June 30, 2025 • 30 mins
On Part of today's podcast, Hosts Ramses Ja and Q Ward tackle the subject of race and ponder whether Black people are a monolith.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Ciphers Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. I
am Rams's job and I am q Ward and we
would like for you to stick around because we have
another interesting show for you today. We're going to hopefully
learn a lot of things. One of the things that
(00:21):
we're we've been discussing on the show quite a bit
and one that we're looking forward to getting into the
deep end is whether or not black people are a
monolith that is often used as talking points on the right.
You know, black people are not a model with and
on the left. And then there are some people that
(00:44):
are trying to reclaim the narrative that black people are
on the same page and there is such thing as
black unity. So we're gonna see what that looks like.
We're also going to be talking about reparations. This is
not as topic that we've uncovered yet on the show,
but we're gonna look at it from a different perspective
because there are some people that did get reparations, not
black people, but there are some people that did, and
(01:06):
I think that that makes for a great case precedent
for folks who really don't know where they land in
so far as the reparations conversation is concerned. Later in
the show, we're going to take you inside the mind
of the black conservative. We have some data that really
kind of identifies, you know, who a black conservative is,
what they value, how they move, and what they think
(01:27):
of the world. And before we get there, we're going
to start to show off with you know, our culture
segment as always, and we're going to compare race and culture.
You know, the question was posed, you know, why are
all the black kids sitting together, you know, at the
lunch table. Well, the answer is they're not sitting together
because they're black, it's because of a shared culture. We
(01:50):
also have, of course Q words clap back and we
have Better Do Better, a lot for you to stick
around for. So a show full of content that we
think you're going to enjoy. But as always, we'd like
to start off with a feel good feature. So today's
feel good feature comes from the Equal Justice Initiative. Shout
out to Brian Stephenson, who is one of the great
heroes to both myself and Q. It reads the International
(02:12):
Jury of the Stockholm Prize and Criminology Foundation has awarded
the Stockholm Prize in Criminology to Francis Cook and EJI
director Brian Stephenson for their applied criminology criminological research as
practitioners who quote succeeded in reducing cruel and unusual punishment.
The prize was presented by Her Majesty the Queen of
Sweden at the Grand Prize ceremony in Stockholm City Hall
(02:34):
in conjunction with the Stockholm Criminology Symposium. The Stockholm Prize
in Criminology is an international prize awarded for outstanding achievements
in criminological research for the application of research results by
practitioners of the reduction of crime and the advancement of
human rights. Made up of internationally recognized scholars, law enforcement
officials and former prize recipients, the International jury selected mister
(02:56):
Stevenson and Francis Cook, former CEO of the Howard League
for Penal Reform, for their work applying research to reduce
disproportionate punishments in the US and the UK. Mister Stevenson
was recognized for advocacy that has prevented many unjust executions
and won a landmark ruling from the US Supreme court
in Miller versus Alabama barring mandatory sentences of life imprisonment
(03:17):
without parole for children. Organized by Swedish National Council for
Crime Prevention, this year symposium focused on justice and rationality
in correctional policies and practices. For those that are not
familiar with Brian Stevenson, just know that he exists and
he and people like him are doing good work taking
(03:39):
baby steps, I will admit that, but steps nonetheless toward
a more equitable and more just.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Society for all of us.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And we don't get a lot of good news these days,
but when someone gets recognized for that type of work
that they're doing, we like to take a moment and
acknowledge him. So Brian Stevenson shout out to you for
our feel good feature for today. Up now, the question.
This is a question that's come up before between me
and Q. Why are all the black kids sitting together
(04:08):
at the lunch table? This was funny when we got
a chance to talk about it a while back. This
has been some years now, but you know it came
up again recently and it's you hear the question posed
not not just about black kids, but you know, why
are the black kids doing this, or why are the
black kids doing that? Or why are the Hispanic kids
(04:29):
always doing this? Or why do these folks dressed like that?
Or why do the white kids do this?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Or whatever?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right, of course, in our world it's very black and white,
so that we get approached, you know, from people that
know the type of work we do, and they are
perhaps legitimately curious and they wonder these things, right, And
you know, we talk about church, we talk about, you know,
(04:53):
all these these cultural silos, and for folks that aren't
intimately familiar with that, it seems like they're racial silos,
it could seem like they're racial silos, right, And so
differentiating race and culture is I think important for folks
that might not regularly or might have never stopped to
(05:18):
really appreciate the line that divides the two. Okay, so
here's a little bit of background on this particular question
about the black kids sitting together at the lunch table,
again from Quorra. But it was a question post and
there's a decent response to it, so I figured I'll
share it just again frame this conversation that you and
I are.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
About to have.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
The question goes, I saw black students sitting separately from
white students in dining.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Halls at the University of Delaware? Why was that?
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Do blacks feel ill at ease near whites? And then
the response was from someone named Brother Nkosey. It says,
I was also visiting that day at the university and
what I noticed was all the white kids sitting separate
and apart from black kids. Do white kids feel ill
at ease around blacks? Historically there is a group that
has told another group that they could only sit in
(06:05):
one area of the bus, have told them to not
eat in the same restaurant, or use the same bathroom, etc.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Etc.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Do Black people have a history of that. It might
have been a nice gesture, considering that history for the
white kids to come over and then invite the black
kids to sit with them. Also, graciously understand if the
black kids declined, because if those white kids had learned
anything about black history while they were in high school,
they would have came to the same conclusion that many
black people have that racial healing is a process, not
(06:33):
an event. So to answer your question, given the historical
relationship in current climate, maybe they did feel a little
ill at ease. It's possible Lastly, to be of most
benefit to you, the question has to become, why did
you feel the onus of mingling or why did you
feel the onus of mingling was on them under the circumstances.
