May 23, 2026 • 29 mins
In the second half of the episode, we discuss an essay by Stacy Muhammad entitled ‘The Politics of Consequence’ and connect Hollywood’s influence on culture to the division we are seeing in American life today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Still broadcasting from the Civic Cipher studios. Welcome back to
Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy
and understanding. I'm your host, Rams's JA.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
He is Rams's JA. I am q Ward. You are
tuned into Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Stay tuned. We're gonna have a nice, nice chat about
an essay. We'll call it an essay that was written
by the Great Stacey Muhammad. It's called the Politics of Consequence.
We wanted to share it with you because we think
that it reveals some insight into how we've come to
(00:32):
regard each other, the subtle influence of our media intake
and the narratives that are crafted by media companies, entertainment companies,
and He's in particular. So this is something we've kind
of talked around quite a bit, and we're gonna get
into the weeds right now, though, I'm gonna turn the
microphone over to Qward as always, because he's going to
(00:53):
talk to us about the modern cost of racism. Before
we get there, though, let me share a video that
prompted this conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
So we know, racism made America money. Slavery built the economy.
Four million people working for free will do that. Redlining
locked black families out of wealth for decades. Private prisons
turned incarceration into a fortune five hundred business. So yeah,
(01:24):
racism was profitable, evil, but profitable. Here's where it gets
embarrassing for y' all. Racism is now losing money. You're
not even good at being evil anymore. City Group showed
racism cost the US sixteen trillion dollars in lost growth.
The wealth gap drags GDP down over a trillion a year.
(01:45):
McKinsey found, closing it could add one to one point
five trillion annually. So while y'all are waving flags and
feeling patriotic, you are mathematically making the country poorer. That's
not opinion. Globally even worse. Africa is one of the
fastest growing markets on Earth. China's already there over two
(02:10):
hundred and eighty billion in trade, building, ports, highways, digital
infrastructure across fifty four countries. America still can't talk to
Africa without sounding like a landlord. The US doesn't do partnership,
it does dominance. And when you show up acting like
(02:30):
you own every room, people stop opening the door.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Shout out to trade. Four.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
The artistry of that video was very cool, but the
messaging hit really really hard. The real cost of racism,
even the racist loses. And the reason that that's moving
I think it has like thirty thousand like and climbing.
(03:03):
The argument that it's making is the same argument that
Rams and I have been making on microphones for years now.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So today I'm going to walk you through some receipts.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Ramses said this on the show before Trade four illustrated
this in this video. September twenty twenty, City Group, the
biggest bank in this country, put out a report titled
Closing the Racial Inequality Gap, the headline finding the US
economy lost sixteen trillion dollars over the previous twenty years
(03:37):
because of systemic racism against Black Americans. This is Citygroup,
not the NAACP, not the National Urban League, not Civic cipher.
City Group not an activist organization, not a civil rights organization. Again,
City Group a bank looking at the GDP, saying out loud,
in writing with data in sources that this has a
(04:01):
sixteen trillion dollar hole that racism dug us into. Thirteen
trillion of that is business revenue that never made it
into the economy because black entrepreneurs could not get loans,
two hundred and eighteen billion in housing market sales that
(04:23):
never happened because black families could not get mortgages city
projects that if America closed those gaps right now, the
economy adds another five trillion dollars in five years. And
that's not to mention the trillions that we've discovered would
be added if we stopped treating immigrants like the enemy.
So when somebody on cable news tells you that racism
(04:45):
is a moral debate, I want you to hear what
they are actually saying. They're telling you it's a matter
of opinion whether the country should keep paying sixteen trillion
dollars to be cruel to its own people.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's not a moral debate.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
That is an accounting issue, and the country has chosen
the wrong line on that spreadsheet for close to one
hundred years. So here's the part that the video makes
you sit with. Everybody is losing. Politicians like to present
things to you like someone is winning. Typically the idea
(05:24):
is somebody besides me, the person asking you to vote
for me and support me, is winning. Except the data
here shows and I can forward this to you, We
can put it on our page so I can make
sure that the wording is proper. If everybody is losing,
somebody is supposed to be winning, yeah, and that somebody
(05:48):
is not who you think. A writer named Heather McGee
put a book out a few years ago called The
Sum of Us. The whole book builds around one image
the nineteen fifties and sixties. Rams has talked about this
before as t brother a lot, so follow me. When
integration started forcing American towns to open their public swimming
pools to black families, towns across the country chose to
(06:09):
fill those pools with concrete. Rather than let everybody swim
in them, they drain the pools. Important thing to point
out here the white kids in those neighborhoods now also
had nowhere to swim. The white grandparents in those towns
will tell you stories about the pool that no one
can swim in anymore. And once you see that, you
(06:32):
cannot unsee it. America does not have universal health care.
Every other developed nation in the world does. The reason
we don't is racism. We cannot give it to those people,
so nobody can have it. The white guy in West Virginia,
one bad week from bankruptcy because his daughter needs surgery.
(06:55):
He doesn't get it either. So to make sure we
don't get it, public Si literally drained across the South,
white kids, black kids equally drowning at higher rates than
they did in nineteen sixty five because there is nowhere
for any of them to learn to swim, literally drowning.
