Civic Cipher 032622 Protecting Black Hair from Discrimination Part 2

talk about what I believe to be something positive. The House has passed to build that bands discrimination for hair, so we're definitely going to talk about that and our way black history of fact. We're going to talk about an all black women's World War II unit, so that is something we're sticking around for as well. But first and foremost, let's discuss how to become a better ally

bah bah So. I don't know if you've heard about this one, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen discussed the systemic inequalities still lurking in the US economy and the work her department needs to do to narrow the racial wealth divide during remarks at an event honoring the late doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. This comes from abcnews dot Com.

Quote from reconstruction at Jim Crow to the present day, our economy has never worked fairly for Black Americans, or really for any American of color, the Treasury chief said during the Reverend Al Sharpton National Action Network's annual Record is honoring the life and legacy of doctor King since taking off his last January. Yellen said that she and her team have worked hard to quote ensure that neither the figurative Bank of Justice nor any literal economic institution

fails to work for people of color. She said, the Treasury has recently completed its first equity review quote, looking across departments and asking where are our operations not as inclusive as they should be. Yellen added that they have also hired the department's first ever counselor on racial equity and sought to hire the quote most diverse leadership team

and Treasury history. Quote. She added that the Treasury was injecting some nine billion dollars in the community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions that seek to serve people in places that the financial sector historically has left out. This is important because you can listen to my show. It's on the iHeartMedia podcast network called the Black Information

Network Daily Podcast. I did an episode called Banking while Black and this Treasury Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is an example of one person trying to change what that means. Hopefully we can make it have some dignity. But yeah, that is an example of a better ally, and you should aspire to be like her, make some changes if you're in a position to do so. So now we move on. I have a big old afro. You listen

to me every week, and I appreciate that. By the way, it means a lot to me and to Q and to my children and my family and my friends and people that I don't know who are black and share this experience and people who I don't know who are not black and empathize that you listen every week. So I'm going to tell you a black story about me. I was born in California, Compton, California, in the eighties. Nineteen eighty two was when I was born, and so I saw a lot of heavy stuff. Imagine Compton in

the eighties, drugs, gangs, all that sort of stuff. That was my reality. I used to think when I was very little that the magical age was twenty. If I could make it to twenty years old, then I will have made it because everyone around me was dying. Sounds crazy, Yeah, that was a real thing, and we'd hear these stories. Of course, such and such died he was only sixteen, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, fourteen, teen, teen, teen, teen teens. So I thought twenty was the magic number.

You know, most kids think eighteen or twenty one. That was me. I thought twenty right follow me. That number stayed with me as I grew six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old, moved to Arizona, eleven, twelve, thirteen. All those years, twenty is the magic number. I knew. I was never going to drink, I was never going to smoke cigarettes. That just never really spoke to me. I wasn't waiting on the day when I could do those things. So for always it was always the number twenty right

ingrained in my head from those traumas. When I was younger, I had a friend that died. There was these two kids I played with, Keith and David. They were my age, and Keith died on the street where I died in the sidewalk. Somebody shot him. Gone didn't get to grow up twenty So now I'm going to school and I get into college. Those of you that listened to the show regularly know the name doctor Camilla Westenberg. She made sure that I was able to go to college. She's

a frequent contributor to the show here. So when I got to college, I was really excited. And when I was twenty years old, I was kind of staring at the end of my schooling career, you know, my academic career, or so I thought at the time. I ended up going back and getting a master's, but at that time, I thought that was the end, and I was in a business school. I went to the Wpkrey College of Business at Arizona State University. And at that school when

I was there, there weren't many black people. I'd be in huge lecture halls, four hundred students, and I'd be the only black person in them. I'd be in small classes of course and be the only black person. There were Hispanic people in the classes, and no one was unkind, no one was me, and everyone kind of got it. Thank god. These you know, in academic environments, people tend to be cool. But one of the things that I realized is that I'm alone in this space. It's just

me here. I am the sum total of the black voice in this conversation. I am the experience that these students will take with them as they go out and help shape the world of tomorrow. Me just one person, right, And that didn't feel like enough blackness, because black people do exist where the reason other people exist, you know, and black people do matter, Black lives matter. Will say it all as often as I can. But where I lived in Arizona, numerically, there weren't a lot of black people, right.

