramento. City officials and others held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the newly renovated skate park, now named for Nichols. Associated Press reports the twenty nine year old moved to Memphis, Tennessee, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic in twenty twenty and resided

with his mother and stepfather. He enjoyed past ten. He enjoyed photography, especially taking photos of landscapes and sunsets, and one of the cool things that happened. Many of you may know that I host a podcast for iHeart and Black Information Network. Q sometimes guest hosts on this podcast, and Q actually was able to interview Tyree Nichols's good friend Jerome Neil Junr, who I believe was involved in this effort, and you got to talk to him for a little bit, right.

coming the rest of that conversation. Now listen. Okay, we're going to talk about protesting now. But I don't want this conversation to sound to you, our listener like.

believe it's something like that. And so voicing our concerns or complaining, as as this imaginary person might call it.

This was a recent interview that we did and we were asked about the origin story for this show here Civic Cipher and for those that don't know the origin story. This show was based out of the protests of twenty twenty. Q and I would.

by the news outlets saying that we're out rioting. These are not riots, as illustrated by the fact that we are here with our children, and indeed many of our allies are here with their children as well. There's no riots, there's no smoke, there's no burning, none of this sort of stuff. Right, But we would go home at the end of the day and watch the news and we would see that it was reported that there were riots, and it's like, well, that didn't happen.

was happened, So I saw this stuff. They had the sound canons and all the police presidents and all that sort of stuff. They were targeting specific folks. I suspect they weren't targeting me and you because of our higher profile and our capacity to.

of the country at that time. You see police running after someone black, immediately you're like, oh my god, the worst could happen. This happened to us when we were pulled over in Mississippi. Everybody people were crying because they were fearing the worst about what could have happened to us based on what they were seeing our Internet of

our interaction with the police. Now, parts of those clips were being shared and then it was, like you said, they were kind of skewing the conversation in such a way to suggest that the protests were unsafe. The police and the protesters were fighting somehow, which isn't true. The police have guns, protesters have bullhorns. It's not the same.

You know what, I mean, But this is kind of what helps the media keep the viewership of the people who really want it to be true that black people are always complaining and that, you know, the people that have the privilege to whom equality feels like oppression.

enforcement responds, it's very very telling, you know. So the people are probably wondering about the wild black part, especially considering so many of the protesters here were not black, except the cause they were standing for was real black, very black, and therein lies the difference, even quote unquote their own are treated the way that we're treated if

you're standing up for us. And the largest example was January sixth, because prior to that, when the idea was Black Lives Matter, protesters will be present, the police militarized themselves tanks, riot gear and came out in recognition and came out in mass I'm not even talking about the technology. I'm talking about the physical president with big guns and big guns and full gear who make sure we didn't show up and harm any property. January sixth, a date

that they were made privy was coming. They were told we're gonna go, not just show up, we're gonna go take over, and they were conspicuously absent. Because white supremacy has a very hard time checking white supremacy a very hard time.

history or the better for marginalized people. Right. But it wasn't until after his death that the government took it seriously and actually changed some living what might have been. It wasn't Nixon. What's his name? I can't think of his name anyway, one of the presidents changed the laws after his death because there were so many eruptions around the country after that, so protests. Doctor King said that

a riot is the language of the unheard. Now there are people that push back and say, listen, you need to be patient. You guys need to be patient. These things move slowly. The wheels of society turned very slowly. This is a long road. I say that I occupy a different space, but yes, you do. Yeah, I occupy a different space. But I can say that because I'm

indeed marching on that road. Someone else in a position of power cannot say that to me because they don't get to define what justice should be like or how long it should take. And I want to quote James Baldwin. Actually, do me favorite. You can read the James Baldwin quote, because I know you love this one.

James Baldwin said, and I quote it has taken my father's time, my mother's time, my uncle's time, my brother's time, and my sister's time, my nieces and nephew's time. How much time do you want for your progress right the multiple lifetimes of our ancestors. We've already given that time. You've already taken that time. In what world do we get where we're going? Do I pass away knowing or having some type of understanding that for my grandchildren things

will be different, that things will be better. That's still a question.

