Another sad day in this country's history, another mass shooting. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher. I am your host, Ramsey's job. Big shout out to Maman q Ward, who is still globe trotting, but I promised this is the last week we will be without him. Fortunately, we have another guest in the studio, a longtime friend of the show was helping me as I broadcast from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. Doctor Camillo Wessenberg is back
in the building. Welcome back to the show. You thank you, okay, okay. And for those who don't know, doctor Westnberg is Professor
Emeritus of English and Music for over forty years. Is where as well as the second vice president for Political Action of the Maricopa County Branch of the NAACP, and she will be sitting in on some conversations that we definitely need to have, including, as I mentioned, the most recent mass shooting in Jacksonville, Florida, that was specifically targeting black people in a black community as they were going
about their lives. So we're going to take a little bit of time today to discuss the cesspit of hatred and the cancerous nature of chat online chat rooms that harbor these sorts of sentiments and allow these echo chambers to exist and ultimately manifest and death being honest, but
also other harms perpetuated against black and brown communities. And we're also going to spend the second part of the show talking about DEI training, diversity equity and inclusion training, and the recent attacks on DEI in the workplace and in other parts of life in America. And we are going to make a case not that we thought we needed to, but make a case for y DEEI training is good for all of us. That and so much more to stick around for for today's episode of Civic Cipher.
But first and foremost, we are going to discuss some ebony excellence. As always in today's ABNY, Excellence is sponsored by Major Threads for innovative fashionable sports. Were Checkmajor threads dot com. Today's reading comes from Bionnews dot com and we are talking about a fourteen year old girl who earned her third college degree before finishing her first year
of high school. According to Black Enterprise, Anita Bennett, age fourteen, made history when she graduated summa cum laude and received her Associates of Science from Cuyahoya Community College. As a freshman at Ohio Connections Academy, Bennett has already earned an Associate of Arts and an Associate of Technical Studies in
childcare Administration and Management. The fourteen year old was able to graduate with three degrees through Ohio's dual enrollment program College Credit Plus, which allows her to take high school and college courses at the same time, and it said she plans to complete a bachelor's degree before she graduates high school. Quote, when you don't know about college that kind of stuff, it can seem really easy, really hard,
and it could seem impossible at times. But just knowing that if you put your mind to it, you can do it, and that disguise the limit and you create your own boundaries, she said. The fourteen year old said her mom inspired her to work and push herself to achieve her goals. She goes on to say, seeing my mother and how hard she worked and how she got her business running and how successful it really was, inspired
me to go into that field as well. And I've always had a passion and love for children, so I knew I wanted to do something like that with my life. So seeing her already have a successful business, it only makes sense to me to take over when I get older, since I wanted to work in the childcare industry as well. And so today we salute you, Anita Ben at age fourteen for again having your third college degree before you
finished your first year of high school. That is spectacular, incredible, right, and of course it is an example of ed the excellence. Moving on, so the Jacksonville mass shooting. I know that I know that we have to go through it line
by line and detail what happened. But I'd like to ask you what your early thoughts were when you first heard about the shooting and put them in context of not just the recent attacks on black people and Hispanic people and Jewish and Muslim people that we've seen around this country in recent years, but also in the context of what your idea of terrorism is, your personal idea having lived rather longer than than I have.
Well, I suppose it was. It's happening again. Here it is again. I can't believe we are experiencing this again. We have had a history of African Americans being killed, assassinated by one person or groups of people, and it is history. It was occurring from my childhood, from slavery and up until today.
And I guess.
The question is, given that we are supposed to be a civilized society and improved society, a progressive society, a democratic society that has values, how is it that a segment of our population continues to harbor some of the sentiments that separate us and degrade people and see them as less than inferior to the extent that they have to pick up a weapon, go and kill someone and even kill themselves. What is it that is so innately a part of you that allows you to engage in
that type of activity. Where was your mind a few minutes before? And what do you go through physically? How do you see people through your eyes? Mind boggling to me that we have people who can walk in and randomly shoot people, chase them down and shoot people. It's happened again, and we keep saying that it's happened again. Oh, it's happened again. It isn't a novelty any longer. So what can we do within our society to change this pattern that we have Because it has become a pattern,
it's the norm. We need to find some mechanism to change it, and we stop and we give condolences to the family, and then the people come out and they put their flowers, and you know, they mong the loss of people, and still they go back in fear themselves.
