August 9, 2025 • 27 mins
In the first half of today’s program, we discuss the overlooked merits of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and how they benefit a company’s bottom line. We also discuss the implications of a disenfranchised voter base and how these things can—and are shaping society.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Civic Cipher Studios. Welcome to another episode
of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship
empathy and understanding. I am your host, Ramsey's job.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
He is Ramsey's job. I am q Ward. You are
tuned into Civic Cipher and it feels like it's been
so long since we spoke, but it hasn't been. I
guess the weeks just feel longer these days.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But we need you to stick around because we are
going to be talking about some important stuff, some things
that are worth contemplating. First up, we're going to be
talking about who pays when DEI disappears and voting power
is stripped. For those who have been paying attention, there's
been this huge deal with jerrymandering in Texas, and indeed,
(00:45):
the latest development is Trump contemplating using the FBI to
go after duly elected legislators who are protesting the jerrymandering
that is taking place in Texas. In addition to that,
job losses under Trump are especially pronounced in black communities
(01:11):
around the country. There's been a surge in black unemployment,
in particular with black women since Donald Trump has taken office.
So who pays when DEI disappears and voted voting power stript.
We're going to get into the weeds. We're also going
to be talking about black creators choosing community over corporate gatekeeping.
You know, we've talked on our other show about Google
(01:34):
eliminating funding for a lot of diversity and equity and
inclusion programs around the country, and they're the latest to
kind of bend the knee and kiss the ring. And
we're going to talk about people that are pushing back
against that and how we can maintain the pursuit of
a more equitable United States of America. So all that
(01:55):
and so much more to stick around for during this show,
and we hope that you do. But before we get
there at his time, as always to start off with
some ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall. So
today we're going to shout out Representative Jasmine Crocket, the
Democrat from Texas who called the out President Donald Trump
as a piece of expletive deleted during a rally on Sunday,
(02:20):
August third. And we like when people speak truth to power.
We like when people are unafraid. We like when people
are willing to meet folks where they are and decency
went out the window a long time ago, and to
be fair, Donald Trump threw it out. So anybody that
has any thing negative to say about Jasmine Crockett, this
(02:41):
isn't a place you're going to find fertile ground. So
I will share this story. The Texas lawmaker appeared at
the Phoenix stop of a political advocacy group, the move
On's Won't Back Down to Her, where she urged the
Democratic Party to get aggressive against the Trump administration. Quote Listen,
Donald Trump is a piece of blank. Okay, we know that, unquote,
had said, garnering cheers from the crowd. Crocket attended Sunday's
(03:03):
rally alongside fellow Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Chris Murphy and
Representative Yasmine I'm sorry to inspire voters ahead of next
year's midterm elections. During the rally, Crockett said she's confident
that a Democratic candidate could win the twenty twenty eight
presidential election, and laid out the strategy. She thinks the
party should take quote but what we are going to
But what are we going to need to do? Then?
(03:24):
Quote she asked for me, it's getting aggressive. She goes
on to say, we need to have some real guardrails
around the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court has paved
the way for half the stuff that we see that's
going on, Crockett added, calling the nation's Supreme Court corrupt.
Despite her criticism of Trump, Crockett placed blame on Congress
and Scotus for allowing the President to implement his agenda.
(03:46):
The Democratic lawmaker added that the High Court has no
ethics guardrails while lower courts do. Quote how much sense
does that make when we know they're taking money, We
have the paper trail and they refuse to put guardrails
on themselves unquote? She added, Uh yes, shout out to
Jasmine Crockett for being bold all right down to brass
(04:06):
tacks who pays when DEI disappears and voting power is stripped. Okay,
I want to share a story that you know I've
shared before, but I think it's relevant that I bring
it back, and for folks that may not have heard
(04:28):
the first time, I think it's it's important for me
to give this, you know, some some context. I think
because of the way that I'm composed, my humanity is
composed and my morality is composed, that I would have
been receptive to the idea, at least of affirmative action.
(04:53):
I would have been receptive to the idea of diversity,
equity and inclusion initiatives. Right. Remember in grade school hearing
about the Great American Melting Pot. For those that are
old enough to remember, school house Rock and the song
the Great American Melting Pot. And this song suggested that
we were all different types of people, all living in
(05:15):
the same land, and that's what made us special. Schoolhouse
Rock is like basically a cartoon sing songy sort of
a thing that they showed in school to teach us
parts of history and math, etc. And so this song,
the Great American melt would likely be banned now. It
probably would be bad now, yeah, exactly, But at the
time this was how, at least at my school, they
(05:36):
were teaching us cool. So this is why I know
the Preamble to the Constitution by heart, because I know
it as a song. It's why I know how bills
go from bills to laws because I know the song, right,
but the Great American Melting plot Pot. Rather, look it
up on YouTube and you'll hear the song that I
heard when I was in grade school. And I remember
at that young age, thinking what a beautiful song, right,
(05:59):
that we're all different because I could look at my classrooms.