It's not like I grew up in Atlanta and I went to a historically black college or university.

show off. This is not for me to stunt. You know what I'm saying. It's not my time. I have to really represent. If you're listening to this show, you know how that word fits in black culture. Represent right, So how did I increase the amount of blackness in those lecture halls? How did I increase the amount of blackness? When I was giving presentations, pitching business ideas, when I was writing reports, when I was doing case studies? How did I increase the amount of blackness? Well, it's just

one side of the problem. The other side was I now have to go out into the world at the end of this school year, and I'm probably going to see many rooms that look just like this, or there's not a lot of black people in these rooms. How do I increase the amount of blackness? How do I create a show, a display, a representation that really really speaks to the fact that I am not here alone, that every ancestor of me, and you is speaking through me,

right now, how do I do that? It's a very very strange question to ask yourself, But that's what happens to you know that very well. It just you have to take responsibility. So what did I do? I did nothing to my hair. I'll say it again, I did nothing to my hair. If I leave my hair alone, it will reach for the sky on all sides, it will grow, and it will flourish, and it will be just as fluffy and as big and grand as it can possibly be. That's the reason I grew my hair out.

That's the reason my hair is long, right now, That's the reason why I'll keep it long. This is a lifelong commitment, just like you know people that put locks in their hair and so forth. That's the reason for my hair. It's that important to me. It's that important to me. No one, there's not a person in the world that could tell me to shave my head because my hairstyle is inappropriate.

the Crown Act, which would ban hair related discrimination. The measure HR twenty one sixteen passed in a vote of two hundred and thirty five to one hundred and eighty nine along party lines. Let's keep an eye out for that one to eighty nine because I think it might come up again. It was introduced by Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman,

who was a Democrat from New Jersey. Crown stands for creating a respectful and open world for natural hair, and the Act prohibits discrimination based on an individual's texture or style of hair. The bill now goes to the Senate. The legislation states that quote routinely, people of atri can dissent are deprived of educational and employment opportunities for wearing their hair in natural or protective hairstyles such as locks, cornrows, twists, braids, bontu, knots,

or afros. Quote here we are today standing on behalf of those individuals, whether my colleagues on the other side recognize it or not, who are discriminated against as children in school, as adults who are trying to get jobs, individuals who are trying to get housing, individuals who simply want access to public accommodations and to be beneficiaries of

federally funded programs. Watson Coleman said in remarks on the House floor Friday morning, this demonstrates to Bill's necessity, She said, because there are people in positions of authority quote who think because your hair is kinky, it is braided, it is a notce, or it is not straight and blonde and light brown, that you somehow are not worthy of access to those issues end quote.

like God. Think about that. And there are people who are not accustomed to seeing what a natural human being looks like. Remember the first human beings that you could call a human being looked exactly like that woman, and they were their hair exactly like that woman. Right, These hairstyles aren't ancient. Before the first human being had the first mutation to create the first blue eye, human beings look just like that. That is the natural state of a human being. This hair that I wear on my

head is the natural hair of a human being. Everything else.

who I am. We're all here together, we're all meant to love each other, you know. But there are certain truths that need to be said, and this is the place where we have to say them. Right. So if you're listening today, I also want to implore you to rethink concepts like that that you may have in your mind. Rethink them. You know, I grew up in the same society as you and as everyone else, very Eurocentric. You know, if it's white, it's right. You know, so no one

who thinks that is wrong or bad. That's just kind of the world that was created for us to grow up in. Right. And we call the institutions that reinforce those ideas white supremacist institutions, right, But we don't. That's not us saying that the individuals who have been made to think these things are themselves white supremacists, because then that would make me a white supremacist. Right. And if

that's true, then it's true for me. And if it's not true, then we all have to recognize that there are institutions that exist outside of us that have had a degree of influence over us. Right. But it's very important if I say nothing else, that I say that this hair is hair and every other type of hair is other hair. It's important that you know that. Again, I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying it's the original. Now I'll continue my backque, did you want to jump in?