(06:53):
If you can be honest with yourself as to the
framing of the question, you will have moved forward as
a person. So there's a lot there, But I want
to add just a little bit more before we get
to our back and forth cubes. So I looked up
the definition of culture just because I think it's going
(07:13):
to help us out. So culture, the first definition says
the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement, regarded collectively. Okay,
So arts and other manifestations, creations, etc. Regarded collectively okay.
And then two the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements
(07:38):
of a particular nation, people, or other social group. So
Caribbean culture is a great example. And then we'll talk
about race.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The definition of race is each of the major groupings
into which humankind is considered in various theories or context,
to be divided on the basis of physical characteristics or
shared ancestry. Okay, it's not scientific, but you know, physical characteristics. Okay,
so my have curly hair. If Q grows his hair out,
looks similar to mine. Largely we have brown skin, you
(08:12):
know that sort of thing. So race, there are people
that are of the same race as me and Q
and don't share the same culture as me and Q.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Caribbean people is a great example.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You know, I did not grow up as a Caribbean man,
And so if I went to a lunch room and
there was a group of Caribbean people sitting together, they
would be sitting according to their culture, not according to
their race, right, And they'd be having conversations that are relevant.
They'd be sharing jokes and sharing foods, and in an
(08:47):
environment where they're comfortable among each other and not being
judged by perhaps my American sensibilities.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And there's the dividing line. Now.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
One of the things that happens often with non black
people entering into a lunch room setting or some other
equivalent setting, is they'll see black people grouping together and
they will feel excluded from that.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And I want to say two things about that. Growing
up black, living black, my whole life, white folks, I
cannot think of a single example ever in my life
of black folks sitting together and saying I'm so glad
that no white people are sitting with us. Right, that's
not white folks are not excluded from that. It's not
(09:34):
a decision based on excluding people, but rather about finding
people that you won't feel are judging you. Where if
you do eat, Remember we talked about eating a watermelon,
eating a banana, these foods that we are very cognizant of.
Eating a piece of fried chicken, you don't feel the gaze,
you don't feel the judgment, you don't feel like you're
(09:55):
letting down your ancestors.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
So you just find folks that you're comfortable, and it's
not just but your food you're eating, but a whole
host of things. The other thing is, it's again, I
think the article or the response says it best. It
is not impossible, it is not frowned upon to make
a new friend.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
If I'm ramses Ja Rudy King Taylor, the second that
is who I am.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I was born in Compton, California in nineteen eighty two. Okay,
the whole time I've lived in this these United States
of America, and the whole time I knew that life
was better for white folks, and then white folks have
they've regarded as in mass have regarded black people in
(10:45):
a different way than we regard ourselves. Right, whatever that
means to you, if you're listening, whatever that means to you,
There is a distinction between how white folks regard us
and how we regard ourselves. Okay, if that's fair, If
you'll allow me that, then the rest of this makes sense.
So knowing that, knowing that these folks have the capacity,
(11:06):
the potential, maybe there's a likelihood that they would judge me,
that I might embarrass and bring shame to them, they
don't want to sit with me. Whatever, Knowing that that
is even a possibility, given the history of this country,
given my own personal treatment, given what I've known from TV,
what I know from police, whatever my own apertures into
my reality. If I'm looking for the most comfortable place
(11:28):
to sit in a room where I'm not going to
ruffle any feathers, not going to upset anybody, well, I
know that the people that look like me aren't going
to regard me in a way that is going to
be damaging to me. And I'm not going to be
damaging to them, and it's easy to find comfort there.
And it's not necessarily because of how they look, not
(11:49):
because of their racial composition. It's just that's one way
of determining whether or not they share the same culture
as me.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So hopefully that frames it. But you're always welcome.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
To come and say hi. I don't ever want anybody
to feel like you can't come say hi, or you
can't come sit with us. We have never had that energy.
That's always been something that has come from the other side. Okay,
you're always welcome to sit. You can be our brothers.
You might have to learn a couple of things, but
we got you. I know I talked a lot cute,
but you know it's on you.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
My bad.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I do it a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
I chuckle every time you do that segment Ramas to
talk nine minutes and thirty seconds, My bad dog. What
you got Black people's culture was mostly stolen from us.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I had to learn this in one of the most
embarrassing ways possible, uh sitting at dinner in Barcelona with
a group of friends and being asked where I was from.
I responded, Detroit, and I saw confusion on the face
of the people at the table as they followed that
question up, like, no, where's your family from, to which
I responded, Georgia, my mother from making Georgia. And again
(13:02):
one of them asked if I meant Georgia like Eastern Europe,
and I said, no, I mean Georgia like Atlanta, like
the dirty South. And one person at the table realized
that I didn't understand the question, and he rubbed his
fingers on his arm to show the brown.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Skin and asked me again where I was from.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And I realized in that moment, of the twelve or
thirteen people at the table, the only person that couldn't
answer the question where you're from?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Was me?
Speaker 4 (13:33):
And for Black Americans, that, for so many of us,
is a question that we can't answer. You know, so
our culture and our ethnicity being replaced by the systemic
thing that we do over here called race, a social
construct that doesn't mean what you think it means, because
there's a singular race of homo sapien sapient and that's human.