You know, I'm at school in California. I went school
in Arizona, so I could look at my classrooms and say, hey,
we are all different and that's what makes us better.
Like I like playing with a lot of different people
at recess. So cool, you know. And this is before
like the reality set in that everybody hates black people
and all that sort of stuff. But you know, school
(06:22):
didn't indoctrinate me that way. You know, I just learned
it because I learned the history of this country, and
then I learned how one side of this country tends
to vote and the types of philosophies that they espouse,
which are often, in my estimation, very anti black, anti marginalized,
and very pro pro white. If we're painting with broad strokes,
(06:45):
I don't want to eliminate too many folks, but if
we're paying with broad strokes, this is what I found
to be the case, especially early on in my life.
I know it's a lot more nuanced than that, but
follow me. So we get to the point where we
are discussing this great American melting pot, and we are
(07:09):
understanding that our strength lies in kind of our diversity.
Fast forward. I go to college and I went to
business school. I went to one of the better business
schools in the United States, and I remember one of
my professors, I think it was global business class I
was taking. And when I was going to school, it
(07:31):
was a red state, you know, Bush and Office that
sort of thing, right, And these people were up and
they were like, yeah, you know Walmart's winning, Let them win,
you know, apex capitalists, right, And they were teaching us
how to be the same way, how to suspend our
morality and blow up a village so we can put
a pipeline in there to carry oil across sacred burial
(07:53):
grounds and all that sort of stuff. Right, They were
teaching us how to do that. Well. One of the
things that even those instructors taught me was that diversity
helps business. And there's a lot of brilliant successful people
that would agree with that, right, including other people, not
(08:18):
just including them like as a voice, but including them
and allowing them to oversee the implementation of it, giving
them real power to shape things, because then they can
bring their own ideas to the table that you may
never have conceived of. So I think I've covered the
diversity part, the inclusion part, and the equitable part. Okay,
So all of these things were things that were also
(08:39):
taught by these same Apex capitalists at my school when
I was in college as being things that help businesses succeed,
help businesses thrive. And you know, they illuminated blind spots
that folks might have. They illuminated missteps that folks might have,
(08:59):
and on and on. Right, if you don't have anybody
that speaks Spanish working at your company as a second language,
anybody who might have been from Mexico and spoken Mexican Spanish. Right,
and you want to sell toothpaste in Mexico, do you
(09:21):
need to just enter the market and sell Colgate? Well
you would think you do. Yeah, Culgate works up here.
Teeth are the same everywhere. Right, let's just go down
there and sell it. It's not so simple because holgat
in Mexico means go hang yourself, right, and nobody wants
(09:42):
to read go hang yourself when they're trying to pick
out which brand of toothpaste that they want to use.
So now you have two choices because someone has illuminated
this oversight to you because you don't speak Spanish, you
don't know what it's like down there, right, So you
either need to rebrand this and pronounce it differently so
that the people will pronounce it differently, because the word
(10:04):
means go hang yourself. So you've got to figure out
how to associate this logo and this word with your
brand and not what it actually means in the language.
Or you have to rename the product that you're selling
down there. One of the two. But either way, you've
now saved yourself from enduring these potentially damaging losses from
(10:26):
trying to enter into a new market a new country. Right. So,
blind spots, right, blind spots like this, This is what
diversity helps with. On top of that, if you offend someone,
if you offend a group of people and they say,
you know what, this company doesn't respect us, so we
will we as a community will not spend our money there.
It doesn't even need to be organized. And if you
(10:48):
don't get the granular data of like who's shopping or
who's buying your stuff, and you don't realize that one
group isn't showing up because you've potentially offended them and
they haven't made a lot of noise about it, and
your competitors do have diverse hiring practices and they have
promoted a diverse workforce, then your competitors will get all
(11:09):
of those people that you've left in the margins in
the margins. And when you look at your competitors' income
statements and their stock prices and you realize they're doing
better than you and you don't know why. Indeed, it
very well could be because they have a diverse set
of eyes on how to make money and you don't. Now,
(11:33):
if you offend someone so much that they can sue you,
that's another way to lose money. Right, So again, I
think I've made my point. Diversity equity inclusion it helps businesses.
It's not charity. No one comes and knocks on your door, like,
is anybody black living here? Because we have jobs out
here that we're given the black folks. It doesn't work
(11:54):
that way. You have to be qualified. In diversity equity
and inclusion initiatives are supposed to find additional qualified people
who are as qualified that don't just look like Chad
down the hall. Right, So if you're with me so far,
then we will further discuss who pays when DEI disappears
and voting power is stripped. So Q was going to
(12:17):
round out the voting stuff a little bit better than
I might. But I want to share this article from
Huffington Post. And again, I know Huffington Post has a
pronounced left leaning bias. I will see that entirely, okay,
But I think that there's a couple of good points
made in this article. We do our best to know
(12:37):
which sources were we're pulling from, but this article, I
think that this really kind of explains what it is
we're trying to say here. So again from Huffington Post.
