Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you back to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. I'm your host, ramses.
Job, he is Ramsey's jah, I am q Ward. You are tuned in the Civic Cipher and bid you are and listen. We know that there was an assassination attempt on the former president. We know that he has picked a VP. We know, we know, we know. If you want to hear our thoughts on this, our takes on it. We have done quite a number of things for the Black Information Network, and we've shared a lot on our
social media. Today, however, we are going to be talking about some things that we've been wanting to get to for this show. The first one, we are going to answer the question why are all the black kids sitting together at the lunch table right. We're going to have a conversation about culture, conversation about race, and a conversation about the difference and how you can find yourself welcome at that lunch table. For the second part of the show, we are going to be talking about what it means
to be blinded by privilege. This is another thing that folks have a tough time with.
It's kind of like this statement, can't see the forest from the trees, you can't see the picture from inside the frame, that sort of thing. So we are going to break down those two things, especially because just in terms of conceptual topics, these are things that we've needed
to get to. So my hope is that the show doesn't sound dated because again we've addressed some of the goings on in media, but this is something that we've needed to get to because we feel like that is more consistent with the premise of this show right now. So before we get there, as always, we are going to start off with some Ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall.
Today's Ebney Excellence is sponsored by Actively Black. There is Greatness in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. Today's story coming from Ebony magazine. For over four decades, Captain Teresa Claiborne has set out to not only rewrite the history books in the world of aviation, but to also leave a profound legacy that will serve as a blueprint
for generations to come. A storied career that includes becoming the first African American female pilot in the United States Air Force in nineteen eighty two, being the first black woman to serve as a command pilot and instructor for the Boeing KC one five Strado tanker, and the second black woman to be hired by United Airlines as a commercial pilot. Claiborne recently took her final flight as she soared into her next chapter. I'm sorry retirement. God bless
her for that. The flight took off last week from Jerseys EWR International Airport as it headed to Lisbon, Portugal, making her final return back to New Jersey on May twenty twenty four. Captain Claibourne recalls the emotions felt as she got into the cockpit for her last commercial flight. She said that quote taking my final commercial flight was
a bittersweet experience, She told Ebony. There was a profound sense of accomplishment and pride in having navigated a successful career, coupled with a touch of sadness knowing that a significant chapter of my life was closing. I felt immense gratitude for all people who supported me throughout my journey and for the opportunity to ensure or inspire future generations of aviators.
Stories like hers are important for so many obvious reasons, us as fathers understanding that our children need to see people in those places to know that they can and should aspire to get there one day themselves.
I love this. That's such a fantastic story. Okay, why are all the black kids sitting together at the lunch table? And this is this is just how we're broaching this subject. But this could be a number This could be asked a number of ways. Why are all the black kids sitting at the back of the bus laughing? Why are all the Hispanic kids congregating at the handball courts every day at lunchtime? This is like high school mentality? Or
why are all the the black employees? Why do they all take their their breaks in the parking lot at the same time every day? This sorts of thing, right, And my understanding, you know, having lived in this country, is that when a non black person sees black people congregating, rather than seeing that as a celebration of culture, as letting their hair down in a place that's familiar around people in audience that is familiar, it feels like that
group is somehow intentionally excluding them. The observer right. Same thing holds true with you know, when you're looking at Hispanic people and they're talking in Spanish or something like that, or in.
More straightforward examples HBCUs. That's a great Black fraternities and sororities. You know, the Fearless Fund that was set up to provide funding for minority women entrepreneurs or founders, all of these things, Black Student Union, the NAACP, we can go on. All of these organizations created out of the necessity for there to be a safe place for excluded groups, and that WE has somehow been flipped to be an exclusionary
term itself instead of the self reaffirming inclusive WE. So those all those organizations that we just named, when they say we, they mean that very inclusively for people who are otherwise excluded from every other space that exists.
Sure, sure, and I respect that for non black people when you're looking at black people congregating in the lunch room. Because that's the example that we're going to go with. Most everyone's had that experience at high school. You see all the black kids sitting at the lunch table, and they sit there every day and they laugh, and you don't you're not in on the joke, right, so you feel like, am I a part of am I what they're laughing at? You feel like, how come I can't
sit there? Why does that feel so exclusive? These people are excluding me? Right? And this is a real thing. I realized that you know, you might you the listener might not have had that direct interpretation of your experience, but you understand that some people may have.
Well, when your lived experience has provided you with inclusion at every step, when you step into a space that seems to exclude you, you feel it in a very, very pronounced way. They're used to walking in a space or into a room that is not curated specifically for you.
Well said, keep going? How dare they keep going?
Is the type of feeling that I think people get, And I think we'll touch on that actually in the second segment of our show.