I didn't mean that figuratively. So if the white guard
(07:19):
at the bar isn't winning, and the white people in
the trailer parks aren't winning, and your white coworkers aren't winning,
and most of your white neighbors aren't winning, I will
pose this question to you, Ramses.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Who is racism?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That's what?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Who the people that weaponize that with racism?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Bingo Ramsey and I are white.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
In a book called Proper Propaganda talxin Q, there is
a section about the bulletproof class. They are the only
ones winning, not you, not their constituents, not even their families,
right their immediate family, Yeah, the wife, the kids. They're
vacationing while you struggle. But being related to them does
(08:07):
not save you. Liking them, supporting them, having the same
ideology does not save you. The only people winning from
racism in America is the bulletproof class. Keep tuning in
and we'll teach you more about them too.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You know, it's funny because you made a point on
a recent episode where you said, you know, if everybody
was on Marcus Garvey's idea way back in the day
to just everybody get on the boats and go back
to Africa and you know we'll get it popping over there.
That eventually, after about a third of us left, they
(08:44):
would make leaving the country illegal. And you didn't get
to breathe a lot of life into that.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But this president would have sunk the ships literally so
and called US terrorists sots.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
This the well, everyone knows at the wealth of this
country's baby of a country. It's only two hundred and
fifty years old. That's not a long time. China's been
around for like five thousand years. You know what I'm saying,
Like it's it's we just got here, right. But the
wealth of this brand new country was built on the
backs of the African slaves. Okay, that wealth that was
(09:17):
snowballed from generation to generation. And now the US is
number oneted money and number seventy at everything else, right
that comes from black people, The backs of my great
great grandmas and my great great grandpas. Right, but the
people that continue to prop up this economy, this big country.
(09:41):
You know, if this, if black people were really on that,
and let's say not all black people, but a good
chunk and ten percent of the black people or ten
percent of the population of black people, So let's say
three percent four percent black people wanted to hang out here,
ten percent of the population wanted to leave because black
people makeup I think thirteen fourteen percent something like that
(10:02):
in population. Now you have a ten percent reduction in
the workforce and the talent pool in everything, and you
cannot feel those vacancies. You cannot fill those consumers. Black
people are excellent consumers, right, And all of these businesses
(10:22):
are so highly leveraged, and they have so much debt
against them to operate at a national and a global
scale that a ten percent drop in productivity in their
consumer base in you know whatever. And indeed, the workforce
upper management, like intellectual contributions would be devastating to this country.
(10:46):
In China would step right in. It would't even have
to step it would just naturally shift over in that direction.
So I could make an argument based on what you
said the other day that black people are integral to
this country maintaining its position as the number one money
country and number seventy is you know, the only reason
we maintain that position is because of the racism that
(11:07):
keeps everybody locked in a permanent underclass underneath that bulletproof class.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So well said, all right, let's.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Move it on. Sorry, we both kind of leaned into that,
but I think so, And once again want to shout
out at Trey four for that that video. I want
to credit all these folks, and again for this one,
I want to credit Stacey Muhamma. We're going to read
a little bit of an essay. Uh this is on
substack if you want to read the entire essay again,
her name is Stacy Muhammad. It's it's called the Politics
(11:35):
of Consequence. I employed to check it out. Brilliant writer,
masterful connections that she's making here. I'm going to share.
This is her words. She's writing from first person. So
this is Stacey Muhammad's words. I recently finished rewatching Ozark
and found myself unsettled all over again by how thoroughly
the bird. I think that's birds were allowed to survive
(11:58):
their own devas Over the course of the series, Mardy
and Wendy Bird I think that's a bird, launder money,
orchestrate violence, destroy lives, destabilized communities, and repeatedly place their
own children in danger. Nearly everyone who enters their orbit
suffers in some way. People are killed, Families collapse, Entire
lives are pulled into the gravitational force of the bird's ambition.
(12:23):
And yet by the end, they still have each other,
Their children return to them, their social standing survives, their
intelligence remains intact. Their family structure, fractured as it may be,
still holds. Even Omar Navarro, the cartel figure looming over
the series, is ultimately removed, while the birds emerge with
their full future still imaginable. The series never fully strips
(12:47):
them of humanity. It continually frames them through intimacy and
emotional access. We see them at dinner tables, in private arguments,
navigating marriage, parenting, exhaustion, fear, and ambition. Even in their
worst moments, the audience is repeatedly and by back into
identification with them. They remain emotionally legible. Again, this is
the words of the writer. She says, I found myself
(13:10):
thinking about this again recently while rewatching your honor with
someone very close to me, someone who's insight into television
I deeply respect. He pointed out something I could no
longer unsee once he said it aloud. No matter how corrupt, violent, manipulative,
or criminal, the white characters became, the series continued to
frame them inside ecosystems of intimacy and domestic humanity. We
(13:32):
saw them with wives, children, friendships, histories, vulnerabilities, contradictions. The
black characters, meanwhile, we're more often position inside the structures
of devastation. Entire Black families are destroyed over the course
of the series. Kofi Jones dies protecting the secret of
a wealthy white family. Eugene loses nearly everyone connected to him.