With a combination of executive orders, legal maneuvers, and staffing decisions,
President Donald Trump has already put in motion his next
effort to subvert upcoming federal elections. In twenty twenty six
and twenty twenty eight. Since taking office, Trumps installed loyalists
(12:59):
who follow his orders and to key positions at the
Department of Justice. Issued executive order centralizing decision making within
the White House, attempted to unilaterally change state and local
election laws, demanded unprecedented access to voter data, dismantled election
security protections, threatened elections officials and workers law firms and
others who have historically stood up to protect elections and defended, hired,
(13:21):
or pardoned those involved in previous efforts to subvert elections.
All of these actions combine into a concerted strategy to
undermine federal elections, according to a new report by the
Brennan Center for Justice, a left leaning nonprofit that advocates
for voting rights. The report highlights how these actions are
being used together to set the stage for future lives
about election integrity and attempts by the White House to
(13:43):
try to change the outcome of elections altogether. It also
details how they are being fought by states, election officials
and voting advocates. We are seeing this as an unprecedented
intrusion by the White House into the way that our
elections work, in a way that really makes us concern
for our elections moving forward, unquote, said Sean Morales Doyle
direction Sorry, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program
(14:05):
at the Brandon Center. Trump has made the subversion of
elections central to his political career, which he launched by
questioning whether President Barack Obama was eligible to be president.
He has claimed every election since twenty twelve. Sorry that
did not go Republican's way was rigged with illegal votes
and fraud, even claiming that his twenty sixteen win would
have been bigger if not for alleged fraud. This false
(14:28):
campaign culminated in his twenty twenty loss, when he illegally
attempted to remain in power and sparked an insurrection aimed
at stopping the certification of President Joe Biden's victory on
January sixth, twenty twenty one. This is a long article,
so'll bear with me. Quote. What we are witnessing now
is that Trump, from day one of this administration has
started putting the wheels in motion to undermine elections and
(14:48):
to make sure the people who would be carrying out
that plan won't say no this time around. Unquote, Morales.
Doyle said, the most important change from his first administration
is that Trump has shied away from hiring experienced people
in the key posts in the Department of Justice, the FBI,
and the Department of Defense, and instead appointed toadies who
follow his orders. After the twenty twenty election, Trump's attempt
(15:11):
to steal the election was hamstrung by his appointees, including
Attorney General William Barr, who refused to seize voting machines
at Trump's request, and other DOJ officials who fought Trump's
efforts to appoint Jeff Clark as acting Attorney General in
order to issue a letter saying the election was marred
by fraud. The second attempt Sorry. The second Trump administration
(15:32):
is instead staffed with people who helped Trump lie about
the twenty twenty election, including Attorney General Pambondi, FBI Director
Cash Mattel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an Assistant Attorney General
Armeet Dillon, and Ed Martin, a right wing attorney who
now leads a Justice Department task force on the weaponization
of the federal government. The shift means voting rights advocates
(15:53):
are now fighting the federal government itself rather than fighting
fringe outside actors. So I know that we talked about
DEI in the workplace. I want to circle back to that,
But first I want to make sure that you know,
QUU weigh in on kind of the evolution of I
guess these attacks on voting rights and really the implications there.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
First, you know, to the audience, Rams just said I
would round out all these things, presenting me as some
expert that is grossly unfair and said a really incredible
expectation that I'm doomed to not live up to.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I am an opinionist, folks. I am a.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Journalist and I do my research, but I am in
no way an experts. So my brother and coworker and
colleague and someone who I refer to as my kind
of hopeful north star sway you into thinking that I'm
going to be the.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The You helped me out so much, man, you got
to forget these things.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
So when he said that, I cringe a little bit
because I'm like, I am not the expert on this.
A lot of what you guys hear is how I
feel about the research that I've done. We started off
talking about DEI and we ended up talking about elections.
(17:13):
And we have now seen a president, half of our government,
a political party, and more than half of the people
that showed up to vote holding up, rooting for cheering
along and supporting things that are by all definition anti American.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And when you campaign.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
On getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion, is very
very important to say those words, because they've made DEI
its own pejorative word.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
DEI is not a word. Those three letters.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Are acronyms, or that's an acronym with three letters that
stand for something else. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are supposed
to be the foundation of our country. The Statue of
Liberty Ellis Island. Take a trip there. Read what it says.
(18:19):
You'd be surprised because it is the opposite of what
you so call patriots are parroting today at the behest
of the grifter in chief, all parts of our country
are worst off without DEI. Industry, education, sports, parades, festivals, carnivals, commerce,
(18:46):
trade again, education, scholastic endeavors, research, Most people who have
contributed to most of the things that you love and
enjoy the iPhone that you're watching this on sad News.