(13:58):
So you know, here we are at that NEXTUS point again.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, well, I think that brings us neatly to the
next question. People have opinions on this, whether or not
black people are a monolith.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
This is something that comes up every four years and
probably during midterms when people try to figure out how
the black vote is going to go, and you know,
folks will say, well, you know, black folks are not
a monolith. They don't all just do the same thing, right.
And you know, there have been calls since I was
little for black unity, you know, talking like the early nineties,
(14:39):
think like ninety two. I mean, there's been calls since
before then. But you know, this is when I started
to click on and started to make heads or tails
of the world, and there was this notion that there
was no such thing as black unity, and that that
was kind of the great test of our generation was
(15:02):
to work on creating a more unified front for our people.
But bear in mind, this was also the time of
the millionaire Mars. This was also the time of you know,
the Black Medallions or the Africa Medallions, and you know,
the you know, the cross colors type clothes and you
know all that sort of stuff, right, And you know,
(15:26):
most recently I had a conversation with doctor Christopher Twlller
from I think it's UC Santa Barbara's is where he's
based if I'm not mistaken, but doctor Twler, he is
the head of the Black Voter Project, right. So what
they do is they monitor trends for black voters around
(15:48):
the United States. They use larger sample sizes than you know,
your typical research groups because they're focused on really one
community and kind of to find the trends within that
one community.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So the data.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
In their estimation is more accurate because it's exclusive to
this one group and it's a larger sample size. And
you know, I asked him about, you know, whether or
not black people were a monolith, whether black people are
on the same page in so far as our politics
are concerned, are we aligned in that way? And the
(16:26):
conversation that he had with me, based on the most
recent election results suggested that, yes, black people were largely
in alignment.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You know, there was.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Over ninety percent of black women that voted the same way,
over eighty percent of black men that voted the same way.
And you know, in a country this size with you know,
as near as makes no difference. Forty million may as
well be black folks in this country. To get those
(17:06):
huge majorities on the same page about their politics is
about as close to being on the same page as
you're going to get right. So for the people that
you know have one set of optics on whether or
not black folks are a monolith and whether or not
that's a good thing. You know, you can drive your
(17:27):
own conclusions for people to have the opposing view and
the opposing optics and feel like it means something entirely different.
The numbers are the same. Nonetheless, what are you.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Thinking, c Well, I don't want to lead the witness.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
But as objective as data and numbers are, they can
be used in a way that's very subjective.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
So yes, very very high percentage of the black people
that voted.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Seem to vote the same way.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Okay, But what we know from that same data set
is that less black people turned out than in the
prior than in the prior presidential election.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
And that's where that monolithic conclusion can be a little slighted.
When asked are black people and monoliths, people tend to
resoundly and proudly scream no, as if any ethnic group
(18:43):
when based on the nuance of daily life tasting, food,
taste in music, taste in art are the same, like
no groups are monolithic in that way. The disadvantage that
we have is we go out of our way to
prove that we are not monolithic at all. And I
say out of our way to prove it as if
it's not in a lot of cases true. There's a
(19:06):
thing that happens in organized labor where if there are
some people that are part of that union that are
having their needs met, they start to care a little
less about those that are not right. So that tends
to be the ones who earn on the higher end
of the spectrum. Right, you can create a situation where
(19:28):
there is no cap for how much they can earn,
but also no floor, no minimum for those that are
beneath them. In that case, you are doing the work
of those you are organizing against. You know, hey, that's
not up to me. I'm not going to fight for
the bottom to be raised because that might make them
put a cap on the top.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So I'm not going to participate in that at all.
And that weakens your union in a.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Way that kind of keeps you where you are without
being able to make much progress, even in situations where
you've broken some type of profit share, keeping your bottom
so low so that you can have an infinite top,
which is an imagination because the ones who owned the
place are never going to let you earn more than them.
(20:15):
Is a good way to trick people. So that's the
same thing that capitalism has done in some cases to
black people, and not just capitalism. We talked about right
wing anti intellectualism. We talked about the pandemic and the
fear of the vaccine causing people to adopt a seemingly
(20:36):
hyper contrarian position with regards to all things moving forward. Right,
everybody who stood in line with me, who agreed that
we shouldn't get this shot, I guess I'm going to
just ride it out with them moving forward, even if
that means becoming a Trump supporter, because even though he
was loudly against the vaccine, he was one of the
first people to get it, which his supporters just very
(20:57):
very conveniently ignore.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Our Black people.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
A monolists, of course not, but those who look to
oppress us, they're not a monolist either, except for when
it comes to the idea of oppressing and staying ahead
of us. They can disagree on one thousand things. When
election time comes, they find the singular thing that they
agree upon and they vote based on that. And in
(21:24):
this country, that thing is very very loudly white supremacist
Christian nationalism. Black people, we can agree on most things,
and we will find the thing that we disagree about
and create a disqualifier for each other, cannibalize each other
and splinter off into all these different fractions, and it
(21:44):
makes it almost impossible for us to get ahead, because
we are already not the majority. If you splinter us
into fractions, it's impossible for us to really collectively get ahead.
