Welcome to another episode of Civic Csicher. I am your host, Rams's jock.
I go by the name q Ward except if my mom is upset and then she calls me quinn ton like with the extra emphasis on the oh. And that's when you know it's you know it's real.
You gotta listen up. Yes, sir, I ain't mad at that.
Well, listen up.
We are back opinion one more game. Uh're gonna talk to you today about some really important stuff, So brace yourself.
Good.
But it's important, which means that it's also kind of heavy. Uh, we're gonna spend some time talking about suicide in the black community. Uh, this is this is what we do. And you're listening because you care or this is something that might be personal.
These issues might be personal to you, or maybe you.
Care about the well being of black people, your brown people, whatever it's brought you to the table on. So we appreciate you locking in with us when it gets a little heavy. So yeah, we're gonna spend a lot of time talking about the increase in suicide rates among black people, which, for those that don't know, is very much an.
Alarming thing here because black people aren't typically associated with suicide in this way, So to have some meaningful increase is definitely something that's up our out and again to talk.
About it, dude, we're also going to spend some time talking about some of the ways that the man gets you, you know, the police, the good old man. Yeah, So it's important for us to inform our communities so that we know what we're up against and can better navigate the waters that are beset on all sides with respect to our paths. And so those and other things are things we want you to stick around for. But you know, we'd like to start off on a pot positive note
around here. So cue, with your permission, can we do some ebony excellence?
Indeed we can? All right, you want to take this one our ebony excellence presented to you today by Hip Hop Weekly M One Time, O WI for your Mind.
That's a sponsor for you.
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I think that's right.
We'll own the rest. Mitchellness is best known for designing and retailing the throwback jerseys that were so popular during the early two thousands. I think every person we knew had one or wanted one. I still got it, yes indeed, and have since made a resurgence. Most recently, the brand collaborated with j Coles Streamers in Print to produce a series of custom NBA throwbacks bearing the Dreamer logo in
place of the original team's logos. Ironically, Jay Z now co owns the creator of jerseys he wants famously threw under the bus and what more can I say in two thousand and four and jay Z made us stop wearing throwbacks and button up. I think after we.
Spent all that money, all of our money, I didn't throw mine away. They're still in the closet, like I said. But listen, that's some Ebony excellence. We are not only shouting him out for investing being a black business investor, but you know, procuring another piece of the culture and breathing some more life into it so that it lives into the future. So once again, shout out to Hip Hop Weekly for that sponsorship and shout out to up
Rocks for the article. Now onto Heavier Things. Yes, indeed, no, I'm a fan of John Mayer and he has an album called Heavier Things. Just a side note, I'm stalling because this is kind of a This is a heavy one, so I'll get right into it. You may have followed the news in recent months and learned of some high
profile individuals who have committed suicide. Of those individuals, a good number are black people, and growing up black, suicide in the black community has always been something that's very rare and a suicide. Not to take anything away from anybody who has ever had to deal with suicide or anybody who's ever been suicidal. On this show and at this roundtable, we are all human beings and we lean on each other, right, But it's just more of a rarity in our families and on our homes, right. This
is how it's been growing up. And so these high profile names and these people who are so accomplished. I think that well, I know now having researched this a bit, that it's just a window into some of the deeper goings on in the black community. Because obviously you're going to hear about the suicide of In this case, we're talking about Chesley Christ who is the lawyer and she was Miss USA twenty nineteen, leaping from a window in New York City right after posting on Instagram made this
day bring you rest in peace. That's a selfie.
That's heavy.
Man.
Oh we got.
We got a few to get through here. But this kind of gives you an idea that if someone who can put on that veneer of happiness, someone who has for most people looking for the outside looking in, this is a person who has. She's a beauty literally, a beauty queen, a lawyer. She I think she was working with entertainment tonight or doing some sort of TV show.
Living what appears to be a charmed life is that, you know, film television, beauty pageants. She was an attorney, right, accomplished, beautiful, successful. You'd never look at her life or look at her and imagine that inside she was dealing with the type of turmoil that would drive you to that. And you talked about the rarity of suicide and in black families and black homes and the black culture, And I think it comes from a sort of numbness to trauma, that's
having been dealing with the worst for so long. That's it. We never felt so low. We were already so low. It was hard to get to depths below that that would make you say I can't be here anymore.
There was no bottom to fall out of it, out of I guess black reality, day to day life, because you were effectively at the bottom, so being born into it, I think that you know, we talk about this word on this show, but we use this word a lot because I do believe that it is sort of like a badge of honor. But it's sort of unfortunate when we have to frame real conversations around it. But resilience.
You know, there is a resilience to black people, you know, given our history in this country and the things that we deal with presently and a lot of the systemic oppression and just you know, there's a lot of environments where black people live for one reason or another, primarily because of redlining and government tactics that you know, effectively prevented the accumulation of wealth and privileged families who weren't
black white folks. There's a great deal of hopelessness in those communities because those redline districts ended up becoming ghettos. And so if we're talking about the ghetto or the hood, there's a great deal of hopelessness in the other, you know, and then you can associate a lot of really bad things with people that live in those areas. Not to say that other people don't listen, Trailer parks have their
same you know, have their problems and so forth. And you know, we've made this argument many times on the show. It there's a good argument to be made about class warfare. But no matter what, we live, black lives and there's a little bit of difference there, and that's why we have a show like this and we will defend those poor people, those trailer park people because they are brothers and sisters too. But we have to talk about these things where they are and for what they are.