Steve Jobs owned the company. A bunch of people that
(19:06):
looked different, created the products, and manufactured the products, and
create the software and the apps and all these things
that you guys enjoy. Immigrants, the people who you claim
to hate, created almost everything that you use. Immigrants, people
of color, And when you remember that all of us
(19:27):
are immigrants, then it's really holistically everything. But we have
a new way of thinking in this country. We're the
only people that deserve to participate in the democracy or
benefit from its virtues are those who are white, no
matter where they are from, no matter where they were born.
(19:47):
And it's a really, really discouraging truth to have to
deal with on a daily basis. And we learned daily
that so many more of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen
are with this way of thinking and this way of
life than we would have ever imagined.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Because as quote unquote powerful.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
And smug and small and evil as your president is,
he needed tens of millions of people to agree with
him and to continue to support him and continue to
back all the decisions that he makes on a daily basis.
He was not then and is not now, doing any
of this by himself. There are tens of millions of people,
(20:33):
hundreds of legislators all over this country doing his bidding,
bending the knee, and practicing pre compliance to whatever they
think he might want them to do. It's a really
sad place for us to be, and he may have
now set it up ramses where like he said when
(20:56):
he was campaigning, people voted the last time they would
need to, because they seem to be putting into place
systems all over this country to keep us from even
being able to participate, let alone not having to.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, well, the result of that is, you know, there's
reduced access, there's fewer voices at the ballot box. Low
(21:34):
income communities don't get to say what it is that
they need. Black and brown communities don't get to say
what it is that they need. And you would think
that people would recognize that during COVID that we kind
of need each other because our humanity is very much
(21:54):
linked to each other, you know what I mean. It
doesn't matter if what part of the world you live in.
We're all connected. Because there was a virus in China
that took over the world like three years because people
spread it to people Homo sapient sapiens spread it to
(22:15):
Homo sapient sapiens. So we're connected. And as a result,
you know, we should have representation. And this administration's attacks
not just on the ballot boxes and the individuals and
so forth, but on data. You know, firing the Bureau
(22:36):
of Labor Statistics, you know, had because well he wasn't
a fan of the data. That was a very scary
move because rather than acknowledging like, hey, okay, this data
is good, this is good feedback, maybe we can do something,
or let's examine what's working, what's not working. The ego
there says, look, man, this is this can't be right this,
(22:58):
there's got to be something wrong here. The people around
me said something different or you know, however he processed that.
So he's going to fire this person who did give
unflattering uh data about Joe Biden as well. You know
when the when the job growth wasn't there, you know,
she did her job. And then now we're looking at okay,
(23:22):
so can we trust the data coming from the government.
You know, typically that's the most reliable. We we kind
of hang our hat on that this came from the FBI.
Now we're going to have to say this came from
the FBI when what year? Right, So there are there
are real consequences there, and you know, for people that
(23:43):
forget the fact that we're all linked together, I think
that you know, we need a reminder for those folks.
And then to circle back to the diversity, equity and
inclusion initiatives and those things being defunded by you know,
places like Google everybody really you know, Target was the
first to fall, you know, but you know those rollbacks,
(24:08):
you know, when you're looking at not just the private
sector and enterprise and in commerce, but in education and academics.
You know, there's less in the way of scholarships to
train the people with the perspective needed to contribute valuable
intel to the corporations that ultimately want to be successful
relative to their competition. If you have less of those
(24:31):
people to hire from, then you have, you know, you
end up with a more problematic future than you would
otherwise have. And it's those people that don't value the diversity,
that don't see that as a strength, that end up
kind of shooting themselves in the foot and don't realize
that that's what they've done until it's too late. They've
(24:53):
insulated themselves from our shared humanity in a way that
they cannot They clearly cannot see it. Because if capitalism
drives this whole machine, and you know, to be fair,
sometimes racism drives it a little further that one.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Go ahead, Yeah, you say, sometimes I don't know that,
I don't know that that Sometimes we're watching people lose
billions of dollars, so they hold on to their racism
so like that racism seems to be stronger than their
allegiance to everything that then there then their solidarity to
(25:32):
their ethnic group, to their to their gender group too,
to their social class. They will hold tighter to racism
than they will to the solidarity to their to their
to their deity. Racism has proven now to be stronger
than their self determination.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
You know. The only thing about that that I I
think I give too much grace too. So you know,
I'm not saying you're wrong. I just I'm acknowledging that
I give too much grace to it. Is that there
are not very many racists yet who are proud, out
loud and you know, full throated racists. They still try
(26:17):
to hide it or sneak it into correct crafty language
or whatever. But to be fair, their behavior certainly does.
It doesn't have it's nonsensical outside of the context of
them just being they're plain racist.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
They're proud of their racist ideas. Yeah, they just don't
like being called racist. Proud of their racist thoughts and
ideas and principles and ideology. Tell you to go back
to your country in the second wild claiming to not
be racist, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And so that. But that's that's kind of the thing
where I'm like, I'm not sure what their motivations are
but it's it doesn't seem like it will ever be
fruitful for them.