So I'm hoping at some point we can find a
singular voice, or at least a singular group of things
that we say we want and kind of get out
(22:05):
of this idea of cannibalizing and tearing each other down
because we say we wanted all these things. And then
we had a very very overly qualified, brilliant black woman
politician run for president who promised to give us almost
all the things we wanted, jobs, housing, down payment assistance
like healthcare, you know, support for black businesses, etc. And
(22:29):
we just found things to pick her apart about while
watching the other side prop up a thirty four time
convicted felon adjudicated sexual assault sexual assault her who was
openly racist, openly anti LGBTQ, openly anti woman. It's really
(22:52):
sad that we find ways to not become fist like
in our unity, watching those who would have us never
have anything or amount to anything, or never have just
our self determination unite whenever they need to, to the
tune of about close to eighty million to put us
(23:15):
in a position that we're in now. It's a really
really sad truth.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Well, if there's anything that we can take from it,
because you're right, the couch was a definite factor in
the least election. So using the data that we're using,
it might not tell the complete story, but it doesn't
say nothing, and that's not nothing. So I would argue
(23:42):
that there is at least the potential for us to
be on the same page, provided that we acknowledge that
progress is a step by step process. It doesn't happen overnight,
and that's a lesson that we're going to have to learn,
I guess in real.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Time moving on. You know who better do better?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
The police?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I mean, they always better do better. But today we're
going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Why the police, like the police don't need tanks, the
militarization of the police. And this is something that you know,
we've talked about before. Q. A lot of these things
we talk about, you know, from time to time because
they come up. But you know, recently, you know, there's
been the reintroduction of this conversation like where where's all
(24:36):
this equipment coming from? Why does it look like these
people are soldiers going into a war zone, a guerrilla
war zone. Aren't they supposed to be police? What happened
to your friendly neighborhood police officer?
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Oh, well, the state of the world has changed, you know,
the social media. Well, no, you're supposed to hold the
standard you are the police, you know what I'm saying.
But no, you know, the militarization of the police has
made the world scarier than it needed to be. And yeah,
the police, I think we've read this before, but the police.
(25:13):
If the United States police departments collectively were a military organization,
they'd be like the third largest military in the world,
behind the United States military and I think China's military, right,
So the fact that they look like a military force,
complete with tanks and bulletproof and all this sort of
(25:33):
stuff is wild. It's crazy work, right, So I'm gonna
share a bit from the Harvard Gazette. Issues revolve around
culture of viewing citizens as potential threats, concerns about self protection,
and departments equipped with military grade arms. Okay, that's the
name of the article.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
All right.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
The masked shooting in Uvalde, Texas in twenty twenty two
by a gunman armed with an AR fifteen style rifle
resulted in searing and a searing loss of life nineteen
young students and two teachers at rob Elementary School. But
equally stunning was the seventy seven minutes it took police
to respond, despite having adequate firepower, equipment and training to
do so. The delay turned a spotlight on the militarization
(26:17):
of US law enforcement, how it can fail to protect
individuals from the kinds of threats it was intended to thwart,
and its tendency to foster a culture of self protection
that can result in unnecessarily violent or deadly responses, particularly
in communities of color. Right, So the police are supposed
to be all brave and bad and they get the
(26:38):
guns and the tanks and bulletproof vests and everything like that,
and they always get to say that they feared for
their life and the people that they're supposed to be
protect the citizens that never get that benefit of the doubt.
The issue that was me talking back to the article.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
The issue is complex, and many law enforcement departments across
the country have continued to resist reforms, even amid arising
crisis of confidence in police and concerns over racism in
the ranks. Jessica Katzenstein and Inequality in America Fellow, who
recently completed her PhD in anthropology at Brown, has been
analyzing police militarization in an effort to show how and
(27:20):
why departments are resisting changes in the ways. The resistance
is not as straightforward as it's often portrayed, but simply
Police militarization consists of a decades old federal government practice
making military equipment available to state and law enforcement agencies.
The initial intent was to help arm police in the
war on drugs and later to prevent terror attacks. Katzenstein
(27:43):
said that many scholars argue that police militarization also includes
spot teams, paramilitary teams and tactics, military bureaucracies, and militarized
ways of understanding crime and criminality, in which the default
is for officers to see non officers as potential threats
or enemies, a particular problem given that communities of color
tend to be more heavily policed.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
WOW.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
During her field research, Katzenstein spoke with law enforcement officers,
reform organizers, and others throughout Maryland about their views on
militarization and proposed police reforms, such as the Baltimore Police
Department's Consent Decree with reforms on training, bureaucratic organization, and
compliant mechanisms.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So that was just reading Q take it away.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
I'm not sure where I would take it if I
did take it away. There's something inherent about the police
and the military in this country, and we spoke about it
recently and it's been like a hush thing that when
you say it out loud, people treat you like your
race baiting or being extreme or being emotional in the gaslight.
(28:54):
You like it, your imagination. But what we've always known
about the police, and even more scary about our military,
is that it still was created, all of it to police,
secure and protect the wealthy of this country. Right, come
and invade a place, take everything from everyone that is there,
(29:17):
subjugate them, enslave them, unlive them, kidnap them, torture them,
traffic them, take all of their belongings, establish a territory,
and then create laws that make everything that you just
did illegal so that they can't do it back. And
then one at a time, as people break those laws,
(29:39):
you arrest them and you do the whole thing all
over again. So everything has always been for that same reason.
