Keep on riding with it, says. We continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. Welcome back to Civic Cipher. I'm your host, Rams's job.
He is Rams's joh I am q Ward. You are tuned into Civic Cipher once again.
Dude, you are, and we still have plenty more show for you to stick around for. I do want to share a little bit about a recent keynote address that I was able to give on behalf of our show. So stick around for our Bob Bob Becoming a Better Ally, because I do want to share a really special story with you. But also we're going to listen to a TikToker and influencer that we're a big fan of discuss
the ways that slaves were captured not just bought. The influencer and the content creator goes by the name of LeVert the Baseman. We're going to listen to his story and then react to that on the show, and that and so much more interesting content coming your way. But before we get there, it's time to discuss these kids and tell you how to be Aba become a better Ally. Baba and Today's Boba sponsored by Friends of the Movement.
You can sign up for the free voter wallet from foteamglobal dot com to support black businesses and allied businesses as well as make an impact with your spending. Again. That's foteamglobal dot com founded in nineteen thirty eight. Jack and Jill boasts two hundred and seventy one chapters nationwide,
representing more than fifty thousand family members. Each chapter plans annual programming activities guided under a general five point programmatic thrust cultural awareness, educational development, civic and social slash, recreational areas. Through service projects, Jack and Jill of America creates a medium of contact for children to stimulate their growth and development through lobbying, educational programming, dissemination of education materials, and
the organization of community and charitable events. Jack and Jill has promoted the public awareness and interest of children, including child development, child growth, child quality of life, childcare, and the promotion of children's rights. I have the pleasure of delivering the keynote address for their Greater Suburban Maryland chapter discussing the theme we will not be silenced And I know we talked about Jack and Jill of America last week, But I just I feel like we should double down
on this organization. I know you're a lot more familiar with them than I was, Q, But just a fantastic organization, a great group of young people with great leadership in place. I want to send a special shout out to Donna Armstrong. She is indeed this Week's example of becoming a better ally. And of course, if you would like to support this organization, visit Jack and Jill and Jackanjillinc Dot org. Again, just a fantastic organization doing the right kind of work for
the right group of people. A very vulnerable population, but a very resilient population. These young people were just I'm just in love with them.
Yeah.
I got to see the pictures from the event and it looked like it was incredible. I wish I could have been there, but it was my baby boy's birthday.
Yeah.
So all right, we are going to talk about some more slave stuff. And the reason we're going to talk about this, you know, Qu's the reason that we're talking about this right now. In fact, talk to us a bit, Q about why you thought that this was relevant, because I know the reason you sent it to a group chat. But the way you put it was so eloquent.
Well, I think it's important to share information like this with each other sometimes believe it or not. To you that is listening to us right now, we need to be reassured that we are not sitting in an echo chamber sharing information from a single point of view or
a single data set. And oftentimes, because Ramsenes and I are singular as Civic Cipher and in a lot of other areas of our professional life, we spend a lot of time having these conversations in a studio with you, our listener, and each other, and we get far more pushback than support. And I think that's because some people think the information that we're sharing is obviously true, so they don't feel a need to come and give us an amen or a vote of support. And those that
oppose us, very very loudly oppose us. So sometimes we're looking at each other like, are we the ones that are on the wrong side of this, because there's so many people that seem to be up against us in this information age. Because once upon a time there were gatekeepers to information. Scientists, professors, and even the news once upon a time gave us the information that we held
to be true. If you wanted to do a scholastic research study on something, you had to go to a library, you had to look through encyclopedias, so the information that you were getting you were pretty certain that that information was real. Well, now in the information age, you have
access to all of the information that exist. Because because so many of us don't know how to properly conduct a scholastic study or do scholastic research, we take all of the information that's true and then we share that information as some type of intellectual flex. You know, I know the one thing that all the doctors and scientists didn't know. And I know that one thing, no matter the topic, politics, slavery, medicine, a global pandemic, systemic depression. Yeah,
I'm the one that knows. The thing that everyone else doesn't know. Is the position that a lot of people have taken. And sadly, we end up on the other side of the table from other black people with regard to the reasons that we are oppressed or that we are oppressed in the first place. And this contrarian intellectual flex that people think they're doing puts us in a position where we're arguing things that are obvious, proven fact against people who are arguing it against our collective own
best interest. And one thing that you and I have seen too many times to count is black people. Because white supremacists and racist people do this anyway. They want to make slavery seem smaller, less important, and less impactful
to today's black American. But even black Americans have started to parrot some of this information that you know, we sold ourselves into slavery, and that black people are just as at fault, and that black people who were going to be enslaved or killed otherwise are better off because Europeans took us from Africa and brought us to America as slaves and taught us all these things about cultivating
land and being simple human beings and not savages. So seeing this information and having someone present actual, reputable and verifiable data contrary to some of those arguments was just something that I hoped listeners could benefit from.
