And now.
Go my my back. You're like that.
Strike waters from headquarters behind him.
And if you're just tuning into Civic Cipher, I'm your host, Ramsis joh I am your other host, and I go by her name q Ward indeed, and we got a lot left for you to stick around for, so please do.
So we're gonna be talking about unfair prison sentence thing that's been making some headlines lately, and we need to take a moment or two to readdress that. I'm sure we've talked about it before on the show, but we're gonna peel back a few layers there. And we're also going to talk about how Black History Month came about. You know, we're staring down Black History Month here and uh, you know, it started as Negro History Week, so we want to get into the details of that for our
way Black History fact. So, like I said, a lot to stick around for. But first we are going to discuss how to become a better ally do it. So this week we're gonna talk about Jack Harlow, which is someone we should all know. But if you don't know Jack Harlow, he's a rapper and he's white, and he's a really good rapper, makes really good music.
He's he's a really good rapper by the way. Yeah, yeah, I like him, and I like him even more now. So this story comes from TMZ. We don't get to use.
A lot of TMZ stories on here, so I'm excited about this one anyway. It says Jack Harlow is gunning for a cop who put his hands on the neck of a woman who wanted to see Jack's show.
And I've seen this video.
She was out.
The video is her standing on the corner, and she's like, I just wanted to see Jack Harlow, blah blah on the officer that grabs her by the neck. So goes on to say Jack saw the video and was outraged, saying, quote, I was disgusted by that cop, and all I want to do is make something good happen for this girl. Immediately, I told the world to help me identify her so I could find a way to give her a hug and give her as many tickets to as many shows
as she wants. But that's not enough, and it's not a solution to a systemic issue that people who don't look like me have to face. The next step is identifying this police officer and getting him unemployed as fast as we can. Assaulting a young woman and putting his hands on her neck is sickening. And she didn't do anything. She was upset, of course, but she didn't threaten him.
It was just two officers and a lady standing on the street and then he reached out and he interacted with her being she did not do that with him. So if you see the video, he's exactly what he's talking about. To be fair and to preserve our journalistic integrity, here, a spokesperson for the police department says, quote, the Cobb County Police Department takes any and all allegations of officer
misconduct very seriously. We are aware of the video snippet posted to Instagram involving our officer and the young woman outside the Coca Cola roxy. The incident is going through an internal review to get a full understanding of the entire incident before any potential action is taken. But to be fair, he shared his stage and he shared his voice, and we always want to highlight that and you can take that lesson into your own life and learn from him how to become a better ally. So shout out
to Jack Harlow. Now shout out to Jack Harlow. Unfair prison sentencing. Got a lot to go through here. But real quick, I want to share something briefly. Have an older brother. He goes by Jay, and I've shared the story on the show before. But for those who haven't heard it, my brother is a lot like me. Brilliant, mind, you know, very He's a man around town or a man about town. I'm not sure how the saying goes upwardly mobile. He's a good looking person, very charismatic, you know,
all these things. He's not a criminal, none of these sorts of things. It's just not him. That doesn't run in my family, right because I have to say that because I know a lot of people think when I tell this story, like, well, obviously something had to go on, but nope.
My brother.
Lives and lived at the time in California, and when the new escalade truck came out many years ago, probably thirteen years ago something like that, a new escalade came out and he went and bought a new escalade right now, For those who don't know, California is a place where carjackings happen, and my brother worked in the entertainment industry, and so sometimes that puts you in parts of town that you might be.
Susceptible to those sorts of things.
So he kept protection in the car with him, right, had a handgun in the.
Car with him.
Again, I'm not a gun person, but I don't tell anyone else how to live their life, right.
You, yeah? Correct?
So uh, Anyway, the story goes, my brother was taking his girlfriend at the time now his wife, taking her home and dropping her off to her apartment. She gets out of the car, goes into the apartment, or goes toward her apartment, I guess, and she gets approached by some guys that were just kind of hanging out there, and they started sort of harassing her. Right, So my brother responds, because that's his girlfriend, he has to protect her, gets out, takes his gun with him, and he shoots
the gun in the air to scare the guys off. Now, the good news is that this was on video, him shooting the gun in the air. Guy's running away, right. The bad news is that when he was pulled over, arrested, blah blah blah. The way the story ended up getting back to whoever it was that he attempted to murder these people. Therefore, he was charged with attempted murder even though it's on video, and the way the court worked is they weren't allowed to submit the video as evidence. Now,
I'm not as familiar with the trial. This was many years ago, and you know, I didn't.
I don't.
