Civic Cipher 082022 How Stereotypes can Affect Black Children (Part 1)

and that's okay because again, that's not your reality. But there are some things that happen that shape our reality as adults that we feel like if we share them, maybe we'll find a way to relate to each other

a little bit more easily, more readily. So we're gonna take a moment today to make sure that we discuss how some experiences have can and do shape the lives of people who are born black in this country, and maybe even some ideas on how you can address those ask about those experiences, and hopefully we can create a

little bit more empty as we relate to each other. Also, we're going to tell a story about how Civic Cipher came to be while someone reached out to us and was like, you know, kind of asking how we came up with the idea for the show, and we haven't told this story in this space, and so we're going to take some time to let you know the origins of this show, why we think it's important, and what

we hope the show will accomplish. In long form, we kind of give bits and pieces here and there, but today we're going to lay it out in full detail for you so that you will have it all. And then of course our way Black History Fact, we're going to be talking about the Urban League. You may be familiar with the NAACP, but today we're going to celebrate the Urban League. But first and foremost, we are going to discuss some Ebony excellence. How does that sound cute?

This sounds very exciting? Shall we we show? So today's Ebny Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media and we got a little tidbit from JP Morgan Wealth Management. As it turns out, black women are the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs in the US, with nearly two point seven million businesses nationwide, So shout out to black women one time. The number of businesses owned by black women grew fifty percent from twenty fourteen to twenty nineteen, representing

the highest growth rate of any female demographic. Black females accounted for forty two percent of all women who operated a new business during that time and represented thirty six percent of all black employers, and they're not letting up. In the US, seventeen percent of black women are in the process of starting a new business, compared to ten percent of white women and fifteen percent of white men. Motives for creating a new business include producing a source

of income or following a dream. So we always want to make sure that we're showing our support black women. And you know, as a side note and a personal experience, I have a sister. You know, this is the closest lens that I have outside of our producer Maggie, Miss Maggie aka Maggie, knowing she knew her perspective. My own little sister once worked for a doctor. And you know, my sister is an actual smart person, like on paper,

a brilliant mind, like for real. And I remember the way that this doctor mistreated my sister and devalued her ideas and so forth, And so my sister now works for herself because of that. So I could definitely see this reality taking shape for black women across the country. Traditionally that undervalues them. So shout out to black women one more time for our ebony excellence, and that is

a great segue into what we're talking about today. It just kind of felt important and timely based on some conversations we're having this week, Q and myself and Maggie about what it means to be, you know, a black man, black person in this country and some of our traumas and insecurities and things that have helped shaped us as

adults that started in our childhood. And so you know, there's some crazy things that you know, if you're not black, you might not be aware of these things that are specific to black people, or that are specific to me an individual, but only could happen to me as a result of me being black, as a result of me, as you'll find out, not having straight hair. And I think that it's worth sticking around for. So I want to tell a quick story to help set the stage.

So you know, I was born in Compton, California. I lived there the first part of my life. That of course, very much shaped how I viewed and still view the world. So a quick story there. When I was younger, it was a lot of violence there. Of course, it was in the eighties, so there was a lot of drugs and that sort of stuff. I had a friend. I had two friends, Keith and David. Keith ended up dying,

remember weird kids, little kids. Keith ended up getting shot and he died in front of his house in the street. I remember that, and I remember everybody screaming, and it was kind of a sad day. But I didn't really get to process that, and I remember thinking, dang, I

hope I make it to twenty. Now, most people when they're that young, they hope that they make it to eighteen, or they anticipate turning eighteen because then they'll be in a grown up, or twenty one because then they can be a real grown up, or twenty five because they can rent a car, or whatever whatever age it is.

But I thought twenty was the magic number because where I lived, whenever people talked about death or these crazy things happen, they would always be like, oh, such and such he was only thirteen or seventeen or fifteen, and the teen part stood out, and that meant that it was a tragedy. So, because I knew how numbers worked, I thought twenty was the magic number, and if I could just make it to twenty, then I will have made it. That's crazy, and so that very much shaped

my life. You know, I was in college when I turned twenty, and twenty was when I let my hair started to grow. I felt that I was going to be myself, and every other day beyond that was a bonus. Now, of course, I moved out of Compton when I was very young, and I knew that life was not just okay, you're born to die, you know, but that number stuck with me, that in mine. When I first came to Arizona, I had a friend. His name was Kevin. For those that are really into hip hop culture that watch a

lot of interviews, you may know the name Bootleg keV. Well. I met Kevin when he was three years old and I was seven, and so we grew up together. The reason he's super into hip hop is because of me. And you know, I love Kevin. I always did love Kevin. And Kevin was very fortunate. His parents had money and they believed that you can buy more than one Christmas present for your kid at Christmas, and so Kevin would get all these Christmas presents.

