Welcome to another episode of Sivig Cipher. I'm your host, ramses Joh I go by the name Q. You can call me Q. Yes, indeed, and uh, we've got a heavy show. I think it was expected. We've got a lot to talk about, so stick around.
UH.
As you know, we were discussing the attack in Buffalo as our last recording, and this past week it was obviously a much widely covered UH mass shooting in Texas. Nineteen children at last count lives are quite short and so we have to talk about that. And it's been a difficult month, but we've done our best to try to cover everything, and we still wanted to make sure that we honored our Asian American and Pacific Islander brothers and sisters for their History month and the heritage man
I should say. And so we have a lot to cover in this episode, and we're going to try to do it all and be true to it all. And so again, a lot to stick around for. I can't promise it's going to be easy. I know that at least we've around here. We've been we haven't had any conversations about the goings on in the news. We've obviously sent a lot of stuff to our group chat and our show producer, Maggie A ka Maggie B. Knowing has kind of pointed us in this direction, which we knew
we'd have to we'd have to do the show. But we're going to be strong for you. We've been holding onto this all week and hopefully we'll be able to do right by everyone. So first and foremost, let's get into some ebony excellence. How do you feel about that? Que asking me how I feel today? Probably not going to be your best. Well, we still want to celebrate.
So today we're going to talk about the first black female architect to earn a doctor from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and how she aims to diversify the industry. Danielle mcleve is the first black woman turn a Doctor
of Architecture professional degree. Her degree serves as a milestone within the industry where black people make up just two percent of one hundred and six and forty two licensed architects and black women represent only zero point four percent, So the school notes, with her degree, she's looking forward to diversifying the industry and inspiring more black women to
enter the field. This is a direct quote from her When I first found out I would be the first black woman to attain this degree, I was hit with a variety of emotions. I was excited to be in this position of trailblazing, and I knew it would be encouraging for other Black women looking to get into design. Mcleeve received her bachelor's in sculpture and painting from Belmont
University in Nashville, Tennessee, before attending U H Manoah. M cleve won the Hawaii Architectural Foundation Ward for her thesis on housing titled Redesigning the Hood using Culturally Aware Wellness as a Tool to inform Architectural design. While on the doctorate programs, she stressed the need for more equitable housing
and culturally aware design practices in architecture. I just want to make a note that our show producer Ms. Maggie aka Maggie b Noan, she's a big fan of this woman right here, So she sent a story over from Black Enterprise so that we could again shout out Danielle mcleve. Now we'll be honest with you. We record the show sometime during the week and it airs on most stations over the weekend. I know It's not normal to show behind the curtains when we're producing a show like that,
but that is the way that most shows work. Hours included. So you might be hearing this well after we've recorded and in the days since we've recorded it. In the day that you're hearing it, maybe there are new things that have happened. But we are going to discuss the world as we see it, as we feel it right now. As you may know, nineteen children were killed one day at school last week, Tuesday of last week, and there were two teachers killed as well. This was because of
a mass shooter and a city called Gouvalde, Texas. I believe that's how it's pronounced. And you know, we've had this conversation on the show before. You know guns, you know this is this is a black show, decidedly black space. Guns have been something that has plagued our community specifically, and so we have lots of conversations that involve guns and the use of guns and the use of guns against black people, and that's sort of done. Less frequent, however,
is the discussion about guns in general. But we have had these conversations here as well. Q is famously I wouldn't I guess anti gun, but a gun owner, and I am just anti gun full stop. And those conversations I believe are necessary for us to really find our way through who we are, who we want to be, what's necessary, and how to protect ourselves in this country. Different philosophies, But this show is so that we can
have those conversations. So it's good that you know Q feels the way he feels and that I feel the way that I feel, because I believe that between the two of us, we represent a good majority of the way people feel around the country. So you might hear your opinions somewhere in the conversations that we have had and perhaps we'll have. And this conversation is that we
found out that the shooter was a Hispanic person. The attack was on a primarily Hispanic community, and so the racial component is a little different this time, but the gun component is one that is very familiar. You know, Q comes from Detroit, impoverished community seven Mile to be specific, and guns were a part of his everyday life growing up. You know, poor people struggling to get by, you know
economic inequalities. You know, you get people that are scraping to get by, and some people even turn to crime, and some of those crimes include robberies. I'm from Compton, California, so it's no stranger to me as well. But in the years since we've grown up, we've seen mass shootings over and over and over again. We were both in high school when Columbine happened, and it's it's been like a runaway train ever since then, and of course more
in recent years it's been even more so. So I want to stop right there because I want Q two chime in, because I know you have a lot on your mind. So Ramses.
