And now bring my mic back. You're like that.
You can strikes with waters from headquarters behind him.
And then if you're just tuning into civicxcite for I'm your host Ramsey's.
Job, he is Ramsys John, I am Q ward one time for Magnie because she'd be knowing indeed, and we.
Still got more show for you to stick around for. So do just that. We're gonna be talking about, uh, the repercussions for police, whether or not they have them, and what they look like.
I'm sorry every time you say something like that last it sounds pretty funny, because but listen, if.
Police get to be if if we are people, we make mistakes, police are people, they make mistakes, we get held accountable, do they? We're gonna talk about that. Also, we're gonna use our way black history fact to discuss the recently passed away mister Bill Russell, Uh, the NBA great who was also a civil rights activist, and we felt it was important to tell his story. So Q is going to be spearheading that effort when we get
to that part of the show. But first and foremost, let's discuss B A B A how to become a better ally? Shall we we shall. So this one brought to you by Hip Hop Weakly Magazine and it is Black Business Month August, so support black businesses all month if you can. If it were that simple, we'd leave it there, but no, we actually have more for you, So get those pens ready or get your phone ready.
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Maggie Known. If you are in a decision making position or in a position of influence at your company and have the ability to host or support initiatives like this, please do Otherwise your patronage to black business is on and offline, is much appreciated and an excellent way to become a better ally. And don't forget you can also support Cecivic Cipher because we're growing with your support. All right? Now, do cops have repercussions or nah? That's how it was written.
I like that, so I'll do a little bit of reading before we start breaking this down. Versus comes from the Washington Post. Police think they can get away with anything. That's because they usually do. That's the title. That crazy, all right? Only a tiny percentage of complaints against police are acted on. Research conducted with the journalism organization The Invisible Institute suggests that ignoring complaints, even multiple complaints about one officer, is not the exception, but the norm in
police departments. I don't want to pause real quick. I think that that shows how easy it is for people to not really think police are the greatest. I get that there's you know, some bad apples. Sure most police are decent folk, sure, right, But to know that the framework doesn't really prioritize complaints about police misconduct, multiple offenses by one officer and so forth, it erodes the faith that the community would have in police departments around the country.
And then there's this obviously in a world like today, where we share information, we share data. We know what's happening in Louisiana, we know what's happening in Oregon. You know, policing is kind of like a catch all. It doesn't matter if it just only happens here or there. No, we have data that tells the story about the whole country.
It's a super complex thing to address, though, Okay, right, in any instance where there's a body that has authority over another, by nature, there's going to be complaints. So that makes this very complex. Of course, if they.
Surveyed our children, they would tell the world we were tyrants.
He makes me go to bed early, It makes me do my homework, he makes me get up early, you know what I mean. So the same with people that work for you, the same with I guess any group of people that are somehow put into a hierarchy deficiency versus another. I think, by nature of it, they treat complaints like, well, yeah, of course they're going to complain about the people that pull them over and give them tickets,
incite them for this and this and that. So I think they by nature treat the complaints as cavalier and just a part of the job, not as something to take seriously, which is ridiculous. But from that vantage point, I can understand how a system could put itself in a position to just almost ignore the complaints of those who are under the thumb of the authoritative you know, policing around them.
You know what else is kind of weird about this is that there's this sort of weird question that I think everyone has to ask themselves at some point in their lives, because it's just such an obvious gaping fail point, failure point in terms of the structure. Who do you call when the police are the bad guys? Another way of thinking about it is, if the police are the ones doing the investigating, who investigates the police? Is it the police?
So I can specifically answer that as the nephew of former Chief Inspector Harold Scott internal Affairs of the Detroit Police Department. Yes, the police investigate the police. Oh wow, how about that.
