Civic Cipher 090421 Ramses Ja & Q Ward

which I think is standard forward for us. So some of those things and some reasons to stick around include we're definitely gonna talk about some statistics that are often skewed and sold to moderates in America to deepen their app with the with respect to you know, black people and the plight of black and brown individuals in this country. We're gonna spend a good amount of time talking about that. But you know, it really came about as an idea when we came across a video, a TikTok video of

all places from someone named cap without a Country. So again, we're gonna spend some time talking about that. We're also gonna talk about Target and how Target became cozy with the cops and what that's meant for black and brown neighborhoods, and you know, the state of the world since then. And we also have a quote from Kimberly Jones we're gonna check out as well that I think you definitely

want to stick around for that. I think we're gonna have to get into the ebony excellent stuff first, So let's do that, q all, no matter what.

it to you. They really relied on the people who live the culture and who are a part of it

to present that story to the masses. And they taken a stance similar to the way journalists were treated in the wake and even in the process of the Vietnam War, where the country felt a certain way about it, but the journalists and photographers more specifically had to go over and cover the worst parts of it and show it to the world, the truth of it, so that people could be as appalled by it if they needed to be, and bring it into what many people thought was an

unjust war. They used Tupac as an example of the violence and the things that are portrayed in hip hop that people have always saw as a negative, and Tupac was saying well, he used an example of someone knocking at your door and not being able to get an answer. The longer you knocked with no answer, the harder you knock.

And by sharing what our truths were with the world, Tupac specifically felt that if the world could see the worst parts of our life, the true worst parts of our life, that they would get the attention that they deserved and much liked the Vietnam War, they were being a lot of effort made to bring an end to

those things. Unfortunately, the victims of these very harsh truths and hip hop looked like me and you, so it was not met with the urgency that I think he and people like Public Enemy really hoped and thought they would be. But the Smithsonian choosing to display hip hop as an art in prison, entering that to the world as a space for truth. I appreciate what I read.

a lot of triumph. And you know, for that story to be not only a Black story, but an American story, and to have it be told for decades by people who have created a whole culture around this style of music, dress, talk, and so forth, I feel like that is remarkable and certainly worthy of Ebony excellence. So very glad that we could share that with you today. So moving on Cap without Country on TikTok check that out if you have TikTok. It occurred to us that we had never done a

show to really meet with the opposition. If you will, what is the opposite of our show? What is the very pro white If you will, that sounds weird, but trust me, there are shows like that. You recall to us driving through I want to say it was Alabama or Mississippi. There were They're advertised as pro white radio shows,

and we actually tuned in and listened to them. I'm sure there are shows out there that purport certain facts or not facts I use the term loosely, but alternative facts or statistics or whatever, and they're skewed or misrepresented in a way that tells a story to folks who really need to feel like they're victims and that black people are what's the word I'm looking for, unfairly victimizing ourselves.

I suppose, you know, or playing the victim role, and we're all on welfare and we just think we deserve and we want everything free. And there's programs and there's you know, there's things on the internet, there's memes, there's you know, articles and all the sort of stuff that shared that helps sell that idea to people who really need that information. They don't need it, of course, but they really want it. They want the world to feel like everything around them is a result of other people

taking things from them. And we never created an episode where we could talk about some of those statistics, because you know, if you're listening to this show, there there might be have been a time or two when you've come across some statistics that say black people statistically are this, that or the other more likely to be doing this, that or the other, and you know, your heart might go out to it, and you might think in your mind, okay, that maybe there's a reason for it, maybe there's more

to it, and it's really up to us to flesh out that full dialogue. And that's what we plan on doing today. And again, it occurred to us when we were looking at this Cap Without a Country's TikTok page. So one of the myths that you know, the host of the page mentioned was the thirteen fifty myth for the my favorite. Yeah, for those that don't know, Honestly, this was new to me. I never heard of the thirteen fifty myth. I'd never heard of it. And that's I'm sure it's surprising to you, but.