That you are behind the curtain with regards to the wind and the house when it comes to producing our show and when it airs to you now as a continent professional. Snapping back into professional mode, Ramses then said
that this shooting happened last week. This shooting happened yesterday as of the time we record the show, So I need that to kind of settle in with people for a second, and just also said the racial component was a little different this time because the shooter was Hispanic, in the community where the shooting happened was as well. I would challenge that the racial component was the same as always. This time the shooter was a member of
a minority. This shooter was not arrested, apprehended, and provided a day in court. The shooter was murdered on the scene, as what typically happened when the shooter looks more like us and less like the people apprehending. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. At some point between me graduating from high school and today, my hometown was the murder capital of the United States, maybe even of the world at one point, and that was never something to be proud of.
But I also.
Walked to and from school every day. There were gangs, there was violence, but at least at school. I never for a second imagined someone would enter that school and possibly murder me and my classmates, no matter how impoverished, no matter how much crime, no matter what our daily
realities were. Since Columbine, as Ramses pointed out, issues of rampant gun violence and specifically mass shootings of people in public places, public places once thought to be the safest of spaces for people of all backgrounds, colors, ethnicities, and religions, church, the grocery store, and school. In the wake of these things,
we fall into a very very exhausting cycle. At this point, because it's so repetitive and it's so predictable, a lot of people are going to be very, very publicly and.
Aggressively upset. Over these next few days.
All of our social media stories and feeds will look the same. Everyone will actually pretend to be outraged by it. The NRA put out a statement today. The words as we gather are in the statement right, very very much business as usual for these people, their performative grief, their
performative sorrow, their thoughts and prayers. In a cycle. Those of us who do not have power will let everyone know how upset we are, and those that do have the power to make changes will very predictably do nothing. So this is me as an adult, as someone who pays taxes and votes and is very very involved in the civics of the city, state, and country that he lives in. I vote in every election, not just the president. Pay attention to who I'm voting for and why. I
do not predetermine those things before the election start. I do not vote in uniformity with a certain group just because that's what I'm supposed to do. However, there is a group that I can say without blinking that I refuse to vote for because they've shown me just how much me and people like me mean to them at some point, the Republican Party in this country. Okay, I'm going to stop now because I was about to say something very very hopeful and something that I know it's
not going to happen. So I don't even want to pretend for our listeners that they'll be called out for what they're doing and that they'll take any.
Accountability for it. I think I forget his name is I want to say Steve Kerr. Steve Kerr, the head coach for the Golden State Wards. Yeah, he has a video that has gone viral and he spoke on the state of politics, and he named some Republican representatives specifically and kind of hung this most recent tragedy on the heads of those people. Now here's the thing, not singularly this tragedy. Though.
We haven't finished talking about Buffalo like that's yeah. Yeah, we haven't spent much time morning or trying to reconcile what just happened. Here we are again, and it's not just optics. These people say how they feel out loud. People who feel the same go out and carry out these very very scary retribution acts with assault rifles, killing innocence, and then we just get back to the status quo
of whatever we were going to do that day. So, speaking of getting back to the status quo, because today is Wednesday that we're recording this episode, it was the last day of school for my sons. I have two sons, and like many of you, I was worried because again, this thing hangs over your head when you take your child to school. When Sandy Hook happened my older son, I left the radio station and I went picked up my son and we went to Toys r Us. I'll
never forget that day. I went, I got my baby out of school.