So yes, they'll continue to give them tanks, guns, rockets, drones, airplanes,
aircraft carriers and whatever they need to continue to protect, serve,
and you know, guard so that those in charge and
(29:59):
empower will always remain so
Broadcasting from the Civic Ciphers Studios. Welcome to the QR Code,
where we share perspective, seek understanding, and shape outcomes. I
am Rams's job and I am q Ward and we
would like for you to stick around because we have
another interesting show for you today. We're going to hopefully
learn a lot of things. One of the things that
(00:21):
we're we've been discussing on the show quite a bit
and one that we're looking forward to getting into the
deep end is whether or not black people are a
monolith that is often used as talking points on the right.
You know, black people are not a model with and
on the left. And then there are some people that
(00:44):
are trying to reclaim the narrative that black people are
on the same page and there is such thing as
black unity. So we're gonna see what that looks like.
We're also going to be talking about reparations. This is
not as topic that we've uncovered yet on the show,
but we're gonna look at it from a different perspective
because there are some people that did get reparations, not
black people, but there are some people that did, and
(01:06):
I think that that makes for a great case precedent
for folks who really don't know where they land in
so far as the reparations conversation is concerned. Later in
the show, we're going to take you inside the mind
of the black conservative. We have some data that really
kind of identifies, you know, who a black conservative is,
what they value, how they move, and what they think
(01:27):
of the world. And before we get there, we're going
to start to show off with you know, our culture
segment as always, and we're going to compare race and culture.
You know, the question was posed, you know, why are
all the black kids sitting together, you know, at the
lunch table. Well, the answer is they're not sitting together
because they're black, it's because of a shared culture. We
(01:50):
also have, of course Q words clap back and we
have Better Do Better, a lot for you to stick
around for. So a show full of content that we
think you're going to enjoy. But as always, we'd like
to start off with a feel good feature. So today's
feel good feature comes from the Equal Justice Initiative. Shout
out to Brian Stephenson, who is one of the great
heroes to both myself and Q. It reads the International
(02:12):
Jury of the Stockholm Prize and Criminology Foundation has awarded
the Stockholm Prize in Criminology to Francis Cook and EJI
director Brian Stephenson for their applied criminology criminological research as
practitioners who quote succeeded in reducing cruel and unusual punishment.
The prize was presented by Her Majesty the Queen of
Sweden at the Grand Prize ceremony in Stockholm City Hall
(02:34):
in conjunction with the Stockholm Criminology Symposium. The Stockholm Prize
in Criminology is an international prize awarded for outstanding achievements
in criminological research for the application of research results by
practitioners of the reduction of crime and the advancement of
human rights. Made up of internationally recognized scholars, law enforcement
officials and former prize recipients, the International jury selected mister
(02:56):
Stevenson and Francis Cook, former CEO of the Howard League
for Penal Reform, for their work applying research to reduce
disproportionate punishments in the US and the UK. Mister Stevenson
was recognized for advocacy that has prevented many unjust executions
and won a landmark ruling from the US Supreme court
in Miller versus Alabama barring mandatory sentences of life imprisonment
(03:17):
without parole for children. Organized by Swedish National Council for
Crime Prevention, this year symposium focused on justice and rationality
in correctional policies and practices. For those that are not
familiar with Brian Stevenson, just know that he exists and
he and people like him are doing good work taking
(03:39):
baby steps, I will admit that, but steps nonetheless toward
a more equitable and more just.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Society for all of us.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
And we don't get a lot of good news these days,
but when someone gets recognized for that type of work
that they're doing, we like to take a moment and
acknowledge him. So Brian Stevenson shout out to you for
our feel good feature for today. Up now, the question.
This is a question that's come up before between me
and Q. Why are all the black kids sitting together
(04:08):
at the lunch table? This was funny when we got
a chance to talk about it a while back. This
has been some years now, but you know it came
up again recently and it's you hear the question posed
not not just about black kids, but you know, why
are the black kids doing this, or why are the
black kids doing that? Or why are the Hispanic kids
(04:29):
always doing this? Or why do these folks dressed like that?
Or why do the white kids do this?
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Or whatever?
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right, of course, in our world it's very black and white,
so that we get approached, you know, from people that
know the type of work we do, and they are
perhaps legitimately curious and they wonder these things, right, And
you know, we talk about church, we talk about, you know,
(04:53):
all these these cultural silos, and for folks that aren't
intimately familiar with that, it seems like they're racial silos,
it could seem like they're racial silos, right, And so
differentiating race and culture is I think important for folks
that might not regularly or might have never stopped to
(05:18):
really appreciate the line that divides the two. Okay, so
here's a little bit of background on this particular question
about the black kids sitting together at the lunch table,
again from Quorra. But it was a question post and
there's a decent response to it, so I figured I'll
share it just again frame this conversation that you and
I are.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
About to have.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
The question goes, I saw black students sitting separately from
white students in dining.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Halls at the University of Delaware? Why was that?
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Do blacks feel ill at ease near whites? And then
the response was from someone named Brother Nkosey. It says,
I was also visiting that day at the university and
what I noticed was all the white kids sitting separate
and apart from black kids. Do white kids feel ill
at ease around blacks? Historically there is a group that
has told another group that they could only sit in
(06:05):
one area of the bus, have told them to not
eat in the same restaurant, or use the same bathroom, etc.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Etc.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Do Black people have a history of that. It might
have been a nice gesture, considering that history for the
white kids to come over and then invite the black
kids to sit with them. Also, graciously understand if the
black kids declined, because if those white kids had learned
anything about black history while they were in high school,
they would have came to the same conclusion that many
black people have that racial healing is a process, not
(06:33):
an event. So to answer your question, given the historical
relationship in current climate, maybe they did feel a little
ill at ease. It's possible Lastly, to be of most
benefit to you, the question has to become, why did
you feel the onus of mingling or why did you
feel the onus of mingling was on them under the circumstances.