Black suffering accumulates narratively, while white suffering remains individualized and
(13:56):
emotionally textured. Even when black characters are granted complexity, they
are frequently denied the same emotional protection the series extends
to its white characters. That difference stays with me, and
the more I thought about it, the more I realized
I was not really thinking about morality. I was thinking
about consequences. More specifically, I was thinking about the politics
of consequence in American television. Because consequence in television is
(14:18):
never neutral. White anti heroes are often allowed contradiction without
complete narrative annihilation. Black anti heroes rarely are. This does
not mean white characters never suffer. Walter White dies, Tony
Soprano dies, Jacks Teller dies, But even in collapse, these
characters are often granted mythic stature. Their narratives preserve charisma, intelligence,
(14:40):
emotional complexity, and symbolic power. Their stories remain tragic. Black
anti heroes, however, are often denied even the possibility of
tragic transcendent transcendient sorry transcendence. The punishment frequently becomes total,
not simply defeat, but erasure. So we've been making a
(15:03):
case this is me again and again. I want to
do it as often as I can, because I do
believe in crediting people for their work. That was Stacy Muhammad.
Those were her words, and she's got the full article
up on substack.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Please check it out.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
It's brilliant. So we've been making a case on this
show that racism is learned, prejudice has learned, indifferences learned,
coldness is learned because of the culture that has been
produced by the unique set of circumstances that exist in
(15:36):
this country, and indeed countries that have a similar origin story.
You know, Great Britain comes to mind, that the British
Empire comes to mind where I and I think a
lot of people who study humanity would argue that it
is the human condition, the condition of the homo sapiy
(15:59):
and sapient to work work in concert with other homo
sapien sapiens. If you're listening to the show and you
don't know what that means, you are homo sapien sapien.
There's only us left on the planet occupying the role
of human. There are no Neanderthals, there are no Homorectus,
all the other ones.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's just us left. It is.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
In our nature to work with each other. This is
indeed how we've been able to propagate our species and
thrive in the way that we have as a species,
and dominate the planet and exert control over every corner
of the planet in the way that we have. It
is indeed that cooperation that has allowed us to flourish.
It is division that is capitalized upon that has allowed
(16:44):
certain people to flourish beyond their wildest dreams. Right now
because it is our nature to cooperate. Everything else is
something that we have to be taught. It goes against
our very nature. If you put two children, doesn't matter what,
what language, none of that stuff. You put two children,
they can look at each other and say, hey, you
(17:04):
have the same bits of your body and approximately the
same place, and we're about the same size. Let's be friends.
And that's the whole thing. So we're born kind of
with that, with those instincts. When you're older is once
you've learned, you've been cultured, right, And I think that
you know, there's a pretty strong argument that there are
several toxic cultures that exist in the world at this point.
(17:29):
I think the foremost of which is probably American culture,
or lack thereof, whatever you want to call is going
on here, and I think television has a big role
to play in that. Obviously, this country's founding was founded
on the very things that we're pushing back against on
the show. But television has, as the article pointed out,
(17:55):
coddled white folks and criminalized black folks. At that is
that is an oversimplification, But I want to use an example. Okay,
there was a show that came out a long time
ago called Weeds. This is before marijuana was legal, right.
This is about a suburban mom who was a fully fledged,
(18:18):
fully fleshed out character, complex character. She was humanized. It
brought you into her story. You could identify with her struggle.
She was a weed smoker and then started selling weed.
If I remember the premise of the show, and the
show was a hit. Right now, if you take that woman,
just use your imagination. Take that woman out, she's no
(18:40):
longer a white woman. Put a black woman in there.
Does everything exactly the same? Is there a rejection to that?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Does that show even get made?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So, I think that there's a responsibility there that when
there is a black person in that sort of position,
have you gone Have these white writers often enough, gone
to the same lengths to humanize these characters, And when
it comes to the white characters themselves, because you know
(19:15):
they it's I think it's they don't heed the responsibility
of having to humanize black characters because they don't know
that it exists. I'm not calling the white writers racist.
I don't know that. I suspect that a lot of
them harbor racist sentiments and they may not know it,
but I cannot just come out my face and say
the writers in Hollywood are racist because I don't know that.
(19:36):
But I can say that that would be a blind spot.
And this is something that we've illuminated on this show.
There are lots of blind spots for all of us.
I don't know what life is like to be a
white woman selling dope and gated community. I've never lived
that life. Right, But if you're not able to humanize
a person because you don't understand what life might be
(19:59):
like for them, or it just didn't occur to you
to do so, then you cannot create that complex character
in the same way. Meanwhile, you can humanize a white woman.
This is why when white women get caught shoplifting, they
I don't know, almost we've seen this.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
They get walked out of the store.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
They don't get handcuffed and're not going to get photographed,
even if you're going to get arrested. If a black
woman is shoplifting to feed her family or whatever, she
shouldn't have been stealing get handcuffed or rested on the
ground bleeding when she gets put in a police car
and so forth. Right, and so TV does have a
role to play on this because they're humanizing the plight
of the anti hero, of the folks that have to
(20:37):
go against the system when it's a white character. And
I don't know that I've seen that very often. I
do want to make a point about copaganda, So don't
let me forget. But I know you got to jump
in here, Q, so help help help give me all
the way together.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
A couple of things here.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
First of all, you and God have the most unyielding
grace and mercy that I've ever encountered. It's unyielding the
idea that they cannot make us human because they don't
know that we exist as human Come on, bro, like
I'm your brother. That's a ridiculous thing to say they
(21:14):
cannot imagine us as human beings because they've never encountered it.
That they've never encountered it in the year of our
lower twenty twenties. All right, back to this, Maybe I misspoken,
but go ahead back to what she said, because I
don't think she said this. I do not think the
position that she wants us to adopt or accept is
(21:35):
that white people are being coddled.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, I said that.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I said.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
That's what expressed to me that we need the same coddling.