Broadcasting from the Civic Cipher Studios. Welcome to another episode
of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship
empathy and understanding. I am your host, Ramsey's job.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
He is Ramsey's job. I am q Ward. You are
tuned into Civic Cipher and it feels like it's been
so long since we spoke, but it hasn't been. I
guess the weeks just feel longer these days.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But we need you to stick around because we are
going to be talking about some important stuff, some things
that are worth contemplating. First up, we're going to be
talking about who pays when DEI disappears and voting power
is stripped. For those who have been paying attention, there's
been this huge deal with jerrymandering in Texas, and indeed,
(00:45):
the latest development is Trump contemplating using the FBI to
go after duly elected legislators who are protesting the jerrymandering
that is taking place in Texas. In addition to that,
job losses under Trump are especially pronounced in black communities
(01:11):
around the country. There's been a surge in black unemployment,
in particular with black women since Donald Trump has taken office.
So who pays when DEI disappears and voted voting power stript.
We're going to get into the weeds. We're also going
to be talking about black creators choosing community over corporate gatekeeping.
You know, we've talked on our other show about Google
(01:34):
eliminating funding for a lot of diversity and equity and
inclusion programs around the country, and they're the latest to
kind of bend the knee and kiss the ring. And
we're going to talk about people that are pushing back
against that and how we can maintain the pursuit of
a more equitable United States of America. So all that
(01:55):
and so much more to stick around for during this show,
and we hope that you do. But before we get
there at his time, as always to start off with
some ebony excellence, shall we? I think we shall. So
today we're going to shout out Representative Jasmine Crocket, the
Democrat from Texas who called the out President Donald Trump
as a piece of expletive deleted during a rally on Sunday,
(02:20):
August third. And we like when people speak truth to power.
We like when people are unafraid. We like when people
are willing to meet folks where they are and decency
went out the window a long time ago, and to
be fair, Donald Trump threw it out. So anybody that
has any thing negative to say about Jasmine Crockett, this
(02:41):
isn't a place you're going to find fertile ground. So
I will share this story. The Texas lawmaker appeared at
the Phoenix stop of a political advocacy group, the move
On's Won't Back Down to Her, where she urged the
Democratic Party to get aggressive against the Trump administration. Quote Listen,
Donald Trump is a piece of blank. Okay, we know that, unquote,
had said, garnering cheers from the crowd. Crocket attended Sunday's
(03:03):
rally alongside fellow Democratic lawmakers, including Senator Chris Murphy and
Representative Yasmine I'm sorry to inspire voters ahead of next
year's midterm elections. During the rally, Crockett said she's confident
that a Democratic candidate could win the twenty twenty eight
presidential election, and laid out the strategy. She thinks the
party should take quote but what we are going to
But what are we going to need to do? Then?
(03:24):
Quote she asked for me, it's getting aggressive. She goes
on to say, we need to have some real guardrails
around the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court has paved
the way for half the stuff that we see that's
going on, Crockett added, calling the nation's Supreme Court corrupt.
Despite her criticism of Trump, Crockett placed blame on Congress
and Scotus for allowing the President to implement his agenda.
(03:46):
The Democratic lawmaker added that the High Court has no
ethics guardrails while lower courts do. Quote how much sense
does that make when we know they're taking money, We
have the paper trail and they refuse to put guardrails
on themselves unquote? She added, Uh yes, shout out to
Jasmine Crockett for being bold all right down to brass
(04:06):
tacks who pays when DEI disappears and voting power is stripped. Okay,
I want to share a story that you know I've
shared before, but I think it's relevant that I bring
it back, and for folks that may not have heard
(04:28):
the first time, I think it's it's important for me
to give this, you know, some some context. I think
because of the way that I'm composed, my humanity is
composed and my morality is composed, that I would have
been receptive to the idea, at least of affirmative action.
(04:53):
I would have been receptive to the idea of diversity,
equity and inclusion initiatives. Right. Remember in grade school hearing
about the Great American Melting Pot. For those that are
old enough to remember, school house Rock and the song
the Great American Melting Pot. And this song suggested that
we were all different types of people, all living in
(05:15):
the same land, and that's what made us special. Schoolhouse
Rock is like basically a cartoon sing songy sort of
a thing that they showed in school to teach us
parts of history and math, etc. And so this song,
the Great American melt would likely be banned now. It
probably would be bad now, yeah, exactly, But at the
time this was how, at least at my school, they
(05:36):
were teaching us cool. So this is why I know
the Preamble to the Constitution by heart, because I know
it as a song. It's why I know how bills
go from bills to laws because I know the song, right,
but the Great American Melting plot Pot. Rather, look it
up on YouTube and you'll hear the song that I
heard when I was in grade school. And I remember
at that young age, thinking what a beautiful song, right,
(05:59):
that we're all different because I could look at my classrooms.