Now let me make another addition to the first point that we made here. So a more troubling component here is this is back from the Washington Post reading that we were doing. More troubling component is the racial disparity in the responses to the complaints. So watch this. Three percent one two three, that's it, three percent of complaints
initiated by black citizens were sustained. That means that if you took one hundred black people that took the time to complain, if you're going to complain about an officer and make it formal the theory, my operating assumption is that you feel like you're on some solid ground there to formalize your complaint. Right, So if you'll let me have that, and in this thought experiment we have here, there are one hundred black people that are submitting these,
again what they feel are valid complaints against these police officers. Again, quote protect and serve quote unquote, you know, we pay taxes, you work for us. That sort of thing you know, three percent, that's three of those Black people have their complaints sustained. Ninety seven of them nothing happens. Okay, hang out.
Those people are by nature criminals, then of course they're going to have complaints about the police.
See and your point out you're being funny, obviously, but you're pointing out the breakdown, and that the the the assumption by the police, and a lot of people that read these statistics, society and large body feel that way, that that well, you know, you shouldn't run if you didn't do anything wrong, you don't that's the same attitude. Now watch this. Twenty one percent of white complaints. White
complainants had their complaints sustained. So we go from three percent if you're black to twenty one percent if you're white, seven times as many. Sure, but even the twenty one percent, Yeah, that's that's we could have a whole show based on that chasm right there. Wow, But even with white people complaining about officers, you're still talking approximately eighty twenty in
favor of the officers. Your complain is not valid. And we know I don't mean for this to sound the way that it's about to sound, but I'm going to just power through it. Then when that if there is a group of people on this planet, they know how to complain. So listen, so listen. What I'm trying to say is what I'm trying to say is I don't think these complaints are just throwing thrown together, that these people are just like whatever. No, these people are serious.
And even then only twenty and they got the right you know, they got the right story in this country, They got the right grounds to stand on for these you know, complaints to be heard. And at least in their minds, they think that these complains are valid. And we're talking eighty percent of the time they're showing the door as well. Right, So, I think that they're great at complaining when it's necessary. They they will switch up their whole life to get that complain off. I've seen
it happen, so, you know, and it's sometimes that's helpful. Man. You know, we got friends and they got moms, and they'll get us back our stuff. You know, they'll they'll get the start to return the merchandise or whatever however it ends up going. But the long and the short of it is that we're we're talking about policing as it relates to all of us, you know what I mean. And obviously, being black, we're kind of at the we get the worst end of it. We always talk we're
like the worst of the statistics. Everything bad happens to us the most most frequently, all the time throughout the history of ever Well, at least throughout the history of the window ever Well, once upon a time before the mass pillage and rape of Africa and her resources, colonization and gross colonization, sure of Africa and her resources, we're talking about a fair playing field for the most part
across the world. You don't know this history because you got to pay attention to who's teaching you this history. But you know, if you're talking about ancient Greece and you know you look at the architecture and all that sort of stuff, all that stuff was learned in Africa by African teachers. You know, everything everything starts in Africa. I know this stuff because obviously I had to know it, and doctor Westerberg was my teacher. But I'm not making
that up. You can, it's actually you can research all this stuff. But you know, here we are today having to deal with these numbers and in this country at least a lot of what we have to deal with
feels very unfair. One of the things that while we're here, one of the things that I brought up in a conversation more recently was the myth that black men don't take care of our children, right, is a very very harmful myth that was created in I believe it was the fifties by a Democrat, a liberal Democrat, who was trying to find a reason for uh uh, economic inequality black families and non black white families. Right. He's trying
to find the basis for this. And what this liberal gentleman, I forget his name, but what he found out in his published report that became sort of the bible when it came to dealing with black people in economics in this country for many years. What he found was that the black family structure was broken, and as a result of that, that black people were suffering economic disadvantages. Right now.