Well, let's get to it, let's play it. And so again this is from at Lavert the base man. If you want to look him up on any platform, I think he's all over the place.
By good morning, you said, not one person was stolen, They were sold by their own leaders, don't race bait. If you're gonna use disinformation, well Brock Children's eighty seven, I can clearly see that your Alabaster, Alabama education has failed you. So come here real quick.
Let's have a conversation.
First and foremost, I'm gonna need you to stop lying. You are far too old that stop it. Secondly, the lies you're telling were started by a racist cloister of Karen's known as the United Daughters of Confederacy. Their job was to spread this and disinformation about slavery in the United States of America. They lied and rewrote history books, making sure that they favored the South and protected racists. You racists and many disinformed people say that nobody was
stolen from Africa, while history says this. Momiral John Hawkins hijacked a Portuguese slave ship and sold three hundred Africans from it, and on his second trip he captured four hundred Africans. He didn't buy them, he didn't purchase them, and he didn't trade for them. He captured them. And when he finished he wrote a book titled an Alliance to Raid for Slaves. And in this book he tells the story of the very first Africans they captured, kidnapped,
and stole. He writes in his book I went myself where we took two hundred and fifty persons, men, women and children. He said nothing about buying them, not purchasing them, not trading them. He said, we took two hundred and fifty people, and in total there were six hundred prisoners.
And yet here you.
Are just loud, proud and wrong, declaring that nobody was stolen. You then go on to say that they were sold by their own leaders, and that too is false. Africa has the highest form of genetic diversity on the planet. Before white people showed up, there was no we are all Africans, we are all black. No, they were different ethnicities,
much like you Europeans were. How you British were different from the Normans, who were different from the Irish, who were different from the Scots, who were different from the Celts, who were different from the French, who were different from the Germans, who were different from the Gauls. You see how that works. You see how different ethnicities work in Europe. It works the same way in Africa. It works the
same way in Africa. And just like in Europe, white men were the ones who were fueling these conflicts between different ethnicities. So in warfare, when one kingdom conquers another, their prisoners of war were enslaved. These African kings didn't enslave their own people, They enslaved their enemies. You then go on to say, don't race bait if you're going
to use this information. See, I don't think you understand what race bating is, because if you did, you would know that your misinformation is intentionally encouraging racism or anger about issues relating to race. The lies that you and people like you tell prevent this nation from healing by stopping the truth from being told. You know, people believe a lie faster than they believe the truth. I mean,
you're a prime example, right. You then go on to say that they were promised land and a mule in eighteen sixty five, and that's true.
We were promised forty acres and a mule. Did we get it? No?
You want to know why, because Andrew Johnson overturned the order in the fall of eighteen sixty five. He gave all that land back to the racist to the very people who declared war on the United States of America. You then go on to say that the first slaves to leave Africa to America was fifteen twenty six, And that ain't true either, because it was fifteen oh one when Spain began trafficking enslaved Africans to the New World.
You're too old to be doing all that, damn line.