that to a person listening it creates fear of black people. It's almost like one in every two black people is going to attack you or something like that. You know, for people that don't take time to really sit with the numbers of the logic or anything like that, it

sounds very scary. And to the people who really need things like this to be true so that they can continue to hold up their white supremacist views of the world or to continue to live comfortably in a world where white supremacy so ports their lifestyle or causes them to live more comfortably, these statistics are very much well received, but they're flawed. Now, I feel like you might have want to jump in there.

day to day lives. Right, And once you actually take all of the optics and all of the statistics and put them in the same bowl and mix it all together, what you have doesn't really support a white supremacist agenda anymore. And so this is why people are scared of the whole truth and the half truths and the misrepresentation of the reality is a little bit more comfortable for them, and I'm a little bit more palatable. So allow me

to explain. So again, there's this thirteen fifty rule, we'll call it a myth on our show that says that half the violent crime comes from black people. Thirteen percent of the population, Black people commits half of the violent crime The truth of the matter is that black people account for fifty percent of arrests of violent crimes. Now, that might not change much so far, but allow me to continue again, black people account for fifty percent of

arrests of violent crimes. Now, when you factor in that black people are five times more likely to be arrested, six times more likely to be convicted, fifty percent more likely to be wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to twenty percent longer convictions than white violent criminals, now you begin to see things level out a bit more. One of the things that we've talked about on this show is over policing and this TikTok page, this cap without a Country.

I want to make sure I shout this out because if you're into, you know, this sort of stuff, if this kind of help empowers your narrative, then you should definitely like lock in if you're on TikTok. But one of the things that we talk about on the show is the way that black people interact with the criminal justice system with policing and so forth, and really policing in this instance, if let's say there will make an imaginary city, I'm going to explain to you how over

policing works. We'll make an imaginary city, and we'll divide the city east and west, and all the black people live on the west side, and all the white people live on the east side, right, And then there's a police force, right that has to patrol this whole city. Now, if eighty percent of the police patrol the west side and twenty patrol the east side, then you would imagine that most of the arrests will be made where there

are police, where most of the police are, right. And so that is a quick and dirty way of illuminating what over policing is. The reason for that is it's kind of like a self It's like a snake eating

its own tail. You know. It's a vicious cycle where the fear of black people creates this demand for more police, and more police creates more arrests without actually dealing with the source of a lot of those crimes, right, And then what ends up getting married is black people in crime in people's minds as opposed to poverty and crime, which is really the source of a lot of the issues that happen in all cities around the world, but in this country it's very much a black and white problem.

If you follow the money, and so instead of people dealing with economic inequalities, we deal with black people and white people, which is how this thirteen fifty statistic can come about.

because it is that easy to understand. If you're putting more police in this area where the people are more poor, and your police have been conditioned to look at them as criminal before they even arrive, they arrest them more, thus justifying the over policing, like, hey, we're resting way more people here. We might even need to put more police.

are more criminals here. So let's spend more money on police in this area next year instead of more money on community centers and arts and programs to get kids off the street and doing something to feel the void or the vacuum that comes with growing up where we have so much less and less resources, less money, less opportunity, leads to people doing things that are not considered good

just in order to survive. I don't know, man, I talk to you guys a lot, just about the things that we share and the things that we see in the group in preparation for the show, and you guys see me. I'm less encouraged by the day. It seems we really have been put in a position where succeeding and having our people as a whole move forward feels less realistic to me.

our posts and our cause. And the show is growing, of course, and that's largely due to your efforts and so but there's another thing I wanted to point out, and I'm glad you mentioned it. Remember I said that if you take all the facts and you put them in the bowl together, you know, the result doesn't really support white supremacy anymore. And I think that a great point of that is and I think that this story tells itself if a person takes a step back and

looks at it. So watch this. If you put more police in the neighborhood, you know the reason for doing that is to make the neighborhood safer. You know, I'm sure anyone would agree. I put more police in there to make the neighborhood safer, to prevent crime from happening, to you know whatever. And what we're seeing is that more police make more arrests. More arrests means more violent arrests means more you know, black lives lost, black bodies