And I don't think that that is what happened or
what we need. I think white people are just allowed
to be human. Yeah, individual human beings who live a
life of nuance. So Walter White and Marty Byrd are
both living in a lie that they've shown Black people
(22:01):
live before. But in the Black story, it's Nino Brown.
Walter White, and Marty Bird became like drug trafficking, drug
creating criminals. It just kept showing them as dad and husband,
and Brown didn't do that. Nino Brown's human side. Shaw
(22:26):
him abusing the woman that he loved. Marty Bird, you
see him loving and trying to protect his wife and
children from the environment he put them in. So he
just still gets to be dad and human being in
person and people, because even black people can watch Ozark
and through everything that they're doing. Just like she said,
(22:47):
find yourself rooting for this family to make it out
of the other side of all of the cruel, corrupt,
illegal decisions that they're making. They're not victims of circumstance.
Walter White become a fentanyl Uh No, what's the drug
that Walter White makes.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I don't know a lot about drugs. Either, So I
can't help you.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, but we've covered it.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
What is the this this new epidemic of white people
falling victim to drugs. No, fentanyl is one, it's fentinyl
is the more recent one. There's one in between, like
cracking cocaine and fentanyl.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Meth.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Oh yeah, that's one.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
He has a crystal meth lab. He makes it. Again,
this is not something happening to him. He finds that making,
selling and distributing drugs is a good way to make
money for me and my family. So he does it,
and you end up rooting for Walter White. Sure, the
chemist who's making meth. And we've all seen the effects
(23:55):
of crystal meth on human beings. So it's not that
white characters are coddled. They just present their story with
every nuance, every angle, all the context, everything that makes
you human. It's the same way that this shooter in
San Diego. I don't know this, but I'm sure will
be presented as some troubled people who went through some
(24:17):
hard times and were radicalized by someone, and that's how
they arrived here. That single person, not all people that
identified that way.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But if rams or Q does something. Look at how
we told you black.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
People behave become their avatar, because we are by nature criminal,
not human. We are by nature some substandard of property
or belonging or by every definition pejorative and negative and dark.
They gave us black intentionally as a negative. Our skin
(24:53):
isn't actually that color.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Everybody's skin is brown.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
So we.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Have to just kind of accept that this is a
decision that they make intentionally. I am not giving them
the grace of they just don't know any better, because
I have people who.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Have known me.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
I said this to you, I'll say it on the
air again for thirty years that still found me to
be the fear mongering, brainwashed, left wing lunatic when my
children's safety was put at risk, something that I thought
everybody should have been able to identify with.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
So thank you for that, because sometimes I say things
and you find a better way to say. I'm right
in the middle of it. So I agree one hundred percent.
I do, and I did promise this. I do want
to kind of touch on copaganda as well, because on
this show, historically we've talked about how problematic police are
in black communities and why there was a need to
(25:52):
push for police reform. Eh, we'll go with police reform
after the George Floyd protest of twenty twenty. And why
that was so challenging is because of the subtle influence
of copaganda. This is something again that Hollywood is culpable
(26:13):
for and responsible for. In short, copaganda is and we
did a whole segment on this. You're welcome to look
it up. It's in the archives. But copaganda is the
subtle influence of police dramas over the years on people's minds. Right,
police are as often is makes no difference the good
(26:33):
guys in the story, right, and so it's hard to
envision police as the bad guys. And the police actually
infiltrated Hollywood. In order to get the real police stories.
The police organization in Hollywood, what is it called the
Police Union maybe I'm not sure, entered into a partnership
with I know at least one producer, but I believe
(26:56):
it was certain producers, but one producer, and the show
was Dragnet in order to get those real police stories.
Back in the day, they wanted to have some control
over how the police were viewed, right, And so the
stories that went out were able to get approved by
the police departments, always painting the police in the most
positive light possible. Right, And then when you think of
(27:16):
like stories of police corruption, they're very exceptionally few and
far between relative to cop being good guys stories.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
And even in those stories, turnal affairs gets to be
the hero booms which are also police officers. So even
when there's that one bad apple, the police solved it
and are the hero and the propaganda worked, oh yeah,
because I'd be watching them shows like get Yeah Yeah,
same me too.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And the's same with the US military. It's like, you know,
you cry fill all patriotic when they waited to flag
at the end, and you learn to not question the police.
And so no matter what we say as a people,
there's people's tendencies. And these people control newsrooms, they control
every aspect of life. Their tendency is to believe the police.
(28:01):
And I want to point out one example of police corruption.
Sky one an oscar for playing a corrupt cop. His
name is Denzel Washington. I'll leave you to connect the
rest of the dots on that one again if you
want to hear the whole rundown, because we we beat
that one and death when we hit it just look
up a Coppaganda and the archives and you'll see it.
But anyway, stuff to bear in mind. But that's gonna
(28:22):
do it for us here at Civic Cipher. Be sure
to follow us on all social media at Civic Cipher
c I B I C C I P H E
R and hit the website Civiccipher dot com. See you
next week, peace.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
Y'all. May yo. We had the leak, these presidents of
Fabulous Lady showing you.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Where bomb traveled.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
Speak to you from sunlight to the move busting on
stage like the fight, move my mic back, you're like that.