I'll be honest, I don't know much about court stuff and police stuff because I don't really interact with those guys, at least not on purpose. But I do know that the one thing that could have showed that he was protecting this woman, they weren't able to submit that as evidence to the court, and so he was just basically testimony, you know, And attempted murder is a very difficult thing to not to prove innocence from when you literally have to say something.
It's hard to disprove something that's what I'm trying to say, or prove something that didn't happen.
Sure, but when you literally have the smoking gun, you know, it's kind of tough to you know, it's registered to you, it's in your car, you know, like that whole thing. And so, long story short, he ended up taking a plea deal for I believe it was twelve years or twelve to fourteen years something like that, instead of taking a deal that did No, it was longer than fourteen years. Sorry,
I think it was sixteen years. So he took a plea deal instead of doing twenty two years, which was the maximum sentence they were going to seek for this.
Right.
Anyway, my brother had to go to prison like a bad person because and my sister said, this is because he's a black man, and they were able to do this, and so they just took him off the street even though he's not a you know, a nuisance, never been in trouble with the police before, never is not in a gang, nothing crazy like that. But they took that huge part of my brother's life. So we're going to talk about unfair prison sentencing here.
First story.
Uh, I got this from CNN. Now, I don't know if you heard about this, que but there's a judge in Lafayette, Louisiana who had to resign recently over a video of that surfaced of her talking about I believe it was a black man that attempted to burglarize her house, right, so what happened? Absolutely No I heard about this, Okay, cool, So well, yeah, of course because we shared in the group chat. But so basically what happens is this judge is watching the playback of the video of her housemates.
I don't know if it's her husband or kids or whatever, but these guys jumped on the burglar right And as she's watching the video, you hear the commentary, you hear what she's saying, and she's like, actually, I have it right here. As the unseen spectators watch the video, they comment on the footage while repeatedly using the N word, CNN has reported in the video from her name is
Michelle Odinett. In the video from Odinette's home, which circulated online, people appear to be watching the footage of the incident on a TV. A male voice is heard saying, mom's yelling in word. A female voice then says, while laughing,
it's an in word, like a roach. And what she says is I take full responsibility for the hurtful words I use to describe the individual who burglarized the vehicles at my home, Odinett wrote in her resignation letter to to Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice John Weimer.
Now.
She said she had taken a sedative and that's why she was racist. I don't know.
Yeah, if you watch the commercial for it, that's one of the side effects. Yeah, you become drowsy and extreme and extremely racist. That's that's it's on there, if it's on the bottle, on the back and a very very small print. Now you know what.
Here's the thing.
The N word, as we all know, is a word that is meant or that it is used to put down specifically black people. Had this been a white burglar at her how she would not have used that word. The point I'm illustrating here is that when that word comes into question, not whether or not she should have been angry, not whether or not this guy was right or wrong, because obviously he was wrong. He was stealing from them. You have a right to protect your family.
You have a right to be angry about someone breaking into your car, absolutely, but be angry once you include race, and she was talking about roaches. There's no way around that.
This is not anger. This is racism.
I need to say that before I say the next thing. Fortunately, the New Orleans District Attorney is going back and re examining her cases where people have been sentenced to prison time because of her judgment right, and we're talking about unfair sentencing. Here another story, this one comes from the
Atlanta Black Star. Lawrence Stevens, aged thirty eight, thought he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison after a Virginia judge sentenced him to one thousand, eight hundred and twenty three years in prison for a two thousand and one home invasion in robbery. Stevens received the lifeline of a lifetime when Hampton Virginia civil rights activists caught wind of his case on November thirteenth, two thousand and one. A then eighteen year old Stevens was homeless,
working two jobs with a baby on the way. According to Rebecca when the Hampton Virginia NAACP Legal Redress and Criminal Justice chairperson, She says, while working at his restaurant job at the time, Stevens and another black employee were talked into breaking into a house and committing a robbery. An older white co worker masterminded the robbery but never
went inside the home. There were five co defendants in all, but the white participants in the robbery received standard sentences averaging ten to thirteen years, as the black code defendants received harsher sentences. Darnelle Nolan, who was seventeen years old at the time, received a thirty five year prison sentence
and Stevens received one eight hund twenty three years. The two black teenagers, their sentencing greatly exceeds that of the sentencing guy lines and that of their white code defendants. When said of the lopsided prison sentences, when says sentencing guidelines are put in place to reduce bias, but Judge Prentice Smiley Junior had a long track record of delivering
harsher sentences to black men. When would not go as far as to say Judge Smiley was racist, but she said, the history speaks for itself.
Man, we are always trying to make sure we don't hurt the feelings of racist people. It makes me sick.
Hang on, young, I got another one. I got another.