being harmed, and so forth. And you know, it's like to a man with a hammer, the world is a nail, right, More police doesn't mean less crime. Police can only respond to crime that has happened. This is something we talk about on the show quite a bit. That's all that they do. You know, police like in a minuscule fraction of a percentage point, actually prevent crime. The vast majority of police work is responding to a crime that's already happened. And so the real question is how do we prevent

crime from happening? Because obviously, putting more police in neighborhoods doesn't fix the problems. It doesn't fix the economic inequalities, it doesn't fix the broken crime justice system that we're going to talk about a little bit more. And I feel like this thirteen fifty rule or myth again as we call it on our show. You said it best when you said it's a lie. He absolutely nailed that.

You know, I'm more likely, I'm more inclined to say that it's a half truth or you know whatever, if it is that, you know, people kind of know that it's a lie, but I'll call it what it is, a half truth. But in this case, you're right, Q, it's a lie. It just sells fear. It's Fox News all day. That's all that it is. So let's move on now. In addition to the statistics I've read before, I want to just recap just so that we're all

on the same page. Okay, So, so far, the thirteen to fifty myth uh purports that thirteen percent of the population quote, black people account for fifty percent of the violent crime that takes place. When the truth is, black people account for only fifty percent of the arrests of violent crimes. Black people are five times more likely to be arrested, six times more likely to be convicted, fifty percent more likely to be wrongfully convicted, and sentenced to

twenty percent longer convictions than white violent criminals. Now I want to add some more to that for the same crimes, for the same crimes. Absolutely I want to add to that, fifty four percent of all violent crimes remain unsolved, including thirty eight percent of all murders, forty eight percent of all assaults, and more than sixty seven percent of all reported rapes. We've discussed that black people are overly policed.

One of the things that we didn't really discuss so far we have on the show, but not so far with this is the War on drug and we don't have time to really go into detail for this segment, but we have in the past on the show, and

of course we will again. But for those that don't know, the quick and dirty version of the story is that the War on drugs was really enacted to quell the hippie movement and the Black power movement in the sixties, that was the origins of it, you know, or the late sixties, early seventies, and then since nineteen sixty as a result of that, there's been a three hundred and

thirty percent increase in black men imprisoned. And because of the Thirteenth Amendment, there's an economic advantage to having these bodies in prison too. You know, a lot of people just make that connection. Well, the Thirteenth Amendment meant that slavery never ended, absolutely right, one hundred percent true. But there was a long period in time in this country between slavery and the sixties when we saw these numbers start to really increase, and then the eighties, of course,

when it really skyrocketed under Reaganomics. But there was a long period of time when you know, black people were you know, overly incarcerated, but not at such astronomical levels.

The Thirteenth Amendment was legal all in that period of time, but it wasn't until recent times when the economics began to make sense, and then private money started moving into prisons and so forth, and so now we have so many black people and brown people and you know, melanated people in prisons, and I will say this white people as well. And prisons are big business, so it affects everybody. But obviously the blacker you are, the more the harsher

it is. You know, we just kind of know that to be true, not to take anything away from anyone else, but what that's resulted in is an increase in single mother households that has increased to sixty four percent as of twenty nineteen. Sixty four percent of black households are single mother households, and you know, prior to the sixties, you know that that wasn't true. You can go back

and look. You can see all of these opportunities that black people took advantage of at different points in history. You know, black people weren't always regarded as whatever we're regarded as now, you know, by the mostly right leaning conservative you know, uneducated and willfully ignorant types. But that's hard to ignore sixty four percent single mother households, and obviously the result of that is children that come from those homes are less likely to graduate high school, less

likely to attend college. There's economic reasons for that, there's you know, social reasons for that. You know, there's it's it's a sad reality, and it's it's unfortunate. But you know, these statistics that you might hear that really paint black people or any people in a bad light often require more insight. They need to be illuminated a bit further.