His report did not account for let me let me, let me, uh consult my list here housing this crimination. It did not account for environmental racism, It did not account for the corrupt criminal justice system. It did not count for account for the the lack of teaching and the educational inequities. It did not account for improper funding of the GI Bill and the promises to Black Americans. It did not account for redlining and the disenfranchisement of
the Black voat. It did not account for drugs and the way the drugs have been criminalized in this country with respect to black people in particular, And that list goes on. You get what I'm trying to say. This guy singularly said the reason that black people don't have money is because black fathers are not in the homes. And that started this myth. Right, first off, it wasn't true, but his basis was marriage rates and the birth rates
of black children. Right, I'm telling you, like you don't know, but our listeners don't know. So some of our listeners don't know I've died. Imagine a good chunk, because this is a common thing that we have to talk to on the talk about on the show and in general. But so what happens is if you're black, or you know someone black, are brown, someone poor, even you might know this story. So let's go back to like the thirties, right in the thirties, the Great Depression. Imagine a poor
family during the Great Depression. How does that family look. Are they white? Yes? Why? Because those are the people receiving aid from the government. Those are the people that are in the pictures that you remember that jumped into your mind when I gave you that example. Right, But imagine how hard black people were hit during that time and what resources black people had because the country was way more racist back then, so black people was way
at the back of that line. Right. But how you could get a little bit more compassion, a little bit more empathy is if you were a mother, a woman who was a mother and unmarried, right, So again you
might know people who operate this way. So what this means is that either this mother cannot claim that she lives in a house with the children's father, her partner, husband, et cetera, so that goes undocumented, which results in later decades these statistics that create this myth that black fathers don't exist in our children's lives, because that's how you are able to cheat the system in order to get what is owed to you by this country despite your blackness,
to have enough food and enough economic opportunities to you know, take care of yourself and your family. Furthermore, it doesn't account for the fact that there is a large migration of black people from the South to the north, places like Detroit where you're from the automotive industry, and other places you know in Chicago and you know, Michigan and places like that where black people were able to find
job opportunities. Right, So this man just decides that, Okay, black fathers are not in their homes, not that they're not providing none of this sort of stuff. And this is why it's important for there to be more black researchers, because they might have known, Okay, well, maybe there's something else that we need to look into. Right. Part of the criminal.
Diabolical peace and the way that narrative is presented, it's not just that they don't account for all of those factors that you said, is that they make it out to be the choice of the black father to be absent.
So that so let me go in, let me lean into that part. So I've heard it said like this before. Rather than fulfilling its promise, this country's promise to black people, this country would rather have black people feel like we are the source of our own problems. Right now, I don't want the wrong people to hear that and run with it, because everybody has to be responsible for themselves. Every community has a degree of responsibility for the community,
the culture, etc. Right. But if we're talking about systemic issues, I think that we have to take everything into consideration. Right. But this myth about absent black fathers has been so influential that even we black people feel like it's true. And it's not to say it doesn't happen, but it doesn't happen to a degree that is uh unique to black people. In other words, white families have absent fathers. Don't say.
Don't say with that much grace, though, because it's not. It's not just that it doesn't happen the way that it's depicted. It's actually polarity. Polarity, the polarity of the opposite is quite as far the opposite distance as you can use as a word for that. The statistics tell a story that is the polar opposite of the narrative.
Go ahead, you tell them.
The most present, most involved, most involved group of people as fathers in this country is the Black American man.
Can you cite the source of that? I cannot, Well, I can. That comes from the CDC's twenty thirteen study based on census data and government funding. Right, so it is a government backed report that was done that confirms what many people long held to be true, is that that couldn't be the case. Black men don't love our children. See.
The thing is, one of the things that I was saying when I was having a conversation with another friend of mine of ours, is that anything that has to do with African American people, if it doesn't sound right, do yourself a favor and remove the word American. Now you're just dealing with African people. Does it still sound the same? In other words, African American men don't raise their children. That don't sound right. Take away the American part.
African men don't raise their children. That don't sound right. So what word did we take out? The American word? Okay? So now we have to look at America. What's going on in America? Okay? Is America creating a set of circumstances or is there something going on in society in America? Or are Black people just bad? And the thing is, you can't just say Black people are just bad because guess what, African men you canse their kids.
You can say it well, and are they would do a lot of people that would agree with you, by the tens of millions, right, the people who came out and droves and shout out to everybody around the country who is using their right to vote. I just want to say that out loud because it's that time. But there are tens of millions of people.
That that spin that right and that vote on a candidate based on the ideology that black people and Mexican people and anybody that's not you know, Christian and white is bad, criminal by nature.