We can strikes with waters from headquarters behind him, the
line side and the borders with press pass.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
We bring it to you asn't happens the streets.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Love from Music Fast Street from
Still broadcasting from the Civic Cipher studios. Welcome back to
Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy
and understanding. I'm your host, Rams's JA.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
He is Rams's JA. I am q Ward. You are
tuned into Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Stay tuned. We're gonna have a nice, nice chat about
an essay. We'll call it an essay that was written
by the Great Stacey Muhammad. It's called the Politics of Consequence.
We wanted to share it with you because we think
that it reveals some insight into how we've come to
(00:32):
regard each other, the subtle influence of our media intake
and the narratives that are crafted by media companies, entertainment companies,
and He's in particular. So this is something we've kind
of talked around quite a bit, and we're gonna get
into the weeds right now, though, I'm gonna turn the
microphone over to Qward as always, because he's going to
(00:53):
talk to us about the modern cost of racism. Before
we get there, though, let me share a video that
prompted this conversation.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
So we know, racism made America money. Slavery built the economy.
Four million people working for free will do that. Redlining
locked black families out of wealth for decades. Private prisons
turned incarceration into a fortune five hundred business. So yeah,
(01:24):
racism was profitable, evil, but profitable. Here's where it gets
embarrassing for y' all. Racism is now losing money. You're
not even good at being evil anymore. City Group showed
racism cost the US sixteen trillion dollars in lost growth.
The wealth gap drags GDP down over a trillion a year.
(01:45):
McKinsey found, closing it could add one to one point
five trillion annually. So while y'all are waving flags and
feeling patriotic, you are mathematically making the country poorer. That's
not opinion. Globally even worse. Africa is one of the
fastest growing markets on Earth. China's already there over two
(02:10):
hundred and eighty billion in trade, building, ports, highways, digital
infrastructure across fifty four countries. America still can't talk to
Africa without sounding like a landlord. The US doesn't do partnership,
it does dominance. And when you show up acting like
(02:30):
you own every room, people stop opening the door.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Shout out to trade. Four.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
The artistry of that video was very cool, but the
messaging hit really really hard. The real cost of racism,
even the racist loses. And the reason that that's moving
I think it has like thirty thousand like and climbing.
(03:03):
The argument that it's making is the same argument that
Rams and I have been making on microphones for years now.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
So today I'm going to walk you through some receipts.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
Ramses said this on the show before Trade four illustrated
this in this video. September twenty twenty, City Group, the
biggest bank in this country, put out a report titled
Closing the Racial Inequality Gap, the headline finding the US
economy lost sixteen trillion dollars over the previous twenty years
(03:37):
because of systemic racism against Black Americans. This is Citygroup,
not the NAACP, not the National Urban League, not Civic cipher.
City Group not an activist organization, not a civil rights organization. Again,
City Group a bank looking at the GDP, saying out loud,
in writing with data in sources that this has a
(04:01):
sixteen trillion dollar hole that racism dug us into. Thirteen
trillion of that is business revenue that never made it
into the economy because black entrepreneurs could not get loans,
two hundred and eighteen billion in housing market sales that
(04:23):
never happened because black families could not get mortgages city
projects that if America closed those gaps right now, the
economy adds another five trillion dollars in five years. And
that's not to mention the trillions that we've discovered would
be added if we stopped treating immigrants like the enemy.
So when somebody on cable news tells you that racism
(04:45):
is a moral debate, I want you to hear what
they are actually saying. They're telling you it's a matter
of opinion whether the country should keep paying sixteen trillion
dollars to be cruel to its own people.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's not a moral debate.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
That is an accounting issue, and the country has chosen
the wrong line on that spreadsheet for close to one
hundred years. So here's the part that the video makes
you sit with. Everybody is losing. Politicians like to present
things to you like someone is winning. Typically the idea
(05:24):
is somebody besides me, the person asking you to vote
for me and support me, is winning. Except the data
here shows and I can forward this to you, We
can put it on our page so I can make
sure that the wording is proper. If everybody is losing,
somebody is supposed to be winning, yeah, and that somebody
(05:48):
is not who you think. A writer named Heather McGee
put a book out a few years ago called The
Sum of Us. The whole book builds around one image
the nineteen fifties and sixties. Rams has talked about this
before as t brother a lot, so follow me. When
integration started forcing American towns to open their public swimming
pools to black families, towns across the country chose to
(06:09):
fill those pools with concrete. Rather than let everybody swim
in them, they drain the pools. Important thing to point
out here the white kids in those neighborhoods now also
had nowhere to swim. The white grandparents in those towns
will tell you stories about the pool that no one
can swim in anymore. And once you see that, you
(06:32):
cannot unsee it. America does not have universal health care.
Every other developed nation in the world does. The reason
we don't is racism. We cannot give it to those people,
so nobody can have it. The white guy in West Virginia,
one bad week from bankruptcy because his daughter needs surgery.
(06:55):
He doesn't get it either. So to make sure we
don't get it, public Si literally drained across the South,
white kids, black kids equally drowning at higher rates than
they did in nineteen sixty five because there is nowhere
for any of them to learn to swim, literally drowning.
I didn't mean that figuratively. So if the white guard
(07:19):
at the bar isn't winning, and the white people in
the trailer parks aren't winning, and your white coworkers aren't winning,
and most of your white neighbors aren't winning, I will
pose this question to you, Ramses.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Who is racism?
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That's what?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Who the people that weaponize that with racism?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Bingo Ramsey and I are white.