And that's not saying that black people we don't have our own path laid out in front of us, because there's lots of things that you know, we have to work on, and we do work on and we will continue to work on. But to pretend like we were just born bad and we commit fifty percent of the crimes is definitely something that is inaccurate, and if we're able to speak to it on our show, then we.

I can't wait to hear her voice again. Every time I hear it it's just so energizing, and it's time for us to talk about becoming a better ally as well. And so, without further ad you, let's get into our Bogba segments. So you're familiar with The Wonder Years, right.

talking crazy to him, you know. So the Wonder.

a few different places in society. But I love it because it brings a little bit more humanity to black people, allows a little bit more you know. This show allows you to get into our heads as black men and black people in this country, and I think that this

show will perhaps lean into it the same. And I think that the most important thing of all is that Fred Savage himself, the star of the original show, is the executive producer of The Wonder Years, and he is sharing his life's work with Black America and sharing his voice and his platform. And I love that, and I think that is how to become a better ally.

We hear Walmart is wide out before it listen, as a black person with hair, I need to say to Walmart, for whatever reason, locks up all of their black hair products, or they at least they had in the past. Right, you can go into a Walmart store, walk up and down the shampoo aisles, walk up and down the you know, personal hygiene whatever it is. You know the comb aisles, and I don't know, you guys know what a Walmart is.

Once you get to you know, the just for Me boxes and the you know, the black hair care products, you notice that they're under lock and key.

because I got all this hair on my head. But let's get into the meat and potatoes the way we're talking about tar Ja. All right, how Target got cozy with the cops? Now, I took an article from Bloomberg Business Week, right, and this is an exerpt. So I'm going to read this just to kind of lead you into where we're going, because I really do want to hear from Kimberly Jones and I want to respond to that.

But again, remember we're talking about Target here, Okay. For decades, Target fostered partnerships with law enforcement unlike those of any other US corporation. It became one of the most influential corporate donors to law enforcement agencies and police foundations, supplying money for cutting edge technology and equipment. When it developed a network of forensic labs, it made them available to

police across the US. Starting in the early two thousands, Target developed a program called Safe City that poured money into police and sheriff's departments to install neighborhood surveillance systems and fund equipment. In Minneapolis, Target worked with the city Attorney's office to have petty criminals banished from the downtown business district through what are called geographic restriction orders. Eight out of ten people expelled were black or American Indian,

according to an analysis of city data. In an article last summer, Aaron Azura, a professor who teaches courses on race and gender at the University of Minnesota, wrote that targets deep ties to police made the company an appropriate outlet for rage, not unlike Walmart, but way more aggressive. You know. It's like, now, I gotta be fair. Okay. Since last year, Target has distanced themselves from the police.

They've stricken a lot of their safe program whatever the names of these programs were, from their websites, and done all this sorts. So I have to tell that I have to say this right. And they've hired new people and revisited what safety means and what it is they're afraid of, and where they need to create distance and why they need to create that distance. And so we do have to have an obligation to applaud anyone trying to make their wrongs right. Okay, but this is an example.

There's Target is not the only company you know, or store, you know, whatever place that people frequent. And I think that by examining this we get a little bit more insight into that corporate culture that creates the dynamic that you and I and Swirl and my children will eventually experience where we go into a store and we get followed around the store. Right, those are those typically happens

with smaller stores. But I happen to know that even if I go into a store now and I'm not followed around, if it's a big enough store, they have cameras and they have security people in the back. And who are those security people watching? Is it the sixty three year old Caucasian grandma doing Christmas shopping? Unlikely? Is it the forty five year old, you know, middle manager stopping into you know, Walmart or whatever department store to

pick up some new trainers? Unlikely? Is it any of us? Totally? One thousand percent?

I'm a big fan of a person named Brian Stevenson.

unless the judge treats his client fairly. Because if the judge treats his client fairly, there's really nothing to see here, right. So he realizes this, and so instead of asking the judge to throw out you know, jurors or you know, throw out evidence or whatever it is lawyers do. I don't know, he simply asked the judge to try his poor young black defendant as a sixty five year old privileged corporate executive, white corporate executive. And the shock in

that request change the atmosphere in the room entirely. Now.

