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 Joah.
He is ramses Joh, I am q Ward. You are tuned in the Civic Cipher.
Indeed you are, and today we are going to be talking about the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Junior. Martin Luther the King Junior talk to me, Q Listen. We are about sick and tired of people who live lives that fly in the face of what doctor King stood for, using Doctor King's legacy and his image to justify their
actions or somehow appear as decent people. And so we're going to spend the first part of the show talking about how doctor King's image and his leg was co opted by conservatives, believe it or not, to whitewash an
agenda that allowed them to appeal to Middle America. And we're going to spend the second part of the show discussing how doctor King, in his own words, felt about some of the hot button issues that are being debated today or some of the things that have been stripped away in today's society by traditionally traditional conservatives, I should say, and these are the same people that kind of invoke his name around the holidays or throughout the year, that
try to suggest that they would have stood with doctor King, or doctor King would have stood with him. So we're going to again use the second half of the show to kind of express doctor King's feelings in his own words. But before we get there, we are going to discuss some ebony excellence.
Shall we?
I think we shall. Today's ebny excellence is brought to you by actively black. There's greatness in our DNA. Visit actively black dot com. Today I'm going to highlight somebody who really deserves some ebony excellence.
For some reason, this one feels extra special to me, okay.
Because there's actually two people I want to shout out. The first person is q.
Ward uh oh.
Q Ward, in case you don't know, is now on the radio.
My name.
Now he's on the radio. He's talking to hundreds more stations around the country. He has done h incredible work in standing up for what is right and championing this effort known as Civic Cipher across the country. And I'm your brother, and if I'm not willing to give you flowers. I can't reasonably expect anyone else to do it. You have helped me dream the dream. You've stayed the course, and here you are on the cusp of something that
is so monumental and so meaningful. And if no one else tells you, I appreciate the work that you're doing.
God bless you, brother. I appreciate you too.
There's another person that we want to shout out. She goes by the name of Brandy Irvin.
That's why it felt special to me, not because he was about to shout me out.
And Brandy has been nominated for the YWCA Tribute to Leadership Award for her work her work with the Harris Campaign and the Democrats, obviously, her work with US here on Civic Cipher, and her.
Social community at large, social.
Work with the Akas and so forth and so on. So she's being recognized for that, and so we want to make sure that we shout her out as well. All right, I hope that didn't feel like too much of a pat on the back, but we have a segment to highlight something that is very special, and you know, I know that I kind of snuck it in there. But we've accomplished something that we would have never dreamed, and we get to do it while doing good work.
And so I appreciate everyone giving me a moment to be able to acknowledge these amazing people that I get to work with. Next time, we'll revert to type and
shout out, you know people beyond you know these four walls. Here, I'm gonna share a bit with you from Yes Magazine, because there's a couple of times every year when people will use doctor King's legacy or they will hand pick, cherry pick parts of his speeches to try to suggest that doctor King's vision is in alignment with their vision for this country.
In alignment with anything that they think or any reactions that they pursue.
And this is really only problematic. It's it's it's not exclusively problematic when it comes to far right conservatives, but it is often the most visible and visibly jarring is the word I want to use. So it's it's it's
just like there's such a juxtaposition. You are trying to use doctor King's legacy to suggest somehow that he would be in alignment with what you're saying, or to suggest somehow that the things that you've done in the past are not they don't fly in the face of what Doctor Kings stood for and the thing every right exactly and it's so jarring and it's so strange, but you know, someone has to exist in this space to kind of push back and to defend doctor King's legacy because he
was a tremendous figure in terms of the pursuit of equity in this country. And if we don't tell our stories the way they need to be told, we run the risk of losing the narrative. And then Doctor King becomes like Santa Claus, free for anyone to use the way that they want, right, and this is not what the man stood for. Their people right now, I met
these people, they had to bury this man. I met Doctor King's son, Martin Luther King the third likewise, and you know, he's a like you can see him as a kid in all the photos, but he actually lost his father because of the same sort of racist ideology behind the people and indeed the party that co opt this man's image, that fought against him having a holiday,
that didn't like love appreciate what he stood for. And then as more time passes, they continue to scoop a little bit more away from his larger than life status, and now that he's gone, to try to get some of that sheen on them and their campaigns to look less racist, to look less divisive, to look less like they're four elites and so forth. So again, this article I think sums us up quite well again from Yes Magazine.
The writer I want to give credit Hajar Yadiza Yazida Yazdiha. Sorry, I knew I was gonna have a tough time with that one, all right. As scholars civil rights activists in King's own children have long pointed out uses of King's words, especially by right wing conservatives, are too often attempts to weaponize his memory against the multicultural democracy of which King
could only dream. Every Martin Luther King Junior Day years on the third Monday in January, politicians across the political spectrum, including those who opposed establishing the national holiday in nineteen eighty three, issue their heartfelt dedications to King, or quote him in their own speeches and in their tweets and
on their social media. The article continues in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties a sanitized version of King was a part of a conservative political strategy for swaying white moderates to support President Ronald Reagan's reelection by
making King's birthday a national holiday. Even after Reagan finally signed the King holiday into law in nineteen eighty three, he would write letters of assurance to angry political allies that only a selective version of King would be commemorated.
