Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios.
I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding.
I am your host, ramses Ja.
He is Ramsy's Jaw. I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher.
And we appreciate that fact. We want you to stick around today because we are going to be asking some really important questions, questions that continue to come up as we navigate our path full of extremes in this country. We're going to be asking.
Does hard work really lead to success?
I know that a lot of people simplify that to that sentence, and of course obviously it's more complicated than that, but we're going to take a look at exactly what that means. And we're going to borrow from a lecture from the great doctor Roy Casagranda, who we're a big fan of on this show, and we're going to use that to kind of explain some of it, but also kind of break out a few points that we that
we feel deserve a little bit more perspective. We're also going to be discussing how Ronald Reagan's racism tanked the education system in the United States, and that is something that we really need.
To take a look at, because we're.
Seeing a lot of things happen now, a lot of attacks on the US Department of Education and on education in general. And you know, it's hard to say to people that aren't familiar with it that racism is at the root of it. But I believe that, you know, we can make a compelling case. We're not the first ones to make this case, and so this will be a very easy lift for us. But you know, information like this doesn't always make its way to people, and
so we're happy to share that on today's episode. But before we get to all that business, we are going to discuss some ebony.
Excellent, shall we Yeah, I think we shall.
Today's Abny Excellence, we're going to be discussing black business growth.
This is from.
Brookings dot Edu. And I recognize that this is from a few years ago, but I think it still holds up and it's worth celebrating. So in twenty twenty, black people represented fourteen point two percent of all Americans, but only two point four percent of all employer firm owners.
Latino or Hispanic people represented eighteen point seven percent of the population and six point five percent of employer firm owners, while Asian Americans represented six percent of the population and ten point six percent.
Of employer firm owners.
From twenty nineteen to twenty twenty, black owned businesses grew by six three hundred and fifty one firms, or four point seven two percent, behind Latino or Hispanic and Asian American firms, but above white owned businesses, which shrunk by point nine percent. Black business's growth was trending upward before
the COVID nineteen pandemic. From twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, the number of black owned businesses across the country increased by thirteen point six four percent, larger than all businesses in general, which increased by point five three percent over the same period. Black owned firms brought in an estimated one hundred and forty one point one billion in gross revenue in twenty twenty, and eleven percent increase since twenty seventeen.
More so than other racial groups.
Black owned businesses had pronounced increases in revenue, employees, and payroll. In twenty twenty, black business owners employees one point three two one million people and created forty eight thousand, five hundred and forty nine new jobs, adding additional one point seven billion and aggregate payout to the US economy.
If black business ownership continues.
To grow at its current rate, it will take two hundred and fifty six years to reach parity with the share of black people in America, a timeline that leaves racial wealth gaps entrenched. Reaching parity in fifteen years will take seventy four point four percent growth rate for twenty five years. And so, you know, got work to do, but that's growth, that's progress. And you know, we salute all the black business owners out there and all the people who support So that's.
Our Ebony excellence right now. However, I want.
To get to what it is that we really wanted to make today's episode about. So there have been these conversations and I'm sure that you're familiar with it. You know, Listen, everybody has the same twenty four hours in a day. Everybody has the same opportunities in this country to make a go of it. If you're not thriving, then it's on you. There's no such thing as a white privilege.
You know, everybody's got it tough, right, And these these things that we hear constantly, and the idea behind it is to put the responsibility for your life squarely in your lap. Which if it was just that, right and all other things were equal, everybody's on board with that, you know, nobody's pushing back. Nobody wants handouts for the sake of handle. Well, I'm sure there are people who do want that, but you know, for the most part,
most reasonable people understand the nature of economics. You provide something, you are compensated for what it is that you provide, and you use that to compensate.
Other people for what they provide.
Right, that's the general gist of it, right, But in this country, there's a history of marginalized people, black people in particular, suggesting that, hey, this system is rigged, and it's rigged against us in particular, and try as we might to work as hard as we can, we will never reach the level that you set as the standard, and therefore we will always be lagging behind. Right now, if you know, you and IQ, we talk about systemic issues on this show. Week to week, we break all
that sort of stuff down. We get people insight into how we've ended up where we are. But for individuals who may not have to do journalistically credible research day to day, week to week to put on a program. You know, this information may not make its way to them and they might sincerely feel like, hey, bro, you got the same twenty four hours in the day that I do.
Get off your shoulders, get out there and get to the money, right.