And you use the word hopelessness, Sure, hopelessness is what typically would lead a person to say, I don't want to be here anymore. Except when you're born into hopelessness, there's nowhere to Yeah, there's nowhere for you to fall from. So that's why I think historically has been so rare, because the circumstances that most black people are born into. You're already, like we said, already, you know, you're at
the bottom. So there's nowhere to fall from and feel that sense of to feel the fall from succeeding and flying. Sure that drops you into that hopelessness that leads you to, you know, feeling like you can't go on anymore. Now, I want to say something, neither of us Q or me, neither of us are mental health professionals. In fact, we rely heavily on each other for just to kind of make sure that we don't succumb to the pressures of putting together a program like this.
We have to live through each article, and we're both feeling empathetic individuals with beating hearts, and so when we read about a mother who's lost her son, or we read about yeah, I mean, we've even seen stuff that's made us son. You remember that video we saw where the police officers were saving those people's lives at the party and they were running and instead of just shooting ramp, they were actually saving people, and we were proud of that.
You know, we process a lot of emotional stuff, but most of it is heavy, admittedly, And we have a system where we take turns like, hey, this looks like it might be something we should talk about. Why don't you take it I took the last one, or you will send it to my way kind of with the same instructions. But I don't want to pretend like we know more than we do. We feel like on this show we at least put it in the center of
the room and we deal with it. And we're going to go first because we've been given the opportunity to stop the music for a second and deal with the human beings behind the cultures. You know that the culture that you know has caused your radio station to exist in your city. You know, we are a people We're not just rappers and singers and dancers. We do rather more,
and we are rather more than just those things. And so today we're talking about where we are as a people and perhaps some of the things that have caused us to feel an even greater sense of hopelessness. And so I'll move on. I do want to say his name, but he is the son of Regina King. Regina King is a famous actress. We know who she is, even if screenwriter and director. To all the aboves, she's the truth.
Her son's name is Ian Alexander Junior, and he took his own life in January on his twenty sixth birthday. And you know, here's a post that I have on Regina's fiftieth birthday. This was in twenty twenty one. He put Happy birthday to my co So extremely proud of you, inspired by your love, artistry and gangsta. To be able to watch you take this lifetime by its neck and make it yours is something I will forever be grateful for. But to have you as my mother is the greatest
gift I could ask for. To be all that you are while always having the time to be their love and support me unconditionally is truly remarkable. The whole Marvel universe ain't got s word on you. You're the real superhero. Love you Mom, this day and every day, yo day. So this is a message that Ian Alexander Junior wrote to his mom on social media on her birthday in twenty twenty one, and then earlier this year he took
his own life. And so you know, from the outside looking in, it always feels like, why would a person do that? And you know, we're often left with more questions and answers, you know, in the wake of someone committing suicide. So I don't think that we're going to we're not even trying to solve this or come up
with any sort of solutions. But I think that by talking about it, maybe it encourages the conversations in your cities and in your households and you know, car rides and just seek someone to talk to because you know there's this you know, we get in trouble for saying for standing up for ourselves as black people, saying black lives matter. You know, people say all lives. People say, well, why don't you deal with black on black crime? You
know what I mean? And we do it just doesn't get the same type of media coverage as when we stand up to police oppression or government oppression or systemic oppression. Right, and this is another example of us standing up for black lives. We're standing up for black lives against suicide, and this, of course will not get the same media attention. I had to compile all these into a segment that
now exists, as these are not just individual stories. Now, this is a whole message that we're using this platform to say, hey, there's something happening here.
The interesting thing is the polarity that exists in this story. Okay, right, The same thing that may suicide so rare in the black community is probably why it's becoming prevalent now. Feeling like there's no one that can relate to how you feel.
You don't know a lot of people that outwardly even talk about being depressed, let alone wanting to kill themselves, and not feeling like you can express that to someone and not be looked at as quote unquote crazy or not be judged or kind of tossed to the side or disregarded because of your mental issues. There's that fear because the stigma that exists around mental health in our
communities is a lot different than others there, it is. Right, So when you don't feel like you can even say out loud that you feel like you're drowning, and you just drown by yourself, in your own head, in your own feelings, I think it reverses the polarity on that sense of hopelessness, right, and you may feel like I was born in it, but the idea that I can't get out of it too much for me.