It was fifteen twenty six when Spain landed in what would become the United States of America. Now was I talking about Spain or Spanish colonies in that video, No, I was not. I was talking about Britain and British colonies around the world, specifically British colonial America. And I said that several times throughout the video, and at least twice within the first ten seconds. And as stated in the video, it was August twentieth, sixteen nineteen when Africans
first landed in British colonial America. It's clear that your UDC education hasn't taught you that America started out as colonies of Spain, France, England, and the Dutch. Those are four separate countries that colonized indigenous land, and each one of those colonies had a different slave policy. So when you said they never promised them anything, You're partially correct
because Spain never promised their enslaved Africans anything but Britain. However, Britain promised their indentured servants their freedom and land, and what was point comfort It was a British colony. So am I saying that no Africans were ever bought and sold during the entirety of the Transatlantic slave trade?
No, that's stupid.
We know that some were bought and sold, but for you to say that none were stolen, that is stupid. So why is that belief stupid? Because apologists for the African slave trade long argued that European traders did not enslave anyone. They simply purchased Africans who had already been enslaved and otherwise would have been put to death. Thus, apologists like you, sir, claimed the slave trade actually saved lives.
Such claims represent a gross distortion of the facts. Some independent slave merchants did in fact stage raids on unprotected African villages, as we have shown previously in the video, as well as kidnap and enslave Africans, and most professional slave traders. However, they set up bases along the West African coast where they could purchase slaves from Africans in
exchange for firearms and other goods. But before the end of the seventeenth century, England, France, Denmark, Holland and Portugal had all established slave trading post on the West African coast. And why they do that because of a little thing called supply and demand. You see, Europeans wanted everything that came from Africa, from the soil to the people, to the water to the mineral everything that came from Africa,
Europeans wanted it. And all Africans wanted an exchange were weapons so that they could defend themselves from their enemies. And with European help, many African kingdoms were able to defend themselves against their enemies at the same time providing Europeans with slaves, with bodies, with human capital. So the next time you decide to open your mouth on the internet, make sure your facts are straight, because you don't need my help.
Making you look stupid. Now half the day you were meant to have.
Oh we have the day you were meant to have as an incredible way to send someone off.
Oh so again, that was LeVert the Baseman, all his sources are cited. If you end up, you know, checking out his content, you come across that video, you can check his sources. We've checked a good number of them. But you know, he's a content creator that we bought on our own. Basically for people who love to throw that back in black people's face that you know, Africans sold, you know, their countrymen and slavery. That's not the only.
Way important to interject here because something he touched on that the rest of the world seems to have a very obtuse view on it's Africans and their countrymen. Africa is a continent filled with several different countries. So again, Africans selling their countrymen as a statement is misleading. Oh yeah that people saying, I tend to think. No, this wasn't a correction for you. This is for the listener who clears that and continues to self perpetuate the idea
that Africa is singular in ethnicity or in culture. Because of this constructive race, people see and think black is a one thing. That's why black people and I cringe every time I hear. But this is why a black people have had to so enthusiastically express to the rest of the world that we are not a monolith. Lord, I wish we were. However, they're not wrong when they
say that. And the reason that they say that is because this constructive race, which was only created to separate those that could be owned as property and who were supposed to be the permanent slave class from those who weren't. If they're black, You guys can't see my quotation marks that I'm putting in the air. They can be property, they can be owned, they could be just like cattle or less than And.
It was illegal to own a white person, of course, as it was, and whiteness was defined by law in this country, and there were arguments to determine what whiteness was for the and what blackness was right for the specific purpose of deciding who could be owned and who could not be owned. And then depending on the status of your mother, that determined what status you had. And so there was, as you mentioned, a permanent slave class.
So the type of slavery that was even practiced in this country is very different than the type of slavery that had historically taken place. So again, for those folks who like old slavery is just something that's happened all over the country. Black people, black or Africans sold their
own brothers and sisters, countrymen, whatever in the slavery. You know, that is nonsense in and of itself on its face, but the point that those people are trying to make breaks down when we look at again some of the other ways for those that heard the way black history fact. Indeed, piracy and slaver aids by white people to get more bodies onto their ships were also common. Of course, there was a good number of people being sold into slavery, but.