So of course it's ridiculous.
But there are plenty of you know, claiming to be educated adult people in this country that say things out like that out loud and believe it.
Well, the truth is that those people are wrong. Now back to police, I want to read this. So this one comes from This also comes from the Washington Post. So patterns demonstrate the larger truth that too often, instead of operating as an effective check on police abuses, complaint
systems served to further disempower poor minority community members. The system offers the illusion that the police are listening to all residents, and then by repeatedly exciting with officers, the systems encourage officers to adopt a mindset that when black and brown citizens object to what they're doing, they're almost always wrong. That reinforces the officer's sense of untouchability. Now I want to add this before we move on. This comes from the New York Times. Justices rule, police do
not have a constitutional duty to protect someone. This comes from June two thousand. You know, I don't even want to read that. Wow, but that's actual. That's an actual court case. I employ you to look it up because we don't have time to go into that. But yeah, Justice's rule, police do not have a constitutional duty to protect someone. Meaning in Uvalde, kids was getting shot up in the classroom, the police are standing outside. They didn't
break the law, I did, you know? Based on what these justices say, the police have no duty to protect the public. And then before we go, a final thought from our show producer to criticize their effectiveness in solving crimes in the aftermath. Further further is the propaganda. It assumes that police are acting in the interests of the public when there's no precedent that says they have to, and oftentimes they're false. Faith in them and moving forward,
we need urgent change. So yeah, please look up that that ruling that the police do not have a constitutional duty to protection. Now sign for the Way Black History Fact sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Magazine Q our resident athletic man, So you can take this one.
I don't know why Rams just thinks I'm the resident expert on sports just because I'm an athlete. Ram just knows more than he wants you guys to know. I think somebody told him it wasn't cool to be a jock once upon a time, so now he runs from it like he didn't.
Also play football.
But I won't put his business out there, and I'll let him keep pretending that he doesn't have an athletic bone in his body. The Way Black History Fact, once again presented by Hip Hop Weekly Magazine, Our tribute to the legend.
That we lost.
I had an opportunity to meet the great Bill Russell once upon a time at a charity event in Los Angeles.
I had just gotten my first job out of college.
Out in LA at a charity event for Marcus Allen, and Bill Russell was in attendance, and I was in all because, as you can imagine, as a lifetime.
Sports fan, all of my sports heroes were there. So rest in peace to one of the greats, Bill Russell. He dies at eighty eight.
Celtics Icon Hall of Famer an eleven time NBA champion, Bill Russell died peacefully with his family, and I think he recently relocated to Not recently, I think he spent most of his life after retiring from the NBA actually on an island off the coast of Washington, not in what you would assume to be the beloved Boston where he spent his entire professional career. Bill Russell, the NBA great who anchored the Boston Celtics dynasty to eleven championships
in thirteen years. Such a crazy stat, the last two as the first black head coach. So it should be noted he was not just the coach but also still a player. So the first black head coach at major sports while still playing that sport.
I didn't know that. Yeah, pretty incredible.
Mister Russell was not just a great athlete, but he also marched for civil rights with doctor Martin Luther King Junior. His family posted the news on social media, saying he died with his wife on Jeanie by his side.
They did not state the cause of death.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in his statement that Russell was the greatest champion in all of team sports.
And you guys might notice that he's.
Conspicuously left out of the greatest of all time athlete conversations. And I think the reason why is because no matter how you measure that, he so outwighs everyone else that it's not even fair. So he's called the greatest champion in team sports here because if you match him up against anyone else, he's got more championships, his winning percentage is higher. He's never lost the do or die game ever in twenty one chance.
It's like, this is why you just rattl those staffs. They're not even written here. Yeah, so you're a sports guy. I'm a music guy. Man, let me be great.