Sure, yeah, absolutely so. I wanted to paint that picture for you because I feel like it's important to dissect this. Those small groups congregating and they look the same or similar, I should say, oftentimes those groups are a segment of the culture that exists on a given campus or in a given environment. Right, it might be work, it might be school, it might be whatever. But what you're seeing
is not necessarily race. You're seeing culture, right. Culture is something that you can celebrate, and culture and race often go hand in hand because you tend to have the same culture as people who look like you. That's a tendency. But these two things are very different. And the more you come to respect and understand and maybe even celebrate a culture, that is the degree to which you might
find yourself welcomed. And not because someone has to welcome you, but you generally don't feel as tense walking past the group every day, right, you might feel a little bit more welcome than that circle, in the same way that if you learned Spanish and you overheard some people speaking Spanish, it might not feel as scary because you know what they're saying. Indeed, you might not feel like, oh my god,
are they talking about it? And if they are, you would be able to pick up on you, so you can read between the lines instead of just defaulting to fear and anger.
And honestly, as an English speaking American, I've had that bit of being used to walking in spaces where everybody speaks English and there's an entitlement that comes with that, and then walking into spaces where there is a group speaking the language most comfortable for them. That's the thing that I've heard Americans get mad at people speaking their native language and their presence. And I flipped this scenario
every time I hear it. If you were in a foreign land where your language was not the language of the native speakers, and you heard someone speaking English, imagine how excited you would be, And imagine it's someone you know. You guys are going to engage in a excited, exuberant conversation in your native tongue because not only is it most natural to you, but the relief finally I can speak and freely without having to translate in my own mind this language that is not native to me.
Right.
So you know, my children, as some of our listeners know, are Black and Mexican. My son's first language is English, my daughter's first language is Spanish. So I have that dichotomy.
In my own home.
And there are times when they have family over and I have no idea what's being said, and I've had that moment of wondering, was that conversation and that laughter all about me? Which is kind of a crazy way to process things, but it comes from then almost entitlement and being used to always being included, even in something as simple as a conversation in a language that you don't speak.
See and and I think that's really important is because understanding where your default setting is, Understanding that did I go to fear? Did I go to concern? Is the ready assumption that they are talking bad about me, that they're laughing at me, is the ready assumption that I am somehow being intentionally excluded from this conversation. That is a great point to catch yourself and then rework your mental framework around your predicament, because the truth of the
matter is you pointed out a great example. Que imagine being in another country where everyone around you is speaking Let's say Vietnam. I've been to Vietnam, so I love Vietnam. It's a beautiful place. It is a beautiful place.
The way when trying to go back, let me know, Southeast Asia is wow.
But but yeah, if I'm walking around in the mall in Vietnam, I'm hearing Vietnamese everywhere. The moment I hear English, it could be in a commercial, it can be just a conversation across the way. My ears perk up right and there's someone that I can talk to, and we'll see, we'll learn a little bit later that that language is a big part of culture. Right, I'm going to use
the word that. I don't know if this is the right way to say this, and I've had a back and forth relationship with this word, but we will say it used to be called ebonics. More recently it's called African American vernacular English AAVE, basically black talk. Don't ever say that I can say that I'm black. You don't ever say that. You can say it, I can say it, you don't say that. But that's like a language unto ourselves.
Right, there's an unfortunate thing happening with regards to quote unquote our langue whiche. It's becoming homogenized because of the Internet, because of social media, people who are not a part of the culture speak like they are. And I was listening to an article on a podcast that I listened to Shout to Shout Out to Bomani Jones where they were speaking about how once upon a time, you knew where you were with the person based on that shared vernacular.
Yep.
And now a middle aged white person might use some teenage black people vernacular because they saw it on their social media and they've co opted it. And now you have no idea when speaking to someone, if you can't interact with them that we are not the same.
In a way that's most comfortable. I know exactly what you mean, and I'm glad you brought that up, because, yeah, the homogenization of what we would consent like it is a distinct language. Right now, you're hearing me speak to you in the King's English, right, this is a language that I won't say I've mastered, but I have a pretty solid command of the English language. If you heard me and Q talking with these mics off and there were these cameras was off and there was no lights,
we sound like we're speaking the way we normally speak. Right.
Q is from Detroit, Michigan. RAS is from Compton, California. So make no mistake. You could imagine, yeah, Nobe, you're using our same.
Voices, but the words that we use, you know, it's just a little bit more relaxed, right. And this is true when I'm around my family. This is true when I'm around people where the steaks aren't high, where there's no one to judge me. These people come from where I come from. If I ate expired oatmeal, they ate it too, you know what I mean. If I got food stamps, they got it too. There's no there's no
big eyes in little US, right. So now we're starting to delineate culture, right and again being in a space with someone that you're comfortable with, where you can speak your own language, and it's it's a little bit easier to follow when we talk about we're in the southwest of the United States, so we're close to Mexico down here.
It's it's very easy for us to use Mexican people who speak Spanish as the example here because we've grown up around well I've certainly grown up around Mexican people, but there's a significant population of Mexican books in in Detroit as well, and Middle Eastern people in Detroit as well.