Even as you read it, now, my blood boils because we knew this already. Yes, this isn't well, we knew this. I'm saying, this isn't a shocker to us. But it feels the same.
It feels like we're getting it for the first time.
Yes, it doesn't feel like, oh yeah, I knew that already. It feels like it's so infuriating.
You know, we've been doing the show for years and for many people who are just coming to the conversation
or maybe they haven't heard of this show before. A lot of this stuff, you know, we know quite well, just because we've had to, Like we probably will end up with honorary degrees at some point, because we've had to do so much research in order to do this show and have it and use journalistically credible sources, so that it's not just Ramses and Q's Opinion Hour, but rather it is civic cipher a conversation that we were
able to have that's based in a shared reality. It's based on facts, it's based on data where we can actually make some inroads and give you, our listener, what it is you might need to have conversations that will lead to impacting people's opinions, because this show only reaches you, but you can reach people's lime hearts in a way that we cannot. But let me continue this article, all right, So only a selected version of King would be commemorated,
all right. That version was free of not only the racial politics that shaped the Civil rights movement, but also the vision of systemic change king and vision. In addition, Reagan's version left out the views King held against the Vietnam War. Instead, the GOP's sanitized version only comprises King's vision of a colorblind society at the expense of the deep systemic change King believed was needed to achieve a
society in which character was more important than race. This interpretation of King's memory would become a powerful political tool increasingly through the nineteen eighties, right wing social movements from the gun rights and family values coalitions to nativists and white supremacists deployed King's memory to claim they were the new minorities fighting for their own rights. These groups claimed that white Christians were the real victims of multicultural democracy
and in fact where the new black. This false version of social reality eventually involved into the Great Replacement theory, which the article took some liberties right there, because the Great replacement theority theory existed going back to if I'm not mistaken, the early nineteen hundreds, late eighteen hundreds, But I see the convergence there.
Well, yeah, it's weaved into the that's.
The best way to say, yeah, exactly, the far right conspiracy theory espoused by public figures like Tucker Carlson that white people are being demographically and culturally replaced with non white peoples and that white existence is under threat. Okay, So that is basically the Great replacement theory in a nutshell.
And you and I saw racist lawyers and lawmakers use civil rights precedents and civil rights legislation to get affirmative action removed.
Right, So this is and that we're going to talk more about that on the second half of the show. But yeah, that's they. They Those are the same people that will tweak quotes and share on their social media quotes from doctor King whenever it's convenient, whenever their campaigning, whenever it's doctor King's birthday, whenever it's Juneteenth, whatever it is.
You know, because doctor King is the great Black in their minds or whatever, and they have a version of him that they can use to appear less racist in their views and less more decent, more decent. That's probably a good way to say it to all right, I'll finish the article. In these distortions, gun rights activists called themselves the new Rosa Parks, anti abortion activists declared themselves freedom writers, and anti gay groups claimed themselves protectors of
King's Christian vision. These disortions of the past were not just rhetorical. Over time, these political strategies had powerful effects and generated what appears as an alternative social reality that for many white Americans began to feel like the only reality. Through the making of these alternative histories, right wings stages such as Steve Bannon could stir up right wing voters, white right wing voters to reclaim and take back America.
Sound familiar, Yeah, unfortunately. So again to your point, this this concerted. You got to imagine, like the political landscape of the country in the eighties, right when Ronald Reagan is coming to power. Ronald Reagan represented a shift in the Republican Party that had at that time suffered some some losses in terms of what it is that they wanted for this country. This country was moving in a
in a more inclusive and progressive way. And Ronald Reagan represented two conservatives a way to dare I say, make America great again? Right, That's what he represented at the time.
And they had lost the battle on abortion at that time, they had lost some other you know, there were some other things that were going on, and they needed to reframe a lot of what they stood for politically in such a way that it appealed to white moderates Middle America, who, again, if you'd taken to account the climate of the country at the time, was feeling like, okay, well we have
seen these black people march. Because you got to think in the eighties, the sixties wasn't that long ago for the people that were alive in voting in the eighties, right, So they saw the dogs get sicked on black people. They saw the assassination of doctor King. They saw, you know, and when you live through that and you know what happened, you know, maybe your heart beats a little differently. Right, So it makes political sense for Ronald Reagan to appear decent.
That's that's the word that you used, Q. Even though a lot of what it is that he proposed and wove into this country, of what we remember him for everything, one hundred percent of what we remember, all of what we remember worked against the whole country. Right, there is no trickle down economics has not worked. It's been forty plus years.