I didn't know what was going on, but but yeah, today business as usual. So one of the things that I didn't do was talk to my son about what happened yesterday. And everyone at his school was fine. He was let out of school, and I brought him with me to the studio. So he's sitting here and he's on the mic, say hi, baby, Hello. So I don't know what I'm about to say, but I know that if you're a parent, that you may appreciate the conversation that I'm going to have with my son and that
his uncle is going to have with his nephew. So here we go. Then, do you know that sometimes people go into schools with guns and they shoot little kids? Yeah, okay, that's a real thing that happens. And you know, little kids are so little that a lot of times they don't survive and they don't know what to do. It's very scary. And you know, little kids don't run as fast as grown ups, you know. And you know, your mom and I we have you in a really good school in a really good area, and it's not the
sort of thing that we want to worry about. But I guess before anything else, I need you to know that I love you, and your mom loves you, and your brother loves you. Okay, and I can't be with you all the time because that's just not the way that things work. But I don't I know this is kind of advanced for you, But I don't want you to ever think that I'm gambling with your life by taking you to school, because that's not what I'm doing. You deserve to have a childhood. You deserve to go
and make friends and play. You deserve to learn at a school with the way most of us do, and you deserve to not to have to live in fear. Give me a second, anything you got cute.
I cannot pretend to be prepared to have this conversation with my nephew or with my son. Yeah, he's going next year. He turns five. That's fall, so yeah, dropping him off at school thing starts next year. For the kids who were killed in Texas, the last day of school is tomorrow. For many of those kids, I'd imagine the last day of school was yesterday, just because what parent wants to send their kid back to that school again.
After that, it was almost hard for me to decide seconds ago that I was going to finish the show today, because my nephew answered honestly the first question you asked him in the way that he absolutely should have. No, Dad, I don't know that little kids get shot and killed at school. That's the type of thought that should never have to cross his mind. And the fact that we have to weigh if we're being irresponsible by not having this conversation or we're doing him a disservice by removing
that innocence, and that Naiven take from him. It's as bad as having to decide, you know, on rent or groceries. It's the type of choices that we should never have
to make. We shouldn't be trying to figure out whether or not he should be more informed so he can be careful, but that might lead to him being scared and not taking advantage of the time where he's at school and should be learning and soaking up information, instead of looking over his left and right shoulder to know if it's safe to be sitting in the seat that
he's in. The type of trauma that could cause PTSD in a kid where he hears a door slam loud and now he's scared because that might have been something else. I cannot pretend that I was even almost prepared to have that conversation with him, or with your nephew.
But we are fathers, we are head of household.
We do have to weigh if we're doing our children a disservice by not having them prepared for this very very, very difficult and scary place they have to grow up in, one that we thought when we were their age, and by the time we got to a point where we had kids their age would be a much different place than it is. I want to say it's very much
the same, but in some cases it's worse off. We have access to far more information now, and even with that information, we are making informed decisions against our own personal quality of life best interest in the name of As we've said many times on this show, capitalism profit over everything, even the lives of our babies.
And this is why Steve Curry said the name Mitch McConnell. That man is the reason why I have to have a conversation with my son, and I have to explain to my son. If you hear anything, I don't care if it's a loudo or slam son, you run as far and as fast as you can. You be smart. I don't know whether or not hiding is the right thing. I don't know if you just keep running, but if that happens to you, you just survive. Okay, baby, Okay? What grade are you going into? Second grade? How old
are you? Seven? And let everyone know what your name is? I don't know. Ayah. So that's the conversation I had to have with my son. I'm not going to pret like I didn't have the same conversation with my older son, Christian, there was a I think it might have been the Parkland shooting in Florida, and I had to take him to school, and this is not who I am, but you know, I mentioned on the show that my father
is a minister and his father was a minister. The teacher when I took my son to school after that, let me pray for my son and the rest of those kids as I walked into class, and the teacher didn't start class until I was done. And I realized, we haven't gotten to the guns part of this, because I think we're still dealing with the reality of it, and we will, so you know, stick around. We're gonna come back with more cific cipher read after this