You know, I'm at school in California. I went school
in Arizona, so I could look at my classrooms and say, hey,
we are all different and that's what makes us better.
Like I like playing with a lot of different people
at recess. So cool, you know. And this is before
like the reality set in that everybody hates black people
and all that sort of stuff. But you know, school
(06:22):
didn't indoctrinate me that way. You know, I just learned
it because I learned the history of this country, and
then I learned how one side of this country tends
to vote and the types of philosophies that they espouse,
which are often, in my estimation, very anti black, anti marginalized,
and very pro pro white. If we're painting with broad strokes,
(06:45):
I don't want to eliminate too many folks, but if
we're paying with broad strokes, this is what I found
to be the case, especially early on in my life.
I know it's a lot more nuanced than that, but
follow me. So we get to the point where we
are discussing this great American melting pot, and we are
(07:09):
understanding that our strength lies in kind of our diversity.
Fast forward. I go to college and I went to
business school. I went to one of the better business
schools in the United States, and I remember one of
my professors, I think it was global business class I
was taking. And when I was going to school, it
(07:31):
was a red state, you know, Bush and Office that
sort of thing, right, And these people were up and
they were like, yeah, you know Walmart's winning, Let them win,
you know, apex capitalists, right, And they were teaching us
how to be the same way, how to suspend our
morality and blow up a village so we can put
a pipeline in there to carry oil across sacred burial
(07:53):
grounds and all that sort of stuff. Right, They were
teaching us how to do that. Well. One of the
things that even those instructors taught me was that diversity
helps business. And there's a lot of brilliant successful people
that would agree with that, right, including other people, not
(08:18):
just including them like as a voice, but including them
and allowing them to oversee the implementation of it, giving
them real power to shape things, because then they can
bring their own ideas to the table that you may
never have conceived of. So I think I've covered the
diversity part, the inclusion part, and the equitable part. Okay,
So all of these things were things that were also
(08:39):
taught by these same Apex capitalists at my school when
I was in college as being things that help businesses succeed,
help businesses thrive. And you know, they illuminated blind spots
that folks might have. They illuminated missteps that folks might have,
(08:59):
and on and on. Right, if you don't have anybody
that speaks Spanish working at your company as a second language,
anybody who might have been from Mexico and spoken Mexican Spanish. Right,
and you want to sell toothpaste in Mexico, do you
(09:21):
need to just enter the market and sell Colgate? Well
you would think you do. Yeah, Culgate works up here.
Teeth are the same everywhere. Right, let's just go down
there and sell it. It's not so simple because holgat
in Mexico means go hang yourself, right, and nobody wants
(09:42):
to read go hang yourself when they're trying to pick
out which brand of toothpaste that they want to use.
So now you have two choices because someone has illuminated
this oversight to you because you don't speak Spanish, you
don't know what it's like down there, right, So you
either need to rebrand this and pronounce it differently so
that the people will pronounce it differently, because the word
(10:04):
means go hang yourself. So you've got to figure out
how to associate this logo and this word with your
brand and not what it actually means in the language.
Or you have to rename the product that you're selling
down there. One of the two. But either way, you've
now saved yourself from enduring these potentially damaging losses from
(10:26):
trying to enter into a new market a new country. Right. So,
blind spots, right, blind spots like this, This is what
diversity helps with. On top of that, if you offend someone,
if you offend a group of people and they say,
you know what, this company doesn't respect us, so we
will we as a community will not spend our money there.
It doesn't even need to be organized. And if you
(10:48):
don't get the granular data of like who's shopping or
who's buying your stuff, and you don't realize that one
group isn't showing up because you've potentially offended them and
they haven't made a lot of noise about it, and
your competitors do have diverse hiring practices and they have
promoted a diverse workforce, then your competitors will get all
(11:09):
of those people that you've left in the margins in
the margins. And when you look at your competitors' income
statements and their stock prices and you realize they're doing
better than you and you don't know why. Indeed, it
very well could be because they have a diverse set
of eyes on how to make money and you don't. Now,
(11:33):
if you offend someone so much that they can sue you,
that's another way to lose money. Right, So again, I
think I've made my point. Diversity equity inclusion it helps businesses.
It's not charity. No one comes and knocks on your door, like,
is anybody black living here? Because we have jobs out
here that we're given the black folks. It doesn't work
(11:54):
that way. You have to be qualified. In diversity equity
and inclusion initiatives are supposed to find additional qualified people
who are as qualified that don't just look like Chad
down the hall. Right, So if you're with me so far,
then we will further discuss who pays when DEI disappears
and voting power is stripped. So Q was going to
(12:17):
round out the voting stuff a little bit better than
I might. But I want to share this article from
Huffington Post. And again, I know Huffington Post has a
pronounced left leaning bias. I will see that entirely, okay,
But I think that there's a couple of good points
made in this article. We do our best to know
(12:37):
which sources were we're pulling from, but this article, I
think that this really kind of explains what it is
we're trying to say here. So again from Huffington Post.