time Kevin's one of Kevin's toys went missing. And instead of me thinking, Okay, he's a child who lost his toy, it's in the couch, it's in the back of the car, something like that, I was so worried that his mom was going to think I stole it, because I understood at that young age that there was a stereotype and a stigma of being black that meant that people assumed

that black people steal, right. And of course I never stole anything, but I would always be so I would I would rush to help him find the toy, and I would pray that I wasn't the one who found it, because if I'm the one who found it, then they could conclude that I hit it in that location, right. And it wasn't until years later, I'm talking my early thirties when I finally told Kevin's mom about that. I was like, oh, I used to hate when keV lost his toys, and I told her the story I just told you.

the world's motor capital. Maybe still at one point the world's murder capital, a very very unproud but true statistic. And in the eighties when I grew up, the early nineties, when I was in Detroit, the black population exceeded eighty percent. And if you can imagine being somewhere where the black population is eighty percent, you can spend your entire life never seeing anyone that isn't black.

So seeing law enforcement was very normal for me, and because everyone was black, it wasn't until I was an adult that I had some of those oh this is different experiences with law enforcement. But being a child in Detroit, especially growing up not wealthy, a lot of things that are true about growing up a black child in this country never dawned upon me until once again I grew up. All of my neighbors were in the same financial situation as my mom, all of my classmates, so not only

were we all black, but we were all poor. So it wasn't like people were stunting on you. And now as I started to grow up, I would notice that my friends who had both parents at home, they had more things than I did, right, name brand shoes and clothes. But just the way that my world got to be shaped around black people was actually really cool. But there

was a duality. My uncle, my mother's brother, by the nature of being an inspector in the Detroit Police Department and then marrying a Detroit police officer to parents with what was considered good jobs, they did well, so I did sometimes get to see how the other side lived. Right, You would go to spend a night over there, and you would want that night to turn into a week or a month or a Mom, can I just stay here because they have a swimming pool and a pantry.

I don't even get into a pantry when you're a young black kid and you've never seen anything like it. Like that was what would be a special occasion. Grocery store trip for me was just every like Tuesday for you know, for their house, extra foodator like, lots of it, all the snacks, you know, anything you could possibly want. I remember the first time my heart fluttered was because I saw Tina Turner. So imagine being very much a child and thinking that the most glorious thing you've ever

seen is Tina Turner. Right, So that's what growing up surrounded by black people does to you, subconsciously, right that Tina Turner and all her glory. It couldn't get me better than that. I'm proud of that to this day. My first crush and my whole life was Tina Turner. And you know, they later made a movie about her. I bought the first tickets, probably pregnant, like, I stood in line to see What's Love Got to Do? And I learned a lot about her life and career that

I didn't know, and that was a little jarring. But once again, this is me going to see my childhood crushes movie simultaneously. However, and forgive me for saying your name if you ever hear this, because I have not seen her since I was maybe six years old. But Mary Kay Mary Kay was my cousin, Leslie and Natalie's friend and Mary Kay was white. She was the second person that I had a crush on, and mostly because if there's a such thing as not seeing color four

year old kids playing in the swimming pool. This wasn't a romantic crush because we were four. But I thought she was pretty and she wasn't my cousin, and that was kind of all that mattered, right that she was white.

It's something I think about today that absolutely didn't matter when I was four and five years old playing in my uncle's swimming pool with her, And it clearly didn't matter to her either, because when other family members would come over and she was there, her interactions with them were just as warm and just as friendly. And clearly her parents had to think it was okay because every summer or every holiday that we were at Uncle Harold's in the pool, she was there too. So just a

really really interesting dynamic. And I'll touch more on how that shifted a little later on in the show. But growing up in an all black city, because eighty two percent of a city being black, that city's.

