Civic Cipher 123122 2022 The Year in Review (Part 1)

important to black and brown communities. We talk about we talk a lot about police violence and justice, shootings, that sort of stuff. In short, our show is not lit, Yeah, but it's important, you know what I mean. There's a gravity here. There's a lot of gravity here. That's what I meant.

why they're important, you know, what they need. This is something that is new to me and so I'm excited to continue to learn more and hopefully share something that you haven't learned before. And then, of course for our way Black history fact, we're going to talk about the great African Roman Emperor. Sounds interesting, wow, so stick around for that. But yeah, first and foremost, we're going to

get into some Ebony Excellence, which is q's favorite. Second absolutely indeed, So today's Ebny Excellence is sponsored by Hip Hop Weekly Media, and we are going to be discussing Greenwood Incorporated. I mentioned we're going to talk about black banking institutions. Well, this comes from Black Enterprise dot Com. Greenwood Incorporated continues to lead the Black bank Movement or sorry, the bank Black movement, with another forty five million adventure

capital funding, so I'll read. Greenwood Incorporated, which kicked off the Bank Black movement in twenty twenty, announced that it has raised forty five million adventure capital funding to expand its digital banking services. Forbes reported the Atlanta based digital banking platform is co founded by former entertainment executive Ryan Glover, tech entrepreneur Paul Judge, ninety year old former Atlanta mayor

Andrew Young Junior, and rapper Michael Killer Mike Grinder. Greenwood, inc named after the Oklahoma city where the Tulsa Race Maxacre took place, was created to help black and brown consumers who increasingly pivot to minority own financial institutions as an alternative to mainstream banks, which have decades long histories of racial discrimination. That's another thing we've talked about on the show. We'll get to more of that in just a minute, but for now, I'll wrap up our emany

excellence here. Greenwood Incorporated currently has about one hundred thousand accounts with another two hundred thousand on a waiting list. It's a great position to be in. The digital Bank's latest funding round was led by Pendulum, a firm that targets black and Brown founders. The investment made Pendulum the largest investor on a dollar basis in the digital banking platform. So once again, shout out to Greenwood Incorporated and shout out to all those responsible for bringing it to life.

We love to see the growth in that sector. The bank Black movement is alive and well and we'll keep monitor indeed. So yeah, now Civic Cipher our year in review. All right, let's go back to January a long time ago. Do you remember we had a show Q where we asked the question why do many Black people vote Democrat? I do remember that show.

a lot of black people have a shared reality. Of course, we have, you know, a large shared culture, but yeah, I think it's more of the shared reality we experience America in largely the same way, and if we are looking at a two party system, then we can only choose one of those. And so I want to say it was Eldridge Cleaver who said that none of the political candidates really speak for us. They don't know us.

That this was back in the sixties or whatever, but he said something was It was a very profound speech that he had given, and I just remember this part of it, but he said, you know, Nixon and whoever his opponent was, I forget the name. They don't they don't speak to us. They're not for us, they're not for our communities. They have no interest in making our realities better. But one of them could potentially make our

reality worse. And this is kind of a reality that a lot of black people have to live with in terms of you know, when we cast our vote, a lot of times, the excitement that you may see is not in us voting for a particular candidate, Obama being a notable exception for obvious reasons. I hope that no one out there would question why that would be important for black and brown people to see. But again, our excitement when we cast our votes isn't necessarily because we're

getting our person in the office. It's often because we're voting against a person who will make our reality worse. And there's something there, you know, I remember having the conversation, there's something there about us voting almost like a voting block, you know what I mean. We we're not a what's the word, We're not a monolith. But when we vote again,

it reflects our shared reality. And we've seen and heard from our family members who've come before us, We've read, you know, those of us that know a bit about our history, we recognize that. You know, there have been moments in history, American history where black people have done very well, and there's one of the time been a subsequent backlash against those various black communities that have done well.

They've kind of created their own governments, elected officials, created black banking institutions, and you know, doctors and hospitals and schools and so forth, and they get burned to the ground or there's you know, some sort of corruption that takes place, or the clan gets called in and they

kill everybody, or whatever the case is. So because we know this, we recognize that things can get worse and for many of us, it feels like this is really the extent of our allowance of that's not the right word, and me think it's the extent of our capacity to involve ourselves in the political process. Here. It's not like we're writing letters to people and they're going to listen and come back. And that's not just a black person thing.

A lot of people feel like if you write a letter, it doesn't really go anywhere unless you're connected, you know. So you know, once every couple of years we get a chance to cast our vote, and if we have a largely shared reality, then it's very easy for us to have that shared reality be reflected in the votes that we cast. And so, yeah, I do remember that conversation, but that was the show. In short. We obviously peeled back a lot more layers.

considering better outcomes for us. Sure, some people are absolutely considering worse outcomes for us, and we have to often cases vote to protect ourselves from that.

But you know, anyway, you know, there's again active aggression from our government toward black people. There's a history of it. There's lots of history of it. You know, a couple of years ago, when we were dealing with whether or not to get people vaccinated, we had to, you know, come up against the Tuskegee experiments. In short, these experiments that the United States government performed on black sharecroppers and infecting them with syphilis and then refusing to give them

treatments just to see what would happen. So these black people were disposable, you know, these black people were expendable.