One thousand, eight hundred and thirty two years, and its white co defendant got ten ten to thirteen. Yeah, but we want to tread softly in made hat. I don't want to say he's racist. Well, let me contend one man.
So I got another story from Democracynow dot Org. This is one we've talked about on the show.
But In Colorado, Governor Jared Polus reduced a one and ten year sentence of truck driver Rohel Aguilera Mideeros to ten years, calling the initial lengthy sentence unjust. The case of Aguilera meant Mederos, a twenty six year old truck driver from Guba, triggered widespread condemnation, including a boycott of
Colorado led by other truck drivers in protest. Aguilera Mederos has said the breaks on his semi trailer failed when driving downhill, leading to a multi vehicle pile up that killed four people in twenty nineteen, and many are calling on the trucking company to be held liable for the crash. So had it not been for the outcry and the support of his fellow truck drivers and you know, the public. You know, there's lots of cases, lots of cases that don't make the news, and we have data, but these
data is actually human beings, lives. These are families that are losing people. We're going to get to the data in just a second, but this one made its way to the news. One hundred and ten year sentence for an accident, you know, even.
The tenure sentence is harsh. Sure, I think I considered. I understand that people died here, but.
Yeah, someone needs to be held accountable. But as they said, there are people calling on the trucking company to be held liable, and you know, punishing this man doesn't bring those people any comfort. Maybe suing the trucking company and holding them civilly liable for it might bring some something.
But you remember to point out Rams, this was not alcohol or drug. He wasn't drunk, he wasn't under the influence. This was purely an accident. Okay, So what do we do now? We go to the government statistics, right, because unfair prison sentencing exists, right, and we see that it's there are judge judges who are racists.
There's a whole criminal justice system that's really set up to put black people in cages and exploit them for their labor. For those that know about the thirteenth Amendment, who've seen the documentary, that know that sorts of thing.
This is big business.
It's small enough to where most people aren't overtly outraged by it. It's not like one hundred percent of black people are in the criminal justice system like what it was when they're slavery. But there's enough people for it to make sense, but not enough for large public outcry. You want to say something, talk to me, I just don't. I don't think that's number spaced. I don't think it's not. I don't think the lack of outrage is because there's
a small number. I think it's just been going on for so long that we're used to it, not just used to it, but completely unaware. Right, it's like slavery, Okay, no more slavery, except if you do something wrong, we can make your slave cool, and then we abolish slavery. And then we start doing this and then there was there was kind of like there was no break in there where they just introduced this new thing. Yeah, so it's like it's not like they came out okay one day.
I know slavery ended forty years ago, but we got this new thing. You guys are gonna love it. Like it wasn't like that.
It happened so kind of coverten over it at the same time and has been going on every since. I think that lack of outrage comes from some a lack of knowledge, but others not really having a chance to be outraged by something that has been going on long before they were born.
You know Michael Stevenson, who's someone that I look up to. He's the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, basically a lawyer that seeks to overturn wrongful convictions. He said something that really stayed with me. He said, you know, if the nation state of Germany was disproportionately was executing people and they were disproportionately Jewish, I couldn't bear it. It would be unconscionable. But yet in this country there's a stunning silence. And he quotes the numbers I'm about to
read to you right now. Now, remember these stats come. This actual text comes from USSC dot gov. That's the United States Sentencing Commission, and that's a dot gov.
You can look it up yourself. I've just copied and pasted. Okay.
The first point, black mail offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated white male offenders. Blackmail offenders receive sentences on average nineteen point one percent longer than similarly situated white mail offenders during the post report period fiscal years of twenty twelve to twenty sixteen, as they had for the prior four period studied. The differences in sentence length remain relatively unchanged compared to the post gall period.
Two non government sponsored departures and variances appear to contribute significantly to the difference in sentence length between black mail and white mail offenders. Black Mail offenders were twenty one point two percent less likely than white male offenders to receive a non government sponsored downward departure or variance during
the post report period. Furthermore, when blackmail offenders did receive a non government sponsor departure of variance, they received sentences sixteen point eight percent longer than white male offenders who
received a non government sponsor departure or variance. In contrast, it was a seven point nine percent difference in the sentence length between a blackmail and white male offenders who received sentences within the applicable sentencing guidelines range, and there was no statistically significant difference in sentence link between blackmail and white mal offenders who received a substantial assistance departure.
And the third.
Point, violence in an offender's criminal history does not appear to account for any of the Democrat demographic differences in sentencing. Blackmail offenders received sentences on average twenty point four percent longer than similarly situated white male offenders. Accounting for violence in an offender's past in fiscal year twenty sixteen, the only year.
For which such data is available, this figure.