And so what we're going to do today is kind of break down why that is only a half truth and for why it's very different for different people with you know, different walks of life in this country. What we're going to do first is we're going to share a bit from doctor Roy Casa Grande and.
Let him tell it.
Best, because you know, he is a university professor or he knows what he's talking about, and then we will provide our insight into some of the things that he doesn't go into too much detailing.
So we'll start that now.
In nineteen sixty eight, Nixon believed he had been elected to undo the sixties. That was his mandate. He wanted it nineteen seventy three to be nineteen fifty three. Honestly, I think if it could have been eighteen fifty three, he would have preferred that. But at least nineteen fifty three, the year he became vice president for Eisenhower. So two years after we land on the Moon nineteen seventy one,
Nixon slashes NASA's budget. They're punished for their success. So Nixon is looking at this and he's going, we just did the sixties, and it's because of people like you, innovators who hold summits to have ideas talked about. Right, that's what this is. In case he hadn't figured it out already. There's a chance to share and maybe make people uncomfortable on occasion, but to get ideas out there.
And Nixon goes The sixties, which by the way, was fifteen years long, started in fifty four and in sixty nine. The sixties was total upheaval. It was a revolution in the true sense of the word, an actual revolution. We changed everything. We changed the way people dressed, We changed the way men wore their hair, We changed the music we listened to. We changed the political structure. We made space for women, women to have more political rights, women
to have more economic rights. We made space for black people, we made space for brown people. We didn't make everybody equal by any means. That would be naive and silly and foolish to think, but at least it got better. We changed our relationship to drugs, to marriage, to text, to everything. And Nixon and his folk hated every moment of it. It was torture for them. They wanted the old order returned, and so he says no. He says
no to NASA. Nixon interfering with NASA maybe not the worst thing to ever happen in the world, but it has a serious consequence. The Saturn five rocket that we launched to the Moon was never intended for the Moon. Veranovon Brown didn't care about the Moon. We cared about Mars. The whole goal was that the Moon was going to be the first step to Mars. That's where we were going. And so that same year NASA got stuck asking the President permission to also go to Mars, and he said,
absolutely not. We're not wasting American tax payer dollars that could be used to cut taxes for the rich and fight the war in Vietnam. Nixon tried to identify what was the causes, what were the causes of that revolution that we call the nineteen sixties, and he and his friends concluded there were two things that caused this one was the incredible US economy from nineteen forty eight to
nineteen seventy three. For twenty five years, the US economy was so amazing that you could conceivably get a job.
I mean a regular job.
I don't mean an amazing job, just a job, and the pay would be so high and the benefits so amazing that you could not only afford to buy a house and feed your family, you might be able to send your kids to school, to college, and you might
be able to retire really well. Picketty says in his book Capital in Twenty first Century that that was the only time, in fact, in human history where a person could work and make wealth, because if you look at the middle class today in the United States, they don't make wealth. They barely get by. The difference between the middle class and the lower class is that the middle class has stable housing and the lower class doesn't have stable housing. The wealth distance between the lower class and
the middle class is negligible, it's meaningless. They're barely getting by. But for twenty five years people were prospering. And what they realize, it's Maslov's hierarchy of needs. If people aren't fretting about food, If they're not worried about shelter, if they're not in constant fear that the economic situation they're in will collapse, they have mind space to start to ask bigger and better questions like wait a minute, what
about civil liberties? What about civil rights? What about human rights? And the next thing. You know, by nineteen fifty four, six years into this explosive economy, we're in the middle of a revolution.
Okay, So.
There's a bit of a history lesson for everyone there, and I hope that that serves to kind of frame the conversation that we're having and want to continue to have. Now, I got a few points that I want to share, and then Q. Obviously I want you to jump in and share your points as well, but I will just kind of burn.
Through these pretty quickly because it is a lot to cover.
So for folks that feel like it's hard work alone, I'm sure there's people that would agree that it's more than just hard work.
But for folks that feel like, hey man, it's simple, it's hard work. That's it. Just work, hard work, work, work, work, work, and you'll get it. I got something for you. Consider I know.
Of a group of people whose whole mission in life was just to work hard. That's all they did. They worked hard, and then they died. They were called slaves, and hard work didn't change their station life. For those people that say, well, it's hard work plus opportunities, right, well, sure, you know, I'd go along with that, But to be fair, opportunities don't make their way to everybody. And so now we're talking about systemic issues again because opportunities never made their.