I don't know the conclusion of that story, but I remember how vivid that became when he said that to me, And so for me, I like to use that exam when discussing you know whoever, because justice in this country is supposed to be blind, and yet it's not, because you and I both know if we saw a sixty five year old person, or if anybody saw a sixty five year old white person walking through a department store, our brains would tell us that's the person least likely

to steal. You know, if we saw, why knowing, a ryder in a store and we didn't know that she was a klepto and shoplifts, you know, for sport. You know, this is an old story from the nineties and a

lot of people weren't born yet. But you know, if we didn't know that, we wouldn't assume that, you know, And it took us growing up to realize that no everybody steals people that don't need to steal steal, you know, that's just kind of how some people get down and then a lot of people that are poor steal because they're poor. The rest of the people that steal, do it for sport because they're bored, because they want to feel a rush. Whatever. You know, there's there's TV episodes

dedicated to this. You know, white Middle American families. You know, ladies going in the store stealing and then it gives them a rush, and then they can't wait to get home to their husbands and express that. You know.

would never forget it, but it will live. You know, his name will get it.

about Target. And I want to make this connection because you know, once upon a time, before Target decided to change their corporate culture, there were a lot of people that were wondering, well, why is it that in Minneapolis people are burning the Target in their own neighborhood. Why are they looting the target? Why are they you know what, these are thugs? These are you know that sort of thing. You know, this is not how you get your point across.

And I understand where that argument comes from. I don't agree with it, but I understand where that argument comes from, right, Because some people want to see protests done on their terms, right, and if they're not participating in the protester or otherwise are not affected by it. Then of course everybody gets to coach from the sidelines. But there's a woman named Kimberly Jones who has something to say, and she mentions

Target by name. And I think that when you take into account this corporate culture that Target had since the early two thousands up until you know, a couple of years ago last year, you start to get a sense of exactly how connected black people felt to organizations like Target, like Walmart, the lock of the black hair care products.

You know, how those corporations tend to represent the same sort of white supremacy that policing, the criminal justice system, the government represents, you know, in a lot of black and brown people's minds. This is why there's a lot of apprehension to trust in things like the vaccines and so forth and so on, because there's not a lot of trust there. And I think that this will illuminate that. I believe we do have a clip queued up.

I didn't allow for you to have anything. And then we played another fifty rounds of monopoly, and everything that you gained and you earned while you were playing that round of monopoly was taking from you.

it over to them. So then for fifty years, you finally get a little bit and you're allowed to play. And every time that they don't like the way that you're playing, or that you're catching up, or that you're doing something to be self sufficient, they burn your game, they burn your cards, they burn your monopoly money. And then finally at the release and the onset of that, they allow you to play, and they say, okay, now

you catch up. Now this point, the only way you're gonna catch up in the game is that the person shares the wealth.

You can't win. The game is fixed. So when they say why do you burn down the community, why do you burn down your own neighborhood, it's not ours. We don't own anything. We don't own anything there is. Trevor Noah said it so beautifully last night. There's a social contract that we all have that if you steal or if I steal, then the person who is the authority comes in and they fixed the situation.

lifetime trying to compensate for. It's really insulting that so many people really want to encourage us to just get over it and actually almost say it like that out loud, you know, as if there's nothing that can be done, as if there's justification for it, as if there's been enough time in between then and now you guys are okay, right, Barack Obama one, you got Michael Jordan, you got Lebron James, you got Oprah, Like, what else do you guys want?

So the frustration that you can hear audibly climbing out of her add to that that we're almost and you know, I don't know this as facts, so people please feel free to correct me. We're almost the only group in history to be disenfranchised in such a way and then

told to get over it without reparation. So to have corporate industry be out front and out loud a part of trying to quench or put out the fire that burns within us, the almost rage that if people really think about, it's almost impossible to have the history that we have and to not be trying to burn the

place down every day. Like the credit that we should as a people should get for that, you know what I mean, really credit to us, Kudos to us have gotten to this place where we're like, man, we just want to live. You know, that's like, that's literally, out loud.