Now, let me make sure I say this because you know I have one more sort of higher profile name in recent months. In fact, i'll say it right now. Moses J. Moseley, who's famous for playing one of the zombies in The Walking Dead, has they suspected suicide. And he was just thirty one years old. So again a young, younger person taking his own life. Now, I think what you said to you was really important because these are the names that we know, these are the sources we
can point to. But the fact is, and we'll get there a little bit further along in the segment, but the fact is that suicide suicide rates for black men and women are rising. For those that know I have
another show, or for those who don't know. I guess I have another show that I do for Ieart Media, and I recently did a segment that I started for Civic Cipher, and you know, they were able to dedicate a lot of resources in short order for this topic I wanted to do that really had a lot to do with what we're talking about today, which basically was mental health for black people. And so I got tons
of statistics. And this isn't really a statistics type of show that you're listening to right now, So I'm not going to bog you down with statistics in the way that the other show is kind of built around hard numbers. But suffice it to say that this is not a black celebrities segment. This is not a Black wealthy people segment, nor is it a Black youngish people youngish people segment, you know, early thirties, late twenties. This is Black people
in general. And one of the things that I suspected, and you know, it's hard to kind of point to what it could be because there's so many things that black people have been resilient about for so long that who knows which piece of the house is crumbling, you know, because the whole thing feels like it's been under a lot of stress. But in the past few years, everybody can put to the pandemic, you know. But in the past few years, even before the pandemic, we dealt with.
You know what.
Starting in twenty twelve, we saw Trayvon Martin, and Trayvon Martin lost his life. And you might not remember this, but the reason that Trayvon Martin was such a big deal is because that was like the eighteenth time that some black child was killed by police or some other form of law enforcement, you know. And by the time Trayvon Martin's name, you know, made headlines, people were fed up with it so much so that the phrase black
Lives matter was born out of that eighteenth tragedy. In the preceding few years, and obviously, you know, black people have been getting killed by the police since the beginning of police in this country, so it's not a news story. But you know, once it gets filmed, once it gets sensationalized, you know, and there's a newer era of people that can share things on social media. So black Lives Matter started out as a hashtag, it caught fire, et cetera.
So this is where you see the modern movement born. But it started before Trayvon Martin, very much so. Right, So that's before the pandemic, right, and then since Trayvon Martin. You listening to my voice right now, you can name six eight people black people who've lost their lives at the top of your head. But there's one hundreds, you know what I mean, Like there's yeah, there you go.
Because of the nature the way that policing is done in this country, the police have guns, and this is a gun wielding society, and it's very different than other places around the world where they don't have those numbers of imprisonment, of police shootings, of school shootings, of whatever. Right. And you know, the sad part about this is that there always exists, no matter what, a narrative somewhere, popular narrative somewhere that he deserved it. It was his fault.
Or they need to do they need to get dads in the home. That's a myth, they need to do whatever. I think the most startling thing about Trayvon Martin was that he wasn't killed by law enforcement. Yeah, yeah, he was killed by.
A citizen deemed himself a vigilante or a crime fighter or crime stopper or batman or whatever he thought he was doing walking around for pursue this kid and killed him. So for everyone who says that all lives matter, you can't find an example like that of anything other than
a black child. Yeah, for they be pursued by a person talking to law enforcement, being told by law enforcement not to pursue them, pursuing them anyway, killing them and living the rest of his day is free, showing us how insignificant our lives are, forcing us to not state or declare, but almost plead like, hey, you guys, like we matter, right, and for that to be met with, well, you know, all lives matter, every everybody matters.
I remember Tommy Lorenz called it the Black Lives Matter More movement, and I'm like, who said that? Anyway, this is our reality. I do want to I want to shout this page out. It's a it's an Instagram page, but we follow it. It's called black Media page. And this was kind of like the nexus of this segment. So I have a blurb from them how scientific it is or not, you know, I don't know. I believe it to be so, but that's not what I just want to make sure that it's stated because that's where
the idea originated. They have a post that said Blackmail's suicides are rising faster than any other racial group. I think I've read that somewhere else too while I was researching this. While of suicide and anxiety have risen sharply during the pandemic, A recent study from the journal JAMA finds that suicide attempts have been rising at an alarming rate long before COVID nineteen. The study found black males had the highest increase in suicide attempts compared to any
other race in the group, increasing nearly eighty percent. The study said young black men face financial hardship, among other stressors, and may have untreated mental health needs. I also want to mention the ex president and his supporters and the tone that was reintroduced into the country and the alarming response to what could be described as black people versus
the police. You know, because police are not losing their lives at the same rate as black people, and they are if they do lose their lives, there is some accountability building into the equation for the person that takes the police officer's.
Life, and sadly or strangely enough, some of that accountability comes at the hands of the police in the same way their retribution. They seek it out themselves. You know, you're talking about violent accountability, not just being brought to justice, but sometimes hunted down and killed like a revenge tactic from a gang.
Well, I mean, I'm from California, so the police were often regarded in the same way as street gangs because oftentimes they behaved in such a way. But you know, there's a lot of things going on in the world. Fortunately, I think they were moving toward a more positive, you know, state of the country. But we need to have conversations, we need to have friends, we need to share information, we need to seek out mental health. And this is our contribution to making sure that none of those things
feel strange. But this is a good enough time for us to take a pause for the cause, So stick around with coming back on more civic cipher right after this