Way to slaves. They worked hard, and you know you have to see that one to me as.
Well, hard work plus opportunities plus intelligence. I would imagine that it would be tough for somebody to suggest to me that zero slaves were intelligent. It'd be foolish to assume that these are human beings the same as any other human beings in the world, all homo sapien sapiens, all with you know, more or less the same cognitive abilities.
Right.
For people that say, you know, these are people who worked hard, have opportunities, or intelligent and have good.
Ideas well, slaves have an idea stolen.
And the reason I keep coming back to slavery is because slavery is a form of systemic oppression and slavery, of course has evolved. Black people are still very much second class citizens in this country. And so I think that just that line of thinking kind of helps create the framework that folks need to understand that the basis for achieving success in this country, and the lack of success that you find in marginalized communities is at least
due in part to systemic factors. Now, there are people who say, Okay, well, you know, we live in a post you know, racist society, slavery is over, blah blah blah, you know whatever. But have we considered how employment opportunities and advancement opportunities in employment have made their way to black and brown people in this country? Have we considered how educational opportunities have made their way to black and brown people in this country? And still how the education
system in this country shapes outcomes. You know, for one group of people who are in a higher income part of town, you know, they have schools that are well funded and well staffed, and they have you know, books and you know, top tier curriculum. For other places, you know, where the funding is a little lower, they have effectively
a school to prison pipeline. Where you know, behaviors are not diagnosed, they're criminalized, you know, and there's no medication, and there's you know, all this sort of stuff, right, And I think that that follows the wealth line. But the wealth line follows the color line, the racial line in this country. So again systemic factors. We're not talking about how that wealth that it was accumulated and still
gets accumulated, is passed from generation to generation. Inheritance. Now there are people who pushed back and say, hey, I didn't get an inheritance. I wish I'd gotten inheritance. Sure, but these things are shaping the data that we're seeing, even if it doesn't affect you personally. Okay, we can talk about banking opportunities, and this is a long list.
You know, I'm not going to go into everything, but I'm wanting to paint a picture before I let you go, que of how systemic factors could influence the data that we're seeing.
You know.
So for people that say, hey, just get out there and get it, get to it and work hard and you can accomplish anything, that American dream was true in the early seventies, according to doctor Casagrande here and I know why people feel that way, But it's not true now, and it hasn't been true for fifty plus years, and the huge drops in data have really manifested themselves in the past fifty years. And we're going to make a case that Ronald Reagan had a lot to do with it, and so did Nixon.
In the latter part of the show.
We haven't talked about, you know, cartural disadvantages and the criminal justice system and how that criminalizes blackness and punishes blackness more than it does whiteness. We haven't talked about healthcare disadvantage. We haven't talked about a lot of things. But these are all systemic issues, right. People will talk about, you know, culture, and I think that that is a that is a straw man argument.
You know.
Again, I've said in the past, I'll say it again, poverty shapes culture. Culture does not shape poverty. It could sustain it, sure, but it doesn't shape it. Right, So you need to be impoverished and then the culture will pour out of that. Right, So again we're back to systemic issues, same twenty four hours in a day argument. That's not necessarily true for everybody. You know, if I wake up in the morning, and I have to take care of a sick parent or whatever. I don't have
the same twenty four hours as you. If you have a car and I don't have a car, I don't have the same twenty four hours as you. I'm walking to a bus stop and then walking when I get to my destination. Right, you have more of your day than I do. For people that are ultra wealthy, they have drivers, they have more of their day than you may have, right because they don't even have to do the driving. They can sit and work in the back
of their car and hustle all day. Sure, I'll see that, and then I think that this myth that everybody can make it in this country and achieve wealth and whatever. On its face, it's silly because if you look at any corporate hierarchy, the stratification of a corporate you know, framework you'll see that a lot of people on the bottom make a little bit of money, and really it's one person at the top that makes a lot of money. So this idea on his faith is not supported by
basic mathematics. So I wanted to go into a little bit more about him saying the difference between the middle class and poor is stable housing. But I don't want to talk up the whole time. So you know, let's let's tag you in here, Q and get your thoughts and then you know, we'll run through the rest of it.
America loves the bootstrap story.