Yeah, Reaganomics was never used to work.
But yeah, but you know all these things that so him whitewashing Doctor King allowed him to get all of that stuff off, right, because he needed to appeal to Middle America, who again at the time, was fresh off of this moment where they had seen Doctor King get assassinated. His whole push was non violence, and he got shot on a balcony. He was a minister, he had children. I have a dream he had a family, had you know what I'm saying. He wasn't trying to hurt anybody.
They were hitting him. They were hitting them. They're putting him in jail, left and right, they're putting the hoses on the dogs on him, and he got shot. And all those people that saw that happen, they saw it wasn't a George Floyd moment. It was Doctor King. George Floyd, we never heard of him, and we saw him die. That was the only thing we know him for. Doctor King died after we got to know who he was.
And again, his whole thing was non violence. How did the non violent minister lose his life on a balcony like an animal? Right, So again, for a person like Ronald Reagan, he gave the white moderate in the country what they needed, which was the appearance of a decent administration that was inclusive and so forth. But behind the scenes, of course, there was this effort to make sure that the version of Doctor King that we celebrate as a
country is the version that we are choosing. We're already past the little black boys and little white girls sitting down at a table together. So we'll just use that one part of what Doctor King said. We'll give him his holiday, and then now hopefully we can appeal to some blacks and a huge swap of Middle America.
Yeah. Imagine the man who made pursuing higher education almost unaffordable. Yeah, to make sure that black people didn't get too much access to educacation.
Yeah.
Also giving MLK a holiday to be celebrated in his fullness as a vehicle. Yeah, to get himself to power. It's really really sick and diabolical. But here we are.
Yeah, and so you know, ah, you know, and the craziest part about this whole thing, And I'm not sure that a lot of people know. And I don't have the notes in front of me right now, so you have to forgive me if I leave something out. But you and I had recently, we had a conversation with doctor russ Wiginton, the president and CEO of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Indeed the Lorraine Hotel where doctor King was shot, and he was talking to us.
And of course we know this from having done this sort of thing a couple of times, that doctor King was starting to appeal to white working class people at the time when he was assassinated, Like he went from you know, let's use the same bathrooms and the same water fountains to okay, here's how I feel about that war in Vietnam to ultimately, hey, listen, White America, Middle America, they're taking advantage of you, and you being racist and
you being influenced by these politicians in this near if that doesn't exist, is costing you. It's not just we have the same oppressor. We have the same there though, we have the same oppressor.
That was the message that was terrifying. Yes, because the level of influence that he had. When when Doctor King spoke, people listened. Yes, and you know, even you know, the newly elected former president uh evoked doctor King's I have a dream speech to lift himself up, and they all do that falsely pointed out that more people came to listen to him speak or to his I remember he said that to something that he did in DC, than
than that attended Doctor Kings. I have a dream speech, which we know is a ridiculous thing to say, but at all costs. They tried to use him, even to prop themselves up, not just like somehow that's the benchmark, not just to falsely pretend to be supporters or lovers of him.
Yeah, I want to I want to circle back. I want to I want to go back just a second though, when I was talking about doctor King trying to appeal to the white workers that was happening in Memphis in Tennessee when he got shot. That's why he was in Tennessee was to I think it might have been a union or something like that, but it was he was talking to white people, and that that was what he was on in that moment, creating solidarity across racial lines.
Because I think you put it so eloquently. You know, hey, we have the same oppressor. And that ultimately cost him his life. But again, that part of doctor King's story you don't hear. All you hear is I have a dream. So for many people, you know, and if you're one of these people, it's it's totally okay. We welcome all commerce here at Civic Cipher. It doesn't matter where you are. We try to make sure that it's an inclusive conversation.
But for many people, they're only awareness of history insofar as black people are concerned, is you know, black people were in Africa, they came here as slaves, then the slaves got free because of Lincoln. Then everybody beat up the free black people and it had a tough time then Doctor King came along and then everybody could sit down at a table together and there was no more segregation. Right, So that's the version of history, many peoples and no
more racism, right. And then Obama got elected. So you know, here we are right. So this is for a lot of people how they think that American history has gone. But for us, we need to color in these details because it's through the subtle influence of people in positions of power, the subtle influence of people with huge platforms or given microphones and audiences to speak to. Often enough, these are politicians who need to sway public opinion in
order to accomplish things. For often enough, a certain facet of you know, the population, often the facet that looks the most like them, but that's not always true, in order to create the changes or revert to the version of society that they ultimately want to get to. And part of the subtle influence comes from things like whitewashing. Indeed, the reality of what doctor King stood for, what he spoke against, what he would be voting for now, flies in the face of what it is that you vote
for every single day. And if you're a you know, I don't know, pick a name, far right politician, you'll see them all, you know, tweet and share his image and all that sort of stuff. But the fact is is that they they would not be politically aligned or ideologically aligned whatsoever. So