(06:53):
If you can be honest with yourself as to the
framing of the question, you will have moved forward as
a person. So there's a lot there, But I want
to add just a little bit more before we get
to our back and forth cubes. So I looked up
the definition of culture just because I think it's going
(07:13):
to help us out. So culture, the first definition says
the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement, regarded collectively. Okay,
So arts and other manifestations, creations, etc. Regarded collectively okay.
And then two the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements
(07:38):
of a particular nation, people, or other social group. So
Caribbean culture is a great example. And then we'll talk
about race.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
The definition of race is each of the major groupings
into which humankind is considered in various theories or context,
to be divided on the basis of physical characteristics or
shared ancestry. Okay, it's not scientific, but you know, physical characteristics. Okay,
so my have curly hair. If Q grows his hair out,
looks similar to mine. Largely we have brown skin, you
(08:12):
know that sort of thing. So race, there are people
that are of the same race as me and Q
and don't share the same culture as me and Q.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Caribbean people is a great example.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
You know, I did not grow up as a Caribbean man,
And so if I went to a lunch room and
there was a group of Caribbean people sitting together, they
would be sitting according to their culture, not according to
their race, right, And they'd be having conversations that are relevant.
They'd be sharing jokes and sharing foods, and in an
(08:47):
environment where they're comfortable among each other and not being
judged by perhaps my American sensibilities.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And there's the dividing line. Now.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
One of the things that happens often with non black
people entering into a lunch room setting or some other
equivalent setting, is they'll see black people grouping together and
they will feel excluded from that.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
And I want to say two things about that. Growing
up black, living black, my whole life, white folks, I
cannot think of a single example ever in my life
of black folks sitting together and saying I'm so glad
that no white people are sitting with us. Right, that's
not white folks are not excluded from that. It's not
(09:34):
a decision based on excluding people, but rather about finding
people that you won't feel are judging you. Where if
you do eat, Remember we talked about eating a watermelon,
eating a banana, these foods that we are very cognizant of.
Eating a piece of fried chicken, you don't feel the gaze,
you don't feel the judgment, you don't feel like you're
(09:55):
letting down your ancestors.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
So you just find folks that you're comfortable, and it's
not just but your food you're eating, but a whole
host of things. The other thing is, it's again, I
think the article or the response says it best. It
is not impossible, it is not frowned upon to make
a new friend.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
If I'm ramses Ja Rudy King Taylor, the second that
is who I am.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I was born in Compton, California in nineteen eighty two. Okay,
the whole time I've lived in this these United States
of America, and the whole time I knew that life
was better for white folks, and then white folks have
they've regarded as in mass have regarded black people in
(10:45):
a different way than we regard ourselves. Right, whatever that
means to you, if you're listening, whatever that means to you,
There is a distinction between how white folks regard us
and how we regard ourselves. Okay, if that's fair, If
you'll allow me that, then the rest of this makes sense.
So knowing that, knowing that these folks have the capacity,
(11:06):
the potential, maybe there's a likelihood that they would judge me,
that I might embarrass and bring shame to them, they
don't want to sit with me. Whatever, Knowing that that
is even a possibility, given the history of this country,
given my own personal treatment, given what I've known from TV,
what I know from police, whatever my own apertures into
my reality. If I'm looking for the most comfortable place
(11:28):
to sit in a room where I'm not going to
ruffle any feathers, not going to upset anybody, well, I
know that the people that look like me aren't going
to regard me in a way that is going to
be damaging to me. And I'm not going to be
damaging to them, and it's easy to find comfort there.
And it's not necessarily because of how they look, not
(11:49):
because of their racial composition. It's just that's one way
of determining whether or not they share the same culture
as me.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
So hopefully that frames it. But you're always welcome.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
To come and say hi. I don't ever want anybody
to feel like you can't come say hi, or you
can't come sit with us. We have never had that energy.
That's always been something that has come from the other side. Okay,
you're always welcome to sit. You can be our brothers.
You might have to learn a couple of things, but
we got you. I know I talked a lot cute,
but you know it's on you.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
My bad.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I do it a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
I chuckle every time you do that segment Ramas to
talk nine minutes and thirty seconds, My bad dog. What
you got Black people's culture was mostly stolen from us.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (12:37):
I had to learn this in one of the most
embarrassing ways possible, uh sitting at dinner in Barcelona with
a group of friends and being asked where I was from.
I responded, Detroit, and I saw confusion on the face
of the people at the table as they followed that
question up, like, no, where's your family from, to which
I responded, Georgia, my mother from making Georgia. And again
(13:02):
one of them asked if I meant Georgia like Eastern Europe,
and I said, no, I mean Georgia like Atlanta, like
the dirty South. And one person at the table realized
that I didn't understand the question, and he rubbed his
fingers on his arm to show the brown.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Skin and asked me again where I was from.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
And I realized in that moment, of the twelve or
thirteen people at the table, the only person that couldn't
answer the question where you're from?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Was me?
Speaker 4 (13:33):
And for Black Americans, that, for so many of us,
is a question that we can't answer. You know, so
our culture and our ethnicity being replaced by the systemic
thing that we do over here called race, a social
construct that doesn't mean what you think it means, because
there's a singular race of homo sapien sapient and that's human.