Speaker 4 (07:47):
In a book called Proper Propaganda talxin Q, there is
a section about the bulletproof class. They are the only
ones winning, not you, not their constituents, not even their families,
right their immediate family, Yeah, the wife, the kids. They're
vacationing while you struggle. But being related to them does
(08:07):
not save you. Liking them, supporting them, having the same
ideology does not save you. The only people winning from
racism in America is the bulletproof class. Keep tuning in
and we'll teach you more about them too.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You know, it's funny because you made a point on
a recent episode where you said, you know, if everybody
was on Marcus Garvey's idea way back in the day
to just everybody get on the boats and go back
to Africa and you know we'll get it popping over there.
That eventually, after about a third of us left, they
(08:44):
would make leaving the country illegal. And you didn't get
to breathe a lot of life into that.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
But this president would have sunk the ships literally so
and called US terrorists sots.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
This the well, everyone knows at the wealth of this
country's baby of a country. It's only two hundred and
fifty years old. That's not a long time. China's been
around for like five thousand years. You know what I'm saying,
Like it's it's we just got here, right. But the
wealth of this brand new country was built on the
backs of the African slaves. Okay, that wealth that was
(09:17):
snowballed from generation to generation. And now the US is
number oneted money and number seventy at everything else, right
that comes from black people, The backs of my great
great grandmas and my great great grandpas. Right, but the
people that continue to prop up this economy, this big country.
(09:41):
You know, if this, if black people were really on that,
and let's say not all black people, but a good
chunk and ten percent of the black people or ten
percent of the population of black people, So let's say
three percent four percent black people wanted to hang out here,
ten percent of the population wanted to leave because black
people makeup I think thirteen fourteen percent something like that
(10:02):
in population. Now you have a ten percent reduction in
the workforce and the talent pool in everything, and you
cannot feel those vacancies. You cannot fill those consumers. Black
people are excellent consumers, right, And all of these businesses
(10:22):
are so highly leveraged, and they have so much debt
against them to operate at a national and a global
scale that a ten percent drop in productivity in their
consumer base in you know whatever. And indeed, the workforce
upper management, like intellectual contributions would be devastating to this country.
(10:46):
In China would step right in. It would't even have
to step it would just naturally shift over in that direction.
So I could make an argument based on what you
said the other day that black people are integral to
this country maintaining its position as the number one money
country and number seventy is you know, the only reason
we maintain that position is because of the racism that
(11:07):
keeps everybody locked in a permanent underclass underneath that bulletproof class.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
So well said, all right, let's.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Move it on. Sorry, we both kind of leaned into that,
but I think so, And once again want to shout
out at Trey four for that that video. I want
to credit all these folks, and again for this one,
I want to credit Stacey Muhamma. We're going to read
a little bit of an essay. Uh this is on
substack if you want to read the entire essay again,
her name is Stacy Muhammad. It's it's called the Politics
(11:35):
of Consequence. I employed to check it out. Brilliant writer,
masterful connections that she's making here. I'm going to share.
This is her words. She's writing from first person. So
this is Stacey Muhammad's words. I recently finished rewatching Ozark
and found myself unsettled all over again by how thoroughly
the bird. I think that's birds were allowed to survive
(11:58):
their own devas Over the course of the series, Mardy
and Wendy Bird I think that's a bird, launder money,
orchestrate violence, destroy lives, destabilized communities, and repeatedly place their
own children in danger. Nearly everyone who enters their orbit
suffers in some way. People are killed, Families collapse, Entire
lives are pulled into the gravitational force of the bird's ambition.
(12:23):
And yet by the end, they still have each other,
Their children return to them, their social standing survives, their
intelligence remains intact. Their family structure, fractured as it may be,
still holds. Even Omar Navarro, the cartel figure looming over
the series, is ultimately removed, while the birds emerge with
their full future still imaginable. The series never fully strips
(12:47):
them of humanity. It continually frames them through intimacy and
emotional access. We see them at dinner tables, in private arguments,
navigating marriage, parenting, exhaustion, fear, and ambition. Even in their
worst moments, the audience is repeatedly and by back into
identification with them. They remain emotionally legible. Again, this is
the words of the writer. She says, I found myself
(13:10):
thinking about this again recently while rewatching your honor with
someone very close to me, someone who's insight into television
I deeply respect. He pointed out something I could no
longer unsee once he said it aloud. No matter how corrupt, violent, manipulative,
or criminal, the white characters became, the series continued to
frame them inside ecosystems of intimacy and domestic humanity. We
(13:32):
saw them with wives, children, friendships, histories, vulnerabilities, contradictions. The
black characters, meanwhile, we're more often position inside the structures
of devastation. Entire Black families are destroyed over the course
of the series. Kofi Jones dies protecting the secret of
a wealthy white family. Eugene loses nearly everyone connected to him.
Black suffering accumulates narratively, while white suffering remains individualized and
(13:56):
emotionally textured. Even when black characters are granted complexity, they
are frequently denied the same emotional protection the series extends
to its white characters. That difference stays with me, and
the more I thought about it, the more I realized
I was not really thinking about morality. I was thinking
about consequences. More specifically, I was thinking about the politics
of consequence in American television. Because consequence in television is
(14:18):
never neutral. White anti heroes are often allowed contradiction without
complete narrative annihilation. Black anti heroes rarely are. This does
not mean white characters never suffer. Walter White dies, Tony
Soprano dies, Jacks Teller dies, But even in collapse, these
characters are often granted mythic stature. Their narratives preserve charisma, intelligence,
(14:40):
emotional complexity, and symbolic power. Their stories remain tragic. Black
anti heroes, however, are often denied even the possibility of
tragic transcendent transcendient sorry transcendence. The punishment frequently becomes total,
not simply defeat, but erasure. So we've been making a
(15:03):
case this is me again and again. I want to
do it as often as I can, because I do
believe in crediting people for their work. That was Stacy Muhammad.