With a combination of executive orders, legal maneuvers, and staffing decisions,
President Donald Trump has already put in motion his next
effort to subvert upcoming federal elections. In twenty twenty six
and twenty twenty eight. Since taking office, Trumps installed loyalists
(12:59):
who follow his orders and to key positions at the
Department of Justice. Issued executive order centralizing decision making within
the White House, attempted to unilaterally change state and local
election laws, demanded unprecedented access to voter data, dismantled election
security protections, threatened elections officials and workers law firms and
others who have historically stood up to protect elections and defended, hired,
(13:21):
or pardoned those involved in previous efforts to subvert elections.
All of these actions combine into a concerted strategy to
undermine federal elections, according to a new report by the
Brennan Center for Justice, a left leaning nonprofit that advocates
for voting rights. The report highlights how these actions are
being used together to set the stage for future lives
about election integrity and attempts by the White House to
(13:43):
try to change the outcome of elections altogether. It also
details how they are being fought by states, election officials
and voting advocates. We are seeing this as an unprecedented
intrusion by the White House into the way that our
elections work, in a way that really makes us concern
for our elections moving forward, unquote, said Sean Morales Doyle
direction Sorry, director of the Voting Rights and Elections Program
(14:05):
at the Brandon Center. Trump has made the subversion of
elections central to his political career, which he launched by
questioning whether President Barack Obama was eligible to be president.
He has claimed every election since twenty twelve. Sorry that
did not go Republican's way was rigged with illegal votes
and fraud, even claiming that his twenty sixteen win would
have been bigger if not for alleged fraud. This false
(14:28):
campaign culminated in his twenty twenty loss, when he illegally
attempted to remain in power and sparked an insurrection aimed
at stopping the certification of President Joe Biden's victory on
January sixth, twenty twenty one. This is a long article,
so'll bear with me. Quote. What we are witnessing now
is that Trump, from day one of this administration has
started putting the wheels in motion to undermine elections and
(14:48):
to make sure the people who would be carrying out
that plan won't say no this time around. Unquote, Morales.
Doyle said, the most important change from his first administration
is that Trump has shied away from hiring experienced people
in the key posts in the Department of Justice, the FBI,
and the Department of Defense, and instead appointed toadies who
follow his orders. After the twenty twenty election, Trump's attempt
(15:11):
to steal the election was hamstrung by his appointees, including
Attorney General William Barr, who refused to seize voting machines
at Trump's request, and other DOJ officials who fought Trump's
efforts to appoint Jeff Clark as acting Attorney General in
order to issue a letter saying the election was marred
by fraud. The second attempt Sorry. The second Trump administration
(15:32):
is instead staffed with people who helped Trump lie about
the twenty twenty election, including Attorney General Pambondi, FBI Director
Cash Mattel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an Assistant Attorney General
Armeet Dillon, and Ed Martin, a right wing attorney who
now leads a Justice Department task force on the weaponization
of the federal government. The shift means voting rights advocates
(15:53):
are now fighting the federal government itself rather than fighting
fringe outside actors. So I know that we talked about
DEI in the workplace. I want to circle back to that,
But first I want to make sure that you know,
QUU weigh in on kind of the evolution of I
guess these attacks on voting rights and really the implications there.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
First, you know, to the audience, Rams just said I
would round out all these things, presenting me as some
expert that is grossly unfair and said a really incredible
expectation that I'm doomed to not live up to.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I am an opinionist, folks. I am a.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Journalist and I do my research, but I am in
no way an experts. So my brother and coworker and
colleague and someone who I refer to as my kind
of hopeful north star sway you into thinking that I'm
going to be the.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
The You helped me out so much, man, you got
to forget these things.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
So when he said that, I cringe a little bit
because I'm like, I am not the expert on this.
A lot of what you guys hear is how I
feel about the research that I've done. We started off
talking about DEI and we ended up talking about elections.
(17:13):
And we have now seen a president, half of our government,
a political party, and more than half of the people
that showed up to vote holding up, rooting for cheering
along and supporting things that are by all definition anti American.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
And when you campaign.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
On getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion, is very
very important to say those words, because they've made DEI
its own pejorative word.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
DEI is not a word. Those three letters.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Are acronyms, or that's an acronym with three letters that
stand for something else. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are supposed
to be the foundation of our country. The Statue of
Liberty Ellis Island. Take a trip there. Read what it says.
(18:19):
You'd be surprised because it is the opposite of what
you so call patriots are parroting today at the behest
of the grifter in chief, all parts of our country
are worst off without DEI. Industry, education, sports, parades, festivals, carnivals, commerce,
(18:46):
trade again, education, scholastic endeavors, research, Most people who have
contributed to most of the things that you love and
enjoy the iPhone that you're watching this on sad News.