We are a people.
In fear. We're not peaceful, and we are doing that to ourselves. We are fostering that type of human environment in which we are existing now, and we have the capacity to charge that.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Now, in case you are not entirely aware of what it is we're talking about, which I'm sure you are, I have to paint a picture for those of us who are just getting up to speed. So I'm gonna share a little bit from CNN. Jacksonville gunman was turned away from an HBCU before racist shooting
that killed three at a nearby store. Authorready say, all right, the gunman who killed three people Saturday at so it's sort of been last Saturday at a Dollar General in Jackson, Florida, had earlier been turned away from the campus of a historically black university just blocks away from the site, shooting authorities said was a targeted attack against black people. The gunman, identified as twenty one year old you know, we don't say their names on this show. Bought a handgun in
April and an Air fifteen style rifle in June. The sheriff said he lived with his parents in nearby Orange Park and had no criminal arrest history, although he had been temporarily involuntarily held under the Baker Act in twenty seventeen. The sheriff said the gunman used racial slurs, left behind a racist I believe this is creed or screed, and drew swastikas on his firearm. Authorities said he was armed with an Air fifteen style rifle and a handgun, and
was wearing a tactical vest and blue latex gloves. The sheriff said victims were identified as Angela Michelle Carr fifty two, Gerald Gallion, twenty nine, and Annult Joseph aj Legera junior, age nineteen. At one away PM at the Dollar General parking lot, the gunman shot into a black Kia and killed car, the sheriff said, then entered the store and
fatally shot Laghea. The sheriff said others fled out the rear exit of the store, and the suspect exited the same door before returning inside The gunman then fatally shot Gallion, who had just walked into the store, and chased after and shot at Gallion's lean girlfriend. The sheriff said at one eighteen pm, the gunman texted his father and told him to go into his room, but the father found
a will and a suicide note. Sheriff said. Officers entered the store a minute later, eleven minutes from the start of the shooting and heard one gun shot, which is presumed to be when the gunman shot and killed himself. The shooting came five years to the day a mass shooting in downtown Jacksonville at a Madden video game tournament.
The attack also coincided with the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the March on Washington, the iconic civil rights demonstration that called on the government to better protect the rights of black people. So, a couple of things that I want to add to some of the questions that you posited, you know, in kind of bringing us up
to speed in terms of your initial reaction. Some of the research that I've done into the sort of as I mentioned that like the cess pit, the breeding grounds for people that feel like these mass shooters feel they are in online forums where people feel like they can blame their problems on other people and they are provided as sort of like echo chamber to express themselves where they won't be challenged and they can they have other people around them that help them make sense of the
world that affirms and reaffirms what it is that they thought things were supposed to be. In other words, let's take for a moment, a white male, right. I want to make sure that it is said plainly that white men are our brothers. And if we're painting with broad strokes, they might be having a tough time adjusting to the
changing climate, racial compositions, political climate of this country. Okay, our brothers right, and we being the older brothers and sisters, being of African descent, being the first humans, I've always felt like, despite our troubles and our issues, we also have to be mindful and historically we have been very patient and very mindful of our younger brothers and sisters
that we share this planet with. There is a degree of compassion and grace that I found often in black women who're older than me, those people that pray, you know, I'm not a person that engages to the same degree that some other folks do. But I see the emotion, I see the commitment to positivity and hoping for positive outcomes. I've never seen black women take up arms and pitchforks and that sort of thing, and that has not been
my reality. So for our white male brothers who have been promised the American dream, who have been promised when you get older.
You can you can do. You can be anything you want to do right. You can be a movie star, you can be an NBA player, you can whatever. And then you know, as they.
Develop into men and they realize that they don't have access to money, opportunities, companionship, you know that they thought, there's a realization that life may not ultimately hold everything that they expected, and they are prime for the why.