Those were her words, and she's got the full article
up on substack.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Please check it out.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
It's brilliant. So we've been making a case on this
show that racism is learned, prejudice has learned, indifferences learned,
coldness is learned because of the culture that has been
produced by the unique set of circumstances that exist in
(15:36):
this country, and indeed countries that have a similar origin story.
You know, Great Britain comes to mind, that the British
Empire comes to mind where I and I think a
lot of people who study humanity would argue that it
is the human condition, the condition of the homo sapiy
(15:59):
and sapient to work work in concert with other homo
sapien sapiens. If you're listening to the show and you
don't know what that means, you are homo sapien sapien.
There's only us left on the planet occupying the role
of human. There are no Neanderthals, there are no Homorectus,
all the other ones.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's just us left. It is.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
In our nature to work with each other. This is
indeed how we've been able to propagate our species and
thrive in the way that we have as a species,
and dominate the planet and exert control over every corner
of the planet in the way that we have. It
is indeed that cooperation that has allowed us to flourish.
It is division that is capitalized upon that has allowed
(16:44):
certain people to flourish beyond their wildest dreams. Right now
because it is our nature to cooperate. Everything else is
something that we have to be taught. It goes against
our very nature. If you put two children, doesn't matter what,
what language, none of that stuff. You put two children,
they can look at each other and say, hey, you
(17:04):
have the same bits of your body and approximately the
same place, and we're about the same size. Let's be friends.
And that's the whole thing. So we're born kind of
with that, with those instincts. When you're older is once
you've learned, you've been cultured, right, And I think that
you know, there's a pretty strong argument that there are
several toxic cultures that exist in the world at this point.
(17:29):
I think the foremost of which is probably American culture,
or lack thereof, whatever you want to call is going
on here, and I think television has a big role
to play in that. Obviously, this country's founding was founded
on the very things that we're pushing back against on
the show. But television has, as the article pointed out,
(17:55):
coddled white folks and criminalized black folks. At that is
that is an oversimplification, But I want to use an example. Okay,
there was a show that came out a long time
ago called Weeds. This is before marijuana was legal, right.
This is about a suburban mom who was a fully fledged,
(18:18):
fully fleshed out character, complex character. She was humanized. It
brought you into her story. You could identify with her struggle.
She was a weed smoker and then started selling weed.
If I remember the premise of the show, and the
show was a hit. Right now, if you take that woman,
just use your imagination. Take that woman out, she's no
(18:40):
longer a white woman. Put a black woman in there.
Does everything exactly the same? Is there a rejection to that?
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Does that show even get made?
Speaker 2 (18:53):
Right?
Speaker 1 (18:54):
So, I think that there's a responsibility there that when
there is a black person in that sort of position,
have you gone Have these white writers often enough, gone
to the same lengths to humanize these characters, And when
it comes to the white characters themselves, because you know
(19:15):
they it's I think it's they don't heed the responsibility
of having to humanize black characters because they don't know
that it exists. I'm not calling the white writers racist.
I don't know that. I suspect that a lot of
them harbor racist sentiments and they may not know it,
but I cannot just come out my face and say
the writers in Hollywood are racist because I don't know that.
(19:36):
But I can say that that would be a blind spot.
And this is something that we've illuminated on this show.
There are lots of blind spots for all of us.
I don't know what life is like to be a
white woman selling dope and gated community. I've never lived
that life. Right, But if you're not able to humanize
a person because you don't understand what life might be
(19:59):
like for them, or it just didn't occur to you
to do so, then you cannot create that complex character
in the same way. Meanwhile, you can humanize a white woman.
This is why when white women get caught shoplifting, they
I don't know, almost we've seen this.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
They get walked out of the store.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
They don't get handcuffed and're not going to get photographed,
even if you're going to get arrested. If a black
woman is shoplifting to feed her family or whatever, she
shouldn't have been stealing get handcuffed or rested on the
ground bleeding when she gets put in a police car
and so forth. Right, and so TV does have a
role to play on this because they're humanizing the plight
of the anti hero, of the folks that have to
(20:37):
go against the system when it's a white character. And
I don't know that I've seen that very often. I
do want to make a point about copaganda, So don't
let me forget. But I know you got to jump
in here, Q, so help help help give me all
the way together.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
A couple of things here.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
First of all, you and God have the most unyielding
grace and mercy that I've ever encountered. It's unyielding the
idea that they cannot make us human because they don't
know that we exist as human Come on, bro, like
I'm your brother. That's a ridiculous thing to say they
(21:14):
cannot imagine us as human beings because they've never encountered it.
That they've never encountered it in the year of our
lower twenty twenties. All right, back to this, Maybe I misspoken,
but go ahead back to what she said, because I
don't think she said this. I do not think the
position that she wants us to adopt or accept is
(21:35):
that white people are being coddled.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah, I said that.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I said.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
That's what expressed to me that we need the same coddling.