hair on my head. It's a big old afro. I've had it for always, and you know it's my hair just grows that way. It's just what it does. So I'm very proud of it, and I don't cut it because it's like it's my way of kind of proclaiming who I am, who I was meant to be. Nature's expressing herself through my hair. God is expressing God's Self through my hand and every other part of me. And

you not taking anything away from anybody. But you know I've always had not always, but for a huge chunk of my life, I've had long hair and kept it that way. And when I got a little older, I remember somebody. So you know how like you'll go to a friend's house, you know, a lady friend, or maybe you're a lady yourself listening to us, and you let comb your hair in the shower, comb through condition or whatever, and you pull the hair off of the comb and you set it on the wall of the shower or

whatever so that you can clean it up later. Right, So the hair is kind of like stringy, straight looking hairs, kind of a little soapy, and it just sits in the corner. Anyone else who sees that sees hair, this hair is from a long haired individual that is in the corner of the shower. Well, my hair is just as long. It just doesn't hang to my shoulders because it's grows in circles, you know what I mean. It just kind of stays where it's at. It just keeps

growing in circles, which coils, if you will coils. Yeah, and this is how you get the cool looking afro situation. I think it's cool. And the thing is if I comb my hair, which I do and I always have to, you know, I have to do the same thing, right. So I remember one time I went to camp I might have been in the eighth grade, ninth grade something like that, you know, comb my hair like normal, and

then I like took the hair from the comb. This wasn't in the shower, but I took the hair from the comb and I threw it into the trash, you know what I mean. And I just left it in like a waste basket inside of the cabin where we're a camping. And one of the people that came into the cabin, this person wasn't like being mean or being racist or anything like that. That's not what this story is about. This person was unfamiliar with hair not attached

to my head. Right, So when they see this clump of hair that looks like a little tiny after that you can fit in a palm in your hand, looks at it and said something like it looks oh my god, look at this. It looks like like a bug created a nest or something like something like. Really that they weren't trying to say anything about me me, right, But the way that I heard it was like, oh my god, and you know everyone else was clowning, was like, you know,

whatever they were saying, I don't know. And then over time I heard things like, you know, when you have like thick black hair in the shower, when you come across that, a lot of people think that it's body hair. We'll say, well, my hair is all thick and black, you know what I mean, And it's cray right. So this thing kind of grew in me, this fear of leaving my hair anywhere, especially in the shower, because I didn't want anybody else to find my hair that came

from my head. I have to comb my hair and take care of the same as everybody, but I became so embarrassed about having to take care in my hair because it sheds. It's just what human beings do. All of our hair sheds. It's it's a natural thing. But leaving it in the shower became like kind of traumatic for me, so much so to wear as as recently as we'll call it, two thousand and maybe seventeen, maybe

sixteen seventeen, I was in Vegas, at a Hilton. I was there under like a diamond account right djaying for New Year's Eve, and I found myself in the shower cleaning up my hair because I didn't want the housekeepers to come in after seeing me in that room to think that I had somehow violated or disrespected the bathroom and for them to be grossed out by my hair on my head. So it's something that stayed with me well into adulthood and again growing up and getting those

traumas of just not being white, just being different. And I'm sure that Hispanic people and you know, everybody has their own versions of these stories. But I think that by us talking about it, we can kind of relate to each other. Now, you went away to college. Tell me more about this, Kip, Well, before going away to college.

have seen the movie eight Mile. That distance is eight miles literally from the southernmost part of Detroit. So as far inward as you can go south to north of the city, out into the north suburbs, eight miles and you're out of the city. All of these teachers could have worked in the suburbs and not had to move, like literally across the street. Go across the street, across

eight mile. You're not in Detroit anymore. The property value increases, your salary increases, the crime rate drops, like all of this was true. So these teachers that were not black that chose to work in inner city Detroit public schools schools had a really really genuine affection and place in their heart for teaching and developing black children.

you have Russian, Miss Lev, mister Kara Maris. All of these people who looked nothing like us, who really really gave a damn about helping us become better people and really poured into that development, prepared me to get shocked by.

full scholarship to play football. So I just graduated from high school full scholarship. I'm about to play college football. I'm on the emotional high. I am in the parking lot waiting for the shuttle to take me to my dorm for the first time. So this is day one. I have not seen my dorm yet. It picks me up in the parking lot. I get on, I sit down. I got on the shuttle first, and the only way I would have noticed this is if I got on the shuttle first. Four white young ladies got on the

shuttle after me. Three of them made it their business to not only sit as far away from me as possible, but to make fun of the one who had to take the only remaining seat by the time they got on, which was next to me, and from the parking lot to our dorm rooms, they just made fun of her, and she was not only hurt but embarrassed, And I remember reaching out and touching her and her not being startled,

which was comforting. And she looked at me like embarrassed for her friends, and I just told her, you don't have to apologize for them. I'm cool. But it was the first time I realized that things were different, and it was the first time of many times that I would be reminded of so