(13:58):
So you know, here we are at that NEXTUS point again.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, well, I think that brings us neatly to the
next question. People have opinions on this, whether or not
black people are a monolith.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Right, So.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
This is something that comes up every four years and
probably during midterms when people try to figure out how
the black vote is going to go, and you know,
folks will say, well, you know, black folks are not
a monolith. They don't all just do the same thing, right.
And you know, there have been calls since I was
little for black unity, you know, talking like the early nineties,
(14:39):
think like ninety two. I mean, there's been calls since
before then. But you know, this is when I started
to click on and started to make heads or tails
of the world, and there was this notion that there
was no such thing as black unity, and that that
was kind of the great test of our generation was
(15:02):
to work on creating a more unified front for our people.
But bear in mind, this was also the time of
the millionaire Mars. This was also the time of you know,
the Black Medallions or the Africa Medallions, and you know,
the you know, the cross colors type clothes and you
know all that sort of stuff, right, And you know,
(15:26):
most recently I had a conversation with doctor Christopher Twlller
from I think it's UC Santa Barbara's is where he's
based if I'm not mistaken, but doctor Twler, he is
the head of the Black Voter Project, right. So what
they do is they monitor trends for black voters around
(15:48):
the United States. They use larger sample sizes than you know,
your typical research groups because they're focused on really one
community and kind of to find the trends within that
one community.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
So the data.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
In their estimation is more accurate because it's exclusive to
this one group and it's a larger sample size. And
you know, I asked him about, you know, whether or
not black people were a monolith, whether black people are
on the same page in so far as our politics
are concerned, are we aligned in that way? And the
(16:26):
conversation that he had with me, based on the most
recent election results suggested that, yes, black people were largely
in alignment.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
You know, there was.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Over ninety percent of black women that voted the same way,
over eighty percent of black men that voted the same way.
And you know, in a country this size with you know,
as near as makes no difference. Forty million may as
well be black folks in this country. To get those
(17:06):
huge majorities on the same page about their politics is
about as close to being on the same page as
you're going to get right. So for the people that
you know have one set of optics on whether or
not black folks are a monolith and whether or not
that's a good thing. You know, you can drive your
(17:27):
own conclusions for people to have the opposing view and
the opposing optics and feel like it means something entirely different.
The numbers are the same. Nonetheless, what are you.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Thinking, c Well, I don't want to lead the witness.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
But as objective as data and numbers are, they can
be used in a way that's very subjective.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
So yes, very very high percentage of the black people
that voted.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Seem to vote the same way.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Okay, But what we know from that same data set
is that less black people turned out than in the
prior than in the prior presidential election.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
And that's where that monolithic conclusion can be a little slighted.
When asked are black people and monoliths, people tend to
resoundly and proudly scream no, as if any ethnic group
(18:43):
when based on the nuance of daily life tasting, food,
taste in music, taste in art are the same, like
no groups are monolithic in that way. The disadvantage that
we have is we go out of our way to
prove that we are not monolithic at all. And I
say out of our way to prove it as if
it's not in a lot of cases true. There's a
(19:06):
thing that happens in organized labor where if there are
some people that are part of that union that are
having their needs met, they start to care a little
less about those that are not right. So that tends
to be the ones who earn on the higher end
of the spectrum. Right, you can create a situation where
(19:28):
there is no cap for how much they can earn,
but also no floor, no minimum for those that are
beneath them. In that case, you are doing the work
of those you are organizing against. You know, hey, that's
not up to me. I'm not going to fight for
the bottom to be raised because that might make them
put a cap on the top.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So I'm not going to participate in that at all.
And that weakens your union in a.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Way that kind of keeps you where you are without
being able to make much progress, even in situations where
you've broken some type of profit share, keeping your bottom
so low so that you can have an infinite top,
which is an imagination because the ones who owned the
place are never going to let you earn more than them.
(20:15):
Is a good way to trick people. So that's the
same thing that capitalism has done in some cases to
black people, and not just capitalism. We talked about right
wing anti intellectualism. We talked about the pandemic and the
fear of the vaccine causing people to adopt a seemingly
(20:36):
hyper contrarian position with regards to all things moving forward. Right,
everybody who stood in line with me, who agreed that
we shouldn't get this shot, I guess I'm going to
just ride it out with them moving forward, even if
that means becoming a Trump supporter, because even though he
was loudly against the vaccine, he was one of the
first people to get it, which his supporters just very
(20:57):
very conveniently ignore.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Our Black people.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
A monolists, of course not, but those who look to
oppress us, they're not a monolist either, except for when
it comes to the idea of oppressing and staying ahead
of us. They can disagree on one thousand things. When
election time comes, they find the singular thing that they
agree upon and they vote based on that. And in
(21:24):
this country, that thing is very very loudly white supremacist
Christian nationalism. Black people, we can agree on most things,
and we will find the thing that we disagree about
and create a disqualifier for each other, cannibalize each other
and splinter off into all these different fractions, and it
(21:44):
makes it almost impossible for us to get ahead, because
we are already not the majority. If you splinter us
into fractions, it's impossible for us to really collectively get ahead.