That was due to.
A market that was created by Europeans. The Transatlantic slave trans human beings been around for between one hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty thousand years or something like that. We're talking like the fifteen hundreds when this stuff start popping off through the eighteen hundreds, so there's a three hundred year period where European business people decide, hey, we can get cheaper labor if we acquire black people to do it, and we can have them enslaved in perpetuity.
And granted that wasn't necessarily the case all over the world, it was definitely the case in the Americans and the West Indies. But this is where the concept of a white person comes from, because prior to fifteen hundred, there was no such thing as a white person. Indeed, as he mentioned in the.
Article, especially not in a way of ethnicity or or race.
It's not a thing. Yeah, Prior to fifteen hundred, there was only English people, Scottish people, French people, Spanish people. You know what I'm saying. There was no such thing as white people any more than there was a such thing as black people, because you know, as we mentioned, there was people from you know, different tribes in different you know, parts of Africa. So Mali, Morocco, thanks you exactly right.
You know which places that would eventually in the future on the on the west coast of Africa become Nigeria and Ghana and things like this.
So exactly exactly my point. So, in short, the way that a lot of people think of blackness, to your point earlier, Q, is that black people are just one group of people, and that black people sold black people into slavery, and black people had slaves in Africa, and slavery is something that everybody's done to each other, and that ignores it doesn't even ignore the nuance. It ignores
the the entirety of the explanation it is. It is too elementary of a of a of an explanation to be taken seriously.
And even as you say it back then, he he highlights in the video, if our countries were at war, those who were we captured, we didn't kill. We put them to work for us. That was a condition of being captured as an enemy to whatever nation you were warring against. So even then, the way that people did it in that sense was kind of merciful, like we could have just went od.
On, y'all.
Yeah, it's been intentionally perpetuated in a way that makes it seem like there was mercy shown on those taken away from their captors in Africa because it was brought to the America.
Let me go with that, because the truth is, if you were taken as a prisoner and enslaved, you were an African tribe, you were taken by another African tribe, you were enslaved. Your children's children's children weren't slaves. It wasn't a permanent slave class, you know. And there were laws of how to treat human beings and so forth, and you can find this out in Egypt. You can find this out elsewhere.
There were laws, which is why we had to be view as less than human, thank you, so that they could use God to justify treating us as less than and consider themselves to be good people, moral people, even though they were subjugated an entire race to this type of slavery and treatment.
And the last thing I'll say is that you know, let's call it three hundred year period or so of the Transatlantic slave trade. Again, that market, that European fueled market of okay, we got to get more slaves. It turned it, It turned Africa into you know, if you're an African leader, you're either going to be the one being captured ultimately or you're going to be the one doing the capturing. And if these Europeans are bringing guns,
then you know, you govern yourself accordingly. So so Europeans cannot divorce themselves from their responsibility here either either. You because the history shows that black people were stolen, Black people were you know, rated pirated, and of course the European market influences have contributed to the overall Transatlantic slave trade and the current predicament of black people in this country at least, and so we'll leave it right there. Thank you as always for tuning in to Civic Cipher.
I've been your host, Rams's job.
He is Rams's jah I am q Ward. Thank you guys once again for continuing to tune in, for rocking with us, and for providing us with the platform that we have.
Yeah, yeah, we really do appreciate it, and we do hope that you're growing as we're growing. Do us a favorite. Hit our website civiccipher dot com with any questions topics you want us to cover. You make a donation there. We appreciate that the show's growing with your support. Follow us on all social media at Civic Cipher. You can find us on YouTube as well at YouTube dot com slash Civiccipher. You can catch me on all social media at Rams's.
Jo I am qward on all socials.
As well, and don't forget you can download this in any previous episode and until next week, y'all.
Peace