Steve Jobs owned the company. A bunch of people that
(19:06):
looked different, created the products, and manufactured the products, and
create the software and the apps and all these things
that you guys enjoy. Immigrants, the people who you claim
to hate, created almost everything that you use. Immigrants, people
of color, And when you remember that all of us
(19:27):
are immigrants, then it's really holistically everything. But we have
a new way of thinking in this country. We're the
only people that deserve to participate in the democracy or
benefit from its virtues are those who are white, no
matter where they are from, no matter where they were born.
(19:47):
And it's a really, really discouraging truth to have to
deal with on a daily basis. And we learned daily
that so many more of our fellow countrymen and countrywomen
are with this way of thinking and this way of
life than we would have ever imagined.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Because as quote unquote powerful.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
And smug and small and evil as your president is,
he needed tens of millions of people to agree with
him and to continue to support him and continue to
back all the decisions that he makes on a daily basis.
He was not then and is not now, doing any
of this by himself. There are tens of millions of people,
(20:33):
hundreds of legislators all over this country doing his bidding,
bending the knee, and practicing pre compliance to whatever they
think he might want them to do. It's a really
sad place for us to be, and he may have
now set it up ramses where like he said when
(20:56):
he was campaigning, people voted the last time they would
need to, because they seem to be putting into place
systems all over this country to keep us from even
being able to participate, let alone not having to.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, well, the result of that is, you know, there's
reduced access, there's fewer voices at the ballot box. Low
(21:34):
income communities don't get to say what it is that
they need. Black and brown communities don't get to say
what it is that they need. And you would think
that people would recognize that during COVID that we kind
of need each other because our humanity is very much
(21:54):
linked to each other, you know what I mean. It
doesn't matter if what part of the world you live in.
We're all connected. Because there was a virus in China
that took over the world like three years because people
spread it to people Homo sapient sapiens spread it to
(22:15):
Homo sapient sapiens. So we're connected. And as a result,
you know, we should have representation. And this administration's attacks
not just on the ballot boxes and the individuals and
so forth, but on data. You know, firing the Bureau
(22:36):
of Labor Statistics, you know, had because well he wasn't
a fan of the data. That was a very scary
move because rather than acknowledging like, hey, okay, this data
is good, this is good feedback, maybe we can do something,
or let's examine what's working, what's not working. The ego
there says, look, man, this is this can't be right this,
(22:58):
there's got to be something wrong here. The people around
me said something different or you know, however he processed that.
So he's going to fire this person who did give
unflattering uh data about Joe Biden as well. You know
when the when the job growth wasn't there, you know,
she did her job. And then now we're looking at okay,
(23:22):
so can we trust the data coming from the government.
You know, typically that's the most reliable. We we kind
of hang our hat on that this came from the FBI.
Now we're going to have to say this came from
the FBI when what year? Right, So there are there
are real consequences there, and you know, for people that
(23:43):
forget the fact that we're all linked together, I think
that you know, we need a reminder for those folks.
And then to circle back to the diversity, equity and
inclusion initiatives and those things being defunded by you know,
places like Google everybody really you know, Target was the
first to fall, you know, but you know those rollbacks,
(24:08):
you know, when you're looking at not just the private
sector and enterprise and in commerce, but in education and academics.
You know, there's less in the way of scholarships to
train the people with the perspective needed to contribute valuable
intel to the corporations that ultimately want to be successful
relative to their competition. If you have less of those
(24:31):
people to hire from, then you have, you know, you
end up with a more problematic future than you would
otherwise have. And it's those people that don't value the diversity,
that don't see that as a strength, that end up
kind of shooting themselves in the foot and don't realize
that that's what they've done until it's too late. They've
(24:53):
insulated themselves from our shared humanity in a way that
they cannot They clearly cannot see it. Because if capitalism
drives this whole machine, and you know, to be fair,
sometimes racism drives it a little further that one.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Go ahead, Yeah, you say, sometimes I don't know that,
I don't know that that Sometimes we're watching people lose
billions of dollars, so they hold on to their racism
so like that racism seems to be stronger than their
allegiance to everything that then there then their solidarity to
(25:32):
their ethnic group, to their to their gender group too,
to their social class. They will hold tighter to racism
than they will to the solidarity to their to their
to their deity. Racism has proven now to be stronger
than their self determination.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
You know. The only thing about that that I I
think I give too much grace too. So you know,
I'm not saying you're wrong. I just I'm acknowledging that
I give too much grace to it. Is that there
are not very many racists yet who are proud, out
loud and you know, full throated racists. They still try
(26:17):
to hide it or sneak it into correct crafty language
or whatever. But to be fair, their behavior certainly does.
It doesn't have it's nonsensical outside of the context of
them just being they're plain racist.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
They're proud of their racist ideas. Yeah, they just don't
like being called racist. Proud of their racist thoughts and
ideas and principles and ideology. Tell you to go back
to your country in the second wild claiming to not
be racist, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And so that. But that's that's kind of the thing
where I'm like, I'm not sure what their motivations are
but it's it doesn't seem like it will ever be
fruitful for them.
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