Civic Cipher 121121 Whitewashing Blackness (Part A)

Normally we've tried to you know, ping pong back and forth, but I know this week we've shared we've both seen a lot of videos, some of which have included human beings losing their lives at the hands of police, unfairly

by all accounts, even those police departments. And so we want to really pull back a couple of layers there and really challenge the hero narrative, not because it's not deserved, but because it doesn't really leave a lot of space for errors for people that don't want to think critically about this. These institutions will say, and a lot more to come as well. But first we are going to

discuss some ebony excellence. So this week we're going to talk about someone who's near physically near to you out there in Atlanta. She goes by the name of Stacy Abrams. So well, first off, what's your thoughts on on Stacy Abrams.

been as successful as she has. So she had an unsuccessful run for governor. People I think eventually thought that she would run for mayor. But what she did is she just found a way to organize people who had the same thoughts, the same ideas, had the same goals and wanted to reach the same point, and got all those people to organize, mobilize and get in the streets, bro get people to vote, get people to show up

at the polls. And she's almost singularly responsible for the Democrats having the representation that they needed from those seats that were available in Georgia. I remember that flipping the state and getting people to come out in large numbers to you know, show up and vote, and her ability to organize, I think she's going to use for her own benefit this time, because she did run for governor

before she lost to Brian Kemp. And the way that you know may have been a little fishy right right, However, she's the one, bro, if we had to champion someone, she's the one. I think her chances of success this time are really high. But you and I have gone back and forth in this show about all the ways that our legislators, our politicians, the people that we put in office, are now going out of their way to make it more difficult for more people to vote. She's

the person on the opposite side of that. She might even be directly responsible for all of these states doubling down on making it harder for poor people and people of color to show up at these polls.

this program. Is because you know, some of the news sources aren't able to peel back the layers the way that we feel might be necessary, you know, for folks to really be able to know what the experience is like. And we are trying to create more empathetic allies or more empathetic people who, you know, maybe they're on the fringes or they're living their own lives and they don't really consider themselves allies to the plight of like black

and brown people in this country. And so we're we're hoping to explain things in a way that is beyond the text that you might find and you know, just kind of give it some some more context. And so I'll begin long story short, and my sources come from the Washington Post and the Daily Mail and the United Kingdom,

who did a cover for the story as well. Black couple ultimately ended up suing a real estate agency after their Bay Area home was valued at just nine hundred and ninety five thousand dollars, but a one point four to two million dollar valuation came about when they removed all photos of themselves and asked white friends to pose as the owners. For viewing when the appraiser came to

view the property a second time. So just by swapping out the family photos and them not being there themselves and having a white couple come in, they gained, you know, nearly half a million dollars in additional wealth in their appraisal of their property. Right now, there are a lot of people that might say, well, this is one example that you know that's not across the board, and you know,

to a degree, they might be right. But overall, based on the experience that I've had that the people that I know have had, you know, this is like when I first read this, I was like, oh my god, that's genius. I wonder how much my house would have been worth if I had done that. What a what an excellent idea? Right not to say that, I was, you know, I fortunately, I've had a very I'm very

very good run. And so I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and you know, the property values they kind of you know, have a I wouldn't be able to lose too much value. But in this house, I was able to see it, and I could see that they had added additional construction elements, and so forth, which is not really possible where I live. So but

let me finish and then we'll get into this. So the couple's name is Paul and Tanisha Austin, and they believed that race was the reason that their home was undervalued because the only thing that they had changed was the race of the people. Trying to get the valuation on the property. Again, they bought the home in twenty sixteen for eight hundred and ninety thousand. It was valued at nine hundred and ninety five thousand, despite spending four

hundred thousand dollars on renovations. Again, that's not really possible where I'm at. So you know, some other details here, and then as I mentioned, they brought in some friends of theirs to sit in the house and kind of receive the valuation under their name Paul and Tanisha Austin, and then of course, you know, they got the higher valuation.