Our controversial war cry is black lives matter. Like wow, man, So you know, try to think about the centuries of I don't even know the right words without sounding so vulgar, right like abduction, rape, kidnap, murder, hang like these are not I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm not exaggerating like this, This is what life was like if you looked like us in this country at its foundation, while also asking

us to build the place. It's tough, man, It's tough to know these things that as true and kind of be forced to accept and just you know, move on, get over it.

social contract. And here we are now discussing Target. But I want to maintain that Target has decided to turn over a new leaf. They've made some new hires, and they certainly appear to be trying to right the wrongs of the past. And so I just glad we got a chance to discuss that, and no more picking on people who burn a store. You know, nobody wants to burn a store. It's not fun. People do that to

get attention. And you know, I think that wasn't Martin Luther King that said riot is the the voice of the unheard or something like that. You know, when people don't feel heard, then they tend to light things up a little bit more. That was kind of the gist of what was said. Don't hold me to.

descendants connect with ancestors represented by the markers. About fifty five stones will be moved to a dignified resting place at National Harmony and will be part of a memorial garden. Meanwhile, the State of Virginia has contracted the nonprofit History, Arts and Science Action Network to track down descendants of people

represented by the gravestones. The stones were rediscovered about four years ago when the property was purchased by Virginia State Senator Richard Stewart, who, upon exploring the newly purchased its land, discovered the stones. Some stones that are illegible because they've been worn too smooth, and those that cannot be removed from the water will become part of a memorial wall along the river bank. Virginia has approved four million dollars for the recovery of the stones in creation of a

memorial in Kaldian State Park. Patricia Howard Chittams was able to touch her ancestors headstone for the first time on Monday. I don't get angry. I don't get mad, you know, because she was here. I'm the sum of her existence, which makes it even better, she said.

helps orient us toward a better future. But we don't want to dwell on the past. We have to acknowledge it. So I want to start end this response by saying, good, that's what you're supposed to do. You build a memorial, You honor those people who were laid to rest at in a black cemetery, because I know the story here. It was a black cemetery. The land was sold to make something in that city, and then they dug up

the bodies and moved them somewhere else. They left the headstones, and then the headstones were sold to a person has like rocks that he used to like change the flow of like a river in his yard or his backyard, something like that. So all these headstones ended up getting thrown in this river to help some farmer. Right. And years later, people that had nothing to do with this say, you know what, that was wrong. We all know it was wrong. We can't undo it, but we can acknowledge

it and we can do something. So let's do that, And I think that's good. We talk about becoming a better ally. That's how you become a better ally. You don't say, why are black people always stuck on the past? Those people are no, no, absolutely not. You know what, if you're not black, your history starts somewhere, and you know you can trace it all the way back to whenever your people first came here. You can you know, you know, some great person, noblemen or whatever, conqueror conquistador

or whatever it does you come from. You know, there's somebody that you can look back to and say, that person's blood flows through my body. I'm made from the same same DNA as him or her. Right, you can say that. Right, Maybe your family doesn't keep good records, you know, but there's somebody, I'm sure of it. If you're black in this country, you're gonna go back to a slave. Now, we learn to be proud, but that in and of itself isn't something that anybody would want.

Like I don't want to tell my sons, Okay, well baby, we came from slaves, So get out there and try to be somebody that's tough. That's that that that and I mean you had to live with that. So we have to acknowledge these in the past we have to acknowledge what it means. And unless you're black, you don't understand the weight of that. Right now, right now, I have a son he came from. My body has no idea that he is the descendant of slaves. And that's as far back as we'll be able to to trace

his lineage. This is these are the people that you came from, right yeah?

there's no pride in that. And Black people in this country, different than really anywhere in the world, have had that part of our heritage and our history taken away from us. So that was difficult then that is difficult for us every day. Just thankfully in this country we don't have to have that conversation as often. But if you take the time to think about it, it hits well.