And I don't think that that is what happened or
what we need. I think white people are just allowed
to be human. Yeah, individual human beings who live a
life of nuance. So Walter White and Marty Byrd are
both living in a lie that they've shown Black people
(22:01):
live before. But in the Black story, it's Nino Brown.
Walter White, and Marty Bird became like drug trafficking, drug
creating criminals. It just kept showing them as dad and husband,
and Brown didn't do that. Nino Brown's human side. Shaw
(22:26):
him abusing the woman that he loved. Marty Bird, you
see him loving and trying to protect his wife and
children from the environment he put them in. So he
just still gets to be dad and human being in
person and people, because even black people can watch Ozark
and through everything that they're doing. Just like she said,
(22:47):
find yourself rooting for this family to make it out
of the other side of all of the cruel, corrupt,
illegal decisions that they're making. They're not victims of circumstance.
Walter White become a fentanyl Uh No, what's the drug
that Walter White makes.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I don't know a lot about drugs. Either, So I
can't help you.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, but we've covered it.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
What is the this this new epidemic of white people
falling victim to drugs. No, fentanyl is one, it's fentinyl
is the more recent one. There's one in between, like
cracking cocaine and fentanyl.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Meth.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Oh yeah, that's one.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
He has a crystal meth lab. He makes it. Again,
this is not something happening to him. He finds that making,
selling and distributing drugs is a good way to make
money for me and my family. So he does it,
and you end up rooting for Walter White. Sure, the
chemist who's making meth. And we've all seen the effects
(23:55):
of crystal meth on human beings. So it's not that
white characters are coddled. They just present their story with
every nuance, every angle, all the context, everything that makes
you human. It's the same way that this shooter in
San Diego. I don't know this, but I'm sure will
be presented as some troubled people who went through some
(24:17):
hard times and were radicalized by someone, and that's how
they arrived here. That single person, not all people that
identified that way.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But if rams or Q does something. Look at how
we told you black.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
People behave become their avatar, because we are by nature criminal,
not human. We are by nature some substandard of property
or belonging or by every definition pejorative and negative and dark.
They gave us black intentionally as a negative. Our skin
(24:53):
isn't actually that color.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
Everybody's skin is brown.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
So we.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
Have to just kind of accept that this is a
decision that they make intentionally. I am not giving them
the grace of they just don't know any better, because
I have people who.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Have known me.
Speaker 4 (25:10):
I said this to you, I'll say it on the
air again for thirty years that still found me to
be the fear mongering, brainwashed, left wing lunatic when my
children's safety was put at risk, something that I thought
everybody should have been able to identify with.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
So thank you for that, because sometimes I say things
and you find a better way to say. I'm right
in the middle of it. So I agree one hundred percent.
I do, and I did promise this. I do want
to kind of touch on copaganda as well, because on
this show, historically we've talked about how problematic police are
in black communities and why there was a need to
(25:52):
push for police reform. Eh, we'll go with police reform
after the George Floyd protest of twenty twenty. And why
that was so challenging is because of the subtle influence
of copaganda. This is something again that Hollywood is culpable
(26:13):
for and responsible for. In short, copaganda is and we
did a whole segment on this. You're welcome to look
it up. It's in the archives. But copaganda is the
subtle influence of police dramas over the years on people's minds. Right,
police are as often is makes no difference the good
(26:33):
guys in the story, right, and so it's hard to
envision police as the bad guys. And the police actually
infiltrated Hollywood. In order to get the real police stories.
The police organization in Hollywood, what is it called the
Police Union maybe I'm not sure, entered into a partnership
with I know at least one producer, but I believe
(26:56):
it was certain producers, but one producer, and the show
was Dragnet in order to get those real police stories.
Back in the day, they wanted to have some control
over how the police were viewed, right, And so the
stories that went out were able to get approved by
the police departments, always painting the police in the most
positive light possible. Right, And then when you think of
(27:16):
like stories of police corruption, they're very exceptionally few and
far between relative to cop being good guys stories.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
And even in those stories, turnal affairs gets to be
the hero booms which are also police officers. So even
when there's that one bad apple, the police solved it
and are the hero and the propaganda worked, oh yeah,
because I'd be watching them shows like get Yeah Yeah,
same me too.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
And the's same with the US military. It's like, you know,
you cry fill all patriotic when they waited to flag
at the end, and you learn to not question the police.
And so no matter what we say as a people,
there's people's tendencies. And these people control newsrooms, they control
every aspect of life. Their tendency is to believe the police.
(28:01):
And I want to point out one example of police corruption.
Sky one an oscar for playing a corrupt cop. His
name is Denzel Washington. I'll leave you to connect the
rest of the dots on that one again if you
want to hear the whole rundown, because we we beat
that one and death when we hit it just look
up a Coppaganda and the archives and you'll see it.
But anyway, stuff to bear in mind. But that's gonna
(28:22):
do it for us here at Civic Cipher. Be sure
to follow us on all social media at Civic Cipher
c I B I C C I P H E
R and hit the website Civiccipher dot com. See you
next week, peace.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
Y'all. May yo. We had the leak, these presidents of
Fabulous Lady showing you.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Where bomb traveled.
Speaker 5 (28:39):
Speak to you from sunlight to the move busting on
stage like the fight, move my mic back, you're like that.
We can strikes with waters from headquarters behind him, the
line side and the borders with press pass.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
We bring it to you asn't happens the streets.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Love from Music Fast Street from
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