This process is called whitewashing. Now, I got at least one story that I can share, but I know many examples throughout my life when this type of tactic, not this exact tactic, but this type of tactic has been necessary, and I'll share one of them. So where I live in Arizona. I have to interact with people. Some of these people are business people, right, and they're accustomed to

doing business with folks that look like them. And I understood that, right, So you know, the platonic ideal, whatever's in your mind right now, if I had to guess, it's a white, middle aged male in a business suit, you know, and he's got a briefcase, and this is the business person that I will be interacting with, And you wouldn't be wrong because this is the type of person I have to interact with. And I remember early on, I created a company to procure advertisements. You know, I

work in radio and uh. I was trying to put together these ad packages for various companies and organizations that included me in the advertising package, right, so I could get paid for doing the media buys, but also I could get paid as the endorser of said initiative, right or whatever call to action. There was my background, like I went to school. My bachelor's is in marketing, my master's is in management. I know how to talk to talk, I know how to walk the walk. I have results.

You know, I don't, okay, you know out here, but I look how I look. Uh, you know, and and to be fair, it's not just that I'm black. I'm also very young.

And I'll get to that in just a second. That might be a little misleading, but I you know, I know how to put on a suit, so you know, I my tattoos don't really come into play when I have a suit on and I'm in a business meeting, which was the case in this one example. But I do wear my hair the way God intended. Right. In other words, my hair grows and it reaches for the sky. It's an afro, you know, or a crown or whatever you like to call it. It's just it's my hair.

That's how it comes, right. I don't change it. I don't really do anything to it. It's just it just is what it is. Right and to the wrong people that can be intimidating, or that can be in their opinion, unprofessional or whatever the case is. Right, And obviously everyone has to play the game, but there are some rules that I will not play by. You know. I will be the way God made me. My hair will be the way God made it. You know, I'm not gonna

I can't change that. It's encoded into my genetics, right, and nor should me or anybody else change who they fundamentally are to you know, have to play this game. But I also recognize that if I'm not going to budge that, I have to work in a workaround.

or otherwise. So what I did when I was meeting with the Health Department was I was working on a health campaign with the Health Department. Prior to actually meeting these folks, I had done a lot of emailing back and forth letting them know, Hey, I could help you with your media buys. I can help you with your outdoor buys. You can buy billboards and these zip codes.

You can you know, buy advertisement in these magazines. You can buy radio ads you know, on these radio stations, and you can put together a campaign that will reach the folks that you're really trying to reach and have multiple impressions from different sources that I believe will you know, get the word out the way you'd like and be effective, you know, And I can help you craft the language and the visuals and so forth, because I know the people you're trying to reach and I can help you

reach them, and they love this, you know. So the ideas flowed back and forth, back and forth, and then time came for us to have a meeting. I was working with a much bigger ad agency to actually handle my media, yes, and so they weren't in the deal as of yet. They just kind of had my back if I needed to come with them with a budget, you know. So it's a six figure deal that I was working on, and I knew prior to going into this meeting that, uh, I'm going to need someone that

these folks can talk to. And as it turns out, I had a friend named Russ. I still have this friend, right, And Russ and I had been through a lot together. We'll say that. But Russ is just like you think. He's a middle aged white man, looks great in a tie, looks like he knows what he's talking about. And he

understood that. I was fine being the cool guy. But when it came time to have these really important conversations, despite my education, despite my familiarity with the subject matter, and despite them being my actual ideas, that I came up on my own, in my own space, I would never be able to I wouldn't be listened to in

the same way. And so I asked him. I was like, hey, Russ, could you come to this first meeting with me, just the first one, please, and sit in the meeting and start the meeting, you know, and then turn it over to me, and then you you, for all they know, you're my boss, and then you turn it over to me, and then I'll do the talking. So that way it looks like it's both of us because they'll feel like they're doing business with you, but they'll get the actual

information for me. So you don't have to study this stuff. You don't have to feel back any layers. And I was like, and I'll cut you in on, you know, some of the money, you know, if we get this taken care of. And Russ, of course, being the salesman that he was, you know, he's an old sales guy from radio, which is how I knew him. He says, yeah, absolutely, Man, I get what you're trying to do. I got you. Just give me the cliffs notes and then we'll knock