Oh yeah, you know what I mean. Work hard and you too can be name your favorite CEO, and that illusion is part of why there's such a lack of progress and making the exceptions the rule also play into that narrative, right, like, how can you and Rams just sit here and have this conversation without acknowledging the Barack Obamas and the Oprah Winfreys and the Lebron james Is and the jay Zs of the world who have shown you that you too can work hard and reach these
astronomical heights. And to the other end, exceptions like poor white people in this country who, even though white privilege exists, does not have a tangible effect on their day to day outcomes, so they can, with clear logic, dismiss it as even a possibility, ignoring that we don't all start at the start line, ignoring that we don't all have a zero base that we move forward from toward whatever
our goal is. So these myths are hard to destroy because they have actual examples to point to that are clearly the exception that data doesn't support. However, for most people's reality, their front door, their day to day is all that they It is the only context that they have, and that cognitive dissonance and that intentional kind of obtuse thinking allows them to dismiss everything outside of what does
the day look like for me? If I am a poor white person in this country who can blame, you know, immigrants and people of color for my position in life, and then turn on the television and see an announcement that Jay z is now a billionaire, then Rams is trying to explain to me that there's a such thing as white privilege seems nonsensical. And being able to manipulate the group of people who see the world through that lens is how we spend the next seventy years making
no progress at all. That exception, even this moment in history, was an exception to the rule, and we can point, hey, those people worked really hard and they amassed wealth for their families, and you too can be once again, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or whoever you know, the idea of wealth is in your head when you have that internal conversation.
Let's use the exceptions to shape the rule and pretend that all the other information and data that exists that proved moves the actual rule is false and your imagination. And because people have unfortunately become very very easy to manipulate. If you can tap into the right emotion and the emotion of the day, you know, white supremacists hate, it goes a really really long way towards that end.
Yeah, you know, I like you know that example that you use, because the truth is that I bet it would be hard for most people to name three black success stories, three black millionaires that weren't celebrities, you know, people in their community, people in their you know whatever. Now, if you live in a place like Atlanta, if you live in a place like Detroit, you know, that might be a little easier. But for most people in this country,
they wouldn't be able to do it. They could all everybody can name a Lebron James or Baraco that sort of thing. But my point here is that you know that there are white businessmen and business women I'm sure who are in your community. They own a handful of restaurants or they own a handful of you know whatever. They work in textiles, or they work with raw materials,
lumber metals, you know whatever. They have a small operation where they you know, pick a thing and they've been able to achieve some success and buy the Mercedes and get the vacation home, and you know what, they have a staff of you know, thirty people, one hundred people whatever working for them.
And that is plentiful.
But the examples of black people reaching that level of success with no celebrity, no super skill set.
That know.
You know, I was born and I'm six foot eight and I can you know, play basketball, run football really quickly.
You know.
That's I think that we are such a celebrity obsessed culture that when we see black people holding court in the entertainment space with non black people, it's very easy for white people to say, well, black people got it just as easy. It's just as fair for everyone, because you know, there's a Magic Johnson and there's a Larry Bird, you know, or you know, maybe a newer example you know of that same kind of concept.
But when it comes to.
Like the actual data and and where a lot of people actually do create wealth, and.
You know, in businesses.
And and and and making investments and so forth. The data doesn't support that, and therefore the numbers don't support that. So, yeah, there's not a lot of people who are celebrities relative to the three hundred and seventy eighty million how many people in this country. There's a handful of people that are famous, a handful, a fraction.
But Chris Rock made a really really well spoken point about where he lives. Yeah, Yeah, Chris Rock is a top five person in his field in the history of the planet.
And I think Ahboo, like Mary J.
Blige and Jay Z were his neighbors, right, the three of the most successful people in the history of entertainment. And you kind of buried the lead there. His neighbor is a dentist. Sorry, I excited because he knew the story and just took them so before I could get there. Yeah, his neighbor is a dentist, a white man who more than likely is the third person in his family treat to have that career or some similar starting point where the family was already wealthy when he was born. You
have to start from zero. And that's just kind of the story of black people in this world. In order to get there, we have to be the best to ever do it. In order for them to get there, they just have to be alive and white.
Yeah, And for a lot of people that point to Donald Trump, I feel like it's important to remind folks Donald Trump started his business with a million dollars from his dad and then ultimately inherited his father's business. It was a multimillion dollar real estate empire. And you know, when people look at him as the American success story, they see themselves closer to Donald Trump than they do to black folks. And it's crazy because it's reflected in
a lot of the voting patterns. And so, you know, to answer the question, you know, does hard work really lead to success? You know, I say that hard work is about you know, it's one piece of it. A lot of people work hard and they never achieved the type of success that we associated with this country.
So food for that