Is almost the same as a twenty point seven percent difference without accounting for past violence. Thus, violence and an offender's criminal history does not appear to contribute to the sentence imposed to any extent beyond its contribution to the offender's criminal history score determined under the sentencing guidelines. Now, let's talk about Kyle Rittenhouse. Now, let's talk about everything. Let's talk about privilege. Let's talk because you know, we
talked about this before. Privilege is not a gift. It's not a three million dollars when you're born. Privilege is not having to overcome the same hurdles. And when we're talking about a criminal justice system, imagine being born in a society where there are no real opportunities outside of playing basketball and rapping. You know, everyone around you is poor, there's no upward mobility. You know, you can study hard, and you can you know, all that sort of stuff.
But a lot of people know that studying hard is not the answer for everyone. Studying hard only gets you a good job. It doesn't get you wealthy, It doesn't even improve your immediate circumstances. Who wants to study when you're hungry. I'm not saying everyone's hungry.
I'm not saying that just gets you a job, not necessarily a good job, sure, depending on what. But listen, I do want to say this because a lot of folks, you know, they have their arguments. I've been kind of reading what a lot of right wing people believe. I will admit that some people are just bad people. You know, societies are complex, right, and you get lots of good people, some bad people, right, But we have a system that
treats everyone like they're bad. Now, the story I started this off with, I have an older brother who's black. It doesn't matter how good looking is that, what smart he is.
He's black, you know, and he has a gun in a black suv in Los Angeles, California. In everyone's mind, you know what I mean. You can be the least racist person with the least amount of prejudices and the least you know, indoctrination. But you know, if you've grown up in America, that recipe has to trigger something in your mind. Otherwise you haven't been paying attention, and the
fact that it triggers something in your mind. Listening to my voice right now illustrates what privilege is because there's if you take away black, this is a guy with who believes in the Second Amendment. You know, it's it's a you know, you can carry it, you know if you need whatever, you know, But black and gun is automatically criminal, especially in a nice Cadillac. Okay, obviously he's a drug. You know, there's so many things that come
to people's minds when you put this thing together. My brother has always been able to do well for himself. He's brilliant. I wish you could meet him, but we have about a minute left. I'm sorry I talked to this stuff, but we had a lot of notes to cover. I do want to get your thoughts on this too. Q.
No, those notes were those notes were important, and these are things that these are things that unfortunately we already knew. Sure, you know, So having this conversation with our audience is what we have to remember that we're doing. Because having this conversation with each other, it's like, yeah, duh, well.
We call it a we call it a black show for non black people, so you know.
Correct, you're right, yeah, but just you know, just understand that so many people that are hearing this either have never heard it or hear it and immediately and instinctively pushed back on it, right, And that's because that implicit
bias exists. Yeah right, Black and gun for a lot of people does mean criminal sadly, you know, but you look at the gross variance and gross lopsidedness of the sentencing differences based strictly on just whether the person is black or white, and it's so obvious, right, But well, a lot of times pointing out the racism in our country makes people feel personally attacked, so they push back on that very hard because you're not talking about a system,
You're talking about them, because they believe so systemically and so passionately in that system.
Well, thank you, as always, brilliant, well said and spot on. Moving on, it's time for the way Black History fact. So again, a lot of texture. I apologize in advance, but I do believe that you'll like to know this because I didn't know this, and rarely do we come across something black that I don't know, So I will read.
This.
This is how Negro History Week became Black History Month. And this comes from The New York Times in the years after reconstruction, campaigning for the importance of black history, and during the scholarly work of creating the canon was a cornerstone of the civil of civil rights work for leaders like Carter G. Woodson, Martha Jones, Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and the Society of Black Alumni
presidential professor. These men who are trained formally and credentialed in the ways that all intellectuals and thought leaders in the earliest twenty century were trained at Harvard and places like that. But in order to make the argument, in order to make the claim about black genius, about black excellence, you have to build a space in which to do that. There is no room. This is how end quote. And this is how they built.
The room, all right.
On February twentieth, Frederick Douglas, the most powerful civil rights advocate of his era, died Washington, d c. These schools began to celebrate what became known as Douglas Day. On January twelfth, eighteen ninety seven, Mary Church Tenell, an educator and community activists posed proposed the idea of a school holiday to celebrate Frederick Douglas's life at a school board meeting in the for the Washington area, and.
It was for colored schools.
The school board agreed to set aside the afternoon of February fourteenth, eighteen ninety seven, the date Douglas celebrated as his birthday. He remember he was born a slave, so he didn't know his exact date birth, But they took February fourteenth, which was the day he used, and the students would learn about his life and would write speeches about Frederick Douglas. So Douglas Day February fourteenth, eighteen ninety seven.