Hall of Famer, five time Most Valuable Player, twelve time NBA All Star. Russell in nineteen eighty was voted the greatest player in NBA history by basketball writers. He remains the sport's most prolific winner as a player and archetype of selflessness who won with defense and rebounding while leaving scoring to his teammates. Often that meant Will Chamberlain, the only player of the era who was ever a worthy
rival for Russell, to be without championships. So he Will Chamberlain, one of the greatest athletes of all time, spent a lot of his career on the losing end of Bill Russell, even though a lot of people may have regarded him as a more gifted physical specimen. Russell said that when he was growing up in the segregated South and later California, his parents instilled in him a calm confidence that allowed
him to brush off racist taunts. Now, Bill Russell, as I told you before, after he retired, left Massachusetts and moved as far away from Massachusetts as possible that we talked about it, and a lot of people would wonder why. And you and I have discussed sports fans in Boston, specifically while he was winning championships in Boston, right as he is the greatest player in the sport for their team.
Eight championships in a row.
While away, people broke into his home, dumped out his trash cans, and defecated around his house and in his bed. I'll let that soak in with you, guys for a minute. The hometown hero in that same hometown, still not given the level of dignity and respect to not break into vandalize, and if I need to be more specific, came home to human feces around his home and in his bed. I'll continue, I've never been through anything. From my first moment of being alive was the notion that my mother
and father loved me. It was Russell's mother who would tell him to disregard comments from those who might see him playing in the yard. Whatever they say, good or bad, they don't know you. They're wrestling with their own demons. Bill was the ultimate winner and consummate teammate, and his influence on the NBA will be forever felt. Adam Silver added and I quote, we send our deepest condolences to
his wife, Genie, his family, and many friends. His family said the arrangements for Russell's memories for his memorial service, I'm sorry, We'll be announced in the coming days. The Celtics often celebrated Bill Russell. Bill Russell would celebrate those moments with his family and friends away from the team. He played for his teammates and for his coach, not for a city that never embraced him.
I never loved him. I want to add this because I have a note here. It says that he was at the march on Washington in nineteen sixty three when Joster King gave his I Have a Dream speech, and he backed Muhammad Ali when the boxer was pilloried. I think that's that word a refusing induction into the military draft. Quote.
To be the biggest, greatest champion of your sport, to revolutionize the way the game is played, and to be a societal leader all at once seems unthinkable, but that's who Bill Russell Russell was and quote, the Boston Celtics said in a statement. Twenty eleven, President Barack Obama awarded Russell the Medal of Freedom alongside Congressman John Lewis, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and baseball great Stan Mirosol so his activism.
Also speaking of his activism in his eighties, Bill Russell joined Twitter, would you guess the reason why to stand in solidarity or to kneel in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick? That was Bill Russell.
I'm glad that I'm glad that you took this one, because see, you know a little neat little things like that, and yeah, you know what I do want to say. I don't know I think it take any shine away from anyone, but I do want to say this, all right, Yes I did play football in high school. Okay, I did. But it's because I read a book and it said that like seventy percent of millionaires play team sports or
something in high school. So I was thinking, like, okay, if I play football, and give me a better chance of getting this money when I graduate. So that's the only reason I played, understood, So I'm familiar with how the game works. But the people that play I wasn't there because I was a passionate person. I was trying to get some bread and I'm I'm one hundred and thirty pounds. Still knew I wasn't going to go to
the NFL. I was just trying to play because that's what the book said, So you know, yeah, I'm not an athlete. All these music tattoos and we got, you know, anyway that's going to do it for us. On Civic Cipher once again, I'm your host. Rams's Jah. They call me Qward, they call her Maggie b Knowing is indeed she produced another great one for us, one for the books, and we love her dearly, So be sure to engage with us. You know we put this show together for you.
We want to hear from you and you know we want to know how this resonates with you. You can hit us on our website Civic cipher dot com. You can submit any questions, any topics. Please donate again. The show is growing and it grows with your support. We are at Civic Cipher on all the major donating platforms, but you can also find that through our website and follow us on social media as well. We are at Civic Cipher uh everywhere that you can find us. And hopefully I'm not missing anything.
And if not, subscribe like a comment podcast, donate right, share it with your friends, become a better ally.
Please until next week, y'all pace, y'all, y yo.
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