as glorious as Ramses does when it is long. So I think you are a uniquely qualified person to speak on this topic, and it was important for people to be able to hear it from such a first account and personal point of view.

your match. Quote. The Biden administration this week said it quote strongly supports and quote the Crown Act and looks forward to working with the Congress to enact this legislation and ensure that it is effectively implemented. More than a dozen states, including New Jersey and New York, had passed versions of the Crown Act. California was the first date to do so. House Majority Leader Steiny Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland, told his colleagues Friday that the bill should

have unanimous support. Fourteen Republicans voted for the bill. Good a military took steps to inherit discrimination last year, said Hoyer, who is white. If anybody thinks this isn't a real issue, obviously the military thought it was an issue, and it was an important enough issue that they took action. He said it was disappointing that one hundred and eighty eight Republicans opposed the legislation when it was recently brought to

the floor under an expedited process. Like Watson Coleman, other proponents of the bill mentioned a number of children directly and indirectly who drew national attention after they were reprimanded for wearing their hair in braids, dreadlocks, or other protective styles. Before a vote was taken, a number of black and African American legislators spoke of having been discriminated against because

of their hair. I do want to mention that I have not been discriminated against because of my hair that I know of, because the way the rest of that story goes is I finished college and then my first job was on a hip hop radio station KKFR and Phoenix, Arizona Power ninety eight point three it's now called and so I went into a welcome space. But imagine having that same experience, right I was going to go into

corporate law, That's why I was in business school. Imagine having that same experience coming from Compton, you know, and realizing that twenty is the magic number. When I get to twenty years old, I'm going to celebrate I've made it. I get to twenty years old, I'm in this space where there is no blackness. What can I do? What can I do now that I'm a man? No one can tell me what to do with my clothes, my hair.

I've made it. What can I do? I can check two boxes off right here, maybe more to grow my hair. Imagine if I walked into a law firm and they look at my hair, the most natural hair style on earth that has ever existed, and they say it's inappropriate and that I can't work there, or if I want to work there, I have to shave my hair right. It is something that they deem is more appropriate. So that was never my reality, but as we're seeing for a lot of people that has been I'll continue quote.

As a black woman who loves my braids, I know what it's like to feel isolated because of how I wear my hair. Representative Corey Bush said on the house floor, quote, this is the last time we say no more to Black people being made to feel like we have to straighten our hair or in order to be deemed professional. Representative Gwen Moore said someone had told a previous employer that she was an embarrassment because of the way her

hair looked. Wow. She accused some of her colleagues, such as Representative Jim Jordan, or republic from Ohio, of avoiding the conversation about discrimination that disproportionately affects black people. Jordan said Friday that he wanted to focus on gas prices, inflation and issues of importance to the American people and

accused Democrats of distancing from those issues. And response to Jordan's remarks, Representative Al Green, who was a Democrat from Texas, said quote, black people are American people too, and when you say the American people don't want it, you cannot exclude black people. Black people would have this beyond the floor. This is a kitchen table issue in black households. Que you have a daughter, your daughter will have black hair.

She does have black hair, excuse me. And as we know pretty much around the world, hairstyles are a lot

more important for women than for men. And so with that said, and with my children also knowing that this is taking place in the world, knowing that we're making moves to protect the natural state of being for human beings, which should exist on a federal level right regardless of what these one hundred and eighty eight Republicans are suggesting to know that that's the world that we're moving into. I think that's a beautiful thing. I think it's a wonderful thing. And for me to know that this is

our reality, it makes me feel optimistic. Oftentimes on the show, we're not able to feel that way, and it makes me feel hopeful, and it makes me feel like we're growing closer as brothers and sisters in this country and on this planet. And so I'm happy that I got to share this story about the Crown Act and a little bit of my story too. It's always kind of fun when I get to do that on the show. So so yeah, onward and upward. Let's keep it going, y'all.