And if they are fed information from sources that have ulterior motives, a separate agenda, et cetera, they could be convinced that in the case of El Paso, Texas, it's Mexican people crumbing across the border, stealing your jobs, affecting the economy, and this is why your life looks like this, as opposed to unfettered capitalism, corporate creed. You know, these sorts of things. The people that are taking from you look just like you. You know they you know they're
they're able to receive disinformation and misinformation. If the political climate looks like people are having conversations about white supremacy and white privilege, and these white men look at their own lives and say, well, shoot, I wish I had
some white supremacy, I wish I had some white privilege. Man, that would certainly change things around here, then it's easier for them to push back, and they can find themselves being upset because when they look at TV and they see these black millionaires and more recently black millionaires who have all of the things, all the reality that they want to live. To them, they're connecting dots that they've been primed to connect, right, They're not looking at numbers,
they're not looking at things in mass. And so the long and short of it is that it's easy for them to end up receiving information that allows them to feel more comfortable about where they are and why they haven't done more, and then they end up moving in this direction. It sounds like you want to jump in police.
Yeah, there are a couple of things that cross my mind as you were talking when you mentioned that they were in this echo chamber in the social media environment where everyone is bouncing off of each other with the same concept. There isn't anyone in there to differ with what they are chanting. It's easy to buy into that and to become grounded in that particular environment. And one of the things is human beings. I don't know why.
The analogy is like a choir. Everybody's singing their song on social media and whatever link that is, and they're just chiming in and they're giving their part, and everyone wants to be somebody within there that some come out and they do their solo act, and the solo act is with that gun. That's how they demonstrate I am with you, I am I am somebody within this environment, especially if they're looking to be acknowledged on who they are.
So that's one of the things. The other thing is, as a whole, people need to understand that you can be whatever you want to be, you can go wherever you want to go. The fact is, and I'll set this in class, especially to my athletes and to people in the arts, that I say it, said doctor Westinberg, I'm going to make it to the pro And I said, you need to work on this assignment, or you need to do this this English assignment. But I'm gonna I'm gonna have a secretary. I'm going to have I'm gonna
you know, I don't need it. There are so many slots in the world for you to get to that point. I would say here in Phoenix, if you look at the number of high school football players, are basketball players that want to get to the pros. And I'm changing over a little bit. This isn't about guns. But you want to get to the pros. There are just so many slots that are there to be filled. And you think about each one of the high schools and each one of the young men of the ladies in that
in that respect, everybody's not going to get there. It's simply not going to happen. So always say you have to find something else, some safety net sure that you can use. And the young people that are engaging in this racism, that's all that they know. They have bought into it. They have not put themselves in any other environment to latch onto. It's like in a cell and they're locked in and they can't get out, and so
they just continue to move in that direction. And that's the unfortunate so aspect of it.
Yeah, yeah, so watch this. There's unfortunately, there's these corners of the internet, you know, in my in my research that are very very toxic and very very sick. And what ends up happening is there are people sharing these really hateful ideas about black people, about anybody who's not really straight and white, et cetera. But they're women in
these forms as well, and they actually encourage this. They praise the previous mass shooter, and then they encourage whoever is currently working on a manifesto to get a higher score and to go out and do more harm. And they suggest these folks that they'll be remembered and worshiped
as a hero. And you got to think, if you're at a point in your life where you feel like your life has no value, no one cares, No one cares if you're here or not, even if you do something awful and die, at least your life meant something. And for some people fueled by hate and the desire to matter because they've been promised that you know, you're
special and you're unique and you can do anything. I think the intersection of those two elements is really part and parcel to what I see in most of these backstories of these mass shooters. And unfortunately, we as a people, we end up bearing the brunt of it, and then the society at large and children, and you know, there's been plenty of mass shootings that are not specifically racially targeted and so but a lot of these components remain
the same. You know, if they're not mad at black people specifically, they're mad at liberals in general, or they're you know, these are often conservative folks carrying out these attacks, deeply radically conservative. I guess that's.
Why I think there should be legislatively some process to limit restrict the type of messaging. And I believe in freedom of speech, but there should be legislation to limit any messaging that is destructive to society.
And I want to agree with you here because in the nation state of Germany, where they have a history of systematically exterminating human beings, and obviously once upon a time it was under Nazi rule, they have very strict rules in place, and Germany, for the most part, is exactly what we would consider in terms of like a free country, but just like in this country, you can't
go into a movie theater and yell fire. A certain speech is not protected, and that certainly is a move that we could consider, in addition to what many people agree is the problem everybody having access to guns, and people doubling and tripling down on the Second Amendment rights that were written for muskets, and now people have aks and so forth. We'll keep talking, but that's where we are now.