So I'm hoping at some point we can find a
singular voice, or at least a singular group of things
that we say we want and kind of get out
(22:05):
of this idea of cannibalizing and tearing each other down
because we say we wanted all these things. And then
we had a very very overly qualified, brilliant black woman
politician run for president who promised to give us almost
all the things we wanted, jobs, housing, down payment assistance
like healthcare, you know, support for black businesses, etc. And
(22:29):
we just found things to pick her apart about while
watching the other side prop up a thirty four time
convicted felon adjudicated sexual assault sexual assault her who was
openly racist, openly anti LGBTQ, openly anti woman. It's really
(22:52):
sad that we find ways to not become fist like
in our unity, watching those who would have us never
have anything or amount to anything, or never have just
our self determination unite whenever they need to, to the
tune of about close to eighty million to put us
(23:15):
in a position that we're in now. It's a really
really sad truth.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Well, if there's anything that we can take from it,
because you're right, the couch was a definite factor in
the least election. So using the data that we're using,
it might not tell the complete story, but it doesn't
say nothing, and that's not nothing. So I would argue
(23:42):
that there is at least the potential for us to
be on the same page, provided that we acknowledge that
progress is a step by step process. It doesn't happen overnight,
and that's a lesson that we're going to have to learn,
I guess in real.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Time moving on. You know who better do better?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
The police?
Speaker 2 (24:08):
I mean, they always better do better. But today we're
going to talk about.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Why the police, like the police don't need tanks, the
militarization of the police. And this is something that you know,
we've talked about before. Q. A lot of these things
we talk about, you know, from time to time because
they come up. But you know, recently, you know, there's
been the reintroduction of this conversation like where where's all
(24:36):
this equipment coming from? Why does it look like these
people are soldiers going into a war zone, a guerrilla
war zone. Aren't they supposed to be police? What happened
to your friendly neighborhood police officer?
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Right?
Speaker 1 (24:50):
Oh, well, the state of the world has changed, you know,
the social media. Well, no, you're supposed to hold the
standard you are the police, you know what I'm saying.
But no, you know, the militarization of the police has
made the world scarier than it needed to be. And yeah,
the police, I think we've read this before, but the police.
(25:13):
If the United States police departments collectively were a military organization,
they'd be like the third largest military in the world,
behind the United States military and I think China's military, right,
So the fact that they look like a military force,
complete with tanks and bulletproof and all this sort of
(25:33):
stuff is wild. It's crazy work, right, So I'm gonna
share a bit from the Harvard Gazette. Issues revolve around
culture of viewing citizens as potential threats, concerns about self protection,
and departments equipped with military grade arms. Okay, that's the
name of the article.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
All right.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
The masked shooting in Uvalde, Texas in twenty twenty two
by a gunman armed with an AR fifteen style rifle
resulted in searing and a searing loss of life nineteen
young students and two teachers at rob Elementary School. But
equally stunning was the seventy seven minutes it took police
to respond, despite having adequate firepower, equipment and training to
do so. The delay turned a spotlight on the militarization
(26:17):
of US law enforcement, how it can fail to protect
individuals from the kinds of threats it was intended to thwart,
and its tendency to foster a culture of self protection
that can result in unnecessarily violent or deadly responses, particularly
in communities of color. Right, So the police are supposed
to be all brave and bad and they get the
(26:38):
guns and the tanks and bulletproof vests and everything like that,
and they always get to say that they feared for
their life and the people that they're supposed to be
protect the citizens that never get that benefit of the doubt.
The issue that was me talking back to the article.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Sorry.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
The issue is complex, and many law enforcement departments across
the country have continued to resist reforms, even amid arising
crisis of confidence in police and concerns over racism in
the ranks. Jessica Katzenstein and Inequality in America Fellow, who
recently completed her PhD in anthropology at Brown, has been
analyzing police militarization in an effort to show how and
(27:20):
why departments are resisting changes in the ways. The resistance
is not as straightforward as it's often portrayed, but simply
Police militarization consists of a decades old federal government practice
making military equipment available to state and law enforcement agencies.
The initial intent was to help arm police in the
war on drugs and later to prevent terror attacks. Katzenstein
(27:43):
said that many scholars argue that police militarization also includes
spot teams, paramilitary teams and tactics, military bureaucracies, and militarized
ways of understanding crime and criminality, in which the default
is for officers to see non officers as potential threats
or enemies, a particular problem given that communities of color
tend to be more heavily policed.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
WOW.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
During her field research, Katzenstein spoke with law enforcement officers,
reform organizers, and others throughout Maryland about their views on
militarization and proposed police reforms, such as the Baltimore Police
Department's Consent Decree with reforms on training, bureaucratic organization, and
compliant mechanisms.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So that was just reading Q take it away.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
I'm not sure where I would take it if I
did take it away. There's something inherent about the police
and the military in this country, and we spoke about it
recently and it's been like a hush thing that when
you say it out loud, people treat you like your
race baiting or being extreme or being emotional in the gaslight.
(28:54):
You like it, your imagination. But what we've always known
about the police, and even more scary about our military,
is that it still was created, all of it to police,
secure and protect the wealthy of this country. Right, come
and invade a place, take everything from everyone that is there,
(29:17):
subjugate them, enslave them, unlive them, kidnap them, torture them,
traffic them, take all of their belongings, establish a territory,
and then create laws that make everything that you just
did illegal so that they can't do it back. And
then one at a time, as people break those laws,
(29:39):
you arrest them and you do the whole thing all
over again. So everything has always been for that same reason.
So yes, they'll continue to give them tanks, guns, rockets, drones, airplanes,
aircraft carriers and whatever they need to continue to protect, serve,
and you know, guard so that those in charge and
(29:59):
empower will always remain so
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