I'm with you, So watch this now. We talked about protesting because often enough, protesting is the language that we have that is has been relatively consistent in terms of our plight, in terms of our arsenal toward achieving a more equitable America. Let me say what I'm gonna say, watch this when we want to vote, sometimes that's taken away from us. There I countless black men permanently disenfranchised because they've been they're convicted felons. We could talk about

that that is almost grotesquely unfair, but permanently disenfranchised. We can talk about access to voting. We can talk about jerrymandering, weakening the strength of the black person's vote, which weakens the value of the black person's experience in terms of

input to the relative to the overall American experience. Right, And so protesting is kind of that last vestige, that last tool that many people feel like they have, and for that to then be villainized and conflated with rioting is exceptionally unfair and it's based on stereotypes that I do want to challenge. Now, I want you to jump in right here, but I got some examples. It will help me challenge this idea of what a protest is.

on that anymore. And once upon a time, I think the idea of a protest was so scary, right, there would be in some cases like boycotts and strikes. There are fiscal damages that happen. People lose money and they respond to that. But that's just going up in mass upset does not tend to really move the needle like it once did.

being aggressive rioters when we're protesting. So I'm gonna read some stuff about riots for sports teams around the country that celebrated or I guess rioted after this form of celebrations or of loss. I'm just read these just so you know, and I want you to ask yourself, why is there no stereotype that these people riot? But why is there a stereotype to black people. I'm gonna read Denver Nuggets. Obviously they won the national championship recently. This

was a couple weeks ago, maybe two hours later. Thousands went to McGregor Square and destroyed it. In Boston in two thousand and four, two thousand and seven, and twenty and thirteen, the Red Sox was the baseball team. Everybody got out there and rioted all three of those years. Boston, Okay, Detroit. Nineteen eighty four, Detroit has a team called Tigers. They probably played some cool sport. And then the Detroit Tigers are a baseball team. Ooh, that's what I was on,

all right. And then nineteen ninety the Detroit Pistons. That's a basketball team. I know them. In twenty eleven, the Vancouver Canucks lost the twenty eleven Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins, and fans trashed parts of the city, causing millions of dollars in damage. Philadelphia Eagles they ride all the time in Philly. Chicago. In nineteen ninety one through ninety three, that was basketball. Denver in ninety six the

Avalanche is the hockey team. Ninety eight the Broncos ninety nine, two thousand and one, the Avalanche hockey team again and in Cleveland in nineteen seventy four baseball team. All Right, sit with it. It's sound for the way Black History Effect sponsored by Underground Beach Club from the streets to the beach, the finest in beach where visit Underground Beachclub dot com. Today I'll be reading from the National Museum

of African American History and Culture slash the Smithsonian. Shout out to our people over at the Smithsonian for working with us all the time. We're discussing widespread and pervasive stereotypes of African Americans.

reduced to caricatures in popular culture. Decades old ephemera and current day incarnations of African American stereotypes, including Mammy, Mandingo, sapphire, Uncle Tom, and watermelon, have been informed by the legal and social status of African Americans. Many of the stereotypes created during the height of the Transatlantic slave trade were used to help commodify black bodies and justify the business

of slavery. For instance, an enslaved person forced under violence to work from sunrise to sunset could hardly be described as lazy, Yet laziness, as well as characteristics of submissiveness, backwardsness, lewdness, treachery,

and dishonesty historically became stereotypes assigned to African Americans. The Maimi stereotype developed as an offensive racial caricature constructed during slavery and popularized primarily through minstrel shows in sad slave Black women were highly skilled domestic workers working in the homes of white families and caretakers for their children. The trope painted a picture of domestic workers who had undying loyalty to their slaveholder as caregivers and counsel. This image

ultimately sought to legitimize the institution of slavery. The mammy stereotype gained increased popularity after the Civil War. War and into the nineteen hundreds. During this time, her robust, grinning likeness was attached to mass produced consumer goods from flower to motor oil. Considered a trusted figure in white imaginations, Mamey's represented contentment and served as a nostalgier for whites

concerned about racial equality. The Pole Milling Company's incartionation of the smiling domestic aunt Jemima became synonymous with the mammy stereotype. In eighteen ninety nine, the company hired real life cook Nancy Green to portray the character at various state and world affairs. The stereotype and the overweight, self sacrificing, independent mammy figure would grow alongside the American film industry through works including Birth of a Nation, Imitation of Life, and