it out of the park. And that's exactly what happened, and that relationship snowballed into other relationships where Russ would be with me when I'm doing media buys, when I'm sitting down with these logistics companies, I'm sitting down with all kinds of companies. You know, Russ would be my guy, that would be the white guy in the room to make the other white guys feel like, perhaps if we did business with this couple of people here, we would

get the results that we want. Whereas me, by myself, I'm not sure that I would have had those same results. I'd never had any results outside of us. And it didn't matter how much I talked, or how as you put it, well spoken, or what my education was. There was a couple of things, not the least of which

is my skin. Remember I'm in Arizona. These middle aged white men are oftentimes very right leaning, very conservative types, who you know they come from a different time, and you know they're not as familiar interacting with folks that don't look like them. And I'm not trying to be any kind of way, and I'm not trying to say anything. I'm just telling you my reality how similar it is to this couple, and I want to read one more thing,

and I want to get your thoughts. Cute to add to this, A long time ago, when I was maybe seventeen years old, I worked at a Nissan dealership, right, and I had to study all these cars Exterras and Maximums and everything like that. I thought I was grown up. Man, I was seventeen. I had a grown up job. I had to wear a suit, you know, to sell these cars. And I just got a kick out of that. Man, I'm a big fan of cars. So at this time, I read something that we got as like staff, as salespeople.

I read something that suggested that Nissan was in trouble, legal trouble for giving higher interest rates overall the sales departments at the dealerships across the country, and the Nissan financing company and all this sort of stuff. We're giving higher interest rates to black people. Now, this was many years ago. This is twenty some odd years ago when

this happened. So you know, this is how I remember it, which might not be entirely accurate, but I do remember that Nissan was charging more interest for black people overall. And it was a clear it was clear, like ones and Zero's racism. You know, the same credit score, same situations.

You know, if you're comparing apples to apples, the blacker you are the higher interest rate, right, And we needed to know about that in case someone came in to try to buy an Ultima or a CenTra or whatever, right, and we needed to know how to defend against that. And there was me and there was another guy there

whose name is Sherman. He was also black, and we had to like really sit with this, like, okay, so they know this is happening, they acknowledge it, and then now they're informing us on how to deal with the customer.

and income level. To be clear this wasn't an aberration of some sort, but appears to be an industry standard. And now we have more substance to suggest that going in to a meeting where finances are at stake, money is at stake with black skin, that counts against you, right, And we know not just in the United States, but across the world things that are associated with poverty. We're seeing textbook examples of why it's more difficult for black folks to build wealth. You know, we could go all

the way back and discuss redlining. We could look at right now and discuss the school to prison pipeline. We could look at the war on drugs. We can look at a number of things. But right now we're looking this in the face, the ones and zeros, right, and we know that crime and poor health, poor education, all these things tend to follow the money line. You know, the poorer this people are, the more difficult of a

go that there is, and the more challenge the community is. Right, So we're seeing these things here and not for nothing. I kind of applaud this couple. I think that's a brilliant idea. Let's get some white folks in here so that we can get a little bit more money out of this house. Right. But the reason that I wanted to share that with you, our listener, is because this

might not be something you might be aware of. You know, in your world it's this this whole thing might be black people versus the police, or maybe that's not your persuasion, and you're like, black people can't get over slavery. Why can't they just fix their own problems, you know, or whatever the case is. You know, there's just some stories that we need to tell, and this is the show that we have, and we can tell these stories now. I would love to get your reaction as well. Q.

What are your thoughts? We got about two and a half minutes. My thoughts are going to be I'm glad you said that. My thoughts are going to be much shorter and much less eloquent than you might think. That's okay.

goodness gracious to keep from saying a curse word. We have to really just be like man, wow, Like the game really is set up for us to fail perpetually, Like they don't want us to ever just be okay.

later with respect to police. We're not talking about the criminal justice system. We're not talking about educational opportunity. We're not talking about a lot of different things. We're just talking about this couple in their house. And you know, for those that listen to the show, you might know because we talk about things like this all the time. But for those that don't. Here's something you might not have considered. All right, please continue, We got another thirty seconds or something.

we have all this data. We have more, and we have even more in the amount and even more in the level of how compelling it is data to speak to all that other stuff you just said, with the only condition being don't look like us, and you'll be fine.