Now it's time for the Way Black History Fact. Today's Way Black History Fact comes from cnn dot com, and we are going to talk about the all Black Women's World War II unit, which is going to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. Much of this article was contributed by Eric Levinson, neilam Borah, and Redeka Meira All of CNN. All right, I will read, oh wait too, I think

your mic is off. I'll read an all Black Women's Army Corps unit that sorted millions of pieces of mail and unheated warehouses during World War Two will finally be awarded a Congressional Gold Medal decades after the fact. President Joe Biden signed a bill into law on March fourteenth that awards a Congressional Gold Medal to the women of the six eight hundred and eighty eight Central Postal Directory

Battalion nickname six Triple eight. The honor was granted quote in recognition of their pioneering military service, devotion to duty, and contributions to increase the morale of personnel station in the European theater of operations during World War Two. The bill states. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Jerry Morgan, a Republican from Kansas, and Jackie Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada, was passed by the Senate in April and the House

last monment. The sixth Triple eight was a unit made up of about eight hundred fifty ye black women who were tasked with overcoming a massive backlog of mail. According to the Department of Defense, the unit traveled to Great Britain in nineteen forty five, surviving encounters with Nazi U boats and a German rocket explosion along the way before spending months sorting through mail and packages stacked to the

ceiling in unheated warehouses. According to the U. S. Army Center of Military History, they adopted the model no Mail low morale. The units set up a new mail tracking system and cleared the six month backlog of mail in just three months. The center said. By the end of the war, the unit processed about seventeen million pieces of mail.

According to the National World War Two Museum, like much of the country, the military was segregated throughout World War Two, Black service members face continuous racism, and the women of the six eight hundred eighty eight have sharp memories of being segregated on trains, spat at and demean by white men and women. The unit later was moved to France and then ultimately disbanded without fanfare in nineteen forty six. There were no commemoratives ceremonies for members when they came

home at the end of the war. The sixth Triple eight was led by Army major Charity Early, who later rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. She died in two thousand and two, and her son praised the belated recognition last year. It's wonderful and it's time, said Stanley Earl. It should have happened fifty sixty years ago, but now is the opportunity for the recognition that these folks did

all the right things that were so important. As of last year, only seven members were believed to still be alive, he said. The medal is part of a belated recognition of the unit's efforts. In recent years. A monument honoring the battalion was dedicated at Fort Leavingworth, Kansas in twenty eighteen. The documentary The six Triple eight nomel Low Morale celebrated the mail tracking system of the battalion created. In a statement, Moran and Rosen praised the signing of the bill and

the battalion's war efforts. Quote the heroic barrier breaking members of six Triple A Battalion, which included brave Nevada women, played a crucial role in the operations of our armed forces during World War Two, Rosen said, quote. They deserve the nation's highest honors for their service. There is no better time to give them this long overdue recognition than during Women's History Month. And I'm proud to see President

Biden sign our bipartisan legislation into law. The women of six Triple Eight have earned a special place in history for their service to our nation, and as of today, their sacrifices enshrined into law with the highest distinction Congress can bestow. Moran said quote, it has been an honor to meet members of the battalion and help lead this effort to awards six Triple Eight with the Congressional Gold Medal,

the highest expression of national appreciation from Congress. Now I want to say something, and then of course, Q you jump in. But again I do another show, and recently we were talking about the proceedings or the confirmation hearing for Judge Kanji Brown Jackson and I had an opportunity to discuss why it was so important to see this

happen and how historic it was. And at the end of one of my episodes, and feel free to go check it out once again, it's on iHeartMedia's app and you look, it's called the Black Information Network Daily Podcast

with Rams's Job. But as I was recalling how it felt, I had a message that I've written, and it said that black women have served this country, and black women have saved this country from itself time and again, and the country is always a little bit better off oft when we benefit from a little bit of black girl man. And that was dedicated to Judge Jackson, of course, but indirectly dedicated to all black women who have in fact saved this country from itself time and again. Think voting right,

black women tend to help save the country. I mean, depending on who you're talking to, but a lot of people really feel that way. Black women have turned the tides in a lot of very important elections in this country's history, and anytime black women are recognized, it's very important.

And obviously we have a show here that exists to provide some balance so that we're so that people don't think we're just rappers and singers and dancers, that we can so we can be politically informed and politically engaged as well. And because we have this show, we are always going to do our best to celebrate some black girl magic. So yeah, and the last minute, your response to this battalion, what do you think your thoughts?