You know, these these experiments, and this is something going back to and so the Democrats often don't feel like you know, granted, Democrats have done a lot of stuff that has made things worse, and particular those studies that they did about housing in the structure of the black family, where there's a Democrat Democrat backed study that suggested that black fathers not being in the home was the result of or or ended up resulting in the economic state of Black America.

our reality. So to continue with the one subject that I was just mentioning, the Democrat backed study on you know, economics and black household and so forth and home ownership, et cetera, pointed out that like unmarried black mothers was the source of all this stuff, and it didn't account for the fact that black people economically were worse off and when you get married, it compromises your ability to

get benefits. It didn't account for the fact that black people were unfairly targeted by police, died at younger ages, et cetera, all these sorts of things. And so when you adjust for those elements, and we didn't find that out until recently, black people are actually better fathers to their children than any other race everybody, right, And it took a long time for that to come out because it sud He was done and believe in the early sixties,

late fifties somewhere in there. But that became a myth that Black people don't take care of our children, Black men don't take care of our children, and everybody just accepted it completely ignoring the fact that Africa is a place that exists where black men take care of their

children just fine, you know what I mean. Completely ignoring the fact that there are societal and then governmental and structural conditions put in place, oftentimes causing a people who are trying to survive to get creative with what survival looks like. And so if that means that we can't get married, so that you can keep getting your benefits and we'll have enough food to eat. Then so be it. But then that means you're not married. But we're still

a family. We're married and all but a piece of paper.

not just what's happened in six months. Or a year, not something that's been over overshadowed by you know, the economy, or overshadowed by a pandemic. Something that can exist on its own, in a vacuum, in a controlled environment, if you will, controlled I guess national environment or climate, a controlled national climate, where there there's nothing that could really sway the results in one significant way or another. You're just left to see, Okay, this city has poured more

money and resources into their police. They had similar rates of crime or whatever beforehand, and this city has defunded their police department and put those funds into crime prevention measures, to increasing job stability, increasing housing stability, and making sure that you know, schools are funded properly, making sure that there's no need for there to be crime in the

first place. Because the funding the police narrative assumes that human beings will just be bad, and the defunding the police narrative assumes that a very small percentage of people will just be bad. Everyone else is only bad based on the fact that they have lack of options or they're backed up against the wall, and then they cultivate

a lifestyle around the lack. So is the question, then, would defunding the police work instead of does right, because the example that you just gave would actually be in the show. In the show, there were a couple of cities where they had they were reporting early data, and they were some of the cities where it looked like

very promising, you know, it looked great. But there were other cities that they had defunded the police and if I remember correctly, and you know, crime rates, there was no appreciable impact on crime rates or crime had gone up or something like that. And these were the headlines. And when you look at who's behind the media, then you're like, okay, well wait a minute, have we had enough time, of.

and February. We talked about did Ahmad Aubrey's murderers get what they deserved? And then we talked about the officer Kim Potter. That's the woman who was in Michigan and she shot the young man. Do me fabric, Can you find his name because I want to say his name. That's the thing that we do around here. But for Ahmad Aubrey's murderers, those are the guys that jumped in

the truck and chased him down the street. He was jogging in and they shot him dead in the street, and then they went to jail and then he got convicted.

But there there's something else there where. She got like another six months off. So maybe she's not out yet, but she's she can see the light of the Meanwhile, Dante Wright, we'll never see the light of dig And so we had that conversation. This year spent a heavy year.

We did talk about in March. Ryan Kugler, for those who don't know, he's the person who directed the Black Panther movies Wakonda Forever and the Original Black Panther, and he was detained at the bank for taking out a cash withdrawal, and we used that episode to talk about how far prejudice can go because it is possible for black people to prejudge black people as well because the bank he went into, the teller was black, the bank

manager was black. And then they called the police on him for taking out a cash withdrawal for twenty thousand dollars and he said he wanted it. He wanted to be discreet because he didn't want anyone to know. So he handed a note and they treated it like it was a robbery.

would be profiled. And so we had this conversation and don't you dare to be black and rich? And it's a weird thing. You, Yeah, it's like it's hard for people to really conceive of that being true. You must be a thief, you must have stolen something, you must be doing something illegal. And we try to be fair on this show because we recognize that no one is born prejudiced. You're taught prejudices based on stereotypes that society

reinforces all around you. And so again, black people can be prejudiced against black people the same as anyone else. But if we don't talk about it here, then we don't do our part to try to influence folks to think critically about their prejudices and to challenge themselves. And if you're listening to our voices, you know on this show in March and on today's show, this is kind of our aim. In April, we spent some time talking about Will Smith and Chris Rock. That was something that

we had to process. We the Black delegations that that was not an easy thing for us to process either. Yeah, we had to process it differently for us because again I think I said it best, it's like an uncle getting in a fight with you know, your uncle, your other uncle, and it just felt like kind of so we had to we had to sit with that one.

We also in April talked about how black people were being overcharged for housing, and then a separate episode we talked about how Wells Fargo was sued for discriminatory loan practices, so you know, black people in banking, and I don't know if these things were in conjunction, but no, no, there was two separate episodes. What I'm saying this next point.

We also talked about black people's homes being undervalued because the owners were black, right, so charged more when you buy it, and then it's valued as less because you own it. Right now, I think a black couple had a white couple of stage the two episodes about that, and their value increased substantially. So so yeah, just to an interesting year. And you know, if I look back, if I'm honest, I'm like, kind of this is like, this is crazy that we get to do a show.

We have you listening to us, we have supporters around the whole country, and we get to talk about these things that really matter. That these topics almost never come up in your normal life. I know that because you know many of our listeners share that I would never know these things. But this is very true and it's our reality. And then in May we asked a very important question that has come up many times on the show since then, but we asked do police make you safer?

causing the crime, not trying to police it away. Because the issues was are what caused people to actually engage in that type of behavior. But yeah, police either they neither prevented more crimes from happening, nor did they solve more crimes. And you know, in that episode, we did our best to think critically about what public safety looks like presently and what it could look like in the future, especially if it was a little bit more fairer and

less hurtful to some of us. So we'll be back with more right after this