Gone with the Wind. All Right, Uncle Tom Uncle Tom, written by Harry Beecher Stowe in eighteen fifty two, featured the title character as a large, broad chested, powerfully made man whose truly African features were characterized by an expression of grave and steady good sense. United with much kindliness and benevolence, He forfeits his own chance at escaping bondage and loses his life to ensure the freedom of other slaves. It's a much different idea of what Uncle Tom means

in the black community today, all right. The stereotype of Uncle Tom is innately submissive, obedient, and inconstant desire of wide approval. The term became popular during the Great Migration, when many Southern born blacks moved to northern cities like New York, Chicago, and Detroit. With them, they brought codes

of condom expected and hostile Jim Crow environments. The stereotype was first publicly recorded during an address by Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association member Reverend George Alexander MacGuire in nineteen nineteen. Do not call a black person and uncle Tom unless you know what you're talking about. That is a serious accusation. Please be very careful to deal with that,

all right. Sapphire The sapphire caricature from the eighteen hundreds to the mid nineteen hundreds popularly portrayed black women as sassy, emasculating, and domineering. Unlike the Mammy figure, this trope depicted African American women as aggressive, loud, and angry, and direct violation of social norms. The Sapphire stereotype earned its name on the CBS television show Amos and Andy, an association with the character Sapphire Stevens, airing from nineteen fifty one to

nineteen fifty three with an all black casts. Sapphire Stevens was the wife to George Kingfish Stevens, a character depicted as ignorant and lazy, fueling Fire's rage. During the Gym Crow period, when blacks were often beaten, jailed, or killed for arguing with whites, these fictional characters would pretend chastise whites,

including men. Their sassinus was supposed to indicate their acceptance as members of the white family, and acceptance of that sassinus was implied that slavery and segregation were not overly oppressive. Watermelon before it became a racist stereotype in the Jim Crow era, watermelon once symbolized self sufficiency among African Americans. Following emancipation, many Southern African Americans grew and sold watermelons,

and it became a symbol of their freedom. Many Southern whites reacted to this self sufficiency by turning the fruit into a symbol of poverty. Watermelon came to symbolize a feast for the unclean, lazy, and childlike to shame black watermelon merchants, Popular ads and including postcards, pictured African Americans stealing,

fighting over, or sitting in streets eating watermelon. Watermelons being eaten hand in mouth without utensils made it impossible to consume without making a mess, and therefore branded a public nuisance all right. Last one Mandingo, the black buck, conjured by the minds of enslavers and auctioneers to promote strength and rereading ability and agility of muscular young black men.

The mandingo trope was born while under the violence of enslavement, a physically powerful black man could be subdued and brutally forced into labor. Emancipation brought with it fears that these men would exact sexual revenge against white men through their daughters, as depicted in the film Birth of a Nation. The reinforcement of the stereotype of the Mandingo as animalistic and brutish gave legal authority to white mobs and militias who tortured and killed black men for the quote safety of

the public. Headlines of newspapers across the nation beginning around the turn of the century, document a phrenzy of arrests, attempted lynchings, and murders of black brutes accused of insulting or assaulting white women. I feel like this is kind of the reason that they were able to rile so

many people up and take the life of Emmettil. Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson epitomized the mandingo or black brute of white imaginations in the flesh, called a beast brute and a coon in print, Johnson's relationships with white women took up as much newsprint as his fighting abilities. With his nineteen ten victory over James Jeffries, promoted as the great White Hope, Johnson brought white fears to a head.

The result was weeks of riotous mob violence across the nation that left thousands of African American communities and lives in ruin. So that's just a handful of stereotypes that the origins of a lot of those stereotypes, and they've evolved and they've taken on news shapes, but you know, those are harmful. They shape outcomes. Clearly, we talked about I mentioned Immettil. You know that had they not been coerced into thinking something that wasn't true.