All Right Carter G.
Woodson, the scholar now known as the father of Black History, was inspired to take his work nationwide. He was born in eighteen seventy five, the son of a form enslaved person or former enslaved people. He worked as a coal miner before receiving his masters at the University of Chicago. He was the second African American to receive a PhD from Harvard, after W. E. B.
Du Bois.
In the summer of nineteen fifteen, doctor Woodson attended Lincoln Jubilee commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Emancipation in Chicago, featuring exhibitions that highlighted African Americans' recent accomplishments, and after seeing the thousands of people who attended from across the country, doctor Woodson was inspired to do more in the spirit of honoring Black history and heritage.
So we're going to hear a lot about this guy, doctor Woodson.
So on September ninth, nineteen fifteen, doctor Woodson formed the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, an organization to provide the scientific study of Black life and history and for those that care. Today, the organization is known as the Association for the State Body of African American Life and History, or.
Asl sorry asalh all Right.
In nineteen sixteen, the Association established the Journal of Negro History, the first scholarly journal that published researchers findings on the historical achievements of black individuals. Doctor Woodson believed that quote if a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world end quote. To that end, he asked his Omega Pside Fraternity brothers to join him in the
work of spreading the importance of black history. The Omega Side Fraternity created Negro History and Literature Week in nineteen twenty four, but doctor Woodson had aspirations for Negro history to become a significant part of the culture across the country. He announced the first Negro History Week in February of nineteen twenty six, almost done.
Here, bear with me.
He chose February because it was the month in which both Lincoln and Douglas were born. After Lincoln's assassination, his birthday on February twelve had been celebrated by Black Americans and Republicans. Douglas Day, which was observed on February fourteenth, had grown in popularity since popularity since Mary Church Terrell
had started it in Washington in eighteen ninety seven. Doctor Woodson saw Negro History Week as a way to expand the celebration of these two men and encourage Americans to study the little known history of an entire people. Doctor Woodson and his colleagues set an ambitious agenda for Negro History Week. They provided a K through twelve teaching curriculum with photos lesson plans and posters with important dates and
biographical information. Real quick, I want to shout out doctor Camilla Westenburgh one more time, and I'm gonna do it every time she crosses my mind because she took the time to teach me. And shout out my dad, doctor Rudolph Wayne Taylor, rest in peace, who took the time
to teach me. In an article published in nineteen thirty two titled Negro History Week, the sixty Year, Doctor Woodson noted that some white schools were participating in the Negro History Week curriculums and that this had improved race relations. You know, shout out to white people in the early nineteen hundreds who were celebrating Negro History Week. They're probably all gone or whatever, but those are the people to help get us to where we are, you know what
I'm saying, So shout out to them too. Almost done. In the nineteen sixties, growing political consciousness among black college students led to a push for more opportunities to study black history. In February nineteen sixty nine, students and educators at Kent State University proposed the first Black History Month and celebrated it in February of nineteen seventy, President Gerald Ford supported Black History Month as an important element in
the nation's bi centennial celebrations. In October of nineteen seventy four, four I Ord met with civil rights leaders including Vernon Jordan, Baynard Rustin, Dorothy Hyde, and Jesse Jackson. As The New York Times reported, the leaders were looking for the president to make a ringing reaffirmation of the nation's commitment to racial justice and moral leadership, and finally, less than two years later, in February of nineteen seventy six, S four
did just that. Drawing on the patriotic significance of the bi centennial, he issued a statement on the importance of Black History Month to all Americans. He said, quote in celebrating Black History Month, we can take satisfaction from this recent progress in their realization of the ideal envisioned by our founding fathers. But even more than this, we can seize the opportunity to honor the too often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.
Real quick, I do want to add that every single president since him has made some mention or a commitment to Black History Month, and so since nineteen seventy six. I believe which a lot of us, you know, perhaps listening to this station were born right around that time or after, and so we might not know that, you know, it wasn't always the case. And so yeah, to go from Negro History Week to Black History Month, I.
Believe, to go from Frederick Douglas Day.
Yeah, there you go. Let's talk about it for real. Anyway, that's it. That's our show. We don't have really be trying to react to it. But I don't think that we really.
Doctor Woodson's fraternity Omega sci Fi?
Omega sci Fi? Did I say wrong? All right? Well shout out.
Mega left the piece of it out, but shot still o Mega sci Fi Fraternity Incorporated one time for the Ques.
Yes, indeed, so that's gonna do it for us once again.
I mean host Ramsey's job.
My name is Quentin Ward, but my friends call me q Ward.
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