And so one time for south West Detroit, one time for dearborn Michigan. There you go shout out to Michaldean friends, my Palestinian friends all day, and of course my Mexican family there you go to see.
Look all there, right, So have this come up. Well, I'm gonna share a bit from you, a bit from Cora I know, don't jump down my throat, but I just came across this and I thought it was interesting how this came about, So I'm gonna share just a bit the question says, I saw black students sitting separately from white students and dining halls of the University of Delaware. Why was that? Do blacks feel ill at ease near whites?
And there was a respec from a gentleman named brother Nikosi. Again, I don't know who this is, but you know, I think that the kids are stopped conversation going, so you don't have to necessarily take these words. But you know, again, we're starting our conversation here. Brother Nikosi says, I was also visiting that day at the university, and what I noticed was that all the white kids were sitting separate and apart from the black kids. Kids feel ill at
ease around blacks. Historically, there is a group that has told another group that they could only sit in one area of the bus, not eat in the same restaurant, use the same bathroom, etc. Do black people have a history of that. It might have been a nice gesture, considering that history for the white kids to come over and then invite the black kids to sit with them. So obviously it's being funny and kind of turning the
situation on its head. Also, graciously understand if the black kids declined, because if those white kids had learned anything about black history while they were in high school, they would have come to the same conclusion that many black people have that racial healing is a process, not an event. So to answer your question, given the historical relationship and current climate, maybe they did feel a little ill at ease.
It's possible, lastly, to be of most benefit for you, the question has to come has to become why did you feel the onus of mingling was on them under the circumstances. If you can be honest with yourself as to the framing of this question, you will have moved forward as a person. So that's a couple of ways to process a situation like that, not mad in any of those. And again we're providing thought experiments just so
that you can again grow as a person. But also our hope is that we're empowering people who can empower other people.
And I love his proposition of critical thinking there. He didn't shoot this person down. He just raised some very straightforward questions as to the reframing of the question itself, but not just the words on the paper or the words in that forum, the thoughts that led to that question.
Why did your mind it that way? And here are some reasons. Who's responsible, who's responsible for why why it looks like this, and who's responsible for.
Fixing who should actually be accountable with here?
Right? Right? And and that's a great place to start, because now we're going to talk indeed about culture and race and the difference. So for us we understand, I want to be very careful when I say this. I don't know, Yeah, I'll say it this way. I don't know if in all of the years that I've been alive, if I have ever been at an event or anything like that to celebrate my race. But I have, and I know this full well, been to several events places,
et cetera to celebrate my culture. Right, So race and culture are two different things, right, because I so, how about this culture? Culture is black? American race is black? Okay, there are black people who are in Brazil, and black people of course in Africa, black people in the Middle East, black people in Southeast Asia. I have nothing in common with them. I don't speak the language. I don't know too much or nothing about what they got going on.
The only thing that we have in common is the fact that we share a significant amount of melanin in our skin.
The interesting thing about race as a social construct is that it's lacking in so many ways of the connective tissue that people think they are assigning when they say all of those people are black. Denzel Washington made an example when I asked about, you know, race versus culture or color versus culture, and the example that he used was the sound of a straightening calm going through You're the hair of a child where he grew up. That is not a race thing. That is a culture there.
And that's just one example. But I remember that's sticking out. That is perfect so poignantly, like Yo, everyone I know knows what that sound. Then I get this conversation. However, RAMS just knew exactly where it was. I got to give my hair straighten. My sisters take care of my.
Hair for me. You know, for those that have seen my face, you know that I have a big afro that I wear. My sisters care for my hair. You know, my my friend's moms care for my hair, you know what I mean. And this is the part of my life. And they know that smell, and I know that smell, and they know this sound. And I'm old school, so I remember the hot comb used to have to go on this stuff, set it on the stove. Yeah, sto,
yeah it is. Yeah. So let me obviously we're talking about our lived experience, but let me share with you some like real definitions that you can take with you. So culture, the first definition says the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement, regarded collectively. An example is twentieth century pop culture. The second definition says the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or
other social group. An example is Caribbean culture. Right now, let's look at race. The first definition says, and the only will that we'll share each of the major groupings into which humankind is considered in various theories or context to be divided on the basis of physical characteristics or shared ancestry. Right, so, those are two different things. And what you may be seeing when you see a small group of people who all look the same, sitting in
the corner of the cafeteria or some equivalent. In your journey is you are seeing a celebration of these people partaking in enriching, in developing, withdrawing from exchanging with others who share indeed their culture.
And you might even see some people that don't share physical similarity, absolutely that absolutely experienced the same cultural, lived experience.
So again, there's twentieth century pop culture, right, So if you go to the pop club after school, you're going to see a lot of different people, right. But again, it's often easy to find folks that share your language. You know your upbringing and they know the smell of a hot comb, and